Will Normal Web Users Follow Cutts To Bing?
08th December 2010
1 year ago by Ryan | 19 comments
Up front: Cutts is not going to Bing! Repeat Not! That aside, writing a post on how Google annoys me would be very easy indeed. I understand that it’s easy to whinge from an SEO perspective forgetting that most of the “normal users” out there couldn’t care less and know nothing about SEO. All they are interested in is whether the top results Google or Bing throws up (especially since Bing calls itself the decision engine) are relevant to the query they’ve just typed in. Equally, “normal users” assume that the no.1 position is a kind of endorsement. The site will not only be relevant, but will somehow give a better user experience – better navigation, better looking, easier ordering process – than sites lower down the rankings. That assumption will also extend to fulfilling in the offline world the promises made online – i.e. you actually get the stuff you’ve ordered!
So, while as an SEO practitioner I could quite quickly build up a list of all of the reasons why I think Google will not be the dominant search engine in years to come, I will try to balance this post out, fairly(ish). Usual caveats: these are my opinions and not necessarily those of Fresh Egg Limited.
The SEO Perspective
It wasn’t until talking through recent developments with a few clients over the last couple of weeks that I got a real world perspective on how badly Google are messing up. Like many of my peers in the SEO world, I dislike Google more and more by the day. They are not doing us any favours as an industry and clearly have no intention of doing so in the near future. Google just seem to want to have SEO under their control and stamp down on the industry altogether. The fact is, although there are hundreds, if not thousands of SEO’s out there, even if we all got together, stood outside Google and refused to move until changes were made, they still wouldn’t budge. Shouting about it on platforms like Twitter wouldn’t do much either. The SEO industry is simply not big enough to change the way Google thinks about their business. Besides, when has Google ever wanted to do something that was good for our industry anyway?
It would appear that Google want to go down the Paid route and harvest the results that they provide in Organic. At least the team behind Bing have acknowledged that we are a part of the game, but the fact remains that for Bing to succeed, Google has to fail. Bing can’t win, but Google could lose. That may be a long way off as Google has become a household name and achieved the accolade of turning from a noun into a verb. Name me one “normal web user” who says, “type it into the search engine” rather than “Google it”! But you can’t assume that position will pertain forever.
The Normal Web User
And speaking of those normal web users, we all know how they search – right? Half of them are still using Internet Explorer which means they are using Bing. The other half is using Google and clearly must find it useful as they have stuck with it for years. However, when talking to a couple of clients over the last few weeks it would seem the general opinion is that people are losing confidence in the search engine. My clients are normal web users, they have offices that consist of normal web users and are by no means restricted to optimising their searches for Google like the SEO industry is. When talking through the recent changes like Google Places, it would seem that the client’s opinions of Google are, to say the least, not good! Quite the opposite in fact.
I have quotes come in over the phone such as “that’s just crap” and “why on earth have they done that?” to which my answer can really only be: “I agree with you and I don’t know why!” Google has unleashed a broken Google Local on top of an even more broken Google Places. Has anyone out there noticed any consistency at all in the way you are seeing Places or how on earth Google are ranking Places? My clients – all average users – would seem to be increasingly representative of the general population who are slowly getting annoyed with the frequency with which Google makes these drastic changes to the way the search engine looks, feels and operates. True there’s an element of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” in the users’ minds because they were comfortable with the Google they knew and by and large trusted.
I seriously do believe that if Google keep thinking themselves as above everyone else in the sector and do no research on whether these changes are going to be good for the general web user, more normal users will migrate to Bing as their search engine of choice in the next 18 months.
Many thanks to @MarcusSEO and @PaulChaloner for their input on this!
On a final note, what do people think about Google Places and Google Instant? Are they fully functional aspects of Google or broken products?
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19 comments so far to - Will Normal Web Users Follow Cutts To Bing? -
Google is far from loosing the battle. If you have a look at http://gs.statcounter.com/#search_engine-ww-monthly-200911-201011 you will see that they already own more than 90% of search engines share globally. Thje statement that users who are using IE are using Bing is clearly not true.
As for the SEOs, obviously they cannot affect Google’s decisions. Before Google was invented there wasn’t any SEO community so all these people technically speaking they are into employment because of Google. The web isn’t just businesses and corporates and Google have done a fantastic job so far by ensuring that smaller web entities can also have presence on the Web.
If Microsoft ever takes over the search engines that is going to be like George Bush being in charge of the whole planet. Simply a disaster… Some better insight into the history of the web (from Mosaic, Lycos and Altavista onwards) will help many understand how lucky we are to have Google as the dominant player and not some more advanced Bill Gates version.
