Search engine marketing experts are urging recruiters to take notice of Microsoft’s new search engine Bing.com, which was launched in June.

A study by the search advertising network Chitika showed that people who arrive at a site following a search on Bing are 55% more likely to click on an advertisement on that site than if they had arrived via Google.

Bing was launched in May and is described by Microsoft as a ‘decision engine’ because of the intelligent search tools built in. The company says web users are increasingly using search engines to assist in making decisions rather than just as navigation or information retrieval tools.
Features include Autosuggest, which automatically suggests similar terms or common refinements when searching, and Best Match, which claims to cut down on the number of clicks to relevant content.

Paul Harrison, managing partner of Carve Consulting, an offline and online marketing consultancy, told Recruiter that because Bing attempts to understand the context behind the search, this should give users better results. “It’s early days but the results thus far are quite encouraging,” he said, adding:

“Google as a platform is extraordinarily crowded for a number of core recruitment search terms. While it [Bing] only has around 10% marketshare, smart companies can create significant visibility very cost effectively.”

Bruce Stander, group chief executive of Optimal Internet, which provides recruiters with a range of web services, including search engine optimisation (SEO), said Google is still the standard but the intelligent search technology built into Bing means it will become a player in the recruitment sector.

Because the exact process of Bing is not publicly available, there is a lot of speculation about what “weighs more” for Bing compared to Google. “But the agencies we’ve done SEO work for are appearing in its rankings as they do in Google and Yahoo, so it would suggest they work in a similar way,” he said.

“The way it reports and presents results is very much part of the next wave of search technology. Search engine marketing has stagnated to a degree and this is the start of products which will differentiate themselves in this way.”

www.bing.com