Element Fusion

About the author: Stacey Clermont is an Internet Marketing Specialist at Element Fusion

We've all seen Bing's commercials, haven't we? The ones about “search overload," a condition we've never heard of, that is tearing our society apart. Bing’s $100 million ad campaign showed us disturbing scenes of how Google’s generalized search results are forcing us to verbalize anything and everything related to the topic at hand. Bing boasts of being the world’s first “decision engine," claiming that it can provide valuable information on shopping, traveling, business, medicine and other more specific interests that Google doesn't address. I have to admit, the claims were intriguing.

I was amazed by the precision of their attacks. They didn't hold any punches. Screaming people, confusing conversations, and animal sounds all erupting spontaneously in the streets. It was all very alarming and fantastic at the same time. The first time I saw one of their commercials, my mouth hung open. I didn’t know what was happening until the Bing icon came on the screen. “What has search overload done to us?” we were made to wonder. Well, apparently it hasn’t done enough. Bing’s impact on the market thus far has been minimal.

Bing’s search traffic pretty much just took over its predecessor’s, MSN Live. The 2009 search market is still overwhelmingly favoring Google. Even after Bing launched, Google commanded over 75% of search traffic, according to one study. Bing currently has around 8% of traffic, which is just slightly higher than what MSN Live commanded.

Admittedly, I was little disappointed with the public response. I was pretty excited about Bing's release, as most SEOs were. As soon as Bing was open for business, I jumped on my computer and tried some random searches to compare it to Google. I liked Bing a lot. I thought it was really easy to use and it did provide up-front data on products, places and people. I also liked the maps app, which has a 3D viewing option. Bing has obviously made a lot of effort to compete in the search engine space.

But, did I switch over to the decision engine? Nah, I still like Google’s features and it has never steered me wrong. “Search Overload” is just hype that hasn't converted me, and based on recent statistics, I'm thinking it's not really working on others either.

What do you think about Bing? Let us know in the comments.