Search Engine Optimization NEWS

by Danie Teshaveli, SEO Professional

It’s been almost two weeks since Microsoft thankfully retired the Windows Live Search brand and released what I’ve been looking forward to for a long time: Bing = Change = Profits.

Well, aside from the initial Bing Statistics released stating Bing is seeing an increase in market share, there could be an even more important benefit of the new design. Bing might just make more money per search query than Google (GOOG). Holy Cow Batman! Like I said before, this is the most exiting thing to happen to search in years. Finally something else than Google this, Google that.

As you may have noticed, Bing uses a three column design for its search results page. This was very carefully thought out by the Bing Dev Team. 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 primetime spot.

So, what happens when you shake-up the design of a search results page? The search engine user breaks that zombie stare they once used to focus purely on the middle column of results. In other words, their eye starts roving. In fact, as User Centric’s eye studies have shown, Bing users–faced with a 3-column design–are much more likely to view the paid ads that run down the right-hand column

…sponsored links on the right attracted more attention on Bing (~42% of participants per search) than they did on Google (~25% of participants per search). The participants who fixated on these links spent approximately 2.5 seconds looking at the area during transactional searches and 2 seconds during informational searches. These times were similar for the two search engines.

Now, it could just be the novelty factor. More likely, the design of Bing encourages the searcher’s eye to look beyond the typical ten blue links. If this trend holds, advertisers will be delighted at the additional engagement Bing brings to their ads. And that engagement means more money for Microsoft’s coffers!

Last Word: We’ll see how the stats shake out in the coming months. But it looks like Bing did some good research on the search results layout that will give advertisers more Bada-Bing for there Bada-Buck.