14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft introduced Bing in June 2009, and a month later the company revealed that the search/decision engine grew its audience by no less than 8% in terms of unique users. However, fact is that the increased user base of Live Search's killer also translates into growth related to the software giant's online advertising efforts and the boosted interest from webmasters and developers. In this regard, the Redmond company pointed out that companies advertising on Bing had reported a positive jump in the numbers associated with sales, traffic volume, click-through-rates, etc.
“Since the launch of Bing, TigerDirect has seen sales and order volume triple, and seen both conversion rate and average order size increase significantly. Based on this early success, TigerDirect has increased its search marketing spend with Bing by twofold. One IT provider has reported 36% higher click volume, 43% lower cost-per-click and 400% higher click-through rates in June. A large wireless communications company’s campaigns have received 28% more clicks since Bing launched than in previous weeks. One PC manufacturer’s impressions have increased 46% since Bing launched,” explained Yusuf Mehdi, senior vice president, Online Audience Business Group.
Bing is not just a search/decision engine and an advertising medium, but also a platform on which developers can build and a source of traffic for websites. In this context, Microsoft is providing webmasters and developers a collection of tools designed to streamline their work. At the end of the past month the Redmond company launched Bing Toolbox.
“One great indicator of interest from this community is the number of developers who’ve signed up to use the Bing API. That number has doubled since we launched to more than 11,000. These developers recognize the power of the Bing API with its flexibility in rendering, ease of re-ranking results and most importantly – its free and unmetered use. Those developers are also writing more apps with Bing – the incoming requests to our API have shot up more than 50% since launch,” Mehdi added.