Confession. I bleed purple. I have an emotional as well as professional motive for attending this session. I’m also becomming a big Bing fan of late and I’m pretty excited to see what they come up with this year.

2009 – Bing has established itself as the “best converting” search engine.

Cedric, 34MM UU in the UK across MSN Windows Live Messenger etc. IT’s not all about reach for you – it’s about performance. Today we’re looking at product capabilities focusing on Bing.

Launched June 2009 and is apparently the “best converting” search engine.

One question we always get. Why bother in search? A – because we are committed to succeed. 5 yrs ago Steve Ballmer said “we want to be number 2”, now they are so how to take it further.

Context – in ten years we have seen 100,000% growth in content. Everything has changed including consumer behaviour. It’s way more difficult to get around the web – hence the rise of search. More and more people are searching more and more.

Queries are becoming more complex in string length and composition. Many more variables to consider and consumers are voicing their frustrations with the search experience. Consumers have evolved faster than search.

Bing Promise: – A brand new search experience. Rich and engaging search content to help British consumers reach more content more quickly.

Intent – we switch on the internet because we want to switch on the internet. Just like TV. Don’t really have an objective in mind.

Bing – capturing  attention using the UI – the attractive imagery. Intended to be a source of information too, with some rollover features. Images are chosen locally by UK journo.

To the search engine nitty gritty.

Many, many queries are purely navigational – therefore why clutter the SERP with anything other than the desired object. E.g. “William Hill” , you would expect the brand result for William Hill.

Informational searches – delivering the answer in the SERP with the feature “instant answer”. E.g. if you type the ref for your flight “BA74″ in the search box then details of the flight will appear in the SERP, giving an instant answer; such as “BA74 departed LAX at 17:45, on time and is due to land at…”.

In the next few weeks expect to see live sports results in the SERP (done in partnership with in-market content providers). Partners include Sky Sports and Toptable.

UX is at the core. Understanding or catering for intent is key. Hence the left navigation. Categorised search for related query term.

Twitter – Bing were 1^st to market with this integration.

Innovation is a core philosophy. Example – using visual stimulus to search, such as searching premiership players by image. Refine by rollover information on the image or refine criteria in the left-hand links. E.g. “Top Scorers” (This looks awesome).

He quotes John Batelle. “Search engine: the database of intent” (I’ll leave it there.)

Over to Adam, who manages the entertainment and gaming channel. We’re gonna get some stats (whohoo).

Reach – 90% of UK internet base.

Unique functionality and tools. MSN targeting capabilities. Adcentre platform has some sophistocated targetting – including days of the week, age and gender.

3^rd year running NNR reports Bing as best converting search engine in the UK.

Bing searchers 47.4% more engaged than Google searchers.

The remainder is an interesting sales pitch for their various AdCenter tools, with UI screenshots. I’ll leave it there. The tool is called “Mate” and has a lot of deep-dive data, demographics, trends, KW data etc. so look it up.

1. Bing (thought to be a joking reference to “But It’s Not Google) is MSN’s new search product and replacement for the memorable, brandable ‘Windows Live Search’. Bing looks pretty nice; or even, a bit like flickr (oooh…. quick domain check “bingr” gone… oh well.) The SERP is okay, save for the annoying Ask style related searches on the left hand side of the algorithmic listings which makes it feel a little cluttered to me. As far as I can tell the listings and search algorithm is pretty much the same, so I’m not sure the additional functionality (video results play instantly on mouseover, and that’s the only one worth mentioning) is enough to lure anyone away for a period of time. Once the novelty of binging stuff, binging your friends and binging yourself wears off we’re left with a slightly better looking Live Search. www.bing.com

2. Google Squared is theoretically a neat little tool to compartmentalise and standardise data. Reducing homework hours by at least 50%. I can’t see much other use for it really? Unfortunately the product itself isn’t particularly great. I did a search for “Political Leaders” and got two results (albeit with an image, comparable date of birth, Nationality and place of death), Abraham Lincoln and Omar al Bashir. I then searched for “Russian Dictators” and was surprised to see Dwight D. Eisenhower in the square. It did perform perfectly when I searched for “Laws of Physics” as all four of them were there. www.google.com/squared

3. Facebook is reportedly releasing vanity URLs at 12.01 am Friday night (Eastern Time). What this means is that instead of the id=(series of numbers) in the URL to your Facebook page, you have the opportunity to select your name, or a variation thereof if you are quick enough/care/can be bothered. TechCrunch is expecting a landrush.

4. iPhone 3G S was unveiled at WWDC earlier this week to some gasps of excitement by all accounts. Safari browser is much faster and handles JavaScript 3x faster. You can buy and rent movies from the phone (cool), and they’ve sorted out the landscape key functionality properly. It’s sounds so cool I’m sorely tempted to buy one – which is easy for me to say as I’ve never had an iPhone. However iPhones early-adopter loyal customers aren’t quite so enthusiastic, given the mortgage-like contractual obligations as O2 customers. Now I know that buying a phone isn’t exactly a property investment. One should expect to have to pay occasionally for certain upgrades at certain times, however the 3G S situation is almost like a slap in the face. Kieron Donoghue of here.org.uk has already done the math as follows “Here in the UK, according to the official O2 Twitter feed the cost of upgrading will likely be “monthly cost x months left on your contract, but specifics may vary slightly”. So let’s say you have 6 months left on a £34.26 a month contract that’s £205.56. If you bought into an 18 month contract, which if memory serves you pretty much had to do when upgrading from the original iPhone to the iPhone 3G and have say a year left then that’s £411.12. To add insult to injury however, when you upgrade you are only given the choice of a new 18 month or 24 month (come on O2, 24 months is seriously taking the water isn’t it? There will probably be 2 new iPhones in 2 years) contract. And if you choose from the 2 lower monthly payment options – as most people will – then you have to pay an additional £274.23 for the 32GB iPhone 3G S.” Kieron’s full post is here

So there we have it. Some pretty weird and eventful happenings in the digital space of late. All the fun stuff happens in a recession!

theMediaFlow Blog is written by Nichola Stott, who you can follow on Twitter @NicholaStott