comScore released its reports for the top 50 web properties in the U.S. and U.S. search market share today. The two reports may have a direct relationship in terms of the market share fluctuation between Google and Microsoft.
In the top 50 web properties report, comScore revealed that Google sites, while still on top, dropped from 190 million unique visitors to 187 million from July to August. Microsoft sites went up from 169 million to 170 million.
In the search engine report, we also see Google dropping a bit, and Bing rising. Google went from 66.8% in July to 66.4% in August, while Bing went from 15.7% in July to 15.9% in August.
The share percentage for the Search Alliance between Bing and Yahoo is slightly different than the total combined number of Bing and Yahoo search share. The comScore report breaks out “powered by” search numbers for both Bing and Google, with the most recent Search Alliance share at 25.3%. The reason for this slight difference is that Bing doesn’t entirely power all aspects of Yahoo search.
As with the Top 50 report, comScore has changed its methodology a bit. The firm says, “The first enhancement is the incorporation of updated demographic universe estimates based on data from the 2010 U.S. census, which provides an improved accounting of the percentage of the population falling into each demographic segment. The second enhancement was an improvement in comScore’s enumeration survey methodology to better represent persons in cell-phone only households.”
Because of the changes, the report excludes month-over-month changes.
Microsoft and Yahoo have announced the Yahoo Bing Network as the official name for their combined search marketplace, which came about as the result of the companies’ “Search Alliance” partnership. Likewise, Microsoft adCenter has become simply Bing Ads.
“Bing Ads is not only a new name, but an improved experience with new features to help you better manage your campaigns and complete tasks faster,” says Microsoft’s Tina Kelleher. “Recent improvements include: a new web interface, improved ad rotation controls, and agency enablement tools that make it easier for agencies to manage multiple accounts.”
Historic Quality Score helps advertisers closely monitor their campaign performance trend and proactively respond to the competition.
Negative Keywords Conflicts Report allows advertisers to identify negative keywords conflicts in scale with ease. As a result, advertisers will receive more targeted traffic and increase their ROI.
Share of Voice reporting quantifies missed impressions and classifies them in detailed buckets, allowing advertisers to take precise action to regain lost share.
Ad delivery status and ad preview tools enable advertisers to more quickly identify issues hindering ad serving at the campaign, ad group and keyword levels.
With ongoing enhancements to the Bing Ads Desktop tool, advertisers have an additional resource for tracking performance and identifying growth opportunities.
The Bing Ads Intelligence tool provides access to customizable marketplace level information that allows advertisers to make proactive decisions regarding their campaign management.
Pann also notes that there is a new Import Campaign feature (for importing from AdWords), and a new Editorial Exceptions feature for resolving editorial disapprovals during and after the ad submission process.
Additional updates are on the way, Kelleher says.
Microsoft and Yahoo say that the network (in the U.S.), consisting of Yahoo and Microsoft’s core search sites, accounts for 30% of the search share, and reaches 151 million searchers who are likely to spend 124% more than the average searcher, and 5% more than Google searchers. The companies say advertisers can reach 46 million unique searchers in the U.S. who aren’t using Google.
“A similar result holds true worldwide, with 489 million unique searchers, 92 million of whom do not use Google; and worldwide the Yahoo! Bing Network represents an audience who is likely to spend 124% more than the average searcher and 78% more than Google searchers worldwide,” the companies say.
“In addition to Yahoo! and Microsoft Core Search sites, the Yahoo! Bing Network represents partner sites like Facebook, Amazon, Monster, WebMD, CNBC, and Viacom, plus networks like The Wall Street Journal Digital Network,” the companies add.
Advertisers would do well to note that Bing has been revealed as the default search on Amazon’s new line of Kindle Fire devices.
Does Bing deliver better search results than Google? Bing thinks so, and has launched a campaign trying to convince people that it’s right. It’s called “Bing It On,” and in addition to television ads, it includes the site BingItOn.com, where Microsoft is encouraging users to take its version of the Pepsi challenge – a blind comparison test between Bing results and Google results for whatever queries you wish to try out.
According to Bing, people “chose Bing web search results over Google nearly 2 to 1.” Notice they said “Bing Web search results over Google,” rather than just “Bing over Google”. More on that later.
