Rethinking the Bing Results Page for Nonprofit and Charity Queries
Company: Microsoft
Role: Product Manager
Category: Product Design & Strategy
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Other
Someone goes to Bing and searches for a charity or a similar organization, and Bing shows a result for it. As the product manager, how would you improve that result?
```hint Start from why they searched
A person looking up a charity rarely wants only its homepage. List the different reasons someone runs this search, and ask which of them today's result serves worst.
```
### Clarifying Questions
- By "the result," do we mean the ranked list of links, the summary panel a search engine shows for a recognized organization, or the whole results page?
- Are we focused on people who type the name of one specific charity, or also on people searching by cause (for example, charities that help children or older adults) who have not picked one yet?
- What matters most to Microsoft here: searcher satisfaction and trust, donations actually completed, or helping nonprofits get found?
- Is this one market or global, given that charity registration and tax rules differ by country?
### What a Strong Answer Covers
- A goal for Bing on this specific query type, and recognition that both the searcher and the charity are users of the result.
- Distinct searcher needs behind charity queries (reaching a known organization, checking whether it is legitimate, comparing options for a cause), with one chosen and justified.
- Pain points specific to charities, such as imposter sites, unclear use of funds and hard-to-find official donation pages.
- Solutions prioritized by impact and effort, including where any trust or verification data would come from and how it stays current.
- Success metrics with guardrails, and risks such as Bing appearing to endorse an organization or scammers gaming the result.
### Follow-up Questions
- A fraudulent charity gets a polished, official-looking result and the press notices. What should have prevented it, and what do you do in the first week?
- Should people be able to donate without leaving Bing? Weigh conversion against liability and the charity's own relationship with its donors.
- Most donations finish on the charity's own website, out of Bing's sight. How would you measure whether your change worked?
Overview: A product improvement exercise about what Bing shows when someone searches for a charity or similar organization. It tests choosing which searchers to serve, finding trust and donation pain points, prioritizing changes to the result, and defining success metrics with guardrails.