Bing Makes Bid To Become Top Deals Destination

Sep 23, 2011 at 9:46am ET by Greg Sterling

When Bing launched deals several months ago its partner was deal aggregator The Dealmap, which was subsequently acquired by Google. That forced Microsoft to turn elsewhere for deals and today, as a result, we’re seeing the launch of a new deals experience on mobile and the PC that pulls in content from a wide range of sources.

The mobile deals experience hasn’t really changed; you can see daily deals in your selected area, as well as deals “nearby” and also browse deals by category. It’s available via the m.bing.com HTML5 site and Bing apps.

There’s a new more comprehensive online experience integrated into Bing Shopping on the PC however. It seeks to bring deals, coupons and retail sales data together in a single place. Users can search and browse for deals by product/brand, category and store.

Daily deals has largely been a “push” email marketing phenomenon and it’s now evolving into a broader experience where users can search and browse deals more proactively. Groupon Now and LivingSocial Instant, as well as several others, are making deals more “pull-oriented” or search-friendly — which is what Bing is also doing.

Yesterday Google relaunched Google Shopping, integrating some of the design elements of its soon-to-be closed Boutiques.com, with more content and features. Google’s daily deals product, Google Offers, is also integrated into the revamped shopping site. However the content is much more limited than what Bing is doing with deals.

Often forgotten, Yahoo has long offered deals and discounts as part of its experience, pre-dating both Google and Bing’s efforts.

Ask.com also sought to become the most comprehensive deals site online, in 2009. But this was before daily deals and deal mania really took off. The company’s timing was off and the effort largely failed. IAC sister company Citysearch has a mobile deals app and also aggregates deals online from various third party sources.

There are also a number of independent deal aggregators including Yipit, Local Offer Network and Savings.com among others.

We can probably expect that Google will ultimately do a version of what Bing is now doing, combining its own Offers with deal aggregation in Google Shopping and in mobile (and ultimately Google Places). This may be telegraphed by acquisition of deal aggregator The Dealmap (which Microsoft apparently was also interested in according to rumor).

Bing’s deals tab in Shopping is likely to be extremely popular as we head into the holiday shopping season. A bad economy and other factors suggest that many consumers will be looking for deals and discounts as an important part of their shopping consideration process.

Postscript: I was contacted by Microsoft to clarify that Bing continues to have a relationship with The Dealmap but has begun incorporating many more deal sources:

Bing Deals also include deals from deal sites such as Tippr, Groupon, Living Social, Zozi, Gilt City along with deals from over 2000 merchants through Bing Shopping including Target, Nordstrom, and Zappos to name a few.

About The Author: Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor at Search Engine Land. He writes a personal blog Screenwerk, about SoLoMo issues and connecting the dots between online and offline. He also posts at Internet2Go, which is focused on the mobile Internet. Follow him @gsterling. See more articles by Greg Sterling

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