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Beanstalk's SEO News Blog

At Beanstalk Search Engine Optimization we know that knowledge is power. That's the reason we started this SEO blog. We know that the better informed our visitors are, the better the decisions they will make for their websites and their online businesses. We hope you enjoy your stay and find the SEO news contained within this blog useful.

March 3, 2011

Bing Pulls Ahead of Yahoo

It looks as though Bing is finally starting to crawl up the search engine usage ladder. For the first time, Bing has outranked Yahoo in the global search engine market. StatCounter Global Stats finds that globally, Bing has attained a 4.37% share of the global market in February, ahead of Yahoo! at 3.93%. Both engines are far behind Google’s 89.94% of the global search engine market. In the United States, Yahoo! is still maintaining a marginal lead over Bing who has 9.03% of the market. Google still has the lion’s share of the market in the US at 76.63%.

StatsCounter bases their findings on aggregate data that is collected over a sampling of 15 billion across their network which carries approximately 3 million websites.

"It is significant that Bing overtook Yahoo! globally for the first time on a monthly basis but it remains a tough battle to claw back Google’s market share. Although Google dipped below the 90% mark in February worldwide for the first time since August 2009 it shows little sign of losing its global dominance any time soon." commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter.

Source: StatCounter Global Stats – Search Engine Market Share

In 2009, Microsoft announced that it would be powering the Yahoo search technology. So in essence they are effectively one company. If you add up the two totals as in a single corporate entity to compare against Google, the Bing-Yahoo conglomerate totals about 8.3% of the search engine market.

As an SEO, Google is the primary search engine that I use for statistics gathering and in our client ranking reports. The fact is that I rarely give more than a cursory glance at Bing or Yahoo on occasion. Having said that, I think that competition is healthy in every industry. One could speculate that the usage patterns have shifted due to the major upsets in the SERPs caused from major Google algorithm updates in January.

SEO news blog post by guestpost @ 7:06 pm

Categories: Bing,Google,Search Engine News,Yahoo!
Tags: search, SERPs —

February 9, 2011

Bing Search Gains Ground on Google

If you’ve been reading the IT news you may have seen an article from Experian pushing out some statistics on Goole losing ground and effectiveness to Bing. Really, if you love statistics, head on over to Experian for the full scoop, they have a few clearly laid out images showing the data they have collected. What I’d like to do is discuss the interpretation of the data and some of the seemingly odd takes that people around the web have on the info at hand.

First, lets discuss what made the headlines, the 21 percent increase in Jan 2011. Google has been making all sorts of changes lately, instant search being one of them. On at least one browser I own, it’s now defaulting to Bing as the search engine because I do not want Google looking at everything I’m typing into the address bar on that browser and then trying to suggest something.

There are privacy and performance issues at play for my decision, and while I could hack at the browser to disable it and keep Google as the default, I personally didn’t have time for it, and I’m a nerd. This alone could account for a gain on Bing’s side of things. Lets also consider that Google has been shifting algorithms around and any savvy site owner/SEO would be wise to compare Bing results to the changing Google results. Again, Google is driving the trend, Bing’s been winning by default.

Finally, the end of January also saw the end of Yahoo Site Explorer. This meant that people wishing to gather info would either have to turn to another source, or run some searches of their own and manually pull all the data together. Google’s an ace at swatting automated attempts to grab data, so if I was pulling this data, I’d go over to Bing for it.

These are all factors "that I can see" and certainly in no way reflects all the factors at play, but clearly gives some better explanation for the 21 percent increase considering the unquestionable preference of core users with Google.

The next figure I want to talk about is the "Success Rate" statistics. Google has worked very hard to provide a results page that has the answer. Remember me saying I was a nerd? Well I play a nerd-approved video game called Minecraft, and last weekend I needed to know the decimal data value for an egg (I had to make a cake). By typing in a rough longtail search into Google I got the data value without even leaving the results page.

Bing tries to get the same result but it’s not nearly as consistent at getting the right answer at the top of the SERPs. What about when I ask Google to handle some metric to imperial conversions or do some math for me? Am I making Bing more successful? When the answer you need is on the results page and you don’t need to click anything, that’s a real "Success".

Experian seems to have really great statistics and I love pouring over the data they share, but take everything with a grain of salt. This is the same company that lists websites as the top search terms for 2 years running. Who the heck wants to know that? Pull all the site names out of the list, now it’s interesting.

SEO news blog post by Ryan Morben @ 9:54 pm

Categories: Bing,Google,Uncategorized,Yahoo!

