With the recent Google carnage..is it time we started taking Bing more seriously?

I think webmasters, agencies and businesses are all becoming tired of Google's "collateral damage" approach.

I know of several legitimate online business owners who know nothing of SEO who have been penalised. They get no support from Google and the truth as most of us know is that their website will either take a very long time to rank normally again or not at all.

Is it time we stop putting our eggs all in one basket and stop relying on Google?

This could be a great opportunity for Microsoft AKA Bing to take advantage of the anger and give webmasters the confidence and support to use their search engine.

Indeed google has been acting stupid these days
will be great that some other search engine step up

I want to take Bing more seriously, but i'll be honest, any backlinking I do doesn't seem to affect Bing as far as I know.

What about you guys? I bet there is someone killing it in Bing somehow using organic search.

With bing, it takes time. There are days when I posted an article with a particular low competition keyword and with in minutes it showed up in google's first page.. that is not going to happen with bing for now.. if you are targeting bing, then you got to wait.. and secondly focus on bing image traffic as well.. i get more traffic from bing image search then bing search..

P.S: also focus on social traffic.

When Bing commands takes over a large chunk of the search engine market, we'll all take it seriously. It has to do what Firefox did years ago, when it rapidly acquired 25% of the browser market, when consumers seemed to get simultaneously fed up with IE's malware riddled product. Only when Microsoft abruptly lost it's 95% monopoly share of the market did it try to get serious about improving its browser. Google users have to collectively revolt in the same way in order for things to change.

I have very good results in both Yahoo and Bing, although I really never did anything focused on these two engines... In fact I was always focusing on G00GLE purely, and the results in Bing and Yahoo came just like that.

So honestly, I'll be more than happy if Bing become more popular - but do not see it happening.

Google is the biggest traffic source for me by a million miles. Until i start getting over 25% the traffic i get with google there no point IMO of taking Bing seriously.

Bing is very unstable 1 day you are ranking first then you are gone, bing dances a lot more than google. They reality is tha SE only care about the money they can get from thde ads.

michaelr1988 said:

Google is the biggest traffic source for me by a million miles. Until i start getting over 25% the traffic i get with google there no point IMO of taking Bing seriously.

Click to expand...

But right now we're treading on egg shells with Google. We could be penalised at any time, it is as if Google has gone crazy.

Or until Google kicks your ass to the curb and you have no idea why. I actually use bing webmaster tools and for one reason or another there spider just doesn't index but a small fraction of my pages no matter what i try. I do get some traffic from it and would definitely like to get more.

michaelr1988 said:

Google is the biggest traffic source for me by a million miles. Until i start getting over 25% the traffic i get with google there no point IMO of taking Bing seriously.

Click to expand...

zebrahat said:

When Bing commands takes over a large chunk of the search engine market, we'll all take it seriously. It has to do what Firefox did years ago, when it rapidly acquired 25% of the browser market, when consumers seemed to get simultaneously fed up with IE's malware riddled product. Only when Microsoft abruptly lost it's 95% monopoly share of the market did it try to get serious about improving its browser. Google users have to collectively revolt in the same way in order for things to change.

Click to expand...

This is a great point. I resisted using Firefox for many years, even when my sister and friends told me that it's far superior to Internet Explorer. Last year, I finally made the switch to Firefox and I love it. I haven't had anymore viruses or browser crashes. My browsing is so much better now.

I love Bing and I use their search. I'm only going to use Google to check my own website's position. I'll use Bing or Yahoo for my searches. I get more relevant results.

I'm not bothered by google having rules and standards for what it lists. I have no trouble adhering to guidelines. If my site's content needs to be improved in some way then fine, I'll improve it.

What pisses me off is they aren't forthcoming about what they expect. Everything is so vague. If they penalize a site for something specifically then fucking tell us what that is so we can stop doing it. If they truly want the web to be a user friendly place then how about explaining, in detail, what you think user friendly is.

We all can use google, just don't click on any ads, this way our searches actually cost them money...

Also, if you want to rank really good in bing and yahoo, use private blog networks...the only problem is that google doesn't like this...so its a big of a catch 22...

I really wonder if yahoo/bing actually have 35% of the search market, that number seems really high to me, I put it closer to 10%...

manny521 said:

We all can use google, just don't click on any ads, this way our searches actually cost them money...

Also, if you want to rank really good in bing and yahoo, use private blog networks...the only problem is that google doesn't like this...so its a big of a catch 22...

I really wonder if yahoo/bing actually have 35% of the search market, that number seems really high to me, I put it closer to 10%...

