At the Credit Suisse Annual Technology Conference, Microsoft SVP Yusuf Mehdi said the company was enjoying success winning over younger searchers. He said that with Bing Microsoft had improved its performance with the critical 18-to-24-year-old demographic, which he said makes up a disproportionate number of the search engine’s users. By contrast, Mehdi said that Live Search was “over-indexed” with the 65-year-old-plus age group.

No surprises on the latter nugget.

Mehdi said that Microsoft believed that next year searches on mobile phones will begin to take market share away from searches on PCs; in response, he said that Microsoft was planning “clients” for the iPhone, RIM, and other platforms. He also downplayed reports that Microsoft is in discussions with news publishers to pay them to pull their content from Google, saying that the company’s “focus (is) on improving the user experience, not to pay people to deindex (from) our competition.”

We’ll keep you apprised of developments as they arise.

Enhanced Video Search

Bing has begun to include four video results at the top of video related searches. They appear to show up more often than Google’s universal results.

Comparative search for [30 Rock].

Comparative search for [Modern Warfare 2].

Facebook / Wish Lists

Bing also introduced the ability to add products and gadgets to a Bing wish list and then push that wish list directly to Facebook. I searched for (what I would consider) popular items for holiday wish lists such as [ps3], [iphone], [madden 10 ], [modern warfare 2] but could not find an option to create a wish list. Either the program is not fully rolled out yet, or they need to do some usability testing. Despite not finding this function, I did notice a few differences between Google and Bing SERPs that warranted a mention.

Google still appears to be testing their product ad format.

In comparison, Bing continues to push their Cash Back program.

While we are searching for [ps3] on Bing…Is a page with 20+ results, broken into 7 categories by orange text, and 4-line green URLs really a better user experience? Bing executives keep saying, “People expect more than just 10 blue links”. That may be true, but I’m not sure I expected to see a page like this.

And really? No ads being sold for the keyword [ps3]?

Wolfram Alpha / Calculations

Users have become accustomed to searching on Google using queries such as [cups in a liter] and getting a quick easy answer at the top of the SERP. Bing is also now connected to Wolfram Alpha’s math engine to provide similar results.

Comparative search for [cos(36)].

Bing appears to be better at simple Algebra than Google. It will actually solve for X. I’ll be really impressed when it can do limits.

These changes will help Bing catch up (if not surpass) Google in terms of micro-functionality. But as our search sherpa pointed out earlier this week, Google is actively making small and large acquisitions that continue to make it a long uphill journey for Bing.