The search land­scape has long been dom­i­nat­ed by Google. But as that land­scape con­tin­ues to evolve, Bing believes there are some key step changes that will impact the way we mar­ket our­selves and the way we search more gen­er­al­ly.

The future of search is some­thing every­one in the search indus­try likes to talk about. Any hint we can get about how the search engines are adapt­ing to bet­ter meet user needs is essen­tial infor­ma­tion in help­ing us to bet­ter pro­mote our brands and talk to our audi­ences.

When we were giv­en the chance to inter­view James Mur­ray, EMEA Prod­uct Mar­ket­ing Man­ag­er at Bing, we jumped at it. Here’s what he had to say about how Microsoft sees search evolv­ing:

Future of Bing Search from Impres­sion.

Pervasiveness

The per­va­sive­ness of search was James’ first point, talk­ing about how the way we search is chang­ing and that users are going beyond the search bar to seek infor­ma­tion via medi­ums like voice, which we know has been a big area of focus through­out mar­ket­ing con­fer­ences this year.

The Inter­net of Things, as an exam­ple, will change the way users behave. A com­mon exam­ple giv­en by Bing is that of the inter­net enabled fridge, where­by the fridge can let you know what food you have and where dig­i­tal assis­tants can there­fore make rec­om­men­da­tions on what to eat. Per­haps a more per­va­sive exam­ple today is that of inter­net enabled cars, or even the increas­ing use of voice search on mobile devices; the more we inter­act with search out­side of the search bar, the greater the poten­tial for search to play an inte­gral part in our lives — and for us as mar­keters, the greater the oppor­tu­ni­ty to nur­ture brand loy­al­ty and bet­ter serve our cus­tomers.

What does this mean for mar­keters? We’re already see­ing an increased inter­est in search fea­tures like Fea­tured Snip­pets, which no doubt play an essen­tial role in the devel­op­ment of voice results mov­ing for­ward. Savvy mar­keters are invest­ing in cre­at­ing great con­tent to answer user queries using nat­ur­al lan­guage — mean­ing we should see even bet­ter qual­i­ty con­tent around the web over the com­ing months.

It also means we need to be aware that our audi­ence may not be com­ing via the tra­di­tion­al search bar. How many results are there in voice search? One! Whether they’re search­ing on a mobile device, Google Home, Alexa, via their car or any oth­er inter­net enabled device, the user will be giv­en just one answer to their query. Secur­ing and retain­ing that num­ber 1 posi­tion will be more impor­tant than ever.

Predictiveness

The idea of pre­dic­tive­ness, accord­ing to Bing, is that search engines and dig­i­tal assis­tants will be bet­ter able to per­son­alise their results to the spe­cif­ic indi­vid­ual searcher. Algo­rithms are already adapt­ing the results we see on screen, and have been for years, but Bing’s sug­ges­tion is that that per­son­al­i­sa­tion will be tak­en to a new lev­el, allow­ing for rec­om­men­da­tions to be made based on pre­vi­ous behav­iour and future needs.

One exam­ple James Mur­ray gave is that of the inter­net enabled fridge, which is able to con­nect with your cal­en­dar and make the rec­om­men­da­tion that you buy more milk on the basis that your par­ents are com­ing to vis­it and you’re cur­rent­ly run­ning low.

It will be inter­est­ing to see how this tran­spires, and indeed how the upcom­ing GDPR rules affect the inter-con­nec­tiv­i­ty of devices at this lev­el.

Proactivity

The final com­po­nent of Bing’s future pre­dic­tions lies in proac­tiv­i­ty, and the abil­i­ty for dig­i­tal assis­tants in par­tic­u­lar to make use of infor­ma­tion about the user to take action on their behalf.

James’ sug­ges­tion is that as users grow more con­fi­dent in giv­ing machines auton­o­my, we’ll reach a point where a dig­i­tal assis­tant could, for exam­ple, pur­chase more milk for us when it knows we are run­ning low and our par­ents are com­ing round.

What this essen­tial­ly means for mar­keters is pret­ty much what we already know; that the future of search is all about improved user expe­ri­ence. When we can attract and then retain cus­tomers, we’re more like­ly to be the preva­lent brand when it comes to dig­i­tal assis­tants mak­ing deci­sions on our behalf. In the short to medi­um term, that’s got to mean a con­tin­ued focus on high qual­i­ty con­tent, tech­ni­cal excel­lence and build­ing brand aware­ness in the form of return­ing traf­fic.

You can watch the full Bing inter­view at https://www.impression.co.uk/bing-interview/