Dance With Strangers

Monday Microsoft officially introduced us all to Bing. Although overshadowed by Google Wave, Bing is a slick search engine with a lot of features I’m digging. Things I think I like thus far:

• For starters, it is super fast, at least until it indexes everything on the Interwebs.
• The SERPs are slick, allowing you to mouse over results and get a quick glimpse at the page.
• You have more options when searching video and images, including filtering them by size, layout, even just by headshots (versus those full body kind).
• It is also indexing things a bit differently, for example on Google my name brings you my blog, on Bing it shows my LinkedIn page.

And this is why Bing is important for you, especially since they reportedly had 6% of search share before it was even officially launched. The results you have come to expect from Google, Yahoo and even Live are now different in Bing. What if you had been optimizing for “guitar picks”? On Google InTuneGP has the number one slot with their custom picks, while Bing has them second. But take a look at zZounds, who jump from 8th on Google to 3rd on Bing. That is above the fold, critical for any company, particularly a consumer company.

This discrepancy is critical and something you must be doing with all your keywords IMMEDIATELY. The reason is two-fold:

1. Words that you have been optimizing for Google may not be appearing in the same place as Bing and action may need to be taken.
2. Competitive keywords that were difficult to optimize for on Google may be easier right now on Bing, not to mention cheaper if you go the PPC route.

It is always fun to review all the bloggers talking about what is good, or most likely bad, about a new search engine. But it is important to put on your marketing cap and make sure all of your hard work in SEO is being realized on Bing and take advantage by getting a leg up in understanding this new player.