Do you find it weird that BING is an acronym for, Because it’s not Google.
I am sure it is an odd coincidence, but the conspiracy theorist in me likes to think there is a Microsoft engineer who is laughing his ass off right now, whilst eating his Doritos and leveling his Dwarf Mage.
I’ve been a heavy user of Google since 1998, a very happy user in fact. The big G always came up with the goodies, the search experience was mostly sunlight whilst birds would sing on trees as I pushed the search button.
But, for a few months now it seems that the information I want and need is buried under a pile of rotting corpses.
As someone who makes a living from massaging websites up the search results ladder, I have never been one to hit the forums to have a moan that G have changed the results and nobbled a client. Such occurences should be already factored in and G always gives a good search experience when it changes the way it serves up the data.
However, I have now decided to change my default search engine. Not the one I use to track my clients, but the one I use for personal reasons.
Recently I searched for “jason calacanis seo snake oil”, for an article that showed examples of people annoying and alienating large groups of people, but still being successful. If you don’t know the story, just BING it.
When using Google it served up three entries from the jasoncalacanis.com website, none of with gave me the goodies and one page was absolute garbage for what I wanted..
Bing however, gave me exactly what I needed. The Search Engine Land article from 2007 about the incident. If you like a good lunch time read and you are not familiar with the story it really is quite entertaining.
Now, this is just one search and it really isn’t a big deal. But I think it is illustrative of what is happening right now in the search world. And as G is so dominant, it makes it a big thing.
Can G push a button and improve things in an blink of an eye. Absolutely, but it all depends on their goals and objectives. There may be other plans afoot which makes sense of all this (conspiracy theorists get your blogs at the ready)
I don’t really know, but it’s definitely going to be an interesting space to watch the next few months.