Dusza what's going on out there

Google's Financial Results suggest Online Advertising Rebound

Google has today announced it's third quarter financial results beating analysts predictions and suggesting that the online advertising sector has begun to rebound.

Google said the net income for the period rose to $1.64 billion up from $1.29 billion in the previous quarter. Earnings per share were $5.89 compared to the analyst expectation of $5.42 per share.

CEO Eric Schmidt said in a statement

"While there is a lot of uncertainty about the pace of economic
recovery, we believe the worst of the recession is behind us and now
feel confident about investing heavily in our future,"

Google is probably the best measure of the online advertising sector as it accounts for roughly 97% of the company's revenue. This is particularly true in search engines, where Google commands around 65% of the market.

Google also reported that the number of paid clicks on site increased 14% from the same quarter in 2008 and although the average cost per click remains depressed compared to last year, Google said its ad rates have increased from the second quarter of 2009 - another hopeful sign.

Meanwhile, the third quarter saw Microsoft aggressively promoting it's new search engine; Bing, which it hopes will become a viable competitor to Google. However, so far Microsoft hasn't managed to make a dent in Google's share of the search market, all of Bing's small market gains have so far come at the expense of Yahoo and other fringe players.

Direct Marketing - Facts & Figures

The latest research by the Direct Marketing Association has confirmed Dusza's belief that door drop marketing is becoming less and less popular.

In 2008 volumes of door drop marketing fell by 11% to 9 billion items - still a lot of junk mail I hear you cry! Interestingly the the same survey found that expenditure on door drop marketing has only fallen by 5%. The group attributes the figures to marketeers seeking "to enhance relevance through improved targeting techniques".

In 'non-marketing' speak this means that marketeers are being much more careful with their direct marketing spend - and who can blame them in this difficult financial climate! Instead of 'blanket' dropping a mediocre campaign, they are creating strategic pieces of marketing material which are targeted to specific people. The hope being that this more responsible approach to direct marketing will produce a better Return on Investment.

Interesting, further research on 'consumer views on data-driven marketing', 95% of consumers say they ARE interested in receiving communications from companies they know, unfortunately 77% say they always opt out of communications from companies they don't know.

The research shows it is getting harder and harder to obtain permission to contact year on year, 2008 only 65% of consumers said they always tick the opt out box.

It seems that consumers are becoming more selective about who they share they data with, and unsurprisingly when you think of the well-publicised instances of data breaches by large organisations. Trust appears to be the key, it is essential to any relationship, especially the relationship between companies and consumers.

So how can you ensure your message gets to your target audience effectively. It's easy get in touch and we can give you clear, honest advice about how to get the best Return on Investment for your marketing budget.

Marketing Trends for 2010

2010 is shaping up to be an exciting year in marketing. From the outside the first decade of the 21st Century didn't look too promising with corporate collapses, economic downturn and environmental disasters, but the last ten years have also been marked by a shift in communications from the traditional media to a fast and far reaching global conversation. Thanks to the many developments of the Internet, including video streaming, social networking and the boom in the home and office PC - news, information and advertising now flows instantaneously from distributor to audience. This new channel of communication presents exciting new opportunities for marketeers.

The following are 10 Trends that we believe will shape all areas of marketing, from advertising to branding and everything in between in 2010 and beyond into the 21st Century.

Transparency & Trust

Events such as the collapse of major banking institutions and high street names in 2009 led to consumer confidence being crushed! No longer as naive consumers happy to sit back, willing to accept anything businesses tell them. Businesses which embrace this change and make a real effort to be open and honest in their dealings will see the benefit of real brand loyalty in the future. However trust is an ongoing process - it can be lost at any time. Brands must work hard to maintain the trust.

Less Time, More Value

Consumers have less time on their hands than ever before and as the 21st Century rolls on, this is only likely to continue. Give your customers more by getting straight to the point - deliver meaningful communications, and your customers will thank you for it.

And More Value

The Economic downturn that categorised 2009 has changed many consumers - perhaps forever! No longer are they happy to spend their hard earned money without thought and on rashly purchased credit! The 2010 consumer is looking for a GOOD DEAL - money off, buy one get one free, coupons, vouchers and reward points are the big sellers for 2010 and into the future. Build your marketing campaigns with that in mind.

