Microsoft’s brand new search product, Bing, was unveiled to the public over the weekend. Over all the response has been moderately positive. Most of the attention has gone into Bing’s use of technology that Microsoft acquired from Powerset, that provides a series of related search terms for each query. However, it is going to take a lot more than copying what Google already does to bring down the search giant.
Its becoming increasingly apparent that Microsoft plans on a very aggressive strategy against Google with Bing. So aggressive that they have begun manipulating their own search engine results to increase click through rates to web sites they have indexed. Whats that you say? Microsft playing dirty?
Here’s how their bait and switch game works. One of the first queries I ran on Bing was my screen name that I use across several different networks “joehall”. On the bottom of the third page of results is a listing to my company’s web site. However, in Bing when running only this query the title of the site appears as my name “Joe Hall”, despite the fact that that page has never been titled anything but the name of the company “JOZSOFT”. The term “Joe Hall” appears once on that page in the sales copy but no other time in the markup.
Therefore I ran my second query using my name brand instead and sure enough the same site appears at the top of the results with the correct page title.
Therefore, I decided to try a second gambit of test using another one of my name brands. This time around I used “Whostalkin” as my query. Sure enough, the fourth site listed is an article by web pro news with the title completely identical to the query I ran. However, when the user clicks the result they will see the article title and the page title aren’t at all what is listed in Bing for that query.
So now the question remains. Why would Bing want to dynamically manipulate the page titles to match search queries? Well, thats easy: higher click through rates! The more referring traffic that web masters receive from Bing, furthers Bing’s brand and manifest its self in the minds of publishers as a major player in the search space. This is an important part of any promotional strategy at the early stages of a new product, and web masters are already starting to take notice.
The obvious backlash of this strategy is that if Bing makes a habit of manipulating page titles then they run the risk of weakening the quality of their results of by giving a false impression of relevancy to the user.
So far I have only run this test on several queries. Has anyone else seen this issue on Bing? If so let us know in the comments with examples!
I was actually very intrigued by the article and the discussion that followed – at least until I got toward the bottom of the comment section. Regardless, @Joe I’m curious, if folks were typing in Joe Hall and they were directed to one of your brand names is that not relevant? Think about the links you’ve built over time … I’m sure a few of those had “Joe Hall” as anchor text no? Perhaps the title tag change is actually a more evolved algo based on relevancy and anchor text. Again these are all assumptions, but I have to be honest – I’m not really seeing how seeing the query “Joe Hall” and the title tag ‘manipulation’ of one of your ‘brand names’ being all that misleading.
@Alan Bleiweiss — I completely agree with you! *Passes you a free beer*
@Jon Lee Clark — I am sorry you didn’t enjoy the last several comments. I don’t respond well to baseless attacks on my integrity. As for further clarifying my point, i am going to re-paste a comment that I posted above that you obviously missed
“If someone runs the query, “Joe Hall” and jozsoft.com comes up with the term “Joe Hall” as the title, that is an extremely pointless result. Because there is absolutely nothing about me on that site. Yes, it is my company, but there is nothing about me as an individual. That’s what my personal blog is for and is why I titled that blog “Joe Hall”.”
@ Joe Hall – No explanation needed on defending your character as I would do the same. Its just unfortunate the convo far too often turns toward that track. Regardless I’ll digress and move onto the point. Check out this tool that compares G,Y and B without branding. I typed in my own name “Jon Lee Clark” and found two of the 3 engines were ‘optimizing’ my Title tags to fit the query: http://blindsearch.fejus.com/?q=jon+lee+clark
Looks like you better expand your rant to include the big G! Its weird though, I ran the above mentioned queries through the tool and all come back normal. Someone must’ve taken notice of your post!:)
My blog didnt appear in bing either, how and if will it appear?
Great article! I tried a few queries, and the results are no where near the quality of google or yahoo. I think they want to run before they can walk.
Agree with your comments about manipulating titles for click through.
@Sebastien : I think you missed the point. Google and yahoo do not always use meta tags and titles on search results. This is not the point of this article and nothing in it implies that you should use the title on search results page.
Is it my impression, or is it that google and yahoo are showing the best title and description they can produce to satisfy your information query, and bing is showing the best title and description to MAKE YOU THINK that your information query is satisfied?
Bence Bing Biraz kendini geliştirmesi lazm.Biraz Yahoo ya Benziyor
And Google doesn’t?
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=seopros.org&aq=0&oq=seopros&aqi=g2
Note the Title- I couldn’t write a title that bad if I’d smoked two or three left handed cigarettes!
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Awww.seopros.org%2B%22SEOpros.org%22&btnG=Search&aq=f&oq=&aqi=
Indicates there is not a usage anywhere on the site like that. Title or otherwise!!!!!
I think there is on ODP you know… just because they can!
My bounce rate for Google was the highest and yahoo the lowest with Bing in the middle but closer to the Yahoo. So I am pleased with my bounce rate with Bing
@Joe the so called attacks on your charactor were completely warranted. When the fact that you say they are baseless is insultingOne analyst reckons that Google’s global dominance will nearly impossible for Microsoft’s Bing to dent. and shows what kind of person you are. A snob of a troll, and a shameless liar who is afraid (or not man enough) to admit when they make a mistake… Your lack of respect or willingness to value other’s opinions (even when backed by common sense) reeks of little big man syndrome… Lemme guess: you are about 5 feet tall and have no authority in the real world so u try to compensate for it in the fake world? A hobbit and a troll… Michael is an expert on people like u.
The only thing baseless in this whole discussion, is the original article, and most of the follow ups by the so called journalist. Unbelievable!
PS
i’m no ms fan! And where on earth is your neck man?!?! Your head just sits directly on your shoulders?!?! LMAO. Must be hard to get layed lookin like that huh? U probably got a real beast of a woman huh?! Lololol. Maybe u were just mad about those things, and took it out on the Internet huh?!!!?! Lolololollmaorofl !!! Huh?!?!?!? Huh?!?!?!?!?! Maybe next time you’ll just shut your big face… Huh?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
Way to waste people’s time man… Thanks a lot you POS on pMS huh?!?!?!?!? 8itch!?!?! If this was the real world you wouldn’t say shlt cause I’d kick your 4SS huh?!?!?!?!?!!!! Loser!
Why would anyone do a search for “joehall” anyway? Who the heck is Joe hall??? Also, I thing bing is worried about the people who use the search engine. Not the webmasters. You really think they would intentionally prevent CUSTOMERS from getting valid search results? That’s nonsense. It’s about customers! Even if they were driving customers to sites that weren’t relevant; why would you care? It wouldn’t hurt anyone but ms… Just another ms hater in denial about ms success… Btw, they have every right to tweak their own algo… If people don’t like the output it’s giving, they will just go somewhere else. I have found bing results to be as good, and sometimes better than google. I didn’t know it was considered playing “dirty” to use your own se how you see fit and manipulate data the same way. If it is, then every se ever is evil. You have to manipulate data or it will be digital trash.
I can’t believe your audacity. It’s mind boggling. Boohoo if u don’t like their strategy. Doesn’t mean it’s wrong.
Go see a theropist pls.
How do u like that “data manipulation”?