Google and Bing rivalry heats up

Google claims Bing has been copying its search results. They setup an ingenious test to prove this claim. The test was simple – Google made some nonsensical search phrases and started pointing search hits to irrelevant sites. In a few weeks, Bing started returning the same search results… pretty fishy, huh?

It’s all good, under the hood

But even if Bing copies Google, what does it really mean? From a techie’s point of view, this could be a potential PR disaster. But from a user perspective, do I really care what goes on under the hood? No, not really – as long as the results are good. I think that’s what Google seems to be forgetting. They still think it’s the 90’s and the web is tech-driven.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a particular fan of Bing. I like some of the cool user interface enhancements they’ve made. But Google is still my preferred engine of choice.

SEO for Google, benefit from Bing

As a person interested in SEO, Bing mirroring Google makes my job easier. I usually optimize a site with Google in mind, in the hopes of benefiting from the other search engines as well. You see, I don’t discount Bing traffic. I’ve found Bing visitors are easier to convert than Google traffic.

So when looking at the bottom-line, do I really care if a visitor used Google, Bing or Yahoo? Nope, not really… all I care about is the cha-ching of my cash-register.

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Zaki Usman

Hello, I'm the founder and CEO at ShoutEx. I like to blog about marketing, mobile and web topics. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn.