Bing and SEO

Hello UKBF'ers.

As Microsoft launches Bing in a post-Live world, what are your thoughts and expectations on how it will change the way you implement SEO into your websites? Is this a fresh start for Microsoft's search, or simply a superficial facelift? Are you now more tempted to 'Bing' rather than 'Google'?

I'm going to use some of your comments in an informative article about Bing in the coming days, so let me know!

Best,

Jon

 

[fisicx]

Well since a site that is #5 in Google is #1 in Bing I ain't changing nuffin'.

Current traffic from msn/live/bing is hovering around 3% and hasn't moved much in the last 12 months and I don't expect it to change much in the future either.

 

[Scott-Copywriter]

I'm not going to pay much (if any) attention towards Bing. The difference between Bing and Live are negligible and I can't see their market share increasing to a level where I'll spend time and effort optimising my site for it at the (potential) expense of Google ranking positions.

 

[garyk]

Agreed, more of a rebranding exercise to generate some free PR rather than anything of substance and will it really challenge googlys dominance? Cant see it somehow.

 

[david8765]

it will be worth keeping an eye on Bing to see how it develops but certainly at present I havent seen or heard of anything to make me give it too much attention.

 

[direct-to-market]

The volume of traffic that our own sites, and our clients' sites, are currently receiving from Microsoft's various search-engine incarnations is at-most minimal compared with the amount from Google. As such, I won't be making any changes to any of our sites, or advising our clients to, until such time as I have clear evidence to suggest that it would be time and money well spent (and even then, I'll only pilot it on a couple of sites to begin with).

Besides which, based on Microsoft's most recent pathetic offering of IE8 with the inbuilt DNS-breaker that they can't be bothered to fix, I have finally moved away from IE after using it since the very beginning! I also deeply regret buying and installing 64-bit Vista Ultimate ...still perhaps one of the most stupid things I have ever done (and I've suffered it for 2 years now)!

I think that Microsoft has lost the plot somewhat recently, and I for one am moving away from them rather than towards them.

Andrew

 

[KingsandQueens]

I would defiantly keep an eye on Bing in terms of mind share when searching for items to purchase, In IMHO I can see them causing serious damage to Goggles advertising business model.

How you may ask?

CashBack sites are king for the early adopters and Microsoft is about to release cashback advertising to the main stream with bing.com.

Will make a very intresting few years for online advertising!

 

[Eagle]

Looks like with Bing keywords in your URL are the priority. Can't say I like this...

 

[I, Brian]

Microsoft's marketshare in the UK is so small as to be considered negligible.

A very negative attitude, I know, but the core focus absolutely needs to be Google, with it's 80+% marketshare in the UK. Last I saw, Microsoft was around 3-5%.

 

Thanks for your initial opinions on Bing. I'll be keeping the thread open for a short time again, but the opinion piece will be outlined and submitted before the end of the week.

If you have anything else to say about Microsoft's latest "Google killer", let me know!

Best,

Jon

 

[NMHancock]

Microsoft's problem has not been its URL or design, its been its poor search results. Google hasn't built up its following by rebranding every 12 months, they have concentrated building an excellent ranking algorithm, and most importantly they have created a community, with Matt Cutts at the head of it. Microsoft/Live/Bing need to get back in the development room and improve its algorithm. They always say 'you cant polish a turd'

 

[bigGUK]

Looks good sooner or later google wall fall unless it improves it interface its hardly bling these days

 

[garyk]

Looks good sooner or later google wall fall unless it improves it interface its hardly bling these days

That is/was one of its main strengths nothing fancy loads quick and results are highly relevant and lightning quick too. There is absolutely no way it will fall, as Seth Godin writes on his blog M$ are trying to be the next Google but Google isn't broken, 99.9999% of its users are happy with it so why would they change????

 

[An Oasis]

Looks good sooner or later google wall fall unless it improves it interface its hardly bling these days

If that were a problem then why do so many people use G?

To quote an old technician of mine "is there anything else to use?". He was deadly serious. As has been said M$ problem is in the results that they produce, they can't compete and that's what matters in this race.

The current results look identical to Live.

 

[Scott-Copywriter]

Microsoft need to give up and come to terms with the fact that they cannot compete with Google. They have huge market shares in many things but search engines will never be one of them, no matter how hard they try.

 

[Alicatt]

Slightly odd thing I've noticed with Bing is it is showing in my web stats as a link from an external site rather than a search engine.

Well behind Google in terms of hits this month but better than Yahoo.

 

[bradleyt]

Bing is too new of an idea to put all of your eggs into that one basket. Keep it business as usual and test it out in small bits before you decide to completely jump ship.

 

[streetslocal]

Slightly odd thing I've noticed with Bing is it is showing in my web stats as a link from an external site rather than a search engine.

Well behind Google in terms of hits this month but better than Yahoo.

Yes i have noticed this too.
Which is a little disappointing as it makes it harder to track keywords like i can with the other search engines.
Bing gives me a very small amount of traffic but i can honestly say i quite like it.....
I like the colourful look and the bright outlook upon opening rather than my plain white google screen.
From an SEO point of view i will not be changing anything at all as quite simply the traffic would not be enough.
Bing is not yet known in a way that people will turn to it in the search for answers.
I think the real question should be:
Is it too late to chase google now?

 

[traxor]

I was surprised when I first tried Bing out, but they still haven't quite got what Google have, so I won't be changing my techniques at all, and if Bing are clever, they won't change anything either, otherwise their engine will be out before you can say But it's not Google.

 

[DayTrader]

what's the difference between Live and Bing, besides the name?

 

[webdevuk]

To be honnest i dont think any search engine will have any chance of retaking googles place . Google have a monoply and always will.. they are slowly but surely taking over the internet . youtube , wikipedia , news , images , videos , mail , i can go on for ever

 

[direct-to-market]

Microsoft once thought they had a monopoly too: Now look at the number of people using OpenOffice on Ubuntu with their websites hosted on Linux, and that's before we mention their search engine.

Before that, IBM thought they would always dominate world IT and look where that got them...

You may be right, but I certainly wouldn't be betting my farm on Google always being at the top!

 

[DotNetWebs]

I posted this link in one of the other Bing threads:

http://www.visithorsham.co.uk/Statistics.aspx

It's a live feed from our stats server.

The Live/MSN/Bing referalls are actually not too bad for our main keyWORD (currently running at about 40% of Google referalls).

However for PHRASES Google wins handsdown with only a tiny percentage coming from Microsoft.

Also the only page Microsoft seems interested in is the home page whereas Google is very good at indexing the whole site.

I personally haven't noticed any difference in the results since the Bing rebranding. It will be interesting to see if it was JUST a rebranding exercise or whether there is any real change to the algorithm.

Regards

Dotty