After years of struggling on the search engine world it seems that finally Microsoft is doing the right things, first at all they decided to go with a “search engine” dedicated site instead the regular “search field” integrated to their MSN page. The approach this time is right for several reasons but two I would like to mention three that I believe are the most important…

1. Great catchy name
The name “Bing” evokes discovery; both in English and Spanish when you suddenly find something you were desperately searching for, most likely you will exclaim “BINGO!” this excellent name is similar to the strategy used by Intel, which name evokes “intelligence”, there is no doubt this strategy will work, the name is catchy short and easy to pronounce in different languages.

2. They are trying to break the paradigm
Early this year Microsoft hired Qi Lu, one of the brightest mind and gifted leaders on the search engine world, prior Microsoft Mr Qi Lu spent 10 years as a Yahoo senior executive, he holds 20 U.S patents. Mr Qi Lu is a firm believer that if Bing doesn’t change the paradigm on search they will be never able to compete there, that’s why Bing is trying to reposition as a decision engine rather than a search engine, and I have to say it is not just an statement, Bing is actually doing things different than Google to help users decide what to do; a quick example is Farecast, a company that Microsoft acquired for 115 M in 2008 and then integrated to Bing search engine under http://www.bing.com/travel/. The system basically predicts future prices on tickets so people can actually “decide” if they buy the tickets now or if they wait for them to get cheaper, the system is 75% accurate and rely of an extensive database of historical data. This is a real example of how a decision engine may work, giving you new parameters to decide other than a list of results, so far Google has not cough up on this one.

Farecast integrated to Bing Decision Engine

3. More Traffic, More Results
Currently Bing has 11% of the market share on search engines but that is going to change in about a month from now. Few days ago Microsoft made public the “Search Alliance With Yahoo” which basically home will merge the indexed pages, traffic and search results for both companies, together the two companies may get 20% of the market share and finally advertisers will start to see more traffic and conversions on their campaigns. The venture news has been well received in the marketing world, Sir Martin Sorrell, Chief Executive, WPP Group said “This is extremely encouraging and introduces more balance into the search and display markets, It is good for our clients and our agencies and for regulators.” (Reuters; July 30, 2009)

In the past I have used Microsoft paid search platform for some of my clients, but unfortunately with disappointing results due to the low and poor qualified traffic, but things seem differently now, with a new name, a dedicated search only site, a different approach to search behavior, new team and new alliances I’m willing to give Bing a second chance… I thing the time is now, don’t you?

This article has been written by Libardo Lambrano, founder of Syndikomm; an online marketing firm based in New York city and specialized in multicultural markets. Libardo Lambrano, a digital citizen of the world can be reached@llambrano