Also notice, they said “chose,” and not “choose.” That’s because this is based on a study Microsoft commissioned, and may not reflect the results from users using BingItOn.com (although I’d be very interested to see how it turns out once they’re done with the campaign. Maybe they’ll show us that later).
A Bing spokesperson told WebProNews in an email, “Although most people identify themselves as Google searchers, an independent study commissioned by Microsoft Corp. shows people chose Bing Web search results over Google nearly 2-to-1 in blind comparison tests. Given those findings, Bing decided it is time to let people see for themselves that there is a better option in search.”
Bing sheds a little more light on the study in a blog post. “How was the test conducted?” the Bing team says. “An independent research company, Answers Research based in San Diego, CA, conducted a study using a representative online sample of nearly 1000 people, ages 18 and older from across the US. The participants were chosen from a random survey panel and were required to have used a major search engine in the past month. Participants were not aware that Microsoft was involved.”
“When the results were tallied, the outcome was clear – people chose Bing web search results over Google nearly 2:1 in the blind comparison tests,” the team says. “Specifically, of the nearly 1000 participants: 57.4% chose Bing more often, 30.2% chose Google more often; 12.4 % resulted in a draw.”
Bing also notes that the “overall sampling error rate for the study is +/- 3 percent at the 95 percent confidence level.”
The following video shows Bing taking it to the streets, betting people an Xbox 360 that they’ll like Bing better than Google. Of course, in the video, everyone loves Bing.
“When we previewed our side-by-side test results with people outside the company, I was often asked how we were able to make these gains with presumably less data than the other guys,” said Dr. Harry Shum, Corporate Vice President, Bing R&D in a blog post. “While there are too many variables to give a fully scientific explanation, I would say our long-term commitment and investment in machine learning for relevance has enabled us to steadily scale out relevance experimentation and make rapid progress.”
“Of course, as we all know, relevance is subjective and queries are dynamic and always changing. But we feel confident that it’s time for customers to come give us a look, and for a conversation on searching quality to occur in our industry.”
The Bing It On challenge, while very much a way for Bing to try and lure users away from Google, was also an opportunity for Bing to talk up some of the back-end tweaks it has made, much of this through extensive experimentation.
“Relevance experimentation at Bing involves training machine-learned models on large amount of training data using thousands of features,” Shum wrote. “In the early years, our models were based on neural networks. But as the amount of training data, number of features and the complexity of our models increased, the inner loop of experimentation slowed down significantly. At one point, it took us several days to finish just one experiment end-to-end. We knew we needed to do something.”
“To overcome this challenge, we turned to our deep partnership with MSR to develop a technology we call Fastrank,” he added. “FastRank is based on boosted decision trees which are much faster to train and thus attractive for relevance experimentation.. But there was skepticism on whether the quality of ranking produced by decision trees could match that of neural networks. Our colleagues at MSR took on this hard problem and developed new optimization algorithms that allowed us to not only match the quality of neural nets, but also train more than an order of magnitude faster.”
Google seems to think it is lending Bing some help as well. Google’s Matt Cutts said in a Hacker News thread, “Last time I checked, it looked like Bing was still using clicks on Google search results as a signal in Bing’s rankings.”
More on all of that here, but basically Cutts is referring to a big search industry story from 2011, when Google set up a sting operation to show that Bing was drawing from its search results. It appeared that Bing was using Google user search queries, gaining access to user data via an Internet Explorer setting.
But even still, that would only be one signal, and Bing claims to use thousands of them, compared to Google’s regularly referenced “over 200”. Bing may be using a lot more signals, including one from the world’s most popular search engine, but does it really translate to better search results?
Cutts also pointed out that the BingItOn tool struggled with a query for “bingiton”. Google did a better job of delivering results for Bing’s new tool than Bing did. I replicated the query personally, and was greeted with a similar result. Bing was showing stuff for the cheerleading “Bring It On” over Bing It On results, and Google was showing Bing It On at the top.
Some readers, however, say they were getting Bing It On at the top for both search engines, so some personalization signals may have come into play, although I can’t honestly understand why Bing would tailor “Bring It On” results to me, especially given that I’ve been covering Bing since it launched (I have no recollection of ever searching for this movie).
