Just over two weeks ago Microsoft launched a major rebrand of their online search engine. Live Search has been transformed into Bing with great success so far.

Figures published by Hitwise, the internet research company, show that in the UK Bing has overtaken Yahoo! Search as the second most popular search engine. However, Google, are still all-powerful with 85.6% of the market share. Bing hold 3.11% and Yahoo! Search UK and Ireland are trailing with 2.24%

The new figures are likely to be unnaturally inflated as people will have been drawn to have a look the new site. Bing looks appealing, more modern, clean and fresh and promises to give you ‘better UK results than ever before and will evolve in the coming months to give you a richer search experience through a range of innovative features.’

Currently Bing is in its beta version, it seems slow to download the home page although there is no problem with the speed of the search results. It’s home page image changes everyday which is a great and simple idea and mirrors Google’s occasional change of logo to reflect events and important dates. Bing allows you to have a quick look at sites to give you an overall impression before you commit to clicking through. The name is fabulous: short, fun and very memorable.

In theory businesses and products rise to the top because they are good and better than the competition. Google is so successful that it has become a household name and to ‘google’ something is an expression that is now in the dictionary. Google is prone to continually launching new products in beta version and inviting users to give feedback. This creates a great ‘buzz’ around its brand which Microsoft are now capitalising on too.

However, other search engines trail far behind Google and it will be interesting to see if Microsoft’s Bing will have the impact it expects.  If it does, developers will be tracking how best to ‘work with Bing’ in the same way that they closely scrutinise how to optimise a site in accordance to the Google guidelines.

Tags: beta version, blog, Search Engine

This entry was posted on Friday, June 19th, 2009 at 5:29 pm and is filed under Google, Microsoft, Search Engine Optimisation, Search Engines, Search Marketing, ebranding, online branding. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.