Click through rates, conversions, and conversion rates all increased. One would be tempted to chalk this up to the initial burst of Bing enthusiasm that came along with its launch. In other words, just because Bing is seeing a lot of action now, doesn’t mean it will be a year from now. The Search Agency is quick to point out however, that impressions have actually been fewer.

"Although Bing’s search volume has increased on the heels of their aggressive advertising campaign, Microsoft has been more selective on which ads they serve on each search results page, often times electing not to serve any ads at all," says Frank Lee on the firm’s blog. "As a result, we saw a 22% drop in total impressions.  But Bing has significantly increased the relevancy of those impressions, yielding double digit growth in CTR and conversion rate."

The rates found from the Search Agency’s analysis:

- Click Through Rate (CTR) up 15%

- Conversions up 6%

- Conversion rate up 18%

- Cost per Acquisition (CPA) down 3%

Lee does acknowledge that the "curiosity factor" could have played a big role in in the numbers above – "explorers clicking on all sorts of listings to see how the new engine performs."

Still, conversions are conversions. Thinking back to my first experiments with using the Bing search engine, I did not find myself clicking through on ads, and if I had, I likely wouldn’t have made any purchases. If people were just messing around to see how Bing works, I have to wonder how many conversions this would have inspired. Perhaps there really is something significant in these numbers.

Microsoft claims to have lost over $750,000 as the result of the actions performed by the three. "Under the scheme, large groups of people or automated computer scripts click on online advertisements without having any interest in the services or product being advertised," Reuters explains.

The 3 defendants named are Eric Lam, Gordan Lam, and Melanie Suen. Gordan Lam told WSJ he wasn’t aware of any lawsuit, and nobody seems to have been able to reach the other two. Nick Wingfield at WSJ reports:

Microsoft said it’s taking the action to crack down on click fraud, in which automated computer scripts or large groups of people click on online advertisements without having any interest in the services or product being advertised. The company alleges that the defendants engaged in "competitor click fraud," one form of the ruse in which a perpetrator seeks to exhaust a competitor’s advertising budget while boosting the prospects of their own advertisements. Online advertisers pay based on how many users click on their advertisements.

Microsoft said starting last year that legitimate advertisers using its online advertising service began experiencing waves of fraudulent clicks on their advertisements, which were promoting auto insurance and virtual currency used in the online game World of Warcraft. After an investigation, Microsoft said it traced the source of the allegedly fraudulent traffic back to the defendants.

It’s interesting to see the suit come so soon after the launch of Microsoft’s new search engine Bing. Although the alleged activity took place in the Live Search days, Bing is bringing a lot of new attention to Microsoft’s adCenter. It’s probably smart of Microsoft to make it clear that click fraud won’t be tolerated if Bing is anywhere near successful as what Microsoft hopes. Of course results are also used in Facebook web searches.

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: 

- Google’s Matt Cutts Has Some Words with Bing

- Search Google and Yahoo from Bing

Original article: If you head to Bing.com, you can go ahead and start searching with Microsoft’s new search engine, despite the announcement that it wasn’t to become available to all until June 3rd. The company did say that it would be gradually rolling out until then, but it appears to be fully launched. Live.com is even redirecting to Bing now. Tried Bing yet? Share your first impression of the search engine.

So, let’s give it a try…

What you search for determines what you see on the left-hand side. If I search for WebProNews, I will just see my search history. If I search for a city like Lexington, I will see the search history, but above it is a list of related searches , and above that are links for Jobs, Airport, Hotels, Restaurants, Apartments, and Images.

When I search for a band like Every Time I Die for example, I see the search history and related searches, but at the top it has links for Images, Tabs, Lyrics, Biography, Interview, Merchandise, and videos. Hmmm…Merchandise.

I wonder what happens when I search for a business. Let’s try Best Buy. Here we get the standard history and related searches, but above that is Catalog, Appliances, Coupons, Careers, and Customer Service. Now that’s interesting. The coupons part is especially interesting considering the increasing popularity of online coupon seeking.

Next, I tried a restaurant – Zaxby’s (a location just opened up down the street, and I happen to know that they offer online coupons). Here the top links are Menu, Franchise, Jobs, Recipes, and Catering. Coupons does not make an appearance in this section, but it appears as the top related search. I would find a locations link helpful in a case like this, but who am I to criticize when "Zaxby’s Locations" is the second natural search result, just under zaxbys.com?

If I search for "Zaxby’s, Lexington KY" I get a familiar map and local listings result at the top, and the only link (other than my search history) in the left column is Local, which gives me a full local listing.

Bing’s natural results are divided according to the links that appear in the left-column. It’s an interesting approach to search. Google recently added the new "search options" feature, which similarly allows people to control their results from the left-hand side, but the approach itself is quite different.

After using it for a short amount of time, I have to say that Bing is not bad (at first glance anyway). There’s going to be a lot of discoveries made for a while, as people all over the world experiment and uncover new features and ways of searching. It’s certainly worth keeping an eye on. People are already finding new tips and tricks.

Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land makes a good point. "Some of these aren’t unique to Bing; other search engines offer them, as well. But one good part about the Bing launch is that as people explore it, they’ll rediscover things that search engines generally can do but which are often overlooked or not realized by even tech-savvy people," he says.

Bing’s going to be getting a lot of attention in the immediate future, but the question is are people going to abandon the familiar Google search in favor of Bing use, or are they just going to play around with it, say, "hmm, that’s cool," and then go back to the search engine they’ve been using for years. So far, Bing seems to be getting a pretty positive reaction.