But, as embarrassing as it might be for Bing to show how Google is better at delivering results for a tool that Bing created to show how much better Bing results are than Google’s, this is still just one query, and the truth is that it doesn’t really prove very much. Anyone can easily find an example of Google providing a less than perfect results page.
The truth is that no matter how many queries you perform, Google is going to win on some of them, and Bing is going to win on some of them.
What do users think? The Twitter reaction is interesting. Here’s a sample:
This kind of mentality leaves one to ponder just how much the general population really cares about which one is technically providing better results more of the time. Of course, this has been part of the discussion since Bing launched. Even if it can deliver better results, most Google users are probably happy enough with Google, and simply aren’t looking for an alternative.
As far as the Bing It On tool goes, you have to consider that this is not really an accurate portrayal of the search experience on either Google or Bing. Bing says right on the site, “Based on a comparison of web search results pane only; excludes ads, Bing’s Snapshot and Social Search panes and Google’s Knowledge Graph.”
The Knowledge Graph is one of the offerings Google is prouder of than anything. Since launch, the company has taken just about every opportunity possible to talk about how revolutionary it is, and what a major step forward in search it is. Bing usually touts its social search features with similar enthusiasm. It strips out the search filtering options, personalization features, and the user interface entirely. There is more to the search experience than what is presented by Bing It On.
Then there are the home pages. People love Google doodles, for example. Some love Bing’s daily photos. Some like the way Bing does image search or videos. There’s also the fact that people use other products from these companies. Google users are often signed in, and can easily navigate around the various services they use from one unified navigational experience. Search is just a feature of the Google experience.
The point is, it’s not just about the “ten blue links,” which ironically, is a point that Bing has made in the past.
So, moving beyond the results as Bing is presenting in the Bing It On challenge, which search engine offers the better all-around user experience? Which one does have the better results? Let us know what you think in the comments.
The Kindle Fire comes equipped with Amazon’s own Silk Web browser. By all accounts, it’s a decent Web browser that’s fast and fluid. In short, it’s the Web browser that most Kindle owners are going to stick with. Google used to be the default search engine in Silk, but it looks like Microsoft muscled their way into the Kindle Fire party.
Ubergizmo was playing around with the Kindle Fire HD this week at Amazon’s press conference and found the device to be pretty great in just about every area. Of course, the interesting part came when they found that Bing was set as the default search engine on the Silk browser.
Microsoft might have just landed a big deal with Amazon. Just by making Bing the default search engine in Internet Explorer, they were able to command 25.6 percent of the search market. They will also be leveraging the power of Xbox 360 users when Bing combined with Internet Explorer hits the console later this year. Having Bing on the Kindle Fire will only serve to expand the Bing user base as Microsoft takes on Google in mobile search.
Interestingly enough, the move to Bing might have been Amazon’s idea. It could very well be the result of retail giant wanting to cut all ties with Google as they aggressively market the Kindle Fire as a service, rather than a tablet. It’s Amazon’s way of getting their store into the lives of every Kindle Fire owner while cutting product search middlemen like Google out of the equation.
This doesn’t mean that you can’t switch search providers though. Amazon will most assuredly allow users to switch to Google, Yahoo or even DuckDuckGo. It does, hoever, raise questions of a possible new relationship between Microsoft and Google. We’ve been seeing it the past few years where Microsoft battles Google using proxies like Facebook.
We’ve reached out to Microsoft for comment and we’ll update if we hear back.
UPDATE: A Microsoft spokesperson gave us the all too familiar no comment.
Microsoft unveiled its big “Bing It On” campaign this week. Part of that is a site, which allows users to perform a search query, and choose which results they prefer. After five rounds, the tool reveals whether your picked Bing or Google for each one. The one you picked the most, must be your search engine of choice.
It’s an interesting comparison of organic search results between the two rivals, but it strips out large parts of the user experience for both search engines. It doesn’t include Google’s Knowledge Graph or BIng’s social bar, for example. It’s hardly an accurate representation of today’s search experience for either engine.
Still, Bing says people prefer Bing to Google two to one:
On Thursday, after the Bing It On site was launched, Google’s Matt Cutts tweeted:
I tested the query out myself, and found similar results to Cutts’.
