The June 9th morning keynote session at SMX Advanced Seattle was a conversation with Yusuf Mehdi, SVP of Online Audience Business at Microsoft, who reflected on Bing’s first year, and spoke of what’s ahead for the engine in year two and beyond.

During the first year, the marketing plan was aggressive. The keynote session highlighted the commercials, product placements, and social media initiatives that were part of the launch of the Bing brand. Mr. Mehdi indicated that in the first year since launch, Bing has acquired 20 million new users, which translates into a 4% market share growth.

The focus with the launch of Bing was on helping people make decisions. As a result, Microsoft worked to try to understand user intent within the context of search queries, and has offered users features that would attempt to help with a decision making process. The following were quoted as some of the aspects of the engine that seem to really resonate with users:

- The visual aspects, including the home page images, which have prompted users to come back to the engine day after day.
- Features that help users accomplish tasks (for example, the airfare price predictor)
- Instant answers feature
- In the mobile realm, the iPhone Bing app remains among the top most downloaded in the app store

So what’s ahead for Bing? My take-away from the session was that there will be a focus on three core areas that we can expect in the near future:

1. The integration with Yahoo – Bing is schedule to begin powering both the algorithmic (organic) and paid results on Yahoo in the fall of 2010, so as to be ready for, and not disrupt the busy holiday shopping season, while hopefully increasing market share within the search arena.

2. Mobile – I mentioned the success of the iPhone app above. Bing is going to be integrated with the iPhone 4 release.

3. Social – Bing’s social vertical will allow users to see real-time updates from Facebook and Twitter. Users will be able to see links being shared, and view trending to see what’s being discussed, what’s trending, and what’s popular now.

The company plans to continue testing, investing in understanding user intent within the context of search, and attempting to push the limits to differentiate itself from the competition.

Happy 1st Birthday, Bing!