Prove It

Consumers are more skeptical than ever. There is no good just writing good sounding copy for your marketing communications, with clever straplines and innovative concepts, now consumers expect you to prove your words are true. SHOW your customers why they should spend their hard earned money with you!

Social Media is not a passing phase

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube - they are here to stay and it is likely that the Internet will expand further into the Social Media arena. So if your businesses is not on the bandwagon yet - get jumping (especially if you are Business 2 Consumer)! Get some amazing content and interact with your customers.

Security and Peace of Mind

Consumers have lived through some troubling times in the last decade from Global Recession to Natural Disasters, they are looking for some security in their future, so bear this message in mind in your communications.

Building Relationships

With the growth of social media, the desire for trust and security, the relationship between business and consumer is stronger and more important than ever. It is also possible to build a much better relationship with your customers and with this relationship comes a great source of word-of-mouth marketing and brand loyalty.

Video & Mobile

Two massive areas of growth in 2010 marketing will be online video and mobile marketing. Invest in either or both - but get on board now - before you are left behind.

Focus

No one can be everything to everyone. As the 21st Century unfolds the term 'niche' has become more and more common. Focus on strategy, build your core offering and concentrate on that before expanding into new markets.

Think About Your Audience

Before you jump into any marketing spend their is one truth that is universally acknowledged. It has been true for decades and will continue to be true into the future. Think About Your Audience - put yourself in their shoes. Much of our advice spans many target audiences, but you must be sure you are reaching your prospective customers in the right way.

If you want help with your marketing strategy in 2010 and beyond then get in touch with Dusza today!

Putting yourself on the Google Map

Register for Googles Local Business Centre so your company shows up any time anyone searches in your area for your particular type of business...

When people look for a product or service via a search engine, the chances are excellent they would prefer to have local companies returned in the results. And so, more often than not, they will add a town, county or postcode to their keywords. For example, Toy shops in London.

If such a phrase is entered into Google, the web site displays its map of the area gleaned from the search words at the very top of the results page, with markers indicating locations of any shops, companies or services that match the search criteria. Google is even smart enough to remember the area keyword from a previous search, so even if the visitor were to omit the town or postcode, it would still return those much sought-after local results.

You might think for such a high prominence on the Google site would be costly and time-consuming to implement, but in actual fact, its free of charge, and takes no longer than fifteen minutes to set-up. All thats needed is a Google account, which many people may already have from using other services on the site (such as Google Earth, Toolbar or Mapping), or from customising the search engine interface.
To add a business, assuming you do already have a Google account, go to http://www.google.com/local/add?hl=en&gl=GB and click on the giant-sized Add New Business button. Here you are presented with a form in which to scribble details pertaining to the company, such as its name, address, telephone number, e-mail and web address, plus a description up to 200 characters. To help Google match the business to visitors searches, you may choose up to five different pre-defined categories from a vast and diverse range of business types or quickly create your own.

Other optional information that can be entered into the profile includes how customers can pay for goods and services (credit/debit card types and other payment methods), the types of brands available (handy for shops), and parking availability. To further enhance the entry, it is even possible to upload and include a photograph or two alongside the description, or add promotional or advertising fodder in the form of a link to a YouTube video.

Once your information has been entered, verification from Google must be sought before the entry goes live. A PIN (personal identification number) is sent by post to the business address entered into the profile, which must be entered in order to activate the listing. It can take up to two weeks for the PIN to arrive in the post, but once youve entered the PIN, your listing will appear immediately, and thereafter the profile can be updated as often as is necessary.

Additionally, it is possible within a single account to add multiple listings, which is useful if your company has more than one branch. Of course, having to fill in the same form several times could be quite tedious, but it seems that Google has thought of that too, and included a tool called Upload a Data File. This enables you to add, replace or delete multiple locations from your account at once, by uploading the information in a single tab-delimited plain text file. Instructions on how to format the table in a spreadsheet application, and what values are acceptable can be found at: http://www.google.com/local/add/helpFeeds?hl=en-US&gl=GB. Although it may sound a bit on the technical side, its little more than setting up a spreadsheet with a few key words in the right places, and the help file guides you effortlessly through the process.