It must be embarrassing for Bing to have Google beat Bing on a query for the very tool that Bing is promoting to show that its results are better for Google. However, it’s unclear how many users actually had these results. In the comments section of an article we did on that, some users said BingItOn.com was the top result on both. Perhaps some personalization signals come into play, though I can’t imagine why Bing would associate the cheerleading movie “Bring It On” or its musical counterpart with anything from my personal life. Honest.
Despite the differences in results in this example, there are other queries that provide much more similar results. Cutts had something to say about that too.
In a comment thread on Hacker News (via Barry Schwartz), Cutts said, “Last time I checked, it looked like Bing was still using clicks on Google search results as a signal in Bing’s rankings.”
It’s funny he should mention that, because I couldn’t help but be reminded about that whole ordeal as I was playing around with Bing It On.
Early last year, Google ran a “sting operation,” as Danny Sullivan who first reported on the story called it, that appeared to show Bing “stealing” at least top results from Google, by monitoring how Internet Explorer and Bing toolbar users use Google.
Google created some test search results pages returning results for queries that nobody would ever search for, and results that wouldn’t make sense for such queries. For example, a query for “hiybbprqag” would return a top result from TeamOneTickets. A query for “mbzrxpgjys” would return RIM’s homepage. A query for ” indoswiftjobinproduction” would return a result for Sandra Lee Recipes at FoodNetwork.com.
“The only reason these pages appeared on Google was because Google forced them to be there,” explained Sullivan at the time. “There was nothing that made them naturally relevant for these searches. If they started to appear at Bing after Google, that would mean that Bing took Google’s bait and copied its results.”
Bing’s results were mirroring each of these examples, though Google found that only a handful of the pages tested proved the point.
In response, Bing’s Harry Shum wrote in a blog post, “We use over 1,000 different signals and features in our ranking algorithm. A small piece of that is clickstream data we get from some of our customers, who opt-in to sharing anonymous data as they navigate the web in order to help us improve the experience for all users. To be clear, we learn from all of our customers. What we saw in today’s story was a spy-novelesque stunt to generate extreme outliers in tail query ranking. It was a creative tactic by a competitor, and we’ll take it as a back-handed compliment. But it doesn’t accurately portray how we use opt-in customer data as one of many inputs to help improve our user experience.”
“The history of the web and the improvement of a broad array of consumer and business experiences is actually the story of collective intelligence, from sharing HTML documents to hypertext links to click data and beyond. Many companies across the Internet use this collective intelligence to make their products better every day,” Shum continued. “We all learn from our collective customers, and we all should.”
“From its inception, we have had what we believe is a distinct approach to search, and the features and innovation in Bing – from our new user experience and visual organization approach to our focus on inferring user intent and helping customers complete complex tasks, Bing has added a new voice and new experiences to search,” he added. “We never set out to build another version of an existing search engine.”
After that post, Cutts and Shum (as well as Blekko’s Rich Skrenta) had a discussion about the whole thing at the Farsight Summit. Throughout that, Cutts maintained the position Bing was basically cheating, and Shum echoed the sentiments of his post, adding, “My view is that we just discovered a new form of spam or click fraud and the Google engineers helped us to figure it out. He said that he wished people could share things like that with them before taking it to the press and getting a “wow effect”. He also said that it would be great if he and Matt could compare signals that they could use.
At one point, Shum played the “Google has a toolbar too” card, but Cutts said users see “big red capital letters” letting them know about the data sharing as soon as they install it. Cutts also said at the time, “We don’t use clicks from Bing’s users in Google’s rankings.”
In the new Hacker News thread, when asked how Microsoft has access to Google’s algorithm data, he replied, “IE and Windows, I believe.” He then points to a section in Microsoft’s IE 8 privacy policy, which says:
“When Suggested Sites is turned on, the addresses of websites you visit are sent to Microsoft, together with standard computer information. … Information associated with the web address, such as search terms or data you entered in forms might be included. For example, if you visited the Microsoft.com search website at http://search.microsoft.com and entered “Seattle” as the search term, the full address http://search.microsoft.com/results.aspx?q=Seattle&qsc0=… will be sent.”
“Most people have little idea that allowing a feature called ‘Suggested Sites’ will result in their Google searches and clicks being sent to Microsoft, or that Microsoft will use clicks on Google search results in Bing’s ranking,” said Cutts. “MSFT also uses something called the Microsoft CEIP (Customer Experience Improvement Program), and I think that’s either opt-out already or they’re making it opt-out in Windows 8–it’s built into the ‘Use Express Settings,’ I believe.”
