SEO for the Average Joe

(thanks @PerryBelcher for the helpful tweet on a Bing VS Google comparison tool)

The launch of Bing (June 1st, 2009) is Microsoft’s latest attempt at grabbing a more significant market share of the search engine business.  According to comScore, Google boasts over 60% market share in the United States (other sources say over 70%), followed by Yahoo! Search with around 20%.  Recently, it appears that Bing, with a 16% search engine market share as of the 2nd week of June,  has been successful at stealing some juice from Google and is starting to give Yahoo! a run for its money.

Will Microsoft’s Bing succeed?  I think it is WAY too early to tell.  The real numbers will start coming in after the  dust settles from Microsoft’s staggering $100 million launch campaign.  After that tapers off, if Bing can hold its ground and metrics involving loyalty, search results pages, queries, etc. remain strong, Google may be forced to take Bing on head to head.

Contrary to what many SEO professionals have been blogging about, I do hope Microsoft succeeds in its quest for a viable search engine.  Diversity and competition in the search business is healthy, and will benefit both businesses and consumers.  It will help keep things fresh, and ensure that the major search engines are constantly innovating.  And from an SEO perspective, it would be fun to have another good search engine to play with!  Ultimately, the SEO business will benefit as well.

I’ve been focusing heavily on SEO for Bing, and what components are most heavily weighted in Bing’s algorithms.  Here are two simple tools that let you compare Bing Vs Google search results side-by-side:

1) General Bing VS Google comparison tool:
http://www.bing-vs-google.com/

2) Compare Bing VS Google search results in various European versions:

http://www.blackdog.ie/google-bing/

Comment on this post, and discuss your opinion of Bing compared to Google.

Also, follow me on Twitter @ChrisAburime.