Chasing Bing: The Truth behind the Hype

In recent weeks, we've noticed a surge in clients calling us to ask questions like "what's up with Bing?" Or, "are you optimizing for Bing?" Even "are you taking advantage of Bing?"

In other words, people want to know that their search engine optimization company is taking special steps to ensure adequate representation on the newly created, much hyped search engine. And to answer the first question, what's up is MSN's umpteenth attempt to create a search engine that garners a significant amount of market share from its more formidable rivals - namely Google and Yahoo!. Microsoft has not been shy to promote the new engine; the current advertising campaign is estimated to cost around $100 million.

How is it going so far? It depends on who you listen to. The metrics vary wildly, depending on the source you consult. In a recent analysis of statistics, Hitwise ranked Bing as the seventeenth most popular website out of 450,000,[1] while StatCounter noted that the engine was in third place behind Google and Yahoo!. ComScore's ratings showed that Bing increased MSN's average daily searcher penetration by 1.7% (from 13.8% to 15.5%). These numbers and ranking criteria are enough to make anyone's head spin. But, when you get down to it, the event everyone is looking forward to is what will happen when the budget runs out, and the promotional period ends. Will searchers remain loyal or return to Google and Yahoo! and not look back? No one can really tell if any positive results are sustainable over a long term period.

Most reviewers put Bing in a good light, noting its ease of use and searching options, and some are even scrutinizing the accuracy and relevancy of Google and Yahoo! results against Bing. In the June 08, 2009 edition of B to B magazine, for instance, one reviewer appreciated the shopping comparison tool while another stated that searchers seeking refined results will be more likely to take advantage of Bing. Admittedly, the engine's clean, streamlined look is pretty exciting; the home page features a new, interactive image each day; searchers click on certain parts of the image and trivia, facts, or additional links pop up. But after that, a simple search will provide users with results similar to its counterparts – images, video, maps, news, and the like.

Another Iteration – This Time with a Pretty Bow

But there are a few reasons not to get so excited. Number one – we have no idea where the market will settle and if the market share for Bing will continue to grow. Without this data, there's no way to say if tailoring a website specifically for Bing is worthwhile, especially if it negatively impacts existing Google and Yahoo! rankings. Number two - no matter which stat you look at, Google still owns the lion's share of the search market; add Yahoo! to the mix and Bing is dwarfed. Number three - Microsoft has no track record of success in the search world; its developers and visionaries have tried many different search iterations, so far to no avail. The company is banking on two things: the quality of the engine and a willingness to spend money to promote it.

And, finally, number four is a byproduct of MSN's past explorations into search engines; the brand name is construed by many as a liability that carries a somewhat negative connotation.

Possibly, a good option would be to take the MySpace/NewsCorp route. When MySpace was bought by NewsCorp in 2005, business went on as usual; MySpace was just MySpace. NewsCorp understood what made MySpace 'cool' was its reputation of independence. Yes, it was crushed by Facebook down the road, but that's a different story. Microsoft chooses to end every Bing commercial with blatant 'by Microsoft' wording and logos as if this is a positive - I'm not sure that it's necessary or even wise.

In light of this information, what's a search engine optimization company do?

Two Ways to Approach the Situation

Irresponsibly:

1. Optimizing for Bing at the potential expense of other engines that have long-term records of market share is foolhardy. At the end of the day, Bing may be new and exciting, but it still possesses a tiny amount of market share in comparison. A prudent search engine optimization company will likely recommend waiting until the numbers stabilize before charting a course of action.

2. Compromising for Bing at the expense of Google and Yahoo! is not wise. A search engine optimization company can certainly optimize for Bing, but hopefully not at the sacrifice of current rankings on more popular engines.

3. Assuming that Bing will have a static algorithm is foolhardy; if Bing does indeed gain market share in the coming weeks and months, black hat practitioners will try to "game" the system, meaning that we can expect the algorithm to change and evolve rapidly. What works on Bing right now may not work in a matter of weeks.

Responsibly:

1. However, a forward-thinking search engine optimization company can be prepared by creating test sites that are optimized specifically for Bing and learning as much as they can about the algorithm.

2. If ideal rankings are achieved, then your search engine optimization company can determine how these rankings translate to Google and Yahoo!. Obviously, it will be important to follow these statistics closely to see if Bing can gain and maintain ratings or if it will mimic Microsoft's history of poor engine performance.

3. Your search engine optimization company should also locate specific pieces of the Bing algorithm that do not compromise rankings in Google and Yahoo!, but that may help rankings in Bing. Finding attributes of the Bing algorithm that can be applied to your website that will garner higher Bing ratings is obviously in the best interest of the site; we just want to make sure that existing rankings aren't compromised on the road to success.

The Proof Is in the Pudding

Not surprisingly, this is not the first time we've had clients calling us because of some new search engine. And like any other search engine optimization company, we've certainly seen this hype before. There was a time when people were asking us if we were optimizing for the search engine iWon. (Anyone remember that? Didn't think so.) To a lesser extent, when Ask.com launched a media blitz a couple years ago touting its new features, many of our clients asked (no pun intended) what our course of action was. With a historical 3% market share, the answer was "not much." We watched as the numbers blipped upwards for a very brief, but stellar moment, and then fell back to previous levels. Of course, any good search engine optimization company will follow these types of numbers closely, but they won't take the reliable engines that they've been driving for granted.

