It was only earlier this year that Bing became a search option on Apple’s mobile devices, but now it seems that Microsoft wants it to become iPhone users’ default search engine. Among the bevy of new iPhone services Bing has unveiled, the search engine today announced a new shopping app, and marketers may want to get their products listed on the user-friendly feature.
The app makes it easy for iPhone users to find product comparisons as they conduct shopping research on the go. Notably, consumer-oriented comparison services are on the rise, with FindTheBest.com recently launching its categorized comparative decision engine. Bing’s app specifically caters to mobile audiences, giving users the ability to search for price comparisons of products with their voices, phone cameras or keyboards.
Andy Chu of Bing for Mobile explains that users simply click “Shopping” on Bing’s mobile homepage to launch the feature. They can then search for products by category or through inputting queries. Results are sorted by consumer reviews, expert ratings, relevance or price.
Each product comes with information about how many stores are currently selling particular merchandise. Those stores that offer competitive prices and quality information about products, such as user ratings, could see a boost in mobile-generated traffic to their businesses’ ecommerce sites thanks to the app.
While this new feature could help Bing gain some share of the mobile search market, businesses may still benefit most from mobile campaigns for Google. According to Stat Counter data recently reported by Royal Pingdom, Google accounts for 98.29 percent of mobile queries.