The prominence of Googles Local Business Map on its search results page isnt the only reason you should consider it for your business. Visitors can use it to physically find your premises, or get directions via the standard Google Map tools. Also, Google will pull in information and user reviews from other local business listings sites, such a qype.co.uk, touchlocal.com and bview.co.uk and automatically insert them into the company profile. It will even perform a search of other sites on the web with your details as the search criteria and display alongside a link to your own web site, further links to other sites that contain related information to the business.

Additionally, registered Google account owners can submit their own reviews of any business in the listing, which appear with a five-star rating. Few things encourage potential customers to trust your business as much as the experiences of those who have already. And all of this can be yours for the price of fifteen minutes. Thats good value.

Google Caffeine

What on Google-Earth is Google Caffeine?

Pardon the joke, but we really couldn't help ourselves! In a nutshell Goggle Caffeine is the code name given to a soon-to-be-implemented Google Search overhaul.

The actual changes that are being made to the beloved Google have not been disclosed (nor are they likely to be). What has been disclosed is merely a collection of adjectives. In a recent interview Matt Cutts (head of Google's Webspam team) says "Caffeine tries be a lot more powerful, a lot more flexible and a lot more robust in the way it indexes."

For those of you who are wondering when is this going to happen, a single data centre has already held trials for the new Caffeine allowing searchers (that's you and me) to road test the search results and the results are showing as marginally different. These trials have now ceased and replacing the page is the following text:

"We appreciate all the feedback from people who searched on our Caffeine sandbox. Based on the success we've seen, we believe Caffeine is ready for a larger audience. Soon we will activate Caffeine more widely, beginning with one data center. This sandbox is no longer necessary and has been retired, but we appreciate the testing and positive input that webmasters and publishers have given."

BUT is there more to it? Speculation that Caffeine is a direct response to the newly formed partnering of Bing and Yahoo has been flatly denied by Google and we at Dusza would agree.

It's a well documented fact that Google have been evolving their search algorithm since its dawn, taking very little notice of the major players around them. This is one of the reasons why Google have superseded any other Search technology because they do not mark their success by pitting themselves against others, but simply by innovation.

So why is Google Caffeine important?

We have interpreted the information released by Google as Caffeine being a massive overhaul of what goes on under the bonnet of Google Search. It is not about changing the search results but more about changing the framework of Google so that it can evolve in the future without huge rewrites or complications.

We liken the difference between the original Google Search and Caffeine, to our own website CMS framework. Before the dawn of the Dusza framework each and every website was freshly created code, we would find new (and better) ways of doing in essence a very similar thing. This was great apart from integrating the newly created technology that was in trial on one website wouldn't integrate to an older website. With the introduction of the framework, every new innovation in technology can be integrated with every single one of our websites - providing they are on the latest evolution of the framework. This gives us the flexibility to rapidly evolve technology which we can offer at a much lower cost to our clients because it significantly reduces the time involved in programming a project. Because of this framework we are now thoroughly consistent and flexible.

We believe Caffeine is similar in concept. Google Search technology and innovation has occurred with the appearance of:

mobile search
time line search including the Google wonder wheel
adwords
xml feeds including Google Product Search
personal search settings
localised search

The original Google Search interface was never designed to encompass this myriad of permutations. Caffeine is likely to be the platform which all these facets of Search can be customised, switched on or off, combined or easily extended.

Another area of difference between the old and new may come from Googles' experience or trial and error. Since the 1990s Google has learnt some valuable lessons from customer reactions.

Now extremely conscious of upsetting the searcher Google decided to trial Caffeine to gauge reaction. If we scale this concept up, the likelihood of Google Search architecture being Data Centre specific may become a reality.

By this we mean allowing certain searchers to use certain data centres for specific methods of search. Google have already proved that Caffeine has started in one data centre, when given the green light the new architecture can take over another data centre and another and we would speculate that this ability to switch over data centres has another use. Google can choose to switch searchers from one data centre to another, to target specific geographical locations to specific data centres.

Why would this be important? Well, does every culture search and retrieve information in the same way? We would expect someone in China searching for McDonalds in Washington to not necessarily be looking for a local restaurant but perhaps historical information about when the first McDonalds came to Washington.

Take this theory even further and understand that within the culture of the Chinese the search algorithm may need to be customised to display results that that culture would expect to find. In a Muslim country is there any point returning results upon a subject that would be considered offensive?

What about Google Caffeine Optimisation?

Well, there has been much discussion in the Dusza offices about what Caffeine will mean for natural / organic search results for our clients. We believe our clients need not fear being dropped from search results.

Google wants to provide relevant results to searchers. That's the goal. Google needs people to search using their search engine in order to create the $21 billion they received in 2008.

Therefore any innovation that helps Google refine its search algorithms to promote websites that are relevant will become ever increasingly implemented. So what makes a website worth being ranked, we can only speculate again, but it is likely to include the fundamentals of a great website from adhering to W3C compliance and Accessibility issues to page load speeds.

If you are concerned about the impact of Caffeine on your website and want to discuss it with Dusza please feel free to get in touch.

CRM Solutions saving businesses

Client Relationship Management systems are saving businesses - literally.

In a financial climate that is unforgiving to wasting time or money, companies are searching for ways to streamline operations.

Client Relationship Management (CRM) offers more versatility than their name may suggest. CRM Solutions have evolved as quickly as the web. With the massive advances in technology on the internet and its relentless pace of evolution CRM solutions are no longer clunky underdeveloped irritations but valuable efficiency tools that allow any company achieve a consistency not before possible.

Firstly, for those of you that think a CRM is yet another geeky term with no merit, let's consider the concept itself. A client relationship management system is a computer system that consists of the processes a company uses to track and organise its contact with its current and prospective clients. CRM software is used to support each of your business processes; information about customers and customer interactions can be automatically tracked and analysed, manually entered, stored and accessed by employees in different company departments.

Now imagine that you have this system based online so that you can literally access the CRM from anywhere around the world using just an internet connection and your secure login details.

Modern day CRMs can fulfill an amazing range processes more efficiently and with a higher degree of accuracy than any employee. An example of the technologies we use every day could be; mobile integration allowing Health & Safety officers to Quality Control building sites in real time, or for a finance department to be able to pay wages remotely via the CRM. How about downloading your entire finance overview in a single Excel file on demand - and further more it's always accurate.

A CRM also doesn't demand pay rises and never takes holiday or sick days.

Analyse your business processes

So where do you start with your business? In order to really streamline company processes you first need to identify what your company processes are, you cant streamline what's not there! If you want to know how to streamline your business Dusza will be publishing a paper right here on this very subject next month, it's a how-to guide aimed at small to medium businesses and will help you identify your processes.

Remember to consider every angle of your business as sometimes it is the processes that you don't use everyday that can be overlooked but actually have real impact on your business. A good example of this could be your recruitment process. When a new employee comes into business how much disruption does it cause? If the answer is; a lot, then this may be due to your business not having the correct strategy and process in place.

Changing your company's habits

The simple fact is that in June 2009 there were over 1,668,870,408 people worldwide using the internet. People are more and more comfortable with working and playing online.

Some companies foresee a backlash whenever a new system is put in place and this can be the case when a system has been ill thought out or badly implemented.

CRMs should be uncomplicated to use and it is important that your employees see and feel the benefit of streamlining operations.

The benefit of an online CRM that is well designed and functions perfectly for your business is that it can actually be a moral boost for your employees - it helps them to be better at their job. A good approach that works well to get your employees on-side is for them to take ownership of the transition between previous processes and methods and the new CRM, with frequent progress updates and group discussions - it's quick and easy to make employees feel part of the CMS deployment process.

Ensuring they have the correct training and a support strategy in place also is fundamental to the success of the CRM.

Success Story

Dusza create and deploy CRMs that dramatically reduce operational costs. One of our clients saw a first year saving of over £120,000 and thereafter a year on year saving of over £250,000.

Dream Generation earning income from the internet

Dream Generation WIRKING for a living.

With nearly a fifth of 18 to 24-year-olds in Britain are out of work, part of a 5m army of young unemployed across the European Union*, research released has showed generation Y is turning to social media to make a living.

Teenagers as young as 13 are reported to be taking advantage of their internet connection to reap money and rewards from wirking - the new term for internet work. Wirk is defined by job opportunities that did not exist before the rise of the internet, and is likely to be completed, and paid for, via the internet.

Completing online questionnaires, polls, content publishing and search marketing are all examples of Wirk, as is the re-launched virgin.com, where members can earn points towards Virgin products.While wirking can be a full time vocation, given the opportunity it offers for anyone with an internet connection to earn money, wirkers are currently more likely to be part time.

