Online marketing firm the Search Agency says that based on analysis of its own accounts, Microsoft search ads appear to be performing better since Bing launched. The firm looked at the final three weeks of Live Search's existence, and the first three of Bing's.
Reuters and the Wall Street Journal are both reporting that Microsoft is suing three people, accusing them of click fraud. The company apparently filed a complaint on Monday in a US federal Court in Seattle.
Update: As the day has progressed, more people have experimented with Bing, and those who were already experimenting with it have experimented more. Not surprisingly, there have been flaws discovered. More criticism has surfaced.
While, Bing is techincally still in preview status, I have to assume they felt it was pretty much ready for prime time. After all, scheduled launch was only two days away anyway. Anyhow, here are a couple more articles on Bing observations worth looking at:
Microsoft has introduced a new version of MSN City Guides in a move the company calls "one step in a long term plan to help users stay in the know wherever they are."
The new MSN City Guides makes ample use of Live Search and Live Search Maps as well as video and social media. Users can share information through Windows Live and Facebook. Microsoft says this makes event organization easy.
The AP is launching an all out assault on any use of its content that is not licensed (purchased) for use by Internet publishers and search engines. As I have said in the past, the AP is not just focusing on the blatant violators such as spam blogs or sites that quote paragraphs without attribution or link. On the contrary, the AP is specifically going after bigger mainstream blogs, Internet publications and believe it or not search engines such as Google.
A you're probably aware, Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8 browser is now generally available. What you may or may not be aware of is that Microsoft has included some accelerators for Live Search within it.
Update 2: LiveSide who shared that tweet about Microsoft saying Kumo was only a test name is now saying they made an error and the tweet didn't actually come from Microsoft. So...disregard that. Let's just say there's no certainty one way or the other.
Microsoft has been in the St. Patrick's Day spirit this month. On the Live Search Blog, they recently reported that the number of people searching for green beer increased by 940% when March started.
Microsoft has also taken the opportunity to map out the routes for St. Patrick's Day parades and highlight items like Irish pubs in Live Search Maps.
In a story we covered earlier this month, John Battelle accidentally typed livesearch.com into his address bar only to find a domain squatter. This of course led to speculation that Microsoft was close to rebranding its Live Search. They clearly were not too concerned about getting that domain (it's still the same a couple weeks later).
It's ugly out there, folks. Unemployment has hit a 25-year high, the Dow is at a 12-year low, and it's impossible to go 10 minutes without hearing the term "Great Depression." So if you're looking to make any purchases online, the MSN Toolbar and its new "cashback-offer-detecting mechanism" may be just what the financial advisor ordered.
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