Search Engine Competition - Good or Bad?

[anand84]

If Bing were to take on Google in a big way, start its own Adwords(if one does not exist already), what effects do you see?

1. Now, you cannot focus on two SEO strategies at the same time. So, websites will have to pick one of the two and live with it, thus compromising on the traffic from the other search engine

2. Advertisers will split between two; which would mean lesser competition on bids. Less eCPM even if the number of advertisers increase?

I am praying for Bing not to become too popular, and I am happy to see recent reports supporting the same.

[bill]

You didn't know about Microsoft AdCenter [webmasterworld.com]? We have an entire forum dedicated to the topic.

I don't think there's a problem having more alternatives out there. It does help lower costs.

It's no good to have one search engine being as overwhelming as Google has become. Competition is good.

[piatkow]

Now, you cannot focus on two SEO strategies at the same time

Maybe people will focus on building good web sites rather than on trying to game the system.

[anand84]

You didn't know about Microsoft AdCenter?

Yes, have fairly heard of it. Guess they don't take Indian webmasters; so have never read or discussed about them..

[JS_Harris]

If Bing buys out Yahoo! search, which it looks like they are about to do, I wouldn't worry about Bing overtaking Google anytime soon. Even with the hundreds of millions being spent on advertising people aren't going to change their default search provider easily.

Now, when microsoft releases a new browser that has Bing as the default search and they work out a deal with firefox to do the same I'd start to expect a more level playing field... problem is IE is mired in security problems right now. Keep an eye on Bing but continue to optimize for what works in Google, it's just business.