Bing Watch . . . Just Bing It!

Happiness, joy, and hope with a yellow circle banner for the New Year

 
Two weeks ago, MSN homepage show a green circle pointing to Bing decision engine, while on the first day of December it used an orange circle.  And now, just about 24 hours to enter the New Year of 2010, a yellow cycle with word “Try Bing” appears on MSN homepage for the same purpose as of the orange and green circles.

Yellow color has several meanings such as:

"...it denotes happiness and joy..."

"...yellow ribbons were worn as a sign of hope as women waited from their men to come marching home from war..."

There is happiness and joy in Bing camp as the decision engine has finally captured over 10% of search market share in America after a very successful launch in late May.  And now, there is hope to conquer Google dominant in years to come, as the decision engine will add Yahoo into the camp within the next few months.

Namaste, no porn please

Online access to pornography is usually very restricted in Eastern culture, especially in India, China, Korea, and Singapore.  As India’s government just recently passed law and enacted Information Technology Act of 2000 that criminalizes online pornography, several top sites incl. Bing and Yahoo started to limit users’ access to pornographic materials.  As guardian.co.uk wrote “The Yahoo search engine and Flickr photo-sharing site (owned by Yahoo) altered their sites earlier this month to prevent users in India from switching off the safe-search facility. The block also applies to users in Singapore, Hong Kong and Korea.”

After Bing launch in late May, it added more tools to filter pornographic materials.  However, Bing has been recognized as one of the popular porn engine with its innovative autoplay to view explicit pornographic videos without leaving the site.  In order to comply with India law, as reported by guardian.co.uk, Bing has warned its users with this notice "your country or region requires a strict Bing SafeSearch setting, which filters out results that might return adult content".

Bing sets China search market as top of to do list

While China popular search engine Baidu.com and giant Google have controlled over 95% of China search market which many analysts believe worth 2 billion yuan ($293 million) in the third quarter of 2009, Bing sets to targeting over 350 millions users in China search market as top priority in the next step of its expansion.  Bing China beta dubbed as “biying” (English: “giving answer”) was launched in mid-June this year. 

As reported by reuters.com citing a top Bing executive who answered an email and quoted “Microsoft is committed to the China market and the search market in China is the most important strategic market for Microsoft.”  According to Jin Naili, an analyst from research firm Analysys International, as reported by reuters.com, China's users who conducted search thru Bing for at least three times a month as of October, has jumped over 30% since Bing launch in mid-June.

Worst website identity

As year 2009 is about to end in the next few days, a team of corporate and brand identity design experts at UnderConsideration has released a list of 2009 worst corporate identity.  The task to identify the best or worst identity was almost similar to the Annual Academy Awards (Oscar) presentation, several fashion experts usually crowned celebrities who wore the best and worst dresses.

On top of this year’s list of worst logo is Bing.  As the design experts team at UnderConsideration wrote “this nastiness was done unknowingly than fully premeditated.”  Although many logo designers praised the new logo as “more friendly, more humble…” when Bing was launched in late May 2009.

American kids love Bing images search

According nytimes.com citing Stefan Weitz, Bing’s director of user experience, Internet users who conducted search found results faster with image search than type-in text search.  Meanwhile, Bing’s users for kids group from 2-years to 17-years has continued to increase since its launch in the last week of May 2009.  Bing’s users for this segment of the population has grown 76 percent during the past seven months, as reported by nytimes.com. 

Bing + Yahoo gain top three spots as the most accessed mobile sites in America

Nielsen posted a list of popular mobile brands and sites accessed thru mobile phones and smart phones.  The combo of Bing and Yahoo could easily handle Google dominant in mobile search market.  Based on the data collected from January to September 2009, Yahoo was at number one as the most accessed mobile sites in America.  Meanwhile, Google was at number two and Bing was at number three. 

 
(chart: Nielsen)

The winner of Bing Photo Contest has a home court advantage

 
The hometown photo contest winner has been awarded by Bing team for a Skyline image that was taken in the city of Seattle, Washington.   The big giant software company headquarter is located in Redmond, just few miles away from central town of Seattle.  Indeed, Bing photo contest winner has a home court advantage. 

The winning photographer is Justin Kraemer, as reported by Bing team blog this afternoon.  A list of 20 best photos is currently on display at Facebook.  This winning photo will be published on Bing popular home page on Wednesday, January 6, 2010.

Bing helps Twitter to make money during the current fiscal year

As per BusinessWeek.com, the real-time content streaming deals from Twitter to both Bing and Google that was announced by Microsoft President, Online Services Division, Qi Lu, during October Web 2.0 Summit, is now worth about $25 million.  While many Wall Street financial analysts questioning the three-year-old Twitter company business practice to make money, BusinessWeek.com quoted some insiders and found the real-time content sharing deal from Twitter to Bing (and also to Google) has helped Twitter to post a profitability fiscal year that will end in the next few days.