“Again, I haven’t looked at this very recently, but if you’re using a recent version of Windows and IE, you’re probably sending your searches and clicks to Microsoft unless you’ve been very careful about how you configured your computer,” he concluded.
Bing launched Bing It On today. It’s a big campaign Microsoft is running, trying to show people that they will prefer Bing results in a blind comparison with Google results. It’s live at BingItOn.com.
As I pointed out in a previous article, it really doesn’t take into account a number of significant parts of the user experience of either search engine (like Google’s Knowledge Graph or Bing’s social bar), but it is what it is.
Google’s Matt Cutts pointed out via a tweet, that a search for “bingiton” on BingItOn shows Bing having a hard time with the query, compared to Google:
Sure enough, Bing’s results (on the right) want to give the user “Bring It On” the movie. Then “Bring It On” the musical. Then pictures of “Bring It On”. Then “Bring It On” the movie again. Then, finally, BingItOn, followed by a news result about Kix Brooks and “Bring It On Home”.
Google’s results (on the left) show three news results for Bing’s endeavor at the top, followed by BingItOn’s landing page, and a bunch of other stories about BingItOn.
Bing has launched a new campaign to try and steal away some of Google’s users, by offering a “blind comparison test,” for users to pick the results they like better – those from Bing or those from Google. You can take the test here.
A Bing spokesperson tells WebProNews, “Although most people identify themselves as Google searchers, an independent study commissioned by Microsoft Corp. shows people chose Bing Web search results over Google nearly 2-to-1 in blind comparison tests. Given those findings, Bing decided it is time to let people see for themselves that there is a better option in search.”
“Beginning today, America can click and choose which Web search results it prefers by participating in the Bing It On Challenge, accessible via BingItOn.com,” he adds. “Based on research that indicates people prefer Bing Web search results over Google, Bing is inviting people nationwide to come and see for themselves with an online test designed to show that the quality of Bing’s Web search results has surpassed Google’s.”
Bing put the following video out of one of their guys getting people to take the test on the street:
“These are just a few examples of the myriad algorithm changes that we’ve developed to enhance Bing over the years,” says Dr. Harry Shum, Corporate Vice President, Bing R&D. “With all of these changes we’ve made some great progress in Bing search quality for our customers. You will notice we have released a fun, non-scientific tool for customers to see for themselves how far we’ve come. And while we know we still have lots of work to do, we think it’s long past time in our industry for a conversation on search quality. This conversation is what we hope to start with the Bing It On Challenge, and continue in the future to make sure we are delivering the quality experiences our customers deserve.”
I’m pretty sure that conversation started a long time ago (especially in the search industry), but fair enough. I remember it was pretty big before the Google Panda update, especially, and pretty much continues on a daily basis. Remember when Blekko launched Three Engine Monte? No? That’s OK. It’s similar to the Bing It On Challenge, but includes Google, Bing and Blekko results. That’s still operational.
Bing notes that the “side-by-side search off” of Bing It On excludes ads, Bing’s snapshot and social search panes, and Google’s Knowledge Graph. Wouldn’t it make more sense to show them all the way the results would actually appear? Google thinks Knowledge Graph is one of its biggest advancements in search to date. For that matter, Bing thinks its social features make it a better search engine. Isn’t it defeating the purpose of user preference to ignore user experience, focusing only on web search results, which Google is already showing less of on more and more results pages?
“Bing it On” will be promoted on TV and online, and will launch tonight during MTV’s Video Music Awards. It will also be featured prominently in Microsoft retail stores in the coming months, and in “pop-up Bing it On challenge stations” across the country.
Bing has just announced that users in the UK will now be able to see which searches are trending, right on the homepage.
Today, they’ve launched the “Popular Now” section on their homepage. “Each day the Bing UK editorial team will monitor for the most popular trends and topics and update them onto the Bing UK homepage,” says Bing in a blog post.
If you click a search term in the “Popular Now” section on the bottom right-hand corner, you’ll be directed to a search results page for the term. It’s that easy:
This feature has been available in the States for awhile now, and it resembles something like Yahoo’s “Trending Now” section at the top of its homepage or the Google Trends page that monitors popular searches.
