So I’m pretty sure I’ve heard this one before.
Except usually there’s a chicken. And a sky. And the sky is falling….
People seem veritably breathless about the purported Google sting operation as detailed in SearchEngineLand.com’s Google: Bing Is Cheating, Copying Our Search Results.
I’ve actually had more than one client ask me for my position on this in the past couple of days. Which I find decidely curious because to my mind it has no real ramifications for their business. Except perhaps that they should take a closer look at Bing in their arsenal, as clearly they’re invested in improving their search results.
But here’s what I really don’t get. All the subterfuge. All the cloak and dagger.
Seriously?
Why sneak in through the back door when the front door’s wide open?
Says Bing: 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.
It is not unrealistic to suggest that one of those signals may include results garnered from another site. Like say, oh, um, Google. And like, say, oh, um… Their search ads…
Holy call a press conference, Batman! Is the media aware of this? Does Google know? Does Bing know?
Oh, wait a second… Looks like Google might be doing the same thing on Bing!!! What is the search world coming to? Well they can’t possibly be monitoring clicks or impressions or click-through rate? Can they? Speed in the ad to show? You don’t suppose they’d be tracking all the way through to the analytics do you?
It seems so… so… much like a Pepsi rep deigning to try a Coke!
Well for sanity’s sake, no one tell Ask.com… Next thing you know… oh… never mind.
It has hardly inconceivably that once upon a time, when someone was in position number infinitesimal in the market, they took a very close look at the leader (Let’s call them AltaVista) to see how they stacked up against the market presence using signals. And it is also not inconceivable that someone somewhere opened an account with a competitor (Let’s call them Overture.com) to better understand the underpinnings of an auction system.
And it’s not unfathomable that more than one person in one department in one office in Palo Alto has an account (Let’s call it Facebook) with the intention of doing far, far more than reaching out to old high school friends.
And a hushed silence came over the blogosphere.
You can’t trademark the alphabet. You can trademark a series of letters in a seemingly unrandom order. You can’t trademark recipes. You can trademark the process for making bread (if you invent a breadmaker), but you can’t trademark the recipe itself. If you want to trademark the process for roasting a turkey, you have to invent a new oven or rotisserie but you can’t trademark the recipe. Or the turkey.
And search results, you can’t trademark those either because they’re in the public domain and they actually belong to someone else. You can trademark your process.
The truth is, we all look for “signals” in the hope that it will help increase our search performance and metrics. Even those who need not depend on paid search for their organic positioning. And we all do it on the back of Google, with keyword tools and message testing and analytics. And at Google’s encouragement. Let’s not forget, they get to finesse on our backs as they have access in to our “signals” for free because they have the wherewithal and the resources to track the signals we put out into the free marketplace.
Free marketplace.
Free to examine. Not free to build. (That costs us.) And while we might sigh or scream, we learn to live with their changes based on our signals. And, like them, sometimes we even get so frustrated our only recourse is to run to the media screaming things like: Florida update. Or penalization. Or click fraud. But in the hand it just comes out sounding like “Unfair!” and everyone nods understandingly while no one really seems to care.
But it doesn’t change the fact that we do we all “look for signals”. It’s hard not to look at someone’s cards when they’re holding them out towards you.
In the end, I’m not saying Bing is or isn’t copying Google search results. I’m saying, borrowing signals from Shakespeare: It’s much ado about nothing.
Have a good one.
~ S
