Google Is Challenged By Bing & The Privacy Campaigners
Recommendations To Be Featured Alongside Google Adverts
It is quite usual to ask friends and family members for advice regarding investment in products and services. We may previously have done this during telephone conversations and informal meet-ups. However, Google has chosen to develop the recommendation process by including the pictures and profiles of people who have endorsed websites advertised on the search engine results pages. This will mean that we are able to see who has clicked on the +1 button and taken the time to write positive reviews.
The Google recommendation system has been criticised by leading privacy advocates. They’ve claimed that it bears some similarity to the ‘sponsored stories’ feature which was integrated by Facebook in 2011. One privacy campaigner said, ‘People expect when they give information, it’s for a single use, the obvious one … We set our own boundaries … We don’t want them set by the government or Google or Facebook.’
Microsoft ‘Bing It On’ In The UK
It has been reported on numerous occasions that UK residents base their decisions primarily on habit. Microsoft believe that this is one of the main reasons why Google has remained the most popular search engine in this part of the world. However, they recently invited the community of UK web users to broaden their horizons by taking part in a ‘Bing It On Challenge’. The participants were asked to blindly test a range of Google and Bing results. People who declared a preference for the Bing results won an Xbox 360. However, individuals who chose the Google results had to give their jumpers away.
It is perhaps unsurprising that a number of people were feeling the cold after taking part in the Bing challenge. The official results showed that 53% of people preferred Bing. However, 34% thought that the Google results were superior. A Microsoft spokesperson said, ‘given that most Britons actually preferred Bing results, there is a pretty good chance that you might be better served by using Bing as your main search engine.’
Matt Cutts Offers Advice To Webmasters
The Influential Google engineer Matt Cutts has been featured in another video related to SEO. He responded to the following query:
‘Since Google is been actively updating its search results, it is hard for people to trust Google anymore. Should one start focusing on getting leads from social media other than search engine results?’
Cutts makes it quite clear that Google algorithm updates will continue over the coming months and years. However, he points out that webmasters who are keen to achieve high rankings should focus their efforts on producing high quality content. Apparently it is also a good idea to include search engine optimisation as part of a wider marketing campaign.