February 8, 2011

The Google Honeypot Sting – Part 2

As a follow-up to my previous post regarding the accusations from Google that Bing is using click-through data as part of their ranking methodology. It is pretty certain that Google does as well and there is evidence to show that they both have been doing so for some time. Even Matt Cutts said in 2002 that "using toolbar data could help provide better SERPs." Although to this day, Google hasn’t officially disclosed if they use the click-stream data as a factor in their search ranking algorithm.

To try to prove their accusation, Google created some fake SERPs for "non-words" and sent clicks through to Bing to make sure they got hold of the data. Even though it was nonsense data, Bing still took it serious enough to use it in about 10% of their search results. Bing then accused Google of click-fraud, but because there was no PPC component it was immediately dismissed.

Bing was not forthcoming in their practices, stating: "We do not copy results from any of our competitors. Period. Full stop." Bing now reveals that they DO use 100% click stream data from sources like their IE toolbars and use this information as factors in their ranking algorithm.

In an additional statement from Bing they revealed that:

"We use over 1,000 different signals and features in our ranking algorithm. A small piece of that is click-stream data we get from some of our customers, who opt-in to sharing anonymous data as they navigate the web in order to help us improve the experience for all users."

I think the bigger story here is why this seems to be such a contentious issue for Google? Why the cloak and dagger routine between the two? I can understand that Bing may not want to divulge its practices, but it seems like adding insult to injury by denying the accusations and then admitting to them later. Both Google and Bing appear to behaving like temperamental juveniles in school yard.

What can we take away from this? Large corporations often behave like children. Even if clickstream data isn’t a leading factor in the ranking and probably never will be, it is part of the equation and as such cannot be ignored. As SEOs, we should be looking for ways to get URLs into the data stream of toolbar users.

SEO news blog post by guestpost @ 6:56 pm

Categories: Bing,Bing,Google,Google,Internet Law,SEO Tips,Uncategorized,Yahoo!
Tags: bing, click-through, google, matt cutts, rankings —

February 5, 2011

The Google Honeypot Sting

Recent accusations from Google have accused Bing of using their MSN/Bing Search Toolbar to watch search picks on Google and then using them to strengthen MSN/Bing search results. In a classic “honeypot” string operation, it seems that Bing has been caught with their bot’s hand in the Google cookie jar.

In a “he said/she said” battle, the two companies have accused each other from employing similar strategies repeatedly in the past. Google has regularly copied innovations that first appeared on Bing, such as image search, personalized backgrounds and navigation schemes. To accuse Bing of doing such a thing seems a bit preposterous. Even worse is the fact that Bing is categorically denying any attempts to ever copy search results from Google.

In a heated discussion that is far from over, Yusef Mehdi (Senior Vice President of Online Services for Microsoft) stated that:

"We do not copy results from any of our competitors. Period. Full stop. We have some of the best minds in the world at work on search quality and relevance, and for a competitor to accuse any one of these people of such activity is just insulting."

"Google engaged in a "honeypot" attack to trick Bing. In simple terms, Google’s “experiment” was rigged to manipulate Bing search results through a type of attack also known as "click fraud. That’s right, the same type of attack employed by spammers on the web to trick consumers and produce bogus search results. What does all this cloak and dagger click fraud prove? Nothing anyone in the industry doesn’t already know.

As we have said before and again in this post, we use click stream optionally provided by consumers in an anonymous fashion as one of 1,000 signals to try and determine whether a site might make sense to be in our index."

Read Full Interview Here

On the Google front, it certainly did not take Matt Cutts long to refute Mehdi’s comments. In a post on the Google blog (along with a 40 minute video), Cutts stated that he is not necessarily accusing Bing of "piggybacking" Google, but refutes their claim that "we do not copy results from our competitors." He then shows that if you type in "ygyuuttuu hjhhiihhhu" in to Google and Bing, you will get the same results."

Certainly each other has at some point and (if not continually) been at fault for employing such tactics in the past. I think the bigger question here is why Google is trying to make this such a public issue? Is it an attempt to try and drag Bing through the mud in an attempt to capture a portion of their market? Or is it a diversionary tactic? Only time will tell. I am sure we shall see the comments flying back and forth between the two groups before this is over. But then, is not all fair in love, war and search engine monpolies?

SEO news blog post by guestpost @ 1:03 am

Categories: Bing,Google,Uncategorized
Tags: bing toolbar, honeypot —

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