Bing’s $4.47 Investment in Google AdWords

As you may have heard, our very good friends at Microsoft are spending $100 million to promote Bing.com, a new search engine.

The search engine is designed not to much to “compete with Google,” Microsoft officials swear, but to build a business around a search experience that enables consumer decisions in travel, shopping, health and local stuff.

Yeah, whatever.

In any case, it turns out that some of that $100 million promotional spend by Microsoft is going directly to… Brother Google.

Do a Google Search on “search engine.” Now, take a look at the right-hand column!

See the third item down?

Search Engine

Get More Info With Less Digging. A
Decision Engine Makes Search Easy!
www.Bing.com

Yes, it’s true. Microsoft’s advertising department has determined that the way to build traffic to Bing.com is to advertise on Google. Hey, fish where the fish are, as they say.

Using Google’s handy AdWords Keyword tool, I was able to determine that Microsoft’s “cost per click” for the phrase “search engine” is $4.47.

Which is to say, any time someone does a Google search using the phrase “search engine” and clicks on the Bing ad, our friends in Redmond pay our friends in Mountain View enough to cover a Google mid-level project manager’s Venti Mocha Cappuccino.  

[I will leave it to your conscience to determine what you want to do with this piece of information. The part about how Microsoft has to pay Google $4.47 every time some web surfer clicks into Bing. com, I mean. That piece of information. Do what you want with it.]

Meantime, I did click on that Bing.com Google ad, purely in the name of research. It took me directly to a Bing search engine results page for the same search.

Here’s what I saw at the Bing results for the “search engine” search.

Well, the “organic” search result at the top is a video all about. . .Bing, a better way to search! Well, what are the chances?

Meantime, you’ll notice that in the right hand sidebar, there is no ad from our very good friends at Google.

They are probably at the Starbucks on 580 N Rengstorff Ave. in Mountain View, enjoying that Venti Mocha Cappuccino.

I do not see sweat on their brows.

Bing.com on D-Day: A Difficult Landing

Bing, the new search engine–er, “decision engine”–from our very good friends in Redmond, Washington, performed well on the 65th anniversary on D-Day. Alas, the landing was not without casualties.

Every day Bing surrounds it search box with a different gorgeous photo that fills the screen. These are not seen-’em stock photos. I visit Bing daily now just to see them.

Each photo embeds invisible interactive cliclets in various spots. Mouse over them and they Flash bits of information; click and you’ll be led to a curated search page that shows Bing in action.

On D-Day, the photo was an aerial shot of the D-Day beaches at Normandy as they appear today.

I’m a D-Day geek but was still struck by the power and beauty of the image.

I found and clicked on the prompt “It’s hard to look at this beautiful beach today and imagine the violence of the D-Day invasion: See where it all happened >>“.

Here’s what I saw.

Great interactive map, based of course on Microsoft’s Virtual Earth platform. The blue markers point to results at left.

But these search results are a mad hash of content, an inexplicable mix of items related to D-Day history, vacation rentals in Normandy, and a few things that my merdre-y college French couldn’t penetrate. But it looks like one of them was a fund raising thing where 550 of an 850-euro goal had been pledged for something or other.

And thus the strength and weakness of Bing: An eclectic, visually appealing search engine of unique design and potential utility–but insistent on making commercial offers a big part of its value proposition, almost without regard to the nature of the search.

It feels like if I don’t want to buy something, or contribute something, or make a travel plan, that Bing isn’t for me. Which, often, it therefore will not be. Except to visit those gorgeous daily photos.

So: For Bing, a valiant landing on a perilous beach. The real fight is ahead.