In the search engine wars, Microsoft has been nowhere to be found when it comes to market share. In fact, they nearly spent over $40 billion to buy Yahoo which is a distant competitor to Google which owns about a 75% market share of searches. Why? The search business is very profitable for the companies in the industry and for the companies, hopefully like yours, that show up on the first page of search results because that is where the customer decides who wins and who loses in the battle for their business dollars. In the latest battle for search engine market share, Microsoft has launched a new search engine called Bing and everyone is reviewing the information.

Search engine optimization is critical for any business because SEO, acronym for search engine optimization, is how your business shows up when a potential customer enters a query on Google, Yahoo, or now Bing. As you've heard me say in other articles, search engines are the yellow pages of today; just the order that your business is found is based on importance and not how much money you've spent with that advertiser. In terms of search engine optimization on Bing, I found our www.nvhost.com websites in similar positions as our sites are found on the other search engines so it wasn't any different for us ? I advise you to do the same testing for your key words to see how you come up in their search results.

What is the consumer reason for Bing and how has it been reviewed so far? If you visit Bing.com, you will find a link to an explanation of why this new search engine is important for consumers. It offers the usual rationale that its search results are more reliable or more relevant to consumers but could they really say anything different? Like MSN, they also have some discussion about how the search engine will provide financial incentives or better deals to visitors. Unfortunately, those potential incentives have not brought me to use MSN for searches and they will not bring me to Bing either. In terms of reviews, most ?geeks? would rather compliment mass murders than behemoth Microsoft so I don't put a lot of stock into most reviews because of this lack of objectivity. In my opinion, Google is still offering a superior search engine product by having search results focused on keywords that can have a local tie in if you are searching for local services ? like dry cleaners. While they aren't a primary source for the information for me, I also prefer the news sections and how simply they are organized on Google.

The big so what on Bing is that we now have another search engine to check as we make sure to search engine optimize our websites. Microsoft has very deep pockets and is very willing to launch products while losing money, learn about the consumer product experience, and then make adjustments to gain market share. This search engine does offer pay per click marketing opportunities but I haven't had a chance to test their PPC system to offer an opinion on it yet. Using the 80/20 rule, I typically stick with Google because of their very high market share which means I will reach the most potential customers on one site. Microsoft has been very focused on Google as their primary competitor in recent years and the attractive PPC revenues will be the reason that Bing will be around and revamped for several years unless Microsoft makes an acquisition in this category. As a full search web development company that offers website design and search engine optimization services, we will continue to monitor the development of Bing as a search engine to make sure our search engine optimization services and our website design will be friendly to the search engine. If you have any questions, please visit us at www.nvhost.com and use our live chat feature or contact us form.