Co-founder of wirk.org, comments: The job market for the young is changing at a rapid pace. Just walk into supermarkets and cashiers have been replaced by self service tills. Ecommerce is replacing traditional job roles and the recession is also a significant factor contributing to job losses.

It is easy to see that even paper rounds are likely to be a thing of the past with online content becoming more accessible on demand. In short, for the young especially, the number of work opportunities are reducing day by day and the opportunity lies in social media.

wirk.org is a not for profit organisation that has been created by users for users, and is a worldwide directory of Wirk opportunities available.

It seems the Dream Generation really are helping themselves and creating a whole new way of wirking.

Google Search Result Filters & Display Options

Google has extended its search offerings. In accordance with Page and Sergey's ambition to organise and distribute the webs vast wealth of information, Google has just launched a collection of additional features that extend user's ability to search.

Amongst the new search options are:

Show All results, Videos, Forums and Reviews
Time specific, Recent Results, Past 24 hours, Past Week, Past Year or Custom Date Range
Extended snippet including Standard view, Images from the page or More text
Related searches including Wonder wheel or Timeline

What's interesting to note is that all these new search features are hidden away as the default option for users. You may think this is a slightly naive way of introducing and testing new technologies on users but it just goes to show how seriously Google are about not damaging their user loyalty.

Back in the early days of Google, a previously thought incidental change in home page design from a serif typeface to a sans serif one caused uproar. It seems the lesson has been learned and taken to heart.

All results

The default is the standard all results users are used to seeing. Videos
Forums
Reviews

If you're ever unsure about the precise terms you should use for your search, start out with a broader search term (e.g. ), then use the Related searches and Wonder wheel options to discover alternative search terms.

The Related searches option puts -- you guessed it -- related searches at the top of the results page. They'll stay there, even as you scroll up and down, so you can easily compare and contrast results for different related searches.
The Wonder wheel visually presents connections between related searches and your search term as an interactive diagram. Click the different nodes in the diagram to see how searches can branch out.

Microsoft + Yahoo = Bing?

So is Google in any kind of trouble or is the joining of 'the two other search engines' really no cause for concern?

Extract from Bing's Director, Adam Sohn

"By now you have probably seen the exciting news about our agreement with Yahoo!. We are totally fired up to be partnering with such a great set of folks, and look forward to seeing what we can achieve for
customers by working together to bring a strong #2 into the search space. This is great news for Bing and is a great accelerator to the work we are already doing. The scale Bing will get through this agreement will enable us to learn, experiment and innovate faster for consumers and advertisers.

The result will be more relevant search results and advertising, which is great for everyone. Working with Yahoo! we will be able to do so much to advance the search experience, and we cannot wait to see the
partnership come to life"
(www.bing.com; July 29, 2009)

Extract from Sir Martin Sorrell, Chief Executive, WPP Group

This is extremely encouraging and introduces more balance into the search and display markets," said Sir Martin Sorrell, chief executive of British advertising group WPP (WPP.L). "It is good for our clients and our agencies and for regulators."
(Reuters; July 30, 2009)

The Microsoft and Yahoo agreement focus' on search and reflects the vital importance of search
and search advertising to the Internet. Search is a critical part of peoples online lives and an important element of the Internet experience.

At the end of July this year, and after much re-negotiating that has seen a prospective $44 billion take-over proposal re-mould itself into a seemingly amicable partnership, Microsoft and Yahoo announced a ten-year long deal that will see the companies combine resources to effectively make Microsoft the worlds second-biggest search engine. With a combined share of around thirty percent, its still less than half that of Google, but its nevertheless a step in the right direction for both companies that, individually, have had little impact on Googles dominance in the search engine market.

In a joint statement, the companies said, "In simple terms, Microsoft will now power Yahoo search while Yahoo will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies' premium search advertisers.

So, what does this mean for us casual web browsing types? Apart from the appearance of Powered by Bing search results on Yahoo pages, its not entirely obvious at the moment. Much of the impact is dependent on the minutiae of the arrangement, which has still to be eked out. One obvious disadvantage is that there will be one less unique search engine for all to use. But hopefully, with Microsoft spending plenty of money, time and effort on its Bing search engine project, Yahoo users can probably expect better search results in time. Some of Bings cool features are already appearing in some guise or another across Yahoo.

