Until recently, most companies that used search engine optimization (SEO) did not even think about sites other than Google, but with the money Microsoft is putting behind Bing and the recent announcement of a search deal with Yahoo, some are saying it’s time to consider optimizing for other search engines.
In a piece for Practical eCommerce, Armando Roggio predicts that after years of Google going after Microsoft with technologies like Chrome and Gmail, he expects Microsoft to hit back hard with Bing and says next year might be "the beginning of the new Microsoft decade."
Roggio says that Bing has changed search engine optimization (SEO) in that it performs differently than Google, meaning businesses need to worry about where they rank in at least two different search engines.
One example of this is a search for "golf clubs" on both search engines. Roggio says Worldwide Golf Shops is the top result on Google, but shows up on page two on a Bing search.
"Clearly, there is something different about the Bing algorithm, and if I were the marketing guy at Worldwide Golf Shops, I would be scrambling to figure out what that difference was before Microsoft gobbles up more of the search market," says Roggio.
Figures released this month from Nielson show that Bing still ranks third in the battle for search engine supremacy, but the site increased its market share from 9 percent in July to 10.7 percent last month.