Citations

1. Crum, Chris. "More Bing Numbers Than You Can Shake a Stick at," WebProNews, June 13, 2009.

About The Author
Scott Buresh is the founder of Medium Blue, an Atlanta-based search engine optimization company. His articles have appeared in numerous publications, including MarketingProfs, ZDNet, SiteProNews, WebProNews, DarwinMag, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide. He was also a contributor to The Complete Guide to Google Advertising (Atlantic, 2008) and Building Your Business with Google for Dummies (Wiley, 2004). Medium Blue has local and national clients, including Boston Scientific, Cbeyond, and DeKalb Medical, and was named the number one organic search engine optimization company in the world in 2006 and 2007 by PromotionWorld. To see how we can help you achieve your online marketíng goals, please contact Medium Blue.


http://www.seo-news.com/archives/2009/jul/9prt.html

Why Automated Blogging Tools Should Be Avoided

These tools all claim to be able to help you create content for your blog without you having to do anything except set it up, choose a keyword/s for your blog to be about.

The tools sales pages usually make claims like:

• “create targeted blog posts on any topic without writing anything!”
• “start hundreds of blogs on any topic and never have to lift a finger to keep them pumping out as much content as you like!”
• “generate traffic, money and blog posts while you sleep!”
• “Achieve Higher Search Engine Rankings And Massive Affiliate Revenue With Self Updating Blogs”

You get the picture - the list of the hyped up claims that the developers of automated blogging tools make goes on and on!

The fact that these people are asking me to promote these kinds of tools scares me a little as I’ve been pretty anti them in the past and don’t want to be associated with the in any way.

However it also makes me wonder how many bloggers are innocently signing up for them without knowing the dangers of doing so. After-all the sales copy on many of these tools sounds too good to be true - blogging made easy, lots of money, no work….

As a result I thought I’d put together a list of reasons why I would avoid ‘auto blogging’ tools at all costs.

Reasons to avoid Automated blogging Tools and Services:

1. Non Unique Content - at the heart of every successful and profitable blog that I’ve come across is unique content. Auto blogging tools all take content from other places on the web and automatically pull them together on your blog. They replicate what others are doing. They create duplicates of other people’s work. It’s not unique, it’s not original and it creates clutter.

Many of the automated blog tools sales pages say you can add to the content that these auto blogging tools use to add uniqueness to your blog but I’d argue that if you’re creating hundreds of blogs it’s pretty unlikely that you’ll be adding unique posts to many of them.

Blogs that are not unique, that don’t have a personal voice, that contain no original thought don’t tend to get links from other blogs, don’t tend to attract subscribers, readers or comments and don’t generally rank well in Google or other search engines.

2. Useless Content - the other main factor in successful blogs is that they create ‘useful’ content - the type of content that solves people’s problems, helps them solve a problem and makes their lives better in some way.

While some might argue that automated blogging tools can help people by finding this type of information my observation of most of them in action is that they are very hit and miss. Most rely upon you identifying keywords that you want your blog to be about and they then go searching for all kinds of content on those keywords.

As a result you can be publishing who knows what on your blog. Some of it may be useful but some of it might be completely irrelevant and even potentially harmful to readers. Many automated blogs that I come across are a step up from being ‘gibberish’.

3. Personal Satisfaction - early in my own blogging I created a number of blogs that I called ‘link blogs’. They looked at what others were writing online and manually (no tools) collated some of it onto one site. I added some of my own thoughts and it did provide usefulness to readers because it was high quality and all in the one place for readers - but the process almost killed my passion for blogging. It was an empty process for me with no real sense of satisfaction. I stopped doing these kinds of blogs (even though they did make me money and readers complained that it was useful to them).

At it’s best - blogging is an exciting, interactive and fun experience that can give you inspiration, ideas and energy. This kind of blogging (ie using these automated tools) is about none of that.

4. Risk - all of the sales pages on these tools talk about how you can use these tools with all kinds of content legally by using content from sites with APIs, open source content or creative commons content. However almost every time I’ve come across a blog using automated blogging tools they have been scraping content from other blogs without permission from their RSS feeds.

Some blogs allow you to use their content but most do not. There’s real risk in using content from other sites in this way on a number of levels:

• Breaking Copyright - use the wrong persons content without your permission and you could end up on the end of legal proceedings.
• DMCAs and Risk to Your Hosting and Ad Partner Relationships - when I catch someone scraping my content I generally give them a warning but follow that up by issuing DMCAs to them, their site’s host and sometimes their advertisers (like AdSense). This can lead to you losing your hosting and being banned from ad networks (for example AdSense don’t allow you to put your ads on pages where you don’t own the copyright of the content). I know a lot of bloggers who issue DMCAs without warning and push a lot harder on these issues than I do - it can be a nightmare to have to work through these kinds of things.
• Damage to Your Brand - many bloggers skip the DMCA process and go with a ‘name and shame’ approach and publically call out those who steal their content. This can have a lasting impact upon your brand and personal name. There’s nothing worse than doing a Google search for your name and seeing the #1 result being a post an angry blogger wrote about you stealing their content.
• Google Penalties - ever heard of ‘duplicate content’? It’s what Google calls content that appears in more than one place on the web. I don’t know exactly how they treat this content but do know that they try to weed it out of their search results. They don’t get it all but they do get a lot of it and I suspect that a site that is largely classified as ‘duplicate’ will never be seen as an authoritative site on Google.

5. Create Something Worthwhile - my take home advice for bloggers is to create something online that is worthwhile, something that matters, something that inspires, informs and educates. Do this over the long haul and you’ll create something that not only means something but that has every chance of having lasting success.

I’ve heard from a few bloggers that they’ve had some success with automated blogging tools (although most of these were a couple of years back) but in every case they tell me that it’s usually temporary. They start blogs, see a bit of Google traffic before being banned from Google.

Their blogs never really amount to anything, they never build their own profile or become known as authorities in their niches, they never create useful sites that become niche leaders and to make money they have to keep starting new blogs over and over again.


http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/07/09/why-automated-blogging-tools-should-be-avoided/