Microsoft (MSFT) has never had as much success in the online advertising space as Google (GOOG). But the past is not going to dictate the future for MSFT. Instead, the company continues to forge ahead with the help of Bing Ads.

The summer of 2014 has been a busy one, as noted by Microsoft’s Stephen Sirich in an official company blog post.

Rather than stay busy with updates that customers would never see, the Bing Ads team made quite a few changes that have made the system easier to use — and that is what advertisers and publishers are looking for.

The Yahoo Bing Network is growing, and with each new feature there is a better chance that the company will become more competitive with Google down the road.

Big Changes or No?

None of the changes made within the Yahoo Bing Network are earth-shattering. That being said, each and every one has helped to push the user experience forward.

For example, keyword normalization was altered. Sirich explained the earlier problem in this department:

“Previously, Bing Ads did not allow users to submit variants of a keyword with extraneous characters (e.g.: bike shed vs. bike-shed).”

In an effort to give users what they want, a useful change was made.

“In response to the many requests received, we created a tool to determine how keywords are normalized before being uploaded to Bing Ads. Otherwise known as keyword normalization, customers can now use keywords with extraneous characters, including those that differ by an accent mark.”

Some users will fall in love with this new feature. Others won’t care about it one way or another. But in an overall sense, it is small changes like these that really add up when it comes to the overall user experience.

MSFT had a busy summer of updates with Bing Ads, and we can expect more of the same in the months to come. This is one area of its business that continues to receive attention.

As of this writing, Chris Bibey did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities.