Microsoft Extends Bing Search Deal With Facebook

The Bing Search Blog announced Microsoft has extended their search deal with Facebook. In addition to extending the search deal, as expected, Facebook will drop Microsoft on the display ad side of the deal.

The extended search deal includes a more robust Bing search experience on Facebook. This includes “richer answers combined with tools that help customers make faster, smarter decisions,” said Microsoft. Also, Bing will power Facebook search outside of the U.S., to all Facebook users, worldwide. This will bring Bing search in front of 400 million or more Facebook users – a big win for Microsoft.

Postscript from Greg Sterling: Integration will be key here; what is the user experience like? Does Facebook make search more central to the user experience or does it remain fairly marginal?

Facebook has had a weak experience around search for much of its life, including after the Microsoft Live search announcement and launch. What we have now is an awkward, “federated” implementation that favors Facebook pages and subordinates general web results (makes sense from the Facebook POV), with sponsored results on the right.

A major “tune up” is in order if Facebook is serious about search, or about making money from paid search ads. There are many skeptics out there who don’t believe that Facebook would be used for web search. However I believe that if Facebook allows Microsoft to “do it right” Bing could see some meaningful query volume over time. And Facebook could equally become more “useful” to people on the site as well.

See these related stories:

• Microsoft Live Search Coming To Facebook
• Microsoft’s Facebook Ad Deal Doesn’t Include Search
• Facebook Search Box Is Low-Hanging Fruit For Microsoft