How Bing Search Engine Will Reduce Online Conversions
If you counted on Microsoft’s “Live Search” search engine to drive online conversions to your website, you’re in for a rude awakening.
Why? Microsoft launched Bing, their new search engine a little over a week ago - they’re actually calling it a decision engine, as Aaron covered recently.
The decision factor is certainly something that Microsoft thinks will give them a leg up on Google and Yahoo (more so Google). Some of the usability features in the new Bing search engine which help the user make a decision are:
- Related keyword search results, along w/ (only) the Top 5 results of the user’s original query. This doesn’t happen for every query used, but Bing does attempt to “guess” what you’re searching for and expands on the search w/ 3 search results for approx. 5 related queries.
- Bing utilizes AJAX scripting to show a “preview” pane for most search results.
The Bing interface utilizes AJAX scripting to showcase the website previews and was discussed by Scott Grizzle of NeXplore Corporation, a developer of web tools and interactive advertising products:
“Bing is purported to have some pretty interesting features that make search more efficient such as a website preview pane, video preview, and helpful groupings of search-results by category,” said Scott Grizzle, chief marketing officer for NeXplore Corporation. Continue reading in AJAX World Magazine (6/1/09)
Sample screenshot of Bing preview pane (click image to view larger size):
Ok, so Bing likes to provide a variety of useful results and a preview… How does that affect you?



you have one. Within What’s Popular, you can view the most recent, most popular or the most relevant stories, images or videos based on your preferences. Each link gives you the option to vote (called pops) for the site. The more “Pops” a site gets, the higher it is on the list (much like Digg/