It’s safe to say that expectations of search capabilities and delivery have risen over the years, and Microsoft is betting that this will translate into widespread adoption of their new and improved search engine, Bing. In anticipation of its debut this week, Microsoft posted a teaser video and allowed select individuals to preview the tool, resulting in some substantial pre-launch buzz.

The Early Verdict on Bing

To understand how the buzz on Bing has unfolded over the last few days, we watched commentary—specifically reaction and sentiment—of social and traditional media site users as they discussed Bing. So far, sentiment towards Bing has been generally favorable, although most people appear to be neutral on the topic. However, more than half of top bloggers–those associated with the most influential and high-reaching blogs– expressed an opinion, with the result being more positive than negative.

So how can we interpret this? In order to understand sentiment, it is helpful to know which keywords are driving the opinions.

Keyword Topics Driving Bing Sentiment

Interestingly, those topics that drive negative sentiment for some people are the very same ones that drive positive sentiment for others (such as comparisons to other search engines, quality of results, and the reaction to the brand). The good news for Microsoft is that the balance is tipping toward positive, especially among influential individuals, and some of the negativity will be moot once Bing goes live (such as the video demo).

Making a Dent in Search Share

While I’m sure that there are many critics who are willing to weigh in on what the future holds for Bing, the real question is are people are willing to switch to Bing from their current search engine? Maybe so.

Although Google has typically been the top dog in the search engine battles, searchers are a little less loyal than you might think. Around one-third of all searchers, and 72 percent of heavy searchers (the top 20 percent of searchers that generate 80 percent of total searches in the U.S.) use three or more search engines per month. These heavy searchers are the ones that Microsoft will want to attract, since they drive the majority of search activity on the Web.

Furthermore, 30 percent of Google searchers also use MSN/Windows Live, accounting for 30 percent of all their non-Google search activity. So this relative disloyalty means that Microsoft may initially have a smaller hurdle to overcome in the battle for search share than one might assume. Meaning, they don’t necessarily need to get non-MSN searchers to switch from Google (or Yahoo!) to Bing – they just have to get people that already use MSN/Windows Live to use Bing more often. And from the glimpse that we’ve seen so far, they seem to be doing just that by focusing specifically on Travel, Shopping, Health, and Local search. Gaining these vertical specific searches to grow overall share isn’t going to be easy, but it seems like a better, more innovative approach than simply trying to make a better Google.

We’ve all been there. We’re at the store sizing up that shiny new product, and everybody from the floor manager to the checkout person to our Significant Other is telling us how much we can save if we just went ahead and bought the darn thing. And we know that spending money isn’t actually saving it, but we do it anyway because it feels so good. Well, last May, Microsoft saw opportunity in our soft spot, and told us that they would actually pay us to buy products we found using their search engine.

And so Live Search Cashback was born. With technology derived through Microsoft’s acquisition of Jellyfish.com, the Cashback program immediately took off, driving 140 percent increase in traffic to MSN/Windows Live Shopping Search from the previous month. As many wondered if the novelty would quickly wear off, the Live Shopping Search audience grew 615 percent over the year. Even more impressive: it was one of only two Top Ten Shopping Search Providers to grow their audience from April 2008 to April 2009.

Turning Search Activity into Cash

Of course, none of this matters unless the searches are turning into referral traffic for the retailers. And since we know that people search for products outside of the shopping-specific area of the search engines, I thought I’d take a look at how effective each search engine is in referring traffic. One obvious finding is that most Internet Retailers can claim their highest percentage of traffic from Google and Yahoo! Interestingly though, MSN/Windows Live Search can claim more efficiency than any other provider on a dollar per visitor basis, driving 8 percent of visits but 12 percent of dollars to major e-commerce sites during Q1.

The Big Picture

I have to admit to being a little surprised at the findings. If Microsoft is doing so well in connecting shoppers with retailers, then why haven’t they been able to close the gap in search share? If we take a step back for some perspective, we find that searches conducted on shopping-specific engines only comprise between one and two percent of total search activity. Nextag, the leading shopping search engine, can only claim 0.3 percent share of all U.S. searches. This in mind, it’s not surprising that shopping search alone does not significantly impact the overall landscape.

For me, the interesting piece in all this is Microsoft’s approach of breaking search into chunks, and (presumably) attacking each of them one-by-one. Of course, it’s premature to declare Live Shopping Search the likely winner, given how far it trails Google and Yahoo!, and that Shopping is such a small piece of the search pie, but it’s going to be interesting seeing how its strategy of taking on Google one vertical at a time plays out. In the meantime, I’m going to try and cut down on all the saving I’ve been doing.

The parent level is defined as a consolidation of multiple domains and URLs owned by a single company or division. The brand level is defined as a consolidation of multiple domains and URLs that has a consistent collection of branded content.

Google searches accounted for 62.8 percent of all Web searches with more than 5.9 billion queries.  Yahoo, MSN, AOL and Ask.com continued to round out the top five.

Searches represent the total number of queries conducted at the provider.

* A year-over-year comparison is not possible because of a definitional change to Yellow Pages Search

Google searches accounted for nearly 63% of all Web searches, with 5.4 billion queries. Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, and Ask.com rounded out the top five.

Searches represent the total number of queries conducted at the provider.

Google searches accounted for more than 64% of all Web searches, with almost 5.2 billion queries.  Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, and Ask.com rounded out the top five.

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Read coverage of Nielsen’s findings on CNET.com and Silicon.com, as well as in Mediaweek and Media Post.

Review September and October 2008 search results.

Google was the most popular website with U.S. Internet users, drawing the largest audience (120 million unique visitors per month, on average) through October 2008.

As of 2008, the most prolific content downloaders in the U.S. live in California, according to Scarborough Research, a joint partnership with Nielsen and Arbitron. The San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose market had the highest percentage (32%) of adults who had downloaded podcasts, video games, music/other audio clips, movies, videos, or TV programs in the past month.  The San Diego and Austin, Texas markets tied for a close second place (31%).  Nationwide, 24% of adults have downloaded online content in the past month.

Top 10 Websites: U.S.

Top U.S. Markets For Content Downloaders

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Relive the greatest hits of 2008 — stay tuned on Nielsen Wire for more Tops In 2008 coverage.

Look ahead to the new year with Nielsen Wire’s 2009 Industry Outlook series.

View the full press release.