Bing webmaster tools issue with indexing site

Since early this morning, several webmasters around the world have been exchanging threads at Bing webmaster forum regarding a major issue with the way Bing indexing sites.  Bing was unable to accept new sites.  Several webmasters had tried to submit their sites with a URL (a domain name) which has “-“ (dash/hyphen) or a domain name with non-dotcom extension (such as, .us), however, all failed.  As Brett Yount, Program Manager for Bing Webmaster Center has confirmed the issue:

“…we are having a few difficulties which I just received confirmation from the indexing team…” and adding this line “…if you try a couple times, it should work…” 

However, a couple of webmasters wrote back to the forum as they were unable to submit their sites to Bing. 

telia wrote “…tried to submit [a website with dash on the domain name] to Bing but it claims it's invalid URL”

rqrock1 wrote “…my site [a domain with .US extension] will not pass the valid site id either…”

After almost 24 hours, it appears that the issue has not been solved yet, as rqrock1 wrote “…they are working on the problem…”

Bing finally ate Google’s lunch

 
Bing team have consumed several bottles of champagne for the past two days in a row, as they saw the decision engine hit another double digits mark as per November data provided by Nielsen Company.  Yesterday data from comScore show Bing captured 10.3% of search market share in America.

 
According to the Nielsen report, Bing captured 10.7% of search market share in November, compared to 9.7% in October.  Meanwhile Google search market share dropped slightly to 65.4% in November, compared to 66.1% in October.  Bing appears to be eating Google’s lunch.

 

 
  (tables: Nielsen Company)

Green is the color for the holiday season

Bing continues to promote itself thru MSN homepage.  On top of MSN homepage, users will see a new green circle which read “Try Bing” with a small arrow pointing to the decision engine search box.  A similar “Try Bing” orange color circle appeared on MSN homepage on the first day of December, and then, the orange circle went on a week of hiatus.

Bing App + iPhone + iPod Touch

Bing has officially launched app for iPhone and iPod touch.  Mobile users can now download the free app thru Bing Mobile (m.bing.com) site or thru iTunes App store.  The new iPhone app will have full function of voice-recognition search, maps locations, and decision engine.  For maps locations and driving directions, this cool feature includes location of restaurants, banks, stores, movie theaters, and local landmarks.

 
(screenshots: Bing.com)

The Perfect Ten

 
The latest comScore report cited by JPMorgan's Imran Khan and published thru businessinsider.com showing Bing received a perfect ten score in the month of November.  Bing search market share finally hit the double digits mark at 10.3% in November, compared to 9.9% in October.  Google share also went up slightly to 65.6%, compared to 65.4% in October.

 
For a span of six months since Bing launch at the end of May 2009, the decision engine has captured additional 2.3% search market share in America.  In the meantime, Google has added only 0.6% search market share for the same period.  Bing has a ratio of 4:1 advantage over Google.

Bing Maps + Silverlight + Azure

Bing Maps is partnering with the European Environmental Agency (EEA) to create an innovative mapping system to depict climate change in the continent of Europe.  Bing Maps is utilizing two of the most significant Microsoft technology for multimedia (Silverlight) and cloud computing platform (Azure) for this web app project.  The web app is to help Europeans to understanding how climate change will be affecting the regions, and is available at a site known as Environmental Atlas of Europe (user must download and install Silverlight software to view maps).

Welcome to Bing Campus

As the 10-years global deal has finally signed by both companies about one week ago, this week Yahoo Human Resources department started the process of identifying 400 search-engine experts and engineers that will be transferred to Bing, as reported by wsj.com citing Yahoo’s CFO Tim Morse.  Mr. Morse was a speaker at the Barclays Capital Global Technology Conference this week.  The Bing team will soon welcoming the 400 ex-Yahoo to its highly accessible San Francisco campus to be near Santa Clara, as those 400 geeks are part of the planned partnership between the two companies that was announced at the end of July.

Firefox barks back at its major sponsor and convinces Googlers to switch to Bing

Due to lack of Google’s concerns on users’ privacy issues, an executive of Mozilla Firefox browser maker (Asa Dotzler), has encouraged its users to switch to Bing decision engine.  Citing a CNBC TV interview last Friday, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said “[Google] do retain this information for some time and it's important…”  As Dotzler wrote in his personal blog, “And here's how you can easily switch Firefox's search from Google to Bing…”

The suggestion to switch to Bing may be very costly for Mozilla Firefox company, citing Mozilla's most-recently-released financial statement, as computerworld.com reporting that “…97% of its revenues came from deals it has with Google, Yahoo, Amazon, eBay and others.”  According to computerworld.com, Mozilla Firefox still has a multi-year deal with Google which will end in 2011.

Bing’s roller coaster ride in America

 
Bing search market share dropped a little bit in America during the month of November.  Bing’s stats looked like a roller coaster ride for the past four months in a row.   According to hitwise.com, Bing received only 9.34% of all searches conducted in America during November, compared to October which was at 9.57% (a drop of 0.23%).   Google received 71.57% of all searches in America during November, compared to October market share of 70.60% (an increase of 0.97%).

