[UK] Microsoft is shedding the beta tag for its custom Bing search engine that caters to users in the United Kingdom with a localized offering. At the same time, the company is releasing Bing Maps UK and thus no longer redirecting users to Multimap.com.
The daily Bing homepage will now be featuring UK-specific imagery and hotspots, and Microsoft claims the localized search engine will boast better ‘instant answers’ (e.g. “how is Liverpool doing in the Premiership?”). Other Bing features like Visual Search and Bing Twitter Search are integrated, but the company has also set up a partnership with Ciao UK to deliver a custom, localized shopping experience.
Microsoft is going to redirect visitors of Bing.com/maps to a specific Bing Maps UK service now instead of opening Multimap.com, and visitors of the latter site will get asked to switch to the newly launched site as well in the next couple of weeks. There are a slew of new features that were added to Bing Maps for the UK site, so for a full overview the best thing for you to do is check out this blog post, where all of them are listed.
TC Europe readers in the UK, your thoughts?
The new Maps functionality for the UK is very cool, particularly if you live in or are visiting London. If you don’t, there aren’t that many new features but the site definitely looks better and is quicker. All good.
Finally! I don’t understand why MS ever redirected to multimap. That was one of the reasons I hated the UK version of Bing. Now that Bing Maps are available to UK users I may give it another try. I’m still not thrilled that they are using Ciao for shopping. Shopping search should search amazon.co.uk ebay.co.uk etc. and present the results in a Bing search.
@kmcgrady
MS bought Multimap about 2 years ago. Presumably the new mapping still uses Multimap’s data. It just took them a few weeks to update/rebrand the UI.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/dec/12/microsoft.digitalmedia
step in the right direction. microsoft needs to adopt same philosophy as google, “what is good for user, is good for the company” and “keep improving user experience”. maybe they need a version of the “it’s the economy, stupid” slogan: “it’s about the user, stupid”. gogole maps is still superior.
…..who cares?
Clearly not you, so why bother reading/commenting?
imagine if Brin and Page felt that way: “uh, who cares about searching, it’s already been done by AOL and Alta Vista…”
As per my personal experience,Bing should be updated for indexing rapidly.
I hope Bing will gain its lost market.
I’ve had trouble with the indexing of my new site on both Google and Bing, and I’ve signed up with both Google Adwords and Microsoft’s version for Bing, adCenter. My developers say to be patient, that they keep re-submitting the site to both and the indexing takes time. We’ll see.
I will say that the sign-up process for adCenter is easier and quicker than Google Adwords.
Thank god, I hate the A-Z maps. They were not designed to use on a computer and the level of detail crammed into those maps are not needed when people find addresses by searching and acquire needed detail by zooming in. They should add bus routes to the “nearby stations” feature, finding the closest tube is usually not a problem, but the closest bus stop is.
Woah, am I the only person who didn’t know about “Birds-eye view”?! Frigging awesome!
I wasn’t aware that Bing had lost market share,
as far as I know the’re slowly gaing share.
Otherwise I’ve used Bing as my only search
engine and I haven’t looked back.
Impressed by the different maps available. Still prefer the standard view of Google Maps (perhaps more because I’m just used to it rather than any good reason). I can see some uses of having the old A-Z maps available for printing and the OS maps are a nice addition.
And then lays off 80% of the London mapping (ex-Multimap) team in it’s latest round of redundancies:
http://twitter.com/johnbfagan/status/5624952643
http://twitter.com/WillemBasson/status/5625199828
http://twitter.com/wayneholt
Congrats to Microsoft for rolling out this Bing version. Any engine that tries to compete with Google and make a more competitive landscape in the search world has my support…we’ll all benefit.
Guys, Microsoft doesn’t partner with Ciao, they own it!
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/29/microsoft-says-hello-to-ciao-buys-european-shopping-site/
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I like it, but only because it ranks me #4 for “london web designers”! I’m seeing that there are still lots of room for improvement within the SERPs as there are lots of odd results and returning websites that are spam is a clear way to loose credibility.
Here’s an example. A Bing UK search for “who is prime minister” returns the Canadian PMs site first. Number 10 only makes 4th place after Wikipedia and the Australian PM. A search for who is number one was pretty awful compared to Google UK.
That said I’m loving the Bird’s Eye view on Bing Maps. It’s a really useful view, especially if the building you are looking for is South facing. Hopefully the data in it will catch up soon and I’ll be able to find my business in there sometime soon…
I totally agree with Mike, it’s good to see more competition in the search field, especially in the hugely polarised UK market. Although I still feel this is fairly primitive compared to Google, it’s a long way ahead of the rest of the crowd and I hope it’ll continue to improve.