Today, Bing announced the completion of the U.S. portion of what it says is its largest aerial imagery endeavor, and its most ambitious mapping effort to date – the Global Ortho Project.
“In two years, the Bing Maps Imagery team has collected every square inch of the continental US and Western Europe at 30cm resolution (1ft = 1 pixel),” a Bing spokesperson tells WebProNews. “This endeavor sets a new standard in aerial map imagery.”
“To give you an idea of the amount of imagery the team has taken, at 30cm per pixel, you could line up all the Global Ortho pixels end-to-end to reach around the earth 994 times, to the moon 104 times and to Venus with an extra seven trillion pixels to spare,” he adds.
Here are a couple of examples:
Pueblo Bonito ruins at Chaco Culture National Historical Park
Cape Canaveral, FL
“There is higher resolution imagery of some certain areas available, but there is no continent-wide mosaic at this high of a resolution,” Bing’s Charlie Peterson said in a blog post. “What GO brings you is an amazing view into familiar places (like your own home) and remote corners of the United States.”
To commemorate the completion of the project in the U.S., Bing sent its team on another mission to capture imagery of a giant Bing logo it had painted on the roof of a nearby parking garage. Once it’s ready, the image will be visible among the imagery.
Bing is expanding its Facebook integration to hopefully help users have a better photo experience across the site. Today, they are launching a new feature that allows Facebook users to browse and perform specific searches for all of their friends’ photos across the site.
Basically, it’s image search for your entire network of Facebook friends.
“With more than 300 million photos uploaded to Facebook per day, photo viewing is one of the most popular things people do on Facebook. Bing now lets you quickly find that special photo (out of your friends’ thousands) on Facebook with the new Friends’ Photo feature. Now, with Bing, you can easily search and browse your friends’ photo collections–whether you’re looking for a specific moment, or just want to see what your friends have been up to at www.bing.com/friendsphotos,” says Bing.
At Bing’s new Friends’ Photos search page, you can browse recent uploads from your Facebook friends or check out your own photos and albums. But the big draw here is the search function, which allows you to do a topic, name, or location search throughout your entire friend network. Let’s say I wanted to look at all of my friends’ photos involving beer:
I can also decide whether I want to filter for just my friends’ photos, pages’ photos, or any ans all photos.
Bing is also linking users to the Friends Photos feature via the sidebar, where Facebook-connected results are displayed during searches. As you probably remember, Bing’s sidebar was inserted into the results pages as a part of their significant redesign that brought three three-column format. Now, when you click on a photo that appears in the sidebar, you’ll be redirected to the Friends Photos search page where you can browse a collection of photos from that topic (for instance, a Hawaii vacation), or search for more photos from your Facebook pals.
Bing announced a new change to its Webmaster Tools, related to how it calculates Change in the Site Activity widget.
Vincent Wehren explains on Bing’s Webmaster Center blog, “For the metrics Clicks from search, Appeared in search, Pages crawled, and Crawl errors we will now show you the percent change for the selected date range (as selected in the date selector near the top of the dashboard) compared to the prior date range of the same length. So when you log into your Bing Webmaster Tools account and are looking at changes for say a 30-day period in your Dashboard (which is the default setting), the percentage in the Site Activity widget will reflect your relative increase or decrease compared to the prior 30-day period.”
Bing Webmaster Tools will also show you the absolute numbers for the aforementioned metrics for both the current and prior period:
“It’s worth noting that since we store up to 6 months’ worth of data in Bing Webmaster Tools, we are — as a consequence — able to show % change information for periods up to three months counting back from the last available date,” says Wehren. “For shorter date ranges we can show change information as long as they and their prior period fall within those 6 months of data we store. In other words, you are not limited to just seeing change information for say, just the last 30 days.”
Bing Webmaster Tools will only provide data for your site from the day your site was registered, of course.
BIng notes that the changes to the Site Activity widget also apply to change info shown on the My Sites page.
Bing announced today that it is adding Quora content to the social sidebar, which it introduced earlier this year. Users will see top Quora contributors related to query topics in the “People Who Know” section.
Users can hover over the contributor’s name to find out more info, or to click and go directly to the answers that contributor has shared.
The feature is only available in the U.S.
Quora should be getting a lot more exposure thanks to not only this new Bing integration, but another move the company made this week. Quora announced the launch of embeddable quotes, which will enable blogs and sites to easily embed Quora content. More on that here.
