I gotta bing a bing bang my bang a long ling long

When I was a senior in high school, circa 1991, I loved the song Jesus Built My Hotrod by Ministry.  I only mention it to explain the title of this blog.  In the opening lines of the song, their is a recording of a minster (don’t know who or where) that says “I gotta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long” and ever since Microsoft introduced Bing, their new search engine, I can’t get this song out of my head….  Time well spent reading this, eh?

At first I was dismissive of Bing since it’s a Microsoft property, but I set that aside and let my curiosity get the better of me.  WOW!  Let me tell you why Bing is a rocking new search tool and  —–why it matters to you as a marketer—-
Bing Kicks ass for the following reasons:

• It’s super fast in returning results.  I mean super fast.  I was pleasantly surprised.
• The best part is, on many searches, it displays what I would say are “categories” on the left.  Look up a medical term and you’ll see what I mean.
• It’s clean.  The layout is basically a knock-off of Google’s interface.  Imitation is after all the sincerest form of flattery.
• It serves up contextual ads on the right hand side from the Microsoft network.

This is important for marketers….. In theory IF Bing gains some traction and can cut back some of Google’s dominance in the search space, it will mean price competition in the area of Pay Per Click marketing.  If you’ve watched the prices of keywords skyrocket on Google over the past few years, then you’re probably (secretly or outright) rooting for Bing to get a foothold in the space.

I haven’t used it enough to really tell if the system produces better search results, but I will say that I’m going to keep comparison shopping bing against Google to see which one yields better results over time.

BOTTOM LINE

Watch Bing closely, you may like what you see.  I can’t believe I just wrote that about a Microsoft product….