Microsoft's Bing search engine

[Chris Rawlinson]

On June 3rd Microsoft’s new Bing search engine was officially fully released online. Microsoft are due to spend around $100 million on advertising this new search engine this year alone.

The main difference with Bing compared to other search engines is the intuitive way that information for searches are organised. They have included ratings comparisons (for restaurant/hotel etc searches), also it will compare prices for products/flights etc even directing you to savings or telling you the best time to book flight deals. Basically the search results are generally a bit more organically clever and accurate compared to Google.

The service in the USA is at present supported by relevant advertising in the side bar similar to Google, however the rest of the world seems to be ad free. Another interesting point is that Microsoft are keen to call Bing a “Decision engine” rather than a search engine. To read up more go to www.decisionengine.com or for more details on the product go to www.discoverbing.com.

The only downside is that most of the great features only work well if you are in the USA (as well as the mobile search version), I'm sure in time though the rest of the world will get the same treatment. One feature I thought was very clever is show in the above picture. Bing changes the search picture background every day and displays relevant information for that picture in pop ups. The above image was displayed on D-Day, they showed location specific info relating to the D-Day landing, with links to read up more detail.

All the ads have been done by JWT, not the most incredible work but I know how conservative Microsoft like to be with their adverts so good job !

To watch all the Bing ads, visit Bing’s YouTube page here.