In May, Quora announced a $50 million Series B round of funding. The company said it intends to build its team, scale up technically, and focus on the long term. more details on that here.
Microsoft has unveiled the Bing app for Windows 8, touting speed as one of its strong points.
“Based on the modern design principles of Windows 8, Bing provides elements like autosuggest, search results, and fluid navigation using tap and swipe,” says David Lindheimer of the Bing Apps and Experiences Team. “Fast and fluid scrolling through the continuous horizontal list of results with a swipe of your finger is immediately satisfying. Rich answers like the one below provide instant fulfillment of your search intent. Your eyes quickly pick up the differences amongst search results based on smart captions and image previews, so that the first tap or click into a result yields just what you’re looking for.”
The app, according to Microsoft, is more visual as well. This has always been one of Bing’s strong points, and that continues with the app.
“We take pride in the craft of building a great Windows 8 app,” says Lindheimer. “Bing’s iconic homepage and hover points are a big part of the app experience. And Bing’s image search just got a lot more immersive. When you’re looking for that perfect photo on the web, Bing brings back a comprehensive collage listing of images. Tapping or clicking on any one of them takes you to a full-screen preview. A simple swipe of the finger lets you scroll through the next set of results.”
Users can begin a Bing search from anywhere in Windows 8. Bing uses Snap to present the list of search results side by side with the browser, so you don’t have to leave search, while browsing pages.
The Bing app will open up other Bing-powered apps on Windows 8 when appropriate (Maps, Weather, News, Finance, Sports, Travel):
Here’s a five-minute video from the Bing team discussing the app further:
Windows 8 will be fully available this fall, and Microsoft says Bing will have additional (but unspecified) capabilities by then.
comScore released its monthly U.S. search engine rankings report for July, which sees Google leading the market at 66.8%, flat from June’s report.
Microsoft sites were slightly up (0.1%) at 15.7%, followed by Yahoo sites (flat) at 13%. The Ask Network managed to climb 0.1% reaching 3% market share, and AOL remained flat at 1.5%.
Still, in July, 25.6% of searches were powered by Bing.
Here’s a look at explicit core searches from June to July:
As you can see, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Ask all saw growth in that department.
Bing unveiled the Bing Fund last month, describing it as an angel investor with an incubator, “working with hot startups to innovate online.”
Bing announced today the first two startups it has been working with: Buddy and Pinion. The former, based in Kirkland, Washington, provides hosted and managed web services for application development. The latter is located in Bellevue, and aims to help gaming communities generate revenue through targeted advertising.
“The Buddy Platform considerably reduces the amount of time mobile and web application developers spend writing, testing, and managing server-side code,” The Bing Fund team says in a blog post. “Its cross-platform APIs support common scenarios such as user accounts, friends and group lists, messaging and chat, geo-location services, photo albums, metadata, gaming, push notifications and crash reporting.”
“Pinion is doing some great work with Valve and their Steam platform,” says Bing Fund GM Rahul Sood. “I have been a Steam user since, like, forever. I have been playing Counter-Strike and Half-Life since they first came out — so I spent a good amount of time studying how Pinion community servers work. Pinion is actually working on ways to improve tàe gaming experience, for example by offering up free gaming servers to communities.”
“I love these kinds of crazy ideas,” he adds.
Sood says Bing Fund is working hard to find its next startup, and apologizes to startups who have not heard back yet, saying that they have had a lot of submissions.
Bing has announced a new social feature, which allows you to tag your Facebook friends when you share a search you’ve performed.
As you may recall, Bing launched a new design a couple months back, complete with some new social features, allowing you to place your search experience and Facebook experience closer to one another than ever before. This new feature appears to be just an extension of that, making use of popular Facebook functionality.
“When searching on Bing, simply enter a question or comment in the sidebar and type the name of a friend on Facebook to tag him or her (you can tag up to five friends at a time),” explains Bing Social Program Manager Kim Vlcek. “With your permission, the question will post on your Facebook timeline, and your tagged friends will be notified so that they can pitch in and help you find what you’re looking for. Remember – you are always in control of what you share through the sidebar.”
Have you used Bing’s social features much? Have you found access to Facebook friends from the search engine to be effective in helping you find what you’re looking for?
