Decision Engine Optimisation - SEO for Bing

As Google’s UK market share continues to reach a staggering 90% (and equally impressive statistics worldwide), and with a long list of failed competitors, the search engine optimisation industry continues to pay less and less attention to this media giant’s rivals. That might all be about to change…

Microsoft’s newly rebranded search offering ‘Bing’ makes its presence felt, and begins a long and dirty two front war on SEO…

Historically, the process of search engine optimisation involved optimising websites to rank well across search engines. Not so many years ago, we worked to ensure that our clients were visible on AltaVista, Excite, Ask, Lycos and more. Now, it’s almost exclusively Google’s game, and checking to make sure that our latest big product launch is showing up on Yahoo is often little more than an afterthought.

Google’s long-term notable competitors in the search market, such as Yahoo, have distinctly different strategies, functionality and targets than Google. They pitch to a different audience, and they maintain a reasonably steady market share, serving the right content to the right audiences.

Not a day goes by when the ‘next Google’ isn’t launched with fanfare and parade, claiming to be and do things that Google can’t or won’t, and inevitably fades into obscurity overnight. So what makes Bing, seemingly little more than the latest rebrand of Microsoft’s search offering, so special?

With a huge marketing budget and critical acclaim, Bing is already making inroads into Google’s market share – enough to make them assign a department to monitoring new developments and formulating plans to combat them.

The interesting point is that Bing isn’t trying to be the ‘next Google’. In fact, it doesn’t appear to bring anything new or unique to the field. Visually, it’s very similar to Google, and it offers very similar features and functionality. Yet it’s performing, and having an increasing impact on the search engine landscape.

Some of Bing’s early success may be attributed to its marketing. Google have a mixed image – they’re a household brand who provides an excellent array of great services, but their corporate image rests on a knife edge of being perceived as an Orwellian big brother. Microsoft has, however, has moved away from this, branding Bing as a ‘Decision Engine’, and providing a more visual interface. People like Bing, they like the streamlined interface, the friendlier face, and the branding as a whole.

But what of the actual service itself? At first glance, Bing’s results seem very similar to those of Google, and indeed of Yahoo. But the proof lies in the details – a nifty ‘Blind Search’ tool located at http://blindsearch.fejus.com/ allows you to enter a search term, and blindly pick which engine provides the ‘best’ results. And guess what? The results are generally incredibly similar, but Bing seems to win the coin toss almost every time.

It’s too early to begin to guess at and understand the fine differences between the ways Bing produces results compared to the other engines, but it seems that they’re doing something right. Time and time again, Bing gets the blind click.

If Bing continue to develop on this success, and can continue to not only provide a better user experience, but also better search results, we may expect the search engine optimisation industry to wake up and start paying serious attention. It may be that we can please Google and Bing in similar ways, but either way, it’s going to mean that SEO will become a more complicated, time consuming and expensive task, effectively doubling the amount of early research in a project as we undertake ‘Design Engine Optimisation’.

And what of Google? If one search engine can make significant inroads, and provide a competing service, does it open the floodgates to more competition? Can alternatives survive without huge marketing funds by providing a better, more personal service? Many have tried and failed, but Bing seems here to stay – and we’re definitely going to be paying attention.