Are Search Engine Results Getting Better Or Simply Confusing Users?
The arrival of Bing as Google’s first serious challenger for many years has resulted in a lot of changes to search. In particular, search results and how they are displayed. I am not even sure if it is beneficial for users or whether it is becoming too confusing. Depending on the search term, the results screen may show:
-
Sponsored Links*,
Related Searches,
News Results*,
Latest Results*,
Local Search Results,
Shopping Results,
Web Sites,
Video Results,
Image Results*,
More Web Sites*,
Blog Results, and
Searches Related to*
.
I am sure there are still more results that I have missed. The results with an asterisk are from a a search for the term “climate change”. Since it is in the news a lot at present I expected to see a lot of news stories. However, what is interesting to note is that results related to web sites appeared well below the fold. This is not a welcome site for those undertaking SEO programs.
More generalized searches such as “Celtic FC”, “Christmas trees” and “used cars” were at least a little friendlier. I am sure there is a lesson to be learned from this. If you are in a niche that isn’t volatile when it comes to trends or making the news then standard SEO practices will work well.
For those with web sites trying to target trending issues then social marketing, press releases and making a noise that is noticed in news streams may result in more traffic than traditional SEO. Let’s face it, if your site is number one but below the fold, how many clicks through’s will you receive?
SEO is heading for an interesting couple of years as non-traditional areas of the web start to impact. The race between Google and Bing may only complicate matters rather than make it easy. I wonder, will the time come when web site owners rue the introduction of Bing – at least with Google still dominating, we know where we all stand and what we need to do to rank well in search results. From what I can see, ranking well in the search engines for some search terms will not deliver what it once did. We’re beginning to see that now.
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