When we look closer at the stats, Bing itself has grown 16% year-over-year and 5% month-over-month, although Yahoo – which also is powered by Bings search technology, only saw a small but respectable 7% year-over-year and 5% month-over-month increase.
Unfortunately as the search game is zero sum, Google figures slumped 5% year-over-year and were down 3% in April 2011 from the previous month. However Google does still hold the overwhelming market share which as of April sat at a still hefty 64.5%.

Even though Google still holds a sizable lead, it is still a very impressive effort by Microsoft to cut into Google’s core business as aggressively as they have. Even more impressive is that Microsoft only launched Bing in June 3, 2009. To do what they have done in little over 2 years is a remarkable achievement to say the least.

What does this mean for SEO?

Will marketers be looking to have multiple strategies?

A Google representative claims that although the numbers do appear strange they are fairly complex in nature and that the drop in average cost per clicks can mostly be put down to emerging countries such as South Africa (which naturally would experience lower CPC’s due to a lack of competitiveness in their respective regions) joining the fold and starting to really impact the overall data.

“We’ve detected that some of your site’s pages may be using techniques that are outside Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site that could be intended to manipulate PageRank. Examples of unnatural linking could include buying links to pass PageRank or participating in link schemes.”

To cut the long story short this was Google saying… we’ve got you!

If you are not familiar with Link Schemes, these are networks which allow you to upload content and links. Well whats wrong with that, sounds a bit like press release distribution? The problem is that these networks tend to have little to no relevance of what it is that you are marketing and also are very poor in quailty. Most importantly they are there specifically built to minipulate the Google algorithm, gain rankings and not to serve an actual visitor.

What happens now?

Your site is de-indexed in Google… meaning your site becomes invisible and no one can no longer find you.

What we are seeing currently are businesses, agencies and webmasters running around like headless chickens trying to figure out how they are going to explain this catastrophic situation to either there bosses, customers or bank managers.

Conclusion

There is no longevity in taking short cuts, even more so nowadays considering Google is becoming exponentially smarter. Organic link building is and always has been the way forward to substainable rankings, something Green Search has built its business around.

With broadband penetration numbers in South Africa sitting at around a very low 5%. The whole online community received a welcomed boost last week by news that the planning commission of South Africa cited the development of broadband infrastructure and services as one it’s key focal points over the next coming years. The commission has committed to providing access to broadband services to the whole country by 2018.

This sort of news can only be a good thing for the country by maturing an immature internet market, boosting a sluggish e-commerce sector and in turn creating huge opportunity in the job market. Not to mention this can mean only good things for the future of SEO in South Africa.

So the time has come and unfortunately that time was on Monday the 21st of November 2011. Yahoo finally called it quits on the Yahoo Site Explorer tool which gave public visitors a small random snippet of a websites back links amongst a few other things. As we know this has all happened as a result of the Bing/Yahoo amalgamation in the search space and Yahoo has now moved the feature into Bing Webmaster Tools. Although I must say they don’t do the same thing which is a bit confusing.

However fear not as we SEO consultants know that YSE was actually quite limited and for proper SEO agencies that really value quality data YSE just wouldn’t of done the job. So in actual fact what is all the fuss about? Well not sure really, because we all know there are some state of the art tools out there (yes some do cost a bit whereas YSE was free) that do what YSE did and ten times better.

So needless to say I’m not going to lose a nights sleep.

Never today has Google been more at threat of losing its grip on its status as the being the king of search. Google’s key advantage has always been its access to an enormous amount of data. Data which has enabled them to make incredible predictions and deliver unrivaled search results. Now I ask you this. In your mind what would be the perfect search engine?

Obviously the answer to this would be a search engine that was able to deliver search results not only based on the recommendations of authoritative and trustworthy sites but results that also reflected the personal opinions and experiences of your friends too. Are we seeing the problem here? Well Larry Page has, otherwise he wouldn’t of literally moved his desk into the Google + headquarters along with investing more engineering resources into G+ than any other element of the business.

The problem is simple but considerable, Facebook has the data that everyone wants but know one can get. People are so engrained into the Facebook platform it has become a necessity in our everyday lives. Put it this way, are you going to just leave a party full of all your very best friends for an empty party where the music may be better? There would probably be a few but it would be for a pretty niche crowd. In party terms, it would be the goths and ravers, in online terms it would be the online marketers and Google employees.

So lets put the shoe on the other foot, is Facebook able to get their hands on Google’s data? Many would say no, but should Facebook make some considerable acquisitions of a couple of lesser search engines, throw in Facebook’s proven track record of being able to poach some of Google’s very best, topped off with a little more time to perfect those algorithms and then ask yourself this question. Is it really that unlikely?

So really the ball is in Google’s court and in particular it revolves around Google + and its ability to take majority control of the social market. Users aren’t going to juggle 2 social accounts, why would you? It’s all or nothing IMO but whatever happens watch this space because whoever wins this battle… wins the war.

Google say the update comes off the back of its 2010 Caffiene update which was implemented to provide up to 50% fresher content. However based on tests it does appear that the update has been quite subtle and only effects verticals where fresh content it crucial to a good customer experience such as news websites etc.

So not too much of a nightmare for search marketing agencies but it does mean that marketers are going to have to put a lot more focus on ensuring new, relavant and engaging content is constantly updated. Remember Google will stop at nothing to ensure that it serves the very best customer experience and agencies should be thinking the same!