Blog homeSeems to be lots of fuss about Microsoft and their new search service – Bing
I am fascinated by what the future holds as a result of this move. Not because I believe Bing will turn out to be the best search engine ever – but because it may force other competitors to react. That reaction will either include Google launching something in travel or Google will decide not to. But we are getting ahead of ourselves.
What is Microsoft Bing?
I dunno. All to be revealed next week (early June 09) however it appears to be, from a travel perspective, tightly incorporating the original Farecast system (which Microsoft purchased in early 2008 and I wrote up previously on this blog, including an explanation of how it works)
The principle of Farecast (now Bing) is that they analyse airfares (and hotels) and suggest to consumers whether to buy now (as the price may go up) or whether to hold for a while (as prices are coming down). Nice.
The travel research onion
Onions have many layers. So does web based travel research for consumers (commodity travel)
- Consumers start at Google (yes they still own the consumer)
- Next the consumer ends up on a multi-supplier website. This could be a price comparison site, a meta-search or a big online travel agent [See Hitwise stats as published by Travolution showing the upstream traffic from leading UK travel websites]
- Next the consumer could end up on a supplier website (a hotel, an airline etc)
There are three layers.
What happens if there are two?
- Consumer starts at Microsoft Bing (requires a seismic shift – but if they can present the site as being a place to inform decisions rather than undertake research – people may buy into that whilst keeping Google as their main research site)
- Consumer sees Farecast style functionality and is directed straight to supplier
Now we have two layers.
Microsoft have, finally, merged the first two research layers into one.
When I speak to Google they always mention that they do the best for the consumer. That is their mantra. If the consumer is best served by sending them to a multiple-supplier website that is what Google will do. If Google believe that the consumer would benefit from being directed to a single supplier site then that is where they will send them. The consumer experience is key as that is what Google believes keeps the consumer going back to their site to start their searches.
Therefore the question to Google now is – Is a consumer best served by having a 2 layer research process or a 3 layer one?
How can Google react?
Microsoft is a fly on an elephant’s back. Really Google don’t have to react at all at this point. However Microsoft isn’t an entity to be underestimated – they will keep throwing money at the problem and eventually they will hit on something that is good for them. Google may lose their nerve and decide to react after all. In 10 years time will we still be looking at text keyword based results? No – so Google will react – the question is how and when.
Options
Alter the Google results to ensure that suppliers are ranked higher than intermediaries
I believe Google know who are intermediaries and who are suppliers as they have every travel website categorised [See my blog post about that]
Question is, do they understand the consumer enough to be able to second guess where to send them? I don’t believe they do without additional information provided by the consumer for that specific trip. User supplied keywords are not as useful to a search engine as originating city, destination and dates.
Add more travel product functionality to the Google search results
They could replicate Bing. They could acquire Kayak / Expedia or any host of other companies and over time replicate where Bing is going.
My gut feeling is that they won’t do that (although rumours persist that Google were bidding against Microsoft to buy Farecast when they were up for sale [Source])
Why won’t they do that? Again, from tiny conversations with people from Google travel I believe they have a respect for the long tail of the business. They care about the interesting tour operators and if they were going to launch a travel system it would have to be all inclusive rather than restricted to the flight / hotel folk. None of the potential Google acquisition targets include non flight non hotel product.
Create a date / availability markup format for travel products
Google have announced their support for the hreview format [See my blog post last week about that] which is basically an enhancement to HTML.
I think that sets an interesting precedent.
The data is in the web page not in some XML file. Although this makes it available to anyone, it is Google who have the engineering capability to retain a copy of every single web page out there…. A single travel website would struggle to go and collect all that data from all travel websites because they are not set up to do that. Google do it anyway as part of their page scanning system.
Could they create a format that would support dates, prices & availability? Perhaps so – and we would end up with a scenario like I pitched 12 months ago in a previous blog post – decentralised B2C metasearch.
To me this is the Google way – it is open to everyone to take part – and incremental to existing services (rather than competing with). We shall see.
I have other ideas as to what Google should do, but these date from 12 months ago. If you are new to this blog you may find them interesting.
What about the rest of the travel industry?
Last week had an interesting public conversation while presenting at a side event during the EyeForTravel Distribution Summit in London (ETOA).
