Social Media and Marketing

The travel section of Bing (www.bing.com/travel) has been described as one of the major upsides to Microsoft’s new search engine.

Published: 16 Jun 2009

The travel section of Bing (www.bing.com/travel) has been described as one of the major upsides to Microsoft’s new search engine.

Bing Travel is part of Bing, Microsoft’s new decision engine and consumer brand.

A report filed by Los Angeles Times highlighted that the level of integration within the search feature makes shopping for travel a more informed experience from the first click – “reducing the number of steps between you and a fully booked trip. So when Microsoft calls itself a “decision” engine, it makes sense”.

Earlier this month, Microsoft Corp. had officially announced the consumer availability of a new search destination for travellers in Bing Travel. Bing Travel combines many of the airfare and hotel tools from Microsoft’s 2008 acquisition of Farecast with rich news and editorial content from MSN Travel.

As per the information available, the number of times people clicked on ads listed next to Microsoft Corp. search results jumped about eight percent in the week since the software giant released its newly revamped search engine.

“If this share lift holds we can expect advertisers to allocate additional budget to Microsoft over the coming months,” said Efficient Frontier Inc., which helps advertisers place text ads on top search engines.

Efficient Frontier, in a blog post on its website, also said the number of searches conducted on Microsoft was up about 20 percent from the week prior to Bing's launch, either due to new users trying Bing or existing Microsoft search users increasing their volume of queries. Efficient Frontier didn't provide market share data.

Read more: Bing