Bing is missing the point. It’s not the destination.

Microsoft’s Bing is the latest so-called “Google Killer” to hit the Twitter trends buzz. There was also recent push at SMX Advanced that Chris Smith discusses on SemClubHouse.com. No doubt there is a strong marketing effort by Microsoft to get people talking about Bing. In that sense, it was, and is a successful marketing campaign. But will “buzz” be enough?

The Bing commercials follow two themes: “Search Overload” and “Decision Engine”. The problems with these themes are they seem to indicate that users are frustrated by Google and the overloading.

The search overload theory seems to imply that we are worse off because of Google. In fact, it’s just the opposite. I assume the theory is “Bing is better, because Google is broken“. The problem with that theory is that Google is not broken.

Lance Loveday, the CEO of Closed Loop Marketing, recently stated it well on SearchEngineLand.com:

“Trying to claim that search is somehow broken when most users are quite happy with it is also a non-starter. It’s just not going to resonate—especially once the ad campaign ends.” source: http://searchengineland.com/bing-a-google-killer-get-real-20510

True that Google does not always immediately take us to our answer, but that is the beauty of it. Because of that we have learned to “google” more often and queries are becoming more detailed. On our quest to find “the answer”, we discover new questions, new answers, and new queries.

“Googling” is about the journey. Although, none of us will admit we enjoy spending time on Google. I doubt it is on anyone’s hobby list. Well, except for mine, but I am in the geeky minority. However, I do see the traffic and the queries. We know Googling as a way of life now.

It is easy to announce a better “Decision Engine”. However, that assumes the user knows the question. “Googling” helps us define the question.

We query. We learn. We adjust. We query. The Googling cycle begins and we love it!

And we DO find our answer. We also learn how to ask a better question. We learn about other tidbits of knowledge related to that topic. We Google.

We could “Bing” if we do not know the answer. We Google when we don’t know the question.

Tags: bing, Google, microsoft