What you should do about Bing

One of the biggest bits of news over the last week or two has been Microsoft’s introduction of a new search engine called Bing. Microsoft is so set on stealing share from Google that it selected the name in hopes users would turn it into a verb, much as with Google. It’s received so much buzz that, at least for now, Bing has passed Yahoo as the number 2 search engine. And, Bing works pretty well, both in my informal tests and in SearchEngineLand’s more rigorous look.

But, does it matter to your business? Should you care?

Yes. Well, kind of, anyway.

Clearly, Bing is getting lots of attention right now. Between the media blitz and the estimated $100 million in advertising Microsoft has thrown behind Bing, it’s likely your customers will at least kick the tires. So, do what you should be doing for your top search sites anyway:

• Ensure you rank for your most important keywords in Bing. Just do a quick search on those top keywords via the search engine and note your ranking.
• Continue to monitor the amount of traffic you receive from the search engine. Pay attention to your traffic sources reports (Bing shows up under Referring Sites – not Search Engines – within Google Analytics at the moment). For instance, sites I monitor see Bing driving between 0.5% and 1.5% of traffic. Not too shabby for a starting point. But not a huge number, either.
• Listen to your customers. If your customers are using Bing, then its importance grows; otherwise, put your focus first on Google – or other sources of traffic – that matter to your customers.

Those in specific markets – travel, restaurants and other “map-dependent” businesses, where Microsoft looks to focus Bing (see the search results for “UP” in SearchEngineLand’s test as an example) – would do especially well to ensure they show up as expected. But, again, put your energies where they matter most. If you’re ranking on Bing, good. If not, it’s likely a problem on other search engines, too, and something you should address right away.

Are you seeing any traffic from Bing? Come across good tips for getting more from it? Let us know in the comments.

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