Hi Peter,
Google is obviously the dominant search engine but as said in my piece if they make a mistake Bing are the ones that are going to step in and take over. My piece was more about arguing how normal web users are getting sick and tired of Google almost making pointless changes in their eyes.
George Bush being in charge of the whole planet? I do not see a difference between this and the way Google are running things now, they are aiming for dominance not just in the search engine world but over people themselves. They want data left, right and centre, they own your mobiles, your emails and your search engines, they are no different to Bing. Neither engines should have a 90% share, it is too large and it would seem Google are using this to do what they want.
@PeterPavement – You are wrong about there being no SEO Community before Google was invented, the likes of Ammon Johns and myself were well into SEO long before Google came along, dear old Alta Vista was the hunting ground of many great search positions.
It is true that Google was a game changer in terms of its simplicity and the excellent results. But it has been the development of the Internet in general that has led to thousands of jobs being created, don’t forget, Google needed the Internet in order to come to life. Google as much as any of us has benefitted by riding the Internet wave.
You are also forgetting an important factor – China and other developing countries. We all know China is the real global superpower now. This is a market in which Google has failed miserably and is never likely to succeed. There is a wind of change in place; like any search result in Google, no site has the devine right to a #1 position; this logic applies in reverse, no search engine has the devine right to be the #1.
What we are seeing with Google is a transformation into a system that is dominated by paid advertising fuelled by corporate greed.
Can you remember the reason why people prefered Google? It was because they knew the organic listings to not be adverts. The more Google invades this territory, the more it will continue to alienate its audience, and start to lose its market share. After all, if all we wanted were adverts we would simply go back to using Yellow Pages, and who would of thought their power would if diminised the way it has?
I understand SEO engineer’s frustration at the frequency and gravity of the changes, but do they really have a right to complain? Surely Google has absolutely no obligation to make life easier for SEOs, the search engine exists solely as an online directory that allows the ‘normal’ user to find the most relevant results relating to their search query.
While developments like Places can skew results from an SEO point of view, from a user’s perspective, receiving more local, proximal results surely makes searches more relevant. For this reason I believe users will continue to favour Google over competitors.
@ Joe
That’s just it though Joe, normal users are not liking Places and Instant. Clients are beginning to see exactly what we see, Google getting too power hungry and wanting more and more ways to make money.
Whilst Google Instant and Places are not making money at the moment what is to say Places will not have paid results within the organic results in the future. I guarantee that it will. Google has no obligation to give a damn about SEO’s and they clearly do not but to deny the user the “simple engine” they have always promised it pretty much suicide for the company.
There was a strong SEO community before Google – with the likes of Webposition Gold (good old doorway page generation) and the associated support forum that was managed by Susan Goodson – there was a whole bunch of us getting excited about this new industry and trying to understand what it all meant. SEO geeks were playing around on AltaVista, GoTo (paid search before Google), Infoseek, Lycos, Hotbot, etc. etc. long before Google came along. All the old boys helped one another then and still do now.
In regards to Google changing, there is no doubt that they are doing this to make more money through paid search. If you take the paid ads away from Google, there is no way they will be able to make money unless they start charging for their tools such as GoogleMail, Google Analytics and Google WebMaster Tools, which is possible at the rate Google is going.
Talk in the UK is that Bing will be receiving 10% of traffic in 2011, so it is already making progress in regards to reaching their audience.
@ JoeJohnson
Yes Joe the changes made was to make the results more relevant but there are still bugs and issues in these new introductions which “searchers” have disliked.
The dominance has to end one day as Alta Vista was taken over by Google many moons ago and for Google this might be the beginning of the end.
@ ryanogs When you talk about clients not liking the changes, can you really class them as an ‘average’ or ‘casual’ user? Clients, though they may know nothing about SEO, still have a vested interest in getting themselves to the top of the SERPs and thus experience Google in a different way to the layman who wants to find out where his nearest Chinese restaurant is, for example.
@ SauravRimal There are obviously bugs at the moment, but surely Google will iron these out in time. From an ‘average user’ perspective, I’d say that a search which delivers the nearest Chinese restaurants to me, rather than the businesses that have had their sites optimised, would be far more useful.
@ Joe- Iron these out? Google Local has been broken since it launched mate, the chances of them ironing anything out are very low. They keep releasing products without fixing the broken ones first. Taking local and inserting it into the main search results when it was broken to begin with was stupidity.
