Will My Website Rankings Change With the Introduction of Bing?
On May 28, 2009 Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer introduced the digital world to their latest incarnation of its search technology, Bing. Every day web users were given access to Bing on June 3, 2009. Why did Microsoft alter the search engine and what does this mean to the search engine ranking your business already has achieved? Will your keyword ranking suffer at all?
The first question is quite simple to answer. Microsoft is desperate to grasp some of the market share that Google now enjoys. Do the names Magellan, Open Text, Info Seek, Snap and Direct Hit sound familiar? These are all Search engines that Google has taken over in the last decade. In 2006 the market share for Google and Live Search were 49.2% and 9.6% respectively. At the time of Bings launch the market share of Google had grown to 72.4% and Live Search had fallen to just 6.3%. With the Google slice of the search engine pie so large and not slowing down, Microsoft had to make some improvements to their search engine offering. The second question is not so easily answered. At first glance, the rankings you and your SEO provider have achieved should not be affected. Some features of the new Bing are impressive and could garner an ease of use which could be advantageous to your website visitors. One main difference is the fact that Microsoft calls their latest endeavor a decision engine rather than a search engine. The primary reason for the title alteration is that Bing is supposed to assist the user in making decisions by delivering the best results, presented in a more organized way to make the key tasks easier and actually help you make decisions faster. There are specific features such as cash back on great products, and Price Predictor, which will tell the user when is the best time to buy an airline ticket in order to help get you the best price. Bing is offering compare and contrast features so your customer will be able to compare your product, price and shipping requirements against others. It could be fabulous for your business to have such features readily available. A primary goal of all websites is for the consumer to make a wise choice|smart decision (the decision to buy) quickly. Bing promises to do just that.
Something else to keep in mind is that Microsoft plans on spending between $80 million and $100 million promoting Bing. These figures represent almost one quarter of their total yearly advertising budget. This immense amount of advertising can only help all of those websites ranked on Bing. High rankings should translate into sales. It is like getting free advertising. Your SEO company should work very hard in the next year to increase your rank on Bing so you can enjoy the effects of this advertising push.
Microsoft reports that your websites rankings may fluctuate a bit at first. They say that the rankings will stabilize in a short while. Since the searches are going to be more refined and narrowed, it is believed that URLs with hyphen separated words will have an initial advantage. But the results are too new to analyze. We can only rely on the information that Microsoft says at this time.
Should you consider changing your SEO optimization strategy? It is always a good idea to speak with your professional, but right now,probably not. Remember how small Bing’s percentage of the total search engine really is. A month after its launch, Bing’s share has grown to 8.23% of all searches. While this is not a great number, the upward movement can only help those websites rank well on Bing. Microsoft’s Bing has come quite far in a short amount of time. Last year the term that was searched the most|the most commonly searched term on Live Search was Google. After its unveiling, Steve Wozniak, the Apple co-founder called Bing astounding. All the buzz can only increase web traffic and hopefully increase web sales.