Since the arrival of Microsoft’s Bing search engine they have steadily prized a small piece of Google‘s market share. I personally still use Google for the vast majority of my search needs but am currently working on my dissertation looking into the effects of white hat and black hat seo techniques – uk severe weather.
This has lead me to use three of the top search engines in Google, Yahoo and Bing. Although Yahoo and Bing have announced their merger to try and take on the giant Google at the time on this writing Yahoo and Bing are still separate entities.
Using Bing however lead me to think how similar the new Bing’s SERP pages look and feel exactly the same as the traditional Google SERP pages most of us are used too. Surely Google have an issue with this blatant copying but is the fact that we are all used to that colour scheme and layout the reason for this?
Looking into the matter more however leads me to find that Google, Yahoo and Bing use each other’s ideas all the time. Like for example when Bing first came along they had their large image on the main search page which then lead Google to copy this exact idea.
This “copycat” way of working of course isn’t confined to just this industry, all companies see their competitors do something which leads them to do the same. For example the car industry is a prime example, if BMW release a car with 500bhp Mercedes will release one which 510bhp shortly after in an effort to remain competitive in what is a tough market.
In conclusion I don’t think that Bing is the only guilty party, it seems that all the major search engines look at the competition for ideas, perhaps when copying there’s a hint of “ooh that’s a good idea, get to it”. Then again there might be a simple explanation as to why they are similar.
I happen to like what Bing has done with there search Algo. I have been following it quite closely and though the results weren’t very relevant in the beginning they have improved greatly. What I still don’t like is that Bing has jumped on the Wiki band wagon and at least in my industry it gives it relevance presence it doesn’t deserve. I also like the little side bar on the right of the result that shows more links, like google sitelinks.
Every industry has competition and trends, it’s natural for a competitor to monitor another competitor and if they are more successful then a little ‘I’ll have a piece of that cake’ attitude is natural.
The real secret is in providing something that is unique and different but that can be risking and costly at the same time. So, unless you have oodles of money to throw at a project and take the risk, it is easier to take an existing model and rip it off, ethical… er… well… no but, the only risk then is whether the victim is going to take you to court or not.
i still frequently use Google despite the appearance and popularity of the Bing search engine’:-
I have noticed the similarity with YahBing and Google SERPS and look; however, I find that Yahbing’s results seem more relevant , less spammed, although that may be because more seo is spent trying to fool Google than Bing etc .
I certainly didn’t like Google’s 3 column approach, that certainly detracted from the end user’s viewing experience and (probably one of the factors behind the change) made the top sponsored results blend in more to the organic listings.
the bing search engine seems to be a great competition to google;.`
I noticed the similarity comparing yahoo & bing. The SERPs are the same.
well, you can never get wrong wether you use Bing or Google, they are both very good search engines *