Bing out suggests Google with new feature

Today Bing announced a new development with their auto suggest feature. The auto suggest feature is not a new development, both Google and Yahoo! have had this functionality for a while now.

The auto suggest feature aids the user by analysing the characters that are being typed into the search box and suggesting possible search terms that the user may be looking for to speed up the search process – and also highlight possible search refinements to return more targeted results.

The recent development brought out by Bing is that these suggested search terms are being informed not only by user search behaviour but also by breaking news and trending search queries:

“In fact, we recently incorporated breaking news and hot trending queries within autosuggest. Updated every 15 minutes, trending queries balance timeliness and relevance to connect you with the most prominent or topical events happening now.”

The following examples from Bing’s announcement post highlights this new feature action:

If you didn’t get a chance to watch the Golden Globe Awards, autosuggest helps you get to the latest news and recent winners:

Whereas through Google you would see the following result:

Curious to know when Tiger Woods will return to golf? Start typing “Tig” and autosuggest surfaces relevant queries that can help connect you with the latest news:

And again in Google you would see the following:

So what does this mean:

This new feature is another development brought out by Bing that challenges Google on being a market leader for innovation within search. Google built its market share through delivering better, more relevant search results than its competitors. If Bing is to really start gaining market share from Google it will be by delivering more relevant results to users, which in this case is by being more topically relevant.

Over the past few years search engines have been developing new offerings in both their Paid and Natural listings, for example the site links that now appear for brand searches, and digital marketers are defining more and more synergy tactics between these disciplines.

With the launch of this new development, the integration of live twitter results into search engine results pages, the popularity of social networks and the ever increasing speed at which search engines are indexing content – we now have to consider real-time marketing and the social implications of the Internet in how we continue to develop our online strategies.

If the first decade of this millenium was about developing Paid and Natural Synergies then the second decade is all about Search and Social Synergy.