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Though Microsoft has made many well-publicized moves to officially promote Bing, the company has more quietly been taking other steps that could propel the #3 search engine to a bigger share of market - much faster than many industry watchers anticipated when the search engine was rolled out.

Most notable in the news lately is Bing's "take-no-prisoners" approach to news content. According to several accounts, the company is reportedly in talks with a number of publishers about indexing exclusively on Bing - a move that would certainly undermine Google.

Behind the Scenes with Mobile

Outside the public eye, however, Microsoft earlier this month also introduced a mobile ad initiative that leverages Bing to a select group of advertisers, according to a company blog post by Jamie Wells.

Dubbed Microsoft Mobile Marketplace, this effort presents a user browsing a mobile site - such as Mobile MSN, Hotmail, Messenger, CNBC or FOX Sports - with a display ad promoting a specific consumer product vertical, such as "Last Minute Holiday Deals" or "Hot Ringtones." When the user clicks on a mobile display banner, he or she is then redirected to a mobile landing page with a list of sponsored links from Bing for Mobile that are based on the specific theme or set of keywords associated with that marketplace.

"Advertisers are able to increase their ROI by extending their mobile search campaign across key Microsoft Mobile display properties," Wells said. "It's simple to implement - advertisers can participate in the Marketplace simply by setting up a typical Bing for Mobile ad campaign and bidding on just one keyword."

The average campaign click-through rates are currently running at more than 20%, he added, which is more than five times more than the average CTR for a mobile search campaign.

Local Search

Microsoft has also invested a good deal of elbow grease in targeting local business owners - and those efforts appear to be paying off, according to WebVisible's newly released 2009 Q3 Report on the State of Small Business Online Advertising. "Microsoft spent a lot of money over the summer to launch Bing, and they targeted their campaign directly at local business owners," said Matt Booth, SVP and program director, interactive local media for BIA/Kelsey. "I should think that they would be encouraged by these results, as more and more SMBs move their ad budgets away from print and directories and online, small market share increases will come to represent big dollars."

The WebVisible report cites Bing/MSN's higher click-through rates in certain verticals as a potential explanation. Projected strategically, the data could bode well for Microsoft in the race to grab as much market share in the fast-growing, hyper-local market, the report found.

Growing Search Share

In general, Bing's share of all US searches is increasing, writes MarketingCharts. In search-engine share metrics from Experian Hitwise, Google accounted for 70.6% of all US searches conducted in the four weeks ending Oct. 31, 2009. However among the top four, #3 Bing increased 7%, while Ask.com rose 2%. Both Google and Yahoo saw 1% decreases in share vs. September 2009.