Google vs. Bing - an update

Image via CrunchBase

I just read on Reuters that Microsoft's Bing is continuing to grow its web search audience. It is still relatively small however compared to Google.

According to comScore:

• June 8-12, Microsoft search accounted for 12.1% of U.S. Internet searches

• June 1-5, Microsoft had 11.3% (the week Bing launched)
  

• May 25-31, Microsoft had 9.1%
  

• May (the rest of it), Microsoft had 8%

At the same in May, Google held 65 % of U.S. searches, and Yahoo! had 20.1%.
It will be very interesting to see if Bing is able to hold the 12%+ or gain more. Additionally, it will be interesting to see if their gains are at Google's expense or at Yahoo!'s. According to brand wisdom, it should be Yahoo! that suffers most.

Google Vs. Bing - Will Bing stand a chance?

A couple of weeks ago, Microsoft relaunched their effort to beat Google in the search marketing game. This time Microsoft has come out with an entirely new search engine - called Bing.com.

Will it beat Google? I don't think so.
Microsoft cannot claim much of anything with the new search engine.

• They are not the first
• They are not the most popular
• They are not the dominant

They may be the prettiest. Their site is full of neat Ajax programming tricks that make it a bit more intuitive to use than Google. It also has a nifty menu that creates itself down the left side that helps you filter your results. Will those innovations help? Maybe. Can Google copy them. Absolutely.

According to Comscore Media Metrix:

Microsoft Sites increased its average daily penetration among U.S. searchers from 13.8 percent during the period of May 26-30 to 15.5 percent during the period of June 2-6, 2009, an indication that the search engine is reaching more people than before. Microsoft’s share of search result pages in the U.S., a proxy for overall search intensity, increased from 9.1 percent to 11.1 percent during the same time frame.

Once the buzz and campaign that Microsoft has been driving dies down, my bet would be on Google to maintain strong leadership over time. But then again ... at one point in time I never had any reason to think I wouldn't use Altavista.com for a search.

Getting high Google rankings - a Mug's Game?

I've been in business for quite awhile. And maybe call me jaded but I'm beginning to question the value of latest holy grail of marketing - SEO and web optimization. Not because it doesn't make sense to target your audience and measure effectiveness of your marketing effort. Of course it does.

My rising doubt arises about the ability of marketers to actually realize this potential without putting all resources and budgets into this one marketing basket.

Two events over the past twenty four hours really have me pondering this question.

The first is a "free" assessment of my website - www.interactivevoice.ca by a consultant who specializes in web optimization. While the assessment was OK and indicated my website would never reach page 1 on Google, it begs the question - who cares? My company is small, specialized and not interested in catering to the whole world, or even the whole marketing industry. To even start the process would cost several thousand dollars. I don't see the how the ROI potential.

The second shoe fell today while ready the Search Insider blog on getting first page listing on Google. Apparently the odds of getting a first page listing are around 500000:1. To beat these odds, requires a lot of focus, resources and likely outside help (expensive help).

I don't know what the answer is but my question is: is it worth it? Or are we forgetting the real basics of good marketing?