Bada BING, Bada Boom: Microsoft’s New Search Engine Emerges

Its about time that Microsoft Corporation offered up a new web search engine, having failed miserably in its previous attempts to do so. Blaming Google’s success for long term failures is easy to do, but when you even trail Yahoo Search badly, then there is much room for improvement.

Bing Goes Live

Whispers of a new Microsoft search engine have been heard for some time with a full scale announcement and preview offered late last week. Today is the date that Bing officially goes live, but if you’re like most of the other curious folks who have a passion for search, then you’ve already checked it out in preview. Often too.

Until now, we’ve had to endure Live Search, the most recent version of the Microsoft search engine prior to Bing. Admittedly, I use Google Search almost exclusively, heading over to Yahoo Search only when I need to check Yahoo Site Explorer out to see how my websites are performing. MSN is usually a non-thought, never getting a chance to prove itself simply because it has failed to prove itself so often in the past.

Giving Other Search Engines A Chance

Hey, don’t blame me — I gave Cuil a chance but quickly abandoned it when it turned out to be a miserable failure. On the other hand, I’ll continue to play around with Wolfram Alpha if and when I want to be entertained. Heck, Twitter Search is probably the funnest one of them all, offering up real time returns on what other people are tweeting about which sometimes can come in handy.

But, when it comes to searching for what you want to find on the internet, Google still rules, controlling about two-thirds of the market and not about to cede its place to a young upstart especially one operated by its bitter rival, Microsoft.

Relevant? Not Quite.

Naturally, when I go to a search engine I enter in my name to see how often it is returned and what sort of returns are served. By taking my full legal name in quotes — “Matthew C. Keegan” — I come up with more than one million results, at least ten times the number I typically find on Google Search. Hmmm….

Okay, I know that I am famous, but I doubt that every single one of those results is accurate. Perhaps more telling is that when I click on the Image tab associated with my name, I find three actual pictures of me with several others being of unrelated photos I’ve used on my many different sites and a handful of other pictures of various objects I’ve never seen before. I may write about car engines, but I resent being associated with a diesel engine!

Playing Around With Bing

I’m not very scientific when it comes to trying out a new search engine, rather I use many of the same tactics I employ on Google Search to give Bing a whirl. Usually, I know almost immediately if a search engine holds promise based on what it does versus what I already know what Google can do.

Bing, even with some results for certain search terms not being all that relevant, still offered up some accurate and informative results for other terms I like to use. In fact, I managed to find some Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) parallels with Google. I do like Bing’s clean interface and the preview information about each result that appears when you hover over it is certainly handy.

Not yet cluttered with a bunch of ads, the Bing “surface” is easy on the eyes, simple to navigate and doesn’t have that “thrown together” feel of Cuil. I like clicking on the Maps tab to find a location which shows how to get there from here while also revealing an aerial view, bird’s eye look and more. I will happily toss Mapquest for the chance to use Bing Maps, what may end up being an important pull to get me binging the ‘net.

Binging The ‘Net

All that said, I liked previewing Bing and plan to spend more quality time with the web’s newest search engine in the days and weeks ahead. Cuil failed out of the box, but Bing appears to have enough going for it to make a serious run as a search engine.

Will Bing challenge Google? It may, especially given Microsoft’s plan to throw $80-100 million dollars in advertising at it. Of course, Google won’t roll over without a fight which means that the winner of this battle will ultimately prove to be you, the web user.

See Also – Wolfram Alpha, The Only Search Engine You Need?

Lessons From The Great Cuil Failure

When Your Promotional Claims Fail To Measure Up

Marketers watched closely as the new search engine, Cuil, got its start this week quickly recognizing that the product being offered was oversold. Nope, you don’t pay to use Cuil, but like any freebie web based product, its success or failure depends a lot on user reaction. The “sale” being  made in this case is the traffic to the site — monetizing your online product comes later.

With nearly every account of what I have read, Cuil failed to measure up. I won’t rehash what I and others said about Cuil over the past few days as there isn’t any need to go in that direction. Instead, I would like to offer something different — tips on how you can launch your product without it bombing. Failure happens, but it certainly isn’t cool.

Five Steps To Successfully Marketing Your Product

Know Your Market — Just because you have all of the workings of a product doesn’t mean that you should introduce your version to the market. Then again, search is dominated by one company and only Google does search so well. With more than 60% of the US search traffic going through Google, having a product that can compete makes sense. You just may not the one to deliver the new product!

Know Your Product — Maybe you can provide a greater quantity of something for your customers, but quantity never should replace quality. Although I like the magazine style SERPs offered by Cuil, many of the returns weren’t accurate and, perhaps what was the most embarrassing of all, too many of the photographs served up with the results missed the mark. Relevancy matters!

Know Your Audience — Exactly what does the customer want? Or, are you telling the customer what he needs? Top notch marketers find out the former while still managing to do the latter, but you should never assume that what you think she needs is what she really wants. Persuasion is very important, but you must offer something of substance in exchange.

Test, Refine, Test, Refine… — Before launching any product, test it again and again and again to see that it operates according to the way you planned it to work. Gauge customer reaction, measure results, and implement changes prior to launching. If anything, Cuil should have slapped up a big fat BETA sticker on the site to explain to people that the search engine was still being tested. When people discovered that the navigation bar was broken, it wasn’t hard to think that the product never made it out of its ALPHA development stage.

Save Face — A terrible launch of a new product isn’t necessarily the end of your aspirations. Then again, an explanation and an apology to your customers are in order. People are slow to forgive a fool, but will consider giving supposed smart folks a break if they admit to the error of their way. Marketing students remember the New Coke campaign of 1985 and how a soft drink giant quickly reacted to customer outrage and mended their ways.

Success Is Possible, But Excuses Aren’t Welcome

In my heart of hearts, I want Cuil to succeed. Google is too big to be left unchallenged, dominating and dictating the market at the same time. Just as Firefox has grown into being a respectable alternative to Internet Explorer, Cuil has the potential to shake up search by giving people a different way to find what they want online.

Provided, of course, Cuil retreats, rebuilds, and releases a product that nobody has to be shamed of and without offering lame excuses explaining why your product looks so bad.