Redmond, Washington — The Redmond, Washington, software giant Microsoft capturing the ground by establishing Bing as its core search engine, the company has now been contemplating with different search box designs to see which ones lead to the most queries in an attempt to integrate Bing with other Microsoft products and services. One of these is Microsoft’s MSN portal.
Microsoft has been experiment with different search bars to see which ones drive the most traffic to Bing. According to CNET, the above displayed is the one that appeared on the MSN site on Friday.
Microsoft has planned to launch a renewed MSN site integrated smoothly with Bing is not just about giving the butterfly a fresh coat of paint.
According to an interview conducted by CNET’s Ina Fried with Erik Jorgensen, the MSN exec in charge of tying the two sites together. He said: “Microsoft needs to ensure that it is less visually jarring when one moves back and forth between MSN and Bing.”
However, the company has been experimenting with different search box designs to analyze which ones lead to the most queries. As it stands, the MSN portal already accounts for half of Microsoft’s search engine traffic. Comparatively few people typed in queries straight from Microsoft’s Live.com address (now Bing.com)
“A big part of my job is figuring out how I combine the Bing experience into MSN in a way that makes sense,” Microsoft’s Jorgensen said in an interview this week.
Microsof’t’s search successes have been in local search, shopping, and travel. These were profitable verticals for MSN’s previous search engine, Live Search. The company’s plan is to drive as many searches as possible from MSN to Bing.
The MSN site now displays two Bing search boxes, one at the top and the other at the bottom part of the site. This is something that would make the interplay between Bing and MSN as seamless as possible. Something in the line of how Yahoo! Search interacts with the Yahoo portal.
Presently, if you search on the MSN site using the Bing search box, the search results page will bring you to the Bing site, which is a totally different site. Although this is not a good business concept, therefore, Microsoft must make a seamless integration between Bing and MSN.
Jorgensen also said that Microsoft is now looking into how the MSN portal can drive users into the various Bing search verticals including its local, shopping and travel search engines.
To make that work, Microsoft needs to ensure that it is less visually jarring when one moves back and forth between MSN and Bing.
“Frankly, that is one I think we have not done well,” Jorgensen said. “I think in the fall that is something we have got to tackle.”
One way of banking on MSN, he said, is by displaying features on the site that tie into the company’s search engine. The company has discussed about ways it can write features that push folks to Microsoft’s local, shopping, and travel search engines–each among the most profitable parts of the search business and the areas in which Microsoft has focused.
Certainly all this is part and parcel of maintaining Bing’s current roaring performance in the search engine race. Although, it may still be a long way to go before Bing reaches even half of Google’s search market share, with the way things are going for Bing, it might not be impossible anymore. And besides if Microsoft still finds it hard to catch up with Google using its Bing search engine, it can always revive the Yahoo acquisition deal. Bing + Yahoo vs Google? Now, that would be more interesting.