 

Bing Toolbar

 
Bing introduced a new toolbar which is dubbed as Bing Bar.  Users can download it thru this link here.  The new Bing Bar is equipped with the powerful Silverlight software and can be installed in Internet Explorer and Firefox.  This new Bing Bar allows users to one-click access to all Bing popular features including Shopping, Video, Decision/Search Engine, Maps, and Hotmail account.  On the decision engine box, it includes “Search Assist” which helps users with several suggested searches when users typing a search term into the box.

Happy clicks come from Bing organic search

A latest study by Chitika, an advertising network, showing Bing has a click-tru-rate (CTR) of 1.74%, compared to Google CTR at 0.98%, as reported by techcrunch.com.  Chitika’s study is based on 134 million ad impressions from about 80,000 websites.  The study only captured ‘organic search’ data, not pay-per-click search ad.

 

 
 (chart & table: Chitika)

Bing + Yahoo search deal has finally signed on December 4, 2009

A press release published by Bing and Yahoo on Friday (Dec 4) shows both companies have officially signed the search license agreement.  Both companies announced to work together on July 29, and then, the deal was delayed few weeks as it passed the deadline on October 27.  From a very reliable source, we first thought the deal would be stamped at a public showing on Dec 2, as Bing top engineers picked San Francisco to show off their latest innovations including street maps, mobile apps, and some cool data.

Bing confirmed the outage

Bing team has confirmed the downtime for about 30 minutes (6:30 to 7:00 PM PST), however, the actual downtime should have been over 48 minutes as we reported the issue within few minutes after Bing outage at 6:24 PM PST last night.  As per the team blog, the outage was caused by “a configuration change during some internal testing that had unfortunate and unintended consequences.”

Bing oops … down!

Bing has been down since 6:24 PM PST for over 20 minutes.  This is a print-screen of Bing's homepage at 6:24 PM PST:

 

 

As we published at 6:45 PM PST, Bing homepage show this print-screen:

 

As of 7:00 PM PST, it appears that Bing team is aware of the situation and they are currently fixing it.  See a print-screen from Twitter.

 

As of 7:12 PM PST, Bing returns to a normal homepage.  Total downtime approx. 48 minutes.

Bing new wisdom: determining user intent

At 10:00AM PST, Bing is currently showing off its new wisdom in the Bay areas:

Microsoft San Francisco
835 Market Street
San Francisco, CA 94103

In this demo show, several Bing's top executives also scheduled to attend, they include:

Satya Nadella, SVP for Research and Development for the Online Services Division
Harry Shum, Corporate VP for Core Search Development
Erik Jorgensen, Corporate VP of MSN
Brian MacDonald, Corporate VP for Core Search Program Management

After the show, here is a chart published by Satya Nadella, SVP for the Online Services Division.

 
 
The main point of today's discussion is about user intent, as Mr. Nadella wrote, “understands what you’re trying to do, where you’re trying to do it, and how you’re trying to talk to it.”

A full report of Mr. Nadella’s study is available at Bing’s team blog,  or visit the Bing product website. 

Mr. Nadella also prepared a Bing’s roadmap on the first 5 pages of a total of 15 pages PowerPoint presentation.  The slides show is a courtesy of kara.allthingsd.com

Click here to go to the slides

 

Young adult loves Bing

Younger users between 18-to-24-year-old prefer to conduct online searching using Bing than any other search engines, according to Microsoft SVP Yusuf Mehdi during a meeting held by Credit Suisse Annual Technology Conference, as it was published by paidcontent.org.  As per the latest info said by Bing's top executive, this group of users (18-to-24 year-olds and mostly college students) conducting search using the decision engine has about 20% higher than the same group of users in the general population.  Compared to prior Bing-era, the old brand “Live Search” was a favorite place to conduct search by retirees and seniors users (at 65-year-old-plus age group).

"Try Bing" orange circle sign

 
In order to increase exposure to MSN millions users, starting today, Bing adds an orange circle sign with a tiny arrow pointing to MSN top search bar where it reads “Try Bing.”   Since MSN is very popular for users searching for news and other general info, the orange cycle may help to increase user’s visibility of Bing search bar.

Bing Hometown Photo Contest

After a very successful run of the photo contest this past summer between the month of June and July '09, Bing is now urging the decision engine’s users and Facebook users to submit a photograph of the user’s hometown and could be published at Bing popular homepage photo. 

During the past summer photo contest, Facebook users selected a top winner photograph by Jeremy Somers of Australia with thunderstorm shot of Sidney.  Users also are being asked by Bing to tell all of their friends to vote.  According to Bing team blog, the winning photo will be announced on December 21.  The winner will appear on Bing homepage on January 6, 2010. 

Click here to submit your photo