The conversations I had with clients were not even discussing positions or where they sat for anything. The talk was around the recent changes and what they thought about them from a user perspective. There was no mention of their business until after the feedback was noted :)
Really interesting post (and comments). I agree with a lot of the points you’re making but it was good to read this morning that Google are still making algorithm changes that *should* benefit the ‘normal’ user: http://www.brandrepublic.com/bulletin/digitalambulletin/article/1045298/google-boosts-nicer-brands-algorithm-changes/
I’ve no idea how they’ll measure bad UX but it seems like a step in the right direction.
Google definitely likes power, that is clear. They like to be in control, and they like to have things purely organic – which means they don’t like SEO. Still I don’t think that Bing stands a chance, at least not right now. The one thing you didn’t mention is brand loyalty, and google has so well established itself that I think a vast majority of ‘normal users’ are brand loyal to google – regardless of changes or even the quality of search results. I think the majority of normal users aren’t even really debating what search engine to use, if they are IE users and they use Bing it’s not because they made a conscious decision to do so (necessarily), but because that’s just what’s there in the box… same with Firefox etc. etc. Users use what is in front of them without thinking most of the time. I’ve run into this with antivirus as most people will just use Norton (crap product) because it is pre-loaded on their system, they don’t even consider other options.
You talk as if you feel Google owes the SEO industry a favour. They don’t and why should they? Although good SEO’s do bring some benefit to Google by improving the relevancy of search results, there remain far too many so-called SEO experts, consultants, etc who, through their bad practice, do the exact reverse. Is it any wonder that Google have a negative perception of SEO?
Dont forget, Google make algorithmic changes to improve the relevancy of search results and to ensure they maintain (and ideally increase) revenues from paid search. Changes to the layout of search results, etc are not done to make SEO more difficult, although I am sure that if this is the case, Google see it as somewhat of a bonus.
@ Daniel: Excellent point, Google have massive brand loyalty but never think this loyalty will keep them safe from falling under. All it takes is a couple of wrong moves and users will not wan’t to use the engine at all.
Already the results page is cluttered with organic, paid, video, social, places, images and more, if more and more keep getting added to this it is just going to become a service too cluttered to use.
Daniel, you make an excellent point about brand loyalty, especially with Norton being what it is and the common man not actually giving two hoots.
Ultimately, I still think there is room for a second major player. It will also be good for us all if there were not such a monopoly.
Ryan, what you need to do is start a ‘Use Bing for a week’ campaign – experience search in a different way.
In all fairness it is fast approaching the second birthday of Bing and I am yet to see any minor shift in traffic referrals from it and away from Google. It is going to be a huge battle.
@ Ben
“Is it any wonder that Google have a negative perception of SEO?”
I am not sure Matt Cutts exudes negativity to the celebs of the SEO Circuit; if anything there is admiration for those within the industry.
@ Ryan Surely a company of Google’s stature would not leave what is tantamount to a faulty product/service unfinished indefinitely? I think the concept behind local places is sound, but it’s no doubt flawed, I just performed a search for ‘gyms’ here in Worthing and the first local result was in Brighton :-s
I appreciate what you’re saying about clients, but even if they say their views are from a user standpoint, I’d contest that they’d always have the best interests of their business in their subconscious mind. I certainly would!
@ Joe- you would have thought so but Google Local has never worked in the way that it should have and they did nothing to fix this before merging it and creating this new Places. Whilst there are many bonuses to Places I do not agree with something as big as this arriving live within the engine when it is broken!
Of course clients have the business in mind but with many of them already in Places this was more personal opinions on the changes Google had made from a user perspective.
@ Dan As the others have said, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head with your point. While we are all stakeholders in the world of search and could debate Google vs Bing ’til we are blue in the face, for the user, it doesn’t really matter.
Most will just use whatever search engine greets them when they open their browser. I don’t think it’s ‘brand loyalty’ as such, do people really have an affinity with or an emotional connection with Google like they do with say, their favourite fashion brand? Perhaps not. People just use Google because it’s become the norm.
Saying that Google’s ubiquity has only come about because it is undeniably a good product/service.
As a Technology professional I use search engines dozens of times a day, I tried using Bing several times and in fact continue to test it but when I am looking for information about a technical issue Bing continuously produces results that never lead me to what I was looking for. Google has a better search algorithm if you are looking for information, Bing may be better when searching for products, local places…etc but I haven’t confirmed that.
Either way, I shan’t be using Bing over Google until Bing displays exactly what I am looking for with the accuracy Google does.