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?