Some travel companies are upto 80% reliant on Google for their income. Wow. That is a scary number. Talk about eggs in a single basket. Personally I wouldn’t want to see more than 50% of business coming from a single source.
Could Bing be good for these companies? Could this be an opportunity to find another source of traffic that isn’t Google?
Finally
See also – rather dull blog post from Microsoft announcing Bing Travel
Mentions launching a community and blogs etc… which may turn out to be quite interesting as well [But most large company created communities are dull really - I much prefer those done by passionate people who are experts - like @ Worldreviewer]
JDW take this as an apology for earlier… 
Hat tip – “Chris” who wrote a comment on Travolution’s blog (linked above). No idea who you are (do I?) but you got me thinking. Thank you.
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Interesting concept – to buy now or buy later. Not new really, agents have been plying their mantra for the last 20 years and upwards – and it is still relevant today – if you have to go to a specific destination at a specific time, with specific criteria book as early as possible. If you do not mind where and are flexible on when, book as late as possible. As that Meercat (I love that advert) would say: “Simple, Huh?” Don’t need a piece of technology to tell me that.
Of course, all these systems are geared at giving you the best answer. What they cannot do, is check to see if you have asked the right question. For an agent, things such as Expedia and Kayak (and probably Bling, Bing or Bong for that matter) are useful tools. Though not much more than tools. They are useful for routings; and when you have to use an, er…, challenging GDS such as Amadeus, invaluable to back up the rather jaundiced information churned out by second rate GDS systems.
Google and Microsoft and whoever can battle this one out should they choose. They are not doing the consumer much good, in realty. These systems are presenting a finite amount of information – how many different variations does one need on the same theme – and even now, some of the information presented by, for example, Expedia is daft (overnight stays on short haul routes) or incomplete (not misleading but close on to it – eg Kayak presenting selected airlines – something the powers that be took some time to stamp out on the GDS systems). So, the added difficulty to all this is that the information shown will be tainted by who is paying the information providor the most money. That is not in the customer interest.
Or should metaserach facilities and any other similar ilk be subject to the same regulation as the GDS systems?
This seems mostly about ‘commercial’ search (e.g. hotel bookings / flight booking) rather than ‘information’ search
(e.g. pages about paris and things to do there). Bing appears to be a more commercial centric system, as would all 2 layer systems as you describes them. I am not sure you can have 2 layer search and maintain the ‘general’ search feeling of 3 layer systems like google. But then, 3 layer systems like google are collapsing under weight of spam… There are also other search issues that need to be solved. E.g. do you want a new (up to date) page or one thats been around for a while. Really that needs to change depending on the subject AND current events. No search engine has got that exactly right yet.
couple of points;
1. Will Bing.IM be suing MSN over brand infingment?
2. Im not convinced this is going to be the revolution is sounds; too much like a fancy concept hiding an affiliate-style distribution system. Will TSM or Kayak be worried that Bing is disuading their users from buying because they think the price will go up or down? Once a few travellers have missed the opportunity to buy based on the “advise” then I suspect the solution will end up being diluted. Equally, such a concept has greatest appeal in a buyers market; as with previous travel downturns this will reverse, demand will exceed supply in key areas and the consumer will revert to making purchasing decisons based on satisfying their own list of must-haves and not on the reccomendation of an anonymous piece of software.
@ David – on the bing.im site there is a line that says they are changing their name shortly….
@ Everyone – I am not convinced that this is going to be a major shift (yet). Therefore the interest is the reaction – not the Microsoft system itself (and therefore why I wrote about the potential reactions)
However I think Microsoft will keep going after this market and will do more acquisitions / more iterations until they get it right. That will be exciting to watch. Google seem content to sit on keyword search and adding a few maps / reviews etc to the mix.
Thankfully I can watch this one from the sidelines…. as I always say – the reserervation system people are one end of the process – and the search engines are at the other. It is the people in the middle who have all the worries. The end points are not moving much.
Like you said if Bing can provide decisions to choose rom rather than merely facilitate research then I feel it has a future.
Travel Search Engine sounds fine.
Will depend on how early adopters will take to it and review it.
Bing is only a rebranded LIVE with a wallpaper beneath the search engine.. Same results as LIVE. No big surprise for the moment…
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