Microsoft Launching Bing As a New Search Engine
Today Microsoft is announcing Bing, a new search service, launching in beta in Europe as part of a series of global product enhancements. The new search service, located at www.Bing.com, will begin to roll out over the coming days and will be fully deployed worldwide by Wednesday 3rd June. Microsoft has designed Bing to help people quickly find the information they need on daily routine searches and in order to accomplish tasks, including making a purchase decision, planning a trip, researching a health condition or finding a local business.
In all European markets, Bing will have a rich homepage image, new user experience and new search engine results page along with an improved index to offer consumers more relevant results. The Bing homepage will feature a new daily homepage image, information hotspots embedded in that image, and a new design feature displaying clear links to search certain categories such as shopping, travel, news, maps, video and images.
The explosive growth of online content has continued unabated, and Bing was developed as a tool to help people more easily navigate through the information overload that has come to characterise many of today’s search experiences. Data from comScore Inc. shows that across all search engines, as many as 30% of searches are abandoned without a satisfactory result. The data also showed that approximately two-thirds of the remaining searches required a refinement, re-query or click back to the search results page.
John Mangelaars, VP, Consumer and Online, Microsoft EMEA, said: “Many people believe search today is a great tool; however we believe search is still in its infancy and there is much more that people can and should expect from their search service. Bing has been built on consumer insights and is designed to help people find the shortest distance from their initial search query to the point of making an informed decision. We’re excited to be sharing the beta version of Bing with Europe today.”
Today’s search announcement will also see the first step in terms of the integration of Ciao, (Europe’s leading online shopping and comparison website[1], acquired by Microsoft in October 2008), into Bing and the MSN shopping portal. From the 3rd June Ciao will be accessible via Bing and MSN as a new shopping facility in 7 European countries (The Netherlands, Spain, Germany, France, UK, Italy and Sweden).
Ciao will allow consumers to compare in-depth information and prices on approximately 7 million items and services across thousands of online retailers. It also provides access to over 5 million consumer reviews, in both text and video formats, enabling people to make well-informed choices based on facts and peer-to-peer opinions from Ciao’s engaged international community of more than 2.7 million members.
Overcoming ‘Search Overload’
Research indicates that 66% of consumers are using search to help them make complex decisions. Consumers are now spending half of their total time searching in sessions that last over 30 minutes, as they refine their queries to pin-point what they seek. Based on customer data, only 1 in 4 individual queries are successful. Search was not originally built to assist in this type of decision making, and today there are too many links which are not sufficiently well organised. Bing was designed to help people quickly find the information they need in order to accomplish tasks and make smarter decisions. As such the US version of Bing, going live in the coming days, has been designed to deliver on three main goals:
- Great results through identification of relevant information through features including ‘Best Match’, which identifies the best answer and ‘Instant Answers’, which provides information in the body of the search results page.
- A more organised experience through development of features which sort and group results, including ‘Web Groups’, a more visually intuitive presentation which enables people to quickly get from knowledge to action, and ‘Quick Tabs’, a contents table for categories of search results.
- Simplify tasks and provide insight in key consumer areas including health, shopping and travel leading to faster, more informed decisions.
With Bing, Microsoft aims to help people complete tasks faster by presenting better organised and more relevant content, great tools to help people in their search experience, and services that can be found only on Bing that help people save time and money in travel, shopping, local and health.
With updates and improvements set to be rolled out across Europe in the near future, Bing is an important step towards this long term vision, and a strong indicator of Microsoft’s commitment to moving search forward for consumers worldwide. It follows the investments in the European Search Technology Centre which will provide dedicated Search engineering facilities in Europe, together with the acquisitions of Multimap and Ciao.
Holcim’s core businesses include the manufacture and distribution of cement, and the production, processing and distribution of aggregates (crushed stone, gravel and sand), ready-mix concrete and asphalt. The company also offers consulting, research, trading, engineering and other services. 
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