Facebook Removes Microsoft’s Bing As Primary Search Engine

According to a report by Reuters, Facebook has removed Microsoft-owned Bing as its primary search engine in exchange for its own search tool that allows users to find information that’s related to friends’ posts and comments.

This change marks the end of a four-year relationship between Facebook and Bing, although Microsoft still owns a small stake in Facebook. “We’re not currently showing Web search results in Facebook Search because we’re focused on helping people find what’s been shared with them on Facebook,” a Facebook spokesperson wrote in a recent statement. “We continue to have a great partnership with Microsoft in lots of different areas.”

Microsoft confirmed the move in a similar statement of its own. “Facebook recently changed its search experience to focus on helping people tap into information that’s been shared with them on Facebook vs. a broader set of Web results,” wrote Microsoft.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO, recently stated that search is one of the most important initiatives the social media giant is working on. He expects search, in addition to Facebook’s Instagram photo messaging service and WhatsApp messaging program, will reach 1 billion people within the next five years. “Once we get to that scale, then we think that they will start to become meaningful businesses in their own right,” explained Zuckerberg.

What does this mean for digital marketers? Now that Bing is no longer being used on Facebook, the focus on friend-to-friend sharing must be increased. Running campaigns that are more likely to be shared organically on Facebook will help them to show up in Facebook’s native search results, thereby increasing the reach of advertisements. This change is in line with an overall move toward more specifically targeted advertising by digital marketers.

The change in Facebook’s search will come as a blow to Bing, which is Microsoft’s answer to the world’s top search provider, Google. As of October, industry researcher ComScore found Google represented 67% of Web searches, while Microsoft’s Bing represented approximately 20%. It’s still too early to determine how much Facebook’s own search technology will affect Bing’s market share.

However, it is clear Facebook and Microsoft’s relationship isn’t nearly as strong as it was seven years ago, when the software giant acquired a 1%, $240 million stake in the social network, which valued the company at $15 billion. Today, Facebook is valued at more than $211 billion.

Regardless, Zuckerberg is clearly focused on Facebook’s growth in search, with hints that the massive amount of information that users share within Facebook could eventually replace the need to search the Web for answers to certain questions. “There are more than a trillion posts, which some of the search engineers on the team like to remind me, is bigger than any Web search corpus out there,” Zuckerberg explained.