Click to expand...

It could be a nice case study to put two fingers up to Google and do everything which would get your site penalised. And see how it reacts in Bing.

Guys, google is heaven for some and hell for others. Why can't we be that "some"? If you go down in serps remember that the top 10 position will always be filled by someone's sites. So don't tell me how evil Google is. There are some dudes out there who rank for the 1st position no matter what. Don't you all think we are doing something wrong? Really now...don't complain that spamming a shit ton of backlinks doesn't work anymore.

Flurbuff said:

I'm not bothered by google having rules and standards for what it lists. I have no trouble adhering to guidelines. If my site's content needs to be improved in some way then fine, I'll improve it.

What pisses me off is they aren't forthcoming about what they expect. Everything is so vague. If they penalize a site for something specifically then fucking tell us what that is so we can stop doing it. If they truly want the web to be a user friendly place then how about explaining, in detail, what you think user friendly is.

Click to expand...

That's how I feel too. Years ago, I used to do a lot of coupon shopping. Some of the stores would just make up rules as they went along. One day, you'd be allowed to use 10 of the same kind of coupons, the next trip it would be 2 of the same. I was frustrated because I wanted to know what the actual rules were. When coupons became more popular, the stores finally put up signs that there was a limit of 4 like coupons per shopping trip. It made coupon shopping less stressful after that because there were clear rules and I followed them.

I wish Google would do this too. They should have a clear set of rules and if you follow the rules, you shouldn't be at risk of having your whole business taken down at their whim. There are so many things that you hear. You just don't know what to do anymore. I made websites with great content and Google still slaughtered them with no explanation. Why doesn't Google just tell us what they want?

And this whole negative SEO business is just plain frightening. You mean to tell me that I could have a great and useful website and one of my competitors could kill it with a Fiverr gig? That's just ridiculous. They should just devalue the links that they don't like, not sandbox or deindex websites for them. If spammy backlinks had no value, people wouldn't waste their time doing them anymore. That would be a more fair way to do it.

I agree completely with you. +rep for a common sense response

lolzap said:

Guys, google is heaven for some and hell for others. Why can't we be that "some"? If you go down in serps remember that the top 10 position will always be filled by someone's sites. So don't tell me how evil Google is. There are some dudes out there who rank for the 1st position no matter what. Don't you all think we are doing something wrong? Really now...don't complain that spamming a shit ton of backlinks doesn't work anymore.

Click to expand...

manny521 said:

We all can use google, just don't click on any ads, this way our searches actually cost them money...

Also, if you want to rank really good in bing and yahoo, use private blog networks...the only problem is that google doesn't like this...so its a big of a catch 22...

I really wonder if yahoo/bing actually have 35% of the search market, that number seems really high to me, I put it closer to 10%...

Click to expand...

According to my personal statistics (from my own websites), it's about 12% for Bing/Yahoo combined. Before Google slaughtered my websites, I was getting about 85% of my traffic from long-tail Google searches. It looks like Yahoo is really performing badly now, only about 1.5% of my traffic came from them. Bing sent a little over 10%. I'm on the first page of Bing and Yahoo for my main keywords.

lolzap said:

Guys, google is heaven for some and hell for others. Why can't we be that "some"? If you go down in serps remember that the top 10 position will always be filled by someone's sites. So don't tell me how evil Google is. There are some dudes out there who rank for the 1st position no matter what. Don't you all think we are doing something wrong? Really now...don't complain that spamming a shit ton of backlinks doesn't work anymore.

Click to expand...

I am complaining because Google is penalising sites that don't even have SEO companies working on them. Not everyone knows what SEO is. Competitors can now freely destroy legitimate and honest websites.

Worst of all, Google won't provide and help or support for these people.

I'm not sure about "collateral damage", none of my sites has been hit so far. May be because I don't follow the standard black-hat practices, but use my own, custom made tricks. In some sense its good that Google updates their algorithms - less competition.

However, as a user I learned to hate Google, Bing, Facebook and their followers. Mainly because these 3 are after my personal details. Not that I have anything to hide, but it just feels bad to see your name on every screen of the above mentioned sites and know that somewhere on a remote database all your actions and details are carefully stored for centuries to come. Its like a museum of your own, and I always hated museums.

Look at imgur.com, this is how I see the future of the Interenet - anonymous and useful. Now look at Google+, Bing, Gmail, Facebook - the total opposite.

I believe that anger on Google is not something that will make Bing popular, that search engine is heading the same way Google does. Most likely a new player with different approach will bring them both down.