Do you follow the SEO and Internet marketing news? If you keep an ear to the SEO ground then likely you will be aware of the fact that Bill Gates feels Microsoft missed a trick when it came to search. Gates has publicly admitted that the failure of Microsoft to acknowledge the potential of the Internet search market was one of the company’s biggest strategic errors.

Oops.

With the launch of Microsoft’s new semantically based search system Bing (not quite as romantic a name as the beta version Kumo – Japanese for cloud or sea), Gates in hoping to make up lost ground and establish Microsoft alongside Google as a search giant.

The big SEO question on the lips of SEO professionals and clients alike is how might the introduction of Bing influence your SEO (search engine optimisation)?

With Google so far ahead of the competition and currently handling around 70% of internet searches in the U.S and 65% of global searches on any given day, does Bing even matter when it comes to SEO?

Well any serious SEO company will have an eye firmly on Bing AND Yahoo because now, in effect, they are one and the same. Over the next few months it is reported that the new technology used for Bing will start to migrate over to Yahoo search. Though their combined presence amounts to somewhere in the region of only 20% of the total search market in most Western countries the Bing/Yahoo marriage represents the only serious threat to Google’s dominance and plenty of solid marketing opportunities to those skilled enough to take advantage of their search technology.

Launched with a major marketing bang, Bing has already picked up enough positive reviews and a large enough following to start posing serious questions of Google. What must also be encouraging for Microsoft is that at last they seem to have established a bridgehead from which to have a chance of taking on Google. High profile launches of other search engines such as Cuil and Wolfram Alpha saw them both lose share rapidly after the initial buzz. Bing though is on the rise.
It’s early days but initial investigation already reveals a couple of areas that may influence your SEO in the future. Research suggests that Bing may be more meta data oriented than Google, offering more diverse page results and be less focused on exact terms. In comparison Google appears more social media friendly with an emphasis on fresher content.

There’s all to play for, and the search algorithms will inevitably evolve over time. Make sure that your SEO is up to date on all the latest twist and turns in this fascinating search war.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 1st, 2009 at 4:43 pm and is filed under SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.