On May 28, 2009 Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer introduced the digital world to their latest incarnation of its search technology, Bing. All web users were given access to Bing on June 3, 2009. Why did Microsoft change the search engine and what does this mean to the search engine ranking your business already has achieved? Will your keyword ranking lose ranking?

The first question is quite simple to answer. Microsoft is desperate to grasp some of the market share that Google now has. Do the names Magellan, Open Text, Info Seek, Snap and Direct Hit ring a bell? These are all Search engines that Google has taken over in the last decade. In 2006 the value for Google and Live Search were 49.2% and 9.6% respectively. At the time of Bing’s launch the value of Google had grown to 72.4% and Live Search had fallen to just 6.3%. With the Google slice of the search engine pie so large and showing no sign of slowing, Microsoft had to make some changes to their search engine offering. The second question is harder to answer. At first glance, the rankings you and your SEO provider have worked so hard to get should not be affected. Some features of the new Bing are impressive and could facilitate an ease of use which could be beneficial to your website visitors. One major difference is the fact that Microsoft calls their latest endeavor a decision engine rather than a search engine. The primary reason for the title change is that Bing is supposed to assist the user in making decisions by delivering the best results, presented in a more organized way to simplify key tasks and actually help you make decisions faster. There are features such as cash back on great products, and Price Predictor, which will tell the user when to buy an airline ticket in order to help get you the best price. Bing will also offer compare and contrast features so your customer will be able to compare your product, price and shipping requirements against others. It could be wonderful for your business to have such features readily available. A primary goal of all websites is for the consumer to make a wise choice|smart decision (the decision to buy) quickly. Bing promises to do just that.

Another thing to keep in mind is that Microsoft plans on spending between $80 million and $100 million marketing Bing. These figures represent almost a quarter of their total yearly advertising budget. This immense amount of advertising can only help all of those websites ranked on Bing. High rankings should translate into sales. It is like getting free advertising. Your SEO company should make extra effort in the next year to increase your rank on Bing so you can enjoy the effects of this advertising push.

Microsoft reports that your websites rankings may jump around a bit at first. They say that the rankings will stabilize in a short while. Since the searches are going to be more refined and narrowed, it is believed that URLs with hyphen separated words will have an initial bounce. But it is too early to analyze the results. We can only rely on the information that Microsoft is telling us at this time.

Should you change your SEO optimization strategy? It is always a good idea to speak with your professional, but at this time, probably not. Remember how small Bing’s slice of the search engine pie is. A month after its launch, Bings share has grown to 8.23% of all searches. While this is not a great number, the upward trend can only help those websites rank well on Bing. Microsoft’s Bing has improved greatly in a short amount of time. Last year the term that was searched the most|the most commonly searched term on Live Search was Google. After its unveiling, Steve Wozniak, the Apple co-founder called Bing astounding. All the speculation can only increase web traffic and hopefully improve web sales.

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