Despite Eric Schmidt’s taunt last week that Microsoft’s search-engine relaunch was something Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) did “about once a year,” Bing is clearly getting a reaction out of Mountain View. A new, very prominent link introduced on the Google (NSDQ: GOOG) home page Wednesday prods users to “explore the world of Google search” (Click on the screenshot to the left to see). It leads to a page that describes a number of Google search features, including many that Bing itself is aggressively promoting, such as queries that bring up instant package tracking, the weather and sports scores.

The launch of the page is not quite on the scale of the “Fear Grips Google” headline that the NYPost ran earlier this week—but it’s a sign that Google may be trying to do something to counter Microsoft’s marketing onslaught. (ComScore (NSDQ: SCOR) data out earlier Wednesday suggests that so far Bing’s launch has been very successful. For the second week in a row, Bing gained market share.) It’s also possible, as some have suggested, that Google may want to create the impression that it’s running scared to fend off regulators worried that it has too much power over the search market.

Either way, as Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan notes it’s about time that Google does some marketing. “Google’s never really had to market itself to consumers, to trot its stuff ... but if the praise for Bing keeps largely rolling in — if people keep discovering features that aren’t necessarily unique to Bing — Google may find it has to step up,” Sullivan writes. And that, he says, is exactly what the company is beginning to do.

• Google’s Schmidt Rips Microsoft’s Bing
• Microsoft’s Bing Posts Second Week Of Gains