A perennial complaint we have from our international readers is that while Windows phone 7 is fine, its Bing integration is not very useful outside USA.
EMEA Marketing Lead – SMB Advertising for Microsoft Advertising Cedric Chambaz spoke to State of Search about Bing in Europe, and how they will improve on this record.
He noted that Microsoft will continue their Bing push into Europe, but that the company needed to customize their engine accurately for local conditions first.
As mentioned before, Bing’s ambition is to help user make more informed decision, but to do so it is critical to understand the unique needs of local users. A one-size-fits-all solution, biased by a dominant market like the US, is not the way forward. This is why Bing invests locally to enrich its global experience. In Europe for instance, search technology centres have been opened in London, Paris and Munich with engineers fully dedicated to the localization of Bing. This means teaching the algorithm to perfectly handle local intents, local spelling, local acronyms… This also means developing user experiences which resonate with the local expectations.
Bing has just come out of beta in France with an experience customized in this very way.
Let’s take the French example: on March 1st Bing went out of beta with a search experience tailored to the French needs. Based on extensive consumer research Bing launched a qualitative and disruptive service with an innovative, more visual search experience which respects both the user privacy and the rights of publishers. On the latter in particular, Bing partnered with numerous iconic local content providers to enrich its offering, whether in local through Pages Jaunes, entertainment with Allocine or even in literature since Bing enables the Moliere and Racine fans to consume the content of the national library straight in the SERP. Such a systematic approach enables us to really fulfil unmet needs, establish a new, viable alternative that is convincing more users to use us more often.
On the future of Bing, Cedric mentioned we will see a lot more partnerships.
Our approach and the quality of our results have already convinced significant players such as Facebook, Yahoo!, CNBC… to adopt our technology. And these are more than syndication deals, they are often deep partnerships. The Facebook integration with Bing is for instance a great foray in how social networks can help redefine the expectations towards relevancy. Similarly Bing embraces the rise of mobile internet consumption. Whether in browser, in apps or embedded in the hardware like on Windows Phones 7, Bing is investing a lot in local and mobile intents with new services like Bing Business Portal launched recently in the US.
He also noted that Microsoft’s deal with Nokia will also significantly accelerate the adoption of the search engine. We have already seen some fruits of this partnership in Nokia’s Navteq doing Streetside mapping in Europe for Bing.
Read more about Bing and Europe at StateofSearch.com here.