The UK now has it very own version of Bing, the new search engine from Microsoft.

The latest version of the search engine was launched last Friday. It allows users to search for UK specific results.

Microsoft’s UK head of consumer and online, Ashley Highfield said:

‘This is a serious, long-term commitment from Microsoft to put a differentiated search product in to the market place. We have not just used the US version of Bing. We’ve had a UK team focusing on what will work particularly well over here.’

‘Bing is ready for the UK consumer, with our revolutionary way of searching the internet proving very popular.’

‘This is by no means the end of our development. We will continue to innovate and introduce new features on an ongoing basis by listening and responding to what UK search users find relevant. Removing our beta tag is merely the first step to signal Bing is here and already has features that are superior to those provided by other search engines.’

In the states Bing launched in May and they have managed to gain an increase of 7% of the search market between September and October.

The initial signs are that Bing is doing well. It is still no competition for Google but it is making a tiny mark. Its nearest rival is Yahoo who has 3.27% of the search market in the UK. Bing has 2.75% and Google has 92.06% so there is still some way to go.

As reported by Propero Digital, Microsoft launched its new look search engine, Bing last month. In an attempt to capitalise on its launch it ran a jingle competition. The result – Bing Goes The Internet – a dreadful but amusing video which has sparked a great deal of online buzz for Microsoft.

The video was made by Johnathan Mann who has set himself the mission of producing one YouTube video a day. The Bing jingle is the 202nd.

Microsoft has done well with this in many ways by gaining huge amounts of publicity – good and bad. What are the lessons we can learn from this?

Engage Your Audience
Thousands of people responded to the call for a jingle. People like to be involved. Asking for help can give your company a human face.

Use Social Media to Your Advantage
People like to interact online. Microsoft used people from their community forums to ask for help. They used YouTube, already hugely popular, to host the competition. They then allowed people to vote for their favourite tune and then to discuss the winner. Blogs all over the world then commented and spread the word of Bing further. In other words all forms of social media were involved to best effect.

Cost Effective Marketing
The competition winner received $500 for his trouble. What a coup for Microsoft! Although they could also have run this competition and not offered any reward at all and there would have been plenty of entrants.

On the Downside
Many have criticised Microsoft for their Bing Jingle campaign. Critics say that it is so tacky that it has not helped them in their attempt to catch up with Google but has in fact detracted from their efforts.

Critics of Bing say that people are happy with Google and that the new search engine does not provide anything spectacularly different that would encourage others to move to it.

In response, Google have recently released information about how they are currently developing their new algorithms for Google Caffeine which has more update content than currently available on the standard Google search engines.

A Word of Warning
We need to decide what we are trying to achieve.  Bing Goes the Internet is tacky (although annoyingly catchy) but it has created attention for Bing.  But how might negative attention attention affect your company?  Microsoft is large and can take knock backs and criticism but smaller companies can rely on their reputations.  Reputation management is important. After the jingle uproar Microsoft were careful to add that the winner was chosen by the public.  50% from votes and 50% from online viewing figures.

Those you think that all publicity is good publicity could be along the right lines in this instance. One of the marketing aims of social media is to drive traffic to your site. For Bing to become popular it needs to be seen and tried out. What better way for this to happen than to drive a lot of traffic its way via the buzz of viral marketing that the Bing Jingle has created.  But is it good enough to keep people away from Google? Time will tell.

After a year and a half in talks, Yahoo and Microsoft finally announced their joint search engine agreement last week. In a ten year deal, Yahoo’s search facilities will now be powered by Microsoft’s search engine, Bing although Yahoo will be keeping its search interface for the time being at least.

The benefits for Yahoo is that its finances will improve. It is set to keep 88% of its search revenue but it will be freeing up a large amount of revenue with a lighter administrative and research budget. The exact details of the deal are yet to be revealed but there have been estimates that Microsoft may be paying out up to $3bn to Yahoo.

For Microsoft, its an opportunity to take another little chip off Google. Its new-look search engine, Bing, is showing positive results. Recent research shows that it increased its market share from 7.21% to 8.23% last month in the US. This is still a far cry from Google’s worldwide monopoly. On the other hand research from search advertising targeting network Chitika found that Bing’s click through rate for paid advertising was 50% higher than Google’s. This kind of press is unlikely to do Microsoft any harm.

So, Microsoft’s luck may be turning. Their new operating system, Windows 7, which is thought will be launched in November, is apparently excellent, unlike its sister, Windows Vista, which has left a bad Microsoft taste in many mouths.

Todd Lowenstein, a portfolio manager at HighMark Capital management which holds about 530,000 Microsoft shares, said:

‘There’s been a sentiment shift. People are starting to get excited now about the visibility of Windows 7 — it’s got good reviews and they’ve got some pent-up demand. They’ve turned the corner in a lot of their businesses.’

In a statement released by Microsoft they say that the new deal with Yahoo will offer consumers greater choice. Their Chief executive officer, Steve Ballmer said:

‘We have great respect for Yahoo!, and together we can offer an increasingly exciting set of solutions for consumers, publishers and advertisers while becoming better positioned to compete in the online services market. We believe our combination will deliver superior value to our respective shareholders and better choice and innovation to our customers and industry partners.’

For the online advertiser it does give some food for thought. One company will now have nearly 30%. This might make it worth more of a thought than either company would have afforded before. 30% (in the US at least) is a sizeable audience.

So does Google have anything to worry about? Currently, Google are under no threat whatsoever but I’m sure they are keeping their beady eye on this new Microsoft/Yahoo friendship. In an email statement they said that they were looking forward to hearing more about the deal.

Google announced their plans to develop an operating system this week. It will be known as Google Chrome OS. This announcement follows the launch of their web browser Google Chrome earlier on in the year and is sure to set Microsoft into worry mode.

Initially Google will be offering the operating system to netbook users who are already using Chrome as their browser and according to their website the operating system will be ready for this by the end of 2010. Eventually the operating system will run on any laptop or pc.

According to Google,

‘Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds.’

Microsoft suffered with the release of Windows Vista which had many flaws. Despite this however they still hold 88% of the operating system market. This October it will release Windows 7 which is reportedly an excellent operating system. Some critics doubt whether the Google Chrome Operating System will have any impact at all on Microsoft but others disagree.

‘Let’s be clear on what this really is,” MG Seigler, a TechCrunch writer, said. “This is Google dropping the mother of bombs on its chief rival, Microsoft.’

The proof will be in the pudding. Its simple, if it helps us then it will do well, if it does not provide any advantages then it won’t.

One important problem will be that most businesses rely on many applications which will not be supported by Google Chrome OS. For example, Microsoft Office, Photoshop, Dreamweaver. After all Google does have the little used Google Docs! Ultimately Google is used to large doses of failure and success. It can afford to play and tease with the amount of revenue it earns. Which ever way it goes Google will rise to live another day and in the mean time – we are all talking about them yet again!

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.