Microsoft is spending a fortune on TV commercials for Bing, its newest adventure in search engines. It is already the #8 search engine in the UK, with users spending 8 minutes there before moving on. Not bad. The down side to this is that Google still occupies 72% of the market; Bing only has 8%. Where do you want to spend your advertising dollars for paid ads?

Bing does have some good features and its getting a lot of attention right now, so its easy to see the allure of advertising there for your keywords. The design of Bing is also something that could pay off for advertisers and Andy Beal of SearchNewz gives a good explanation for this:

“Bing uses a three column design for its search results page. Having just returned from Microsofts Search Summit, I can confirm that this wasnt just done on a whim, but very carefully thought out. One of the driving factors for the design, was the ability to give Bing users a vast array of data and refinement options. In essence, Bing gave that left hand navigational column a prime time spot.”

Benjamin Rudolph, of Search Discovery, gave a presentation on Bing at the Women in Interactive Media networking event on August 20. He described the reality for advertisers: Bing is not Google, not even close (although it is MUCH better than Microsoft’s previous search engine). Bing may be as good as Google for search, the design is definitely very nice, but at the end of the day, its just not worth putting your advertising dollars where your customers are not. Google is a verb, I mean we “Google” everything!…its where everyone is. And if you want your product or service to be found, its where you need to be too.