Bing Update

Microsoft's search engine Bing is getting harder to ignore.  Last month 15% of searchers on the internet used Bing.  Mircosoft is using the same strategy to develop Bing that they used to develop many of their other products.  This strategy is to come to market with a product that is inferior to the market leader and to just keep pounding away improving their product and taking market share little by little.  Think here of Microsoft Word vs Word Perfect, Microsoft Excel vs Lotus, X Box vs Play Station.  Although I personally find Google's results better than Bing's results testing now shows that 82% of searchers are happy with Google's results and 81% of searchers are happy with Bing's results.

Google Places Changes

With Google's migration from Places Pages to Google+ Pages there are some big changes.  Here are some of them.  

• No more anonymous reviews. Result: harder to spam the reviews which is a good thing

• In setting up a listing the number of categories is still five, but the numbers that show has been reduced to two.  Result: Harder to know what the competition is doing.  The first two categories are really important. 

• Google Offers is now more prominent.  Result: Allows for a competitive advantage as many businesses do not use it.  

• The business description has grown exponentially in importance because there is less information on the page, and the placement of the description is much more prominent.                                                                          Result: Spend time making sure the business description is perfect.  

Google Protects Its Algorithm

About a month ago an internet marketing company, iAcquire.com, was caught by a blogger selling and buying links.  This is a violation of Google's guidelines.  Google's response was to de-index iAcquire's website.  This means that one is able to find iAcquire's site on Google.  It is possible to find the site on Bing, but in Google's world the site no longer exists.  In the SEO world iAcquire.com has/had about fifty employees which is a good size company.  

I have several thoughts about this event. 

1) Lots of companies buy links.  I have experience of being approach to put links on some of my sites.  The companies that approached me are reputable and their websites have a page rank of six and seven.  (It is possible the company has hired a SEO company and does not know what the SEO firm they hired is doing.)   But I think buying links is a common practice.  

2) I do not think Google would have de-indexed the site if the link buying had not been made public.  If Google had found this out on their own I believe they would have penalized the site, lowered the website's page rank and moved the site to page five of the SERPs.

3) Whether you buy links is related to your business plan and your risk profile.  If you can live with the potential of being de-indexed and the rewards of moving up the Search Engine Results Page is high then buying links might be a good idea.  Personally, I would never do it and I have never consulted with a business in which I have recommend it - too much risk. 

4) I don't think buying and selling links is a moral issue.  Buying and selling links does not work with Google's business model and search algorithm so they discourage it.  Some SEO's act like selling links/buying links is a moral issue.  I don't think so.