It should be noted that Bing’s rollout on mobile devices is not complete just yet. Bing offered the following Tweet this morning:

What do you think of Bing? Does it have a shot at cutting significantly into Google’s search market share? Will you use it over Google? In addition to Google? Tell us what you think.

Also, we’d love for you to share your Bing experiences with us. Experiment with it, and tell us what cool things you find (what problems you find as well).

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.

"With Live Search and Live Search Maps integrated into the new experience, making a decision about what to do and where to go just got a lot easier," says a post from the Lives Search Team.

Local search results from Live Search are integrated throughout the site. This applies to all ZIP codes within the United States at this point.

"Filtering capabilities will help make it easier to decide where to go based on your chosen criteria," says Microsoft. "For example, type in ‘baseball’ as an event search and you can sort by relevance, date, type, or within a certain mile radius."

Businesses should pay special attention to MSN City Guides because users can find local business listings with easy links to Live Search Maps and one-click directions.

Do you agree with the AP’s actions? What do you think?

The AP believes that desperate times call for desperate measures and that means demanding royalties from any company profiting from any aspect of their content. When Google links to an AP story in a search result with an Adwords ad on the page the AP expects to be paid. Include a rewritten headline link to an AP story Matt Drudge and you will be sued for payment by the AP. Add a paragraph snippet of content from an AP article in your PaidContent.org blog post and be ready for a call from an AP lawyer demanding their share of your ad revenue.

From the AP’s perspective, the concept of fair use is primitive and counter to their desperate desire to prevent their demise in an ad supported Internet content economy. The Associated Press Board of Directors, which is made up mostly of newspaper executives, has issued a member call to arms against anyone and everyone who misappropriates AP content.

The release quotes AP Chairman Dean Singleton who spoke at the AP annual meeting in San Diego, "The news cooperative would work with portals and other partners who properly license content – and would pursue legal and legislative actions against those who don‘t." Mr. Singleton added, "We can no longer stand by and watch others walk off with our work under misguided legal theories."

Exactly what misguided legal theories Mr. Singleton was referring to became more clear as reports and interviews were published by other media. The New York Times quotes AP executives as stating, "They were concerned about a variety of news forums around the Web, including major search engines like Google and Yahoo and aggregators like the Drudge Report". In other words, they are challenging the long held assumption that search engines or news aggregation sites have a right under fair use principles to republish headlines or small snippets of content without permission or payment. Should the AP be paid?  Comment.

If you don’t believe the AP is really going after Google, Yahoo and Microsoft’s Live Search for republishing AP content in search results read what Sue Cross, a senior vice president of AP told reporters as printed in the New York Times:

" When asked if The A.P. would require a licensing agreement before a search engine could show specific material, Ms. Cross said, “that could be an element of it,” but added, “it’s not that formed.”"

Obviously, the AP doesn’t consider a link that goes with the republished headline or snippet sufficient payment. The AP’s stated goal is to make it illegal either through the courts or by new laws to link (with a quote) to copyrighted content on the Internet without the permission of the copyright holder. However, in the case of the Drudge Report where most headlines are rewritten, apparently even a link to their content without permission may need an AP license agreement.

If the AP is successful, and they clearly believe they will be, then the Internet will be changed as we know it. Linking (with snippets or not) to the content of others could become a permission based concept where one only links (and quotes) after they have received the appropriate approval.

If content owners like the AP can sue search engines for unauthorized use of their content and win a share of their ad revenue, then the Google apple cart could be turned upside down.

>>> Is the AP justified in their fight? Should search engines share their revenue with content providers?

… Share your thoughts below.

—— —— ——

Author Perspective: The author of this article, Rich Ord, is the founder and CEO of the iEntry Network which includes this publication, WebProNews. In 1996 Mr. Ord started NewsLinx.com which linked via republished headlines to selected Internet business and tech related articles as they were published. NewsLinx was the first news aggregation site of its kind and spawned many similar sites such as Topix.net, Techmeme and Google News.

News aggregation was not understood or immediately appreciated by most mainstream news organizations in early 1996. At that time most newspaper websites only published a fraction of their articles online and many were experimenting with pay-for-access concepts.

Soon after the launch of NewsLinx, Mr. Ord was contacted by numerous news organizations including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, etc… asking if NewsLinx had permission to "deep link" directly to stories within their site. The answer given by Mr. Ord was that the Internet was based on links and that NewsLinx was really no different than a search engine and therefore had the right to republish headlines and link direct to the article web page.

However, to avoid action on what sounded like legal threats to Mr. Ord he offered to stop including their headlines at their request. The typical response in 1996 was that they did not want NewsLinx to stop publishing their headlines and linking to their articles.

Users can highlight a word and hit the  icon and bring up a menu which includes things like "search with Live Search," "shop and save with Live Search Products," etc.

You can easily find locations on Live Search Maps by highlighting an address. Click the blue arrow, and select "Map with Live Search" from the accelerator menu. You will then see a map preview, which you can click on to get a more detailed map page.

A similar funtion allows you to easily translate words or phrases. Highlight the words you want to translate, click the blue arrow, and select "Translate with Live Search" from the accelerator menu. A preview window will come up with the translation. You can easily change languages from there.

The search accelerators are useful functions that you would expect to come in the form of a plug-in rather than in the browser by default. They could help boost Live search use tremendously if enough people take advantage of them.

Yahoo is offering its own "Yahoo-Optimized" version of IE8. This comes with a feature called the Mail Web slice, which gives signed-in users quick previews of their Mail in a drop-down page within browser.

It also includes direct access to other Yahoo products like Yahoo Search, Yahoo Toolbar, and the Yahoo home page as well as visual search suggestions under the search box.