The story of the moment is one which Danny Sullivan broke where a Google sting revealed that BING was gaming the relevancy in its search results based on information gleaned from those who used Internet Explorer as a browser in combination with the toolbar and some other settings.
The case revolves around some pretty hefty technical issues, as you can imagine but the bottom line is that BING, which has always been a matter of pride for Microsoft for doing things their own way, is really a Google slave. This is more serious than you can imagine.
Google Caffeine, for instance, was a direct response to the implementation of BING. Competition drives innovation at a much greater rate than consumer demand in what essentially is a closed market (and the Old Soviet Union model of retail shopping is a conclusive argument about that). BING’s copying of Google leaves a gap in the market in terms of competing search technologies.
I hope that given sufficient publicity Microsoft will be able to wipe the egg from its face and simply focus back on finding ways to nip at Google’s heels maintaining both an alternative to Google and keeping the latter sharp and focused on quality search results which benefit both consumers and webmasters alike.
The best SEO questions come out of a real need and this morning an email from Lomas H. from London helped highlight what’s really different in 2011 in SEO, following the Google Panda Update.
19-05-2011 Hits:1628 SEO Tips
Facebook has, apparently, rejigged its programming to allow status updates of up to 60,000 characters long. That’s a 12-fold increase over its previous limit of 5,000 characters and a remarkable leap in progress from its original 160 character limit which...
04-12-2011 Hits:1014 Social Media News
One constant worry webmasters have is what can they do if spam sites start linking to them, either by accident, or because they are attempting to bring down the search engine ranking of your own site. Competition on...
14-04-2011 Hits:432 WEB View
Even if you are a born writer writing is hard work. It has to make sense, it flows out of you with some difficulty and once it is ‘out there’ you are normally justified in feeling such a sense of...
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With all the media attention on Google+ it is easy to forget that Facebook still counts 10% of the planet’s population in its user base and is not going to simply roll over and play dead.
27-07-2011 Hits:1118 Social Media News
This week a series of posters promoting German banks to Eastern European countries, caught my attention. The full set of posters can be seen at the Top Design Mag website and it is definitely worth taking a look at.
05-12-2011 Hits:1655 SEO Tips
In a crowded web which is growing at the rate of 185,000 websites each day online success depends on a very simple factor: do you have enough ways set up for your website to be found?
14-04-2011 Hits:300 WEB View
The moment anybody asks you to spend time publicising your website there has to be a really good reason why you are investing the most valuable commodity you have. When it comes to social tagging and search engine optimisation (SEO)...
14-04-2011 Hits:791 WEB View
This is a funny Blog post because the headline says it all. There is not a single person anywhere on the web who does not want their website to be on Google’s first page for at least one...
14-04-2011 Hits:348 WEB View
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I’ve led the discussion on how social media and SEO are changing the processes we use to work and live, online, with the publication of my book ‘The Social Media Mind’. I combine experience in journalism and blue-chip corporate management with a penchant for explaining complex issues in simple terms. Contact me for media interviews, presentations and panel discussions