This is just the latest in various companies’ attempts to make search more social. Last week, we saw a new feature (which may just be in test mode) where Google is placing more Google+ content into search results.
Bing has been hanging out with the champion of the Loews Surf Dog competition in Imperial Beach, California. It’s part of this whole “Bing Summer of Doing” campaign the company has been promoting.
Today, Microsoft’s search division uploaded the following video about it:
In the video, host Damien Fahey says he wanted to find an amazing story about surfing, so he checked Bing, and using the search engine’s social results, he got a recommendation from his friend, who recommended the dog surfing championship.
So, he ended up spending the day with last year’s champion, Abbie.
I guess the lesson we’re supposed to take away from this is that if you use Bing’s social search features, you can find yourself in some amazing situations. Unfortunately, my experiences with the features haven’t been so epic.
The video closes with the “Bing is for doing” slogan. I’m glad to see it applied to such an every day scenario.
Back in May, Bing unveiled a pretty significant redesign of their search results pages. The new design, which launched in the U.S. on May 16th, features a three-column format. On the left, you have your traditional search results. In the middle you have “snapshot,” which features relevant information like maps and images. and on the right is Bing’s “social sidebar,” which incorporates data from Facebook and other sources to allow you to see recommendations from friends across various social networks.
Today, Bing has announced the first new social sidebar integration since that big launch – and it involves location-based app Foursquare.
Now, searches will include Foursquare tips in the social sidebar, which gives Bing users even more information from the social community.
The tips will show the Foursquare icon and will also contain a link to the location’s page on the network.
“The tips that we surface on Bing depend on the venue you are searching for and your location. For example, if you’re in New York your Starbucks search results would be specific to that area and different than the results that someone might see if they search in San Francisco,” says Bing.
For Bing users in the U.S., the rollout begins today. They say that more Foursquare integration is on the way
Earlier this week, we reported on The Bing Fund, which was basically in the “coming soon” stage. Now, it’s here.
On the BingFund homepage, it says, “Hi, we’re an angel investor with an incubator, working with hot startups to innovate online.”
According to the site, Bing Fund intends to focus on a few startups at a time, and as it graduates one out of the program, it will fill the spot with another. Bing Fund says it offers:
Subsidized use of unique APIs from Bing’s data ecosystem
The opportunity to access certain technology assets developed by Microsoft Research
Assistance from Bing Fund team members who specialize in design, engineering, marketing, and building businesses
Consultations with Subject Matter Experts at Microsoft, some of whom are world experts in their areas
Exposure to Microsoft executives
Connections with our partners and customers
Funding
Co-workspace for startups located in the Seattle area.
Bing says Bing Fund is looking for startups that are building online or mobile experiences that incorporate “fresh insights,” and that have both inspirational vision and ability to execute. A working prototype (preferably with a site or app that is already live) and gaining momentum is required.
Startups will work with Bing Fund for a minimum of four months.
comScore has put out its monthly analysis of the United States search market. Google led the charge significantly, which should come as no surprise, but it just so happens that Google achieved its highest number yet at 66.8%. Luckily for Microsoft, Bing also saw its highest yet.
In May, it seemed as though Yahoo had stopped its downward spiral, but based on these new numbers, it appears that was just a pause in the larger trend.
Bing announced that it’s rolling out some updates to its UK site, including some design tweaks, speed adjustments, and some changes that have improved relevance.
The design adjustments allow for the homepage image to be displayed larger (as seen above). Bing users often cite the homepage images as one of the more pleasing elements of using the search engine. Now, the UK version essentially matches the US version.
“In addition the results themselves are cleaner. Removing the information on the left of the page and minimising the header raises the level of consistency and predictability while making it easier for you to scan the page and quickly find the information you want,” said Bing’s UK Team on a company blog. “Increasing the space between lines improves readability and optimises the page for touch devices.”
“The new experience is more than skin-deep. You will also notice faster page-load times and improved relevance under the hood,” the team added. “After all, Bing’s goal is to help you spend less time searching and more time doing. Changing how Bing looks is the next big step in doing just that.”
Do you think Bing’s search results have improved?
A couple months ago, Microsoft revealed “The New Bing,” as a completely redesigned social search interface in the U.S. No sign of that in the UK so far.
