Bing Fine with NOT Catching Google

[TheMadScientist]

[eweek.com...]

Microsoft Bing Director Stefan Weitz said Microsoft is fine not catching up to Google in traditional keyword search.

Google organizes the world's information and that's great. We are moving beyond organizing information and what comprises knowledge and that's more than links or multimedia on a Web page.

Fascinating Read

[mack]

It certainly is a great read, and I applaud what they are doing. But it will be difficult to educate users on how to make the best use of new ways to search. It needs to be almost done for them. Traditional keyword searches are simple, and this is where Google gained its huge market share. By keeping it as simple as possible.

Delivering the user to a dynamic vertical as a result of a query.. It this really a lot different from a basic keyword search?

Mack.

[Eurydice]

Bing expects to differentiate by offering e-commerce-related verticals that ease consumers' transactions.

Which means Bing is focusing to get the searches that produce revenue. Google can have the rest, i.e., searches that have little value. Brilliant.

65% of searches are informational (to learn about something). No ecommerce value there.

Another 20% are navigational: People looking for widget.com. No ecommerce value for Google either.

Only 15% of searches are for commerce. That's where the ad revenue is. So Bing doesn't need the other searches: they just want to cut into the commerce searches.

[nomis5]

I'm not sure that Eurydice's post is all there is to it.

If I go to Google and type in "how to grow vegetables" I get a whole pile of "informational" websites. But I also get a whole pile of sponsored links selling stuff to do with growing vegetables, many of them expensive items.

So direct searches which result in mainly e-commerce site results are not the be all / end all. In my view they earn less revenue than other search types.

Oh, forgot to mention that Bing would say they are happy to be a poor second as far as SERPS are concerned. If their $millions had bought them top place then I think their "spin" would have been ever so slightly different!

[Mark_A]

Only 15% of searches are for commerce. That's where the ad revenue is. So Bing doesn't need the other searches: they just want to cut into the commerce searches.

Not sure I agree with this, plenty of non ecommerce sites on the web want and are prepared to pay to get visitors to their websites which will only result in an enquiry rather than a web/sale.