I continue to see disappointment with the Microsoft search engine “Bing“. I’m not sure who is running the show over there but I can see exactly why they have lost so much market share in South Africa. Everyone in the world has caught on the fact that South Africa has what it takes to be a top country in the world when it comes to some technological advances…. everyone except Microsoft that is.

Microsoft started out great in South Africa when they used to have the “pages from South Africa” option on their page when you visited bing.co.za , they have since removed this option (bing.co.za now redirects to bing.com) and now longer even supports South Africa in their International search option.

Why is this so bad?

Go ahead and try to find any local page in South Africa. Bing results are full of international pages with almost no local pages from South Africa indexed. A South African page will be lucky to show up under its own name.  So tell me… what is the point of anyone in South Africa using Bing at all if they cannot find local information?

So where are the South African Results in Bing?

Well if you are good at doing puzzles then you will eventually find it. To find local SA pages in Bing you will need to do the following:

Step 1: Search from Something and then be forced to see international results first.
Step 2: Find the “Advanced” button above the search results to the right
Step 3: Locate the country/region link under search terms.
Step 4: Find South Africa
Step 5: Add to search

Bing then adds an ugly “loc:ZA” to the end of its search query which I guess they want you to remember for next time.

How does Google do it?
Step 1: Search from Something and then be forced to see international results first.
Step 2: Locate the pages for “Pages from South Africa” and click it.

Why has Bing not thought about this yet?

Truth is they were once doing it right and then someone got bad advice and was told to hide the pages from South Africa option. Maybe they are trying to save costs by not using the bing.co.za domain (not sure why Microsoft would need to save money) of maybe they are trying to strengthen the bing.com domain. Either way I believe it is a huge mistake on their part. Bing.co.za should simply go directly to Step 5 in the Bing puzzle.

Secondly, from a search engine optimisation  point of view getting a site listed in Bing for the first time takes weeks (sometimes months), something Google does in seconds. Come on Microsoft, speed up those crawlers, the demand is for real time search not news that is weeks old. Microsoft could even beta test a better search engine using Bing.co.za if they afraid it will effect their so called search quality on Bing.com which at the moment does not exist here.

Conclusion

Microsoft need to wake up and support the South African market. South Africa has proven that they can put on world class events like the World Cup, South Africa has proven that they have technology superior to most countries and quality websites are no exception there. If Bing cannot show the love for South Africa then how can South Africa show the love for Bing?