Despite being tied to Bing for ten years, Yahoo is dealt quite a respectable hand with this deal. It gets an outsourced search engine for a remarkably low price (from which it can pick and choose elements to use), a guaranteed stream of search revenue for a year and a half, and the opportunity to sell search advertising on both Yahoo and Microsoft. And it gets to save money, too which is never a bad thing in business. For Microsoft, it simply means that almost overnight it gets its hands on a bigger share of the search engine market than it could possibly achieve with natural growth alone of its Bing project.

So what could us mere mortals expect when we search using Bing? Well, in theory we could be being served up a plate of Bing Search results or Yahoo's or a combination. In addition we will certainly see Yahoo's advertising power brought to Bing.

Only time will tell if their combined efforts can rock the big G.

Microsoft goes Bing when it's finished

In need of a different, less Googled, perspective on whats available on the web? Try Microsofts re-vamped search engine

The UKs population, and come to think of it, much of the world too, is so enamoured with Googles simple and straightforward approach to finding things on the web that to Google or Google it are as much a part of everyday parlance as Hoover-ing the carpet. To Google is to search the web.

There have been plenty of search engines that have drifted in and out of popularity during the webs formative years, amongst them Microsofts Live Search and MSN, but it is fair to say that few have had the longevity, or market share, of Google. In July 2009, in an attempt to capture even just a tiny morsel of Googles audience, Microsoft re-launched its search engine under the name of Bing.

The chap responsible for designing Microsoft Outlooks user interface, Brian MacDonald, was charged with re-developing Bings front-end, and this is apparent from the consistency in the way it works and looks across the different search pages and tools. At first glance, is comparably more colourful than Google, with a huge photograph (which changes on a daily basis to encourage regular re-visits) underneath the main search tools. Along the bottom of the photograph, and dotted around it are hot-linked areas to sites or searches relating to the image. If nothing else, you might actually learn something by visiting the landing page (just like you do when Google has its celebration days). It doesnt detract from the main point of the page; its just a nice feature, although low-bandwidth connection users might suggest otherwise.

As for the search results themselves, which is of course the most important aspect of any new engine, they are sufficiently dissimilar to Googles, and lacking in any filler to warrant using Bing as an alternative source of information. It gives you the impression that it really understands what it is youre looking for (as opposed to matching words), and will even do clever things like return localised results based on your IP address. Its all really rather neatly presented too. One particularly feature in the search listings is the page preview, which pops up when you hover near the link. Within this panel, the first few paragraphs of text from the site are displayed. Oftentimes, this is accompanied by a list of links to other pages within the site in an Also on this site section. Very neat. But, not content with giving you pages of decent matches, Bing is also helpful enough to present an extra list of related items to your query down the left hand panel. It certainly improves the chances that youll find something of interest.

Unlike Google, video and image results are not displayed in amongst the other search listing on Bing, but instead are displayed as previews at the bottom and top of each page. Aesthetics may be subjective, but this arrangement does actually keep the listing a little more uniform and therefore easier to read. Besides, it is far better to use the dedicated media search pages if youre looking specifically for a picture or video clip.

Within these media search pages, image results are displayed on a single scrolling page (what Bing likes to call infinite scrolling, although the page does of course come to an end at some point). This does negate navigating back and forth through pages, and can actually make it quicker to find and compare images you need. The actual size of the images can be customised too (small, medium, large and image with detail); irrespective of the thumbnail size, pointing at it with the mouse will display a larger preview with details, and a link to related images.

The images found can be filtered according to several criteria: size (small to wallpaper-sized dimensions), layout (its proportions: landscape, portrait or square); colour or black and white, whether its a photo or illustration, and whether or not the content contains people (faces or head and shoulder shots, for example), which is an interesting addition to the usual array of filtering tools. It works rather well, too.
Videos can be previewed in-line by rolling over their thumbnails with the mouse. As with pictures, results can be filtered according to a number of criteria. In this case, its film length, aspect ratio, resolution, and it source (BBC, YouTube, MSN, or MTV for example). Up to 20 videos are displayed per page, and can be viewed as thumbnails, or presented with their detail visible.

At the time of writing, Bing is still in its public beta phase, and is requesting lots of feedback about its features, including if the results returned were what users expect. But first impressions are quite good. While it certainly wont topple Google from its top-spot on the search engine podium, Bing is potentially an excellent alternative to those with Google fatigue.