There's been a discussion in the tech press lately concerning the pros and cons of Google and the newly refurbished Microsoft search engine, dubbed Bing. No, this has nothing to do with presidential primaries, the 2012 election or anything of that ilk. In fact, it is more horn tooting, I suppose, than anything else. FHQ gets a steady stream of traffic based on people searching online for a number of things: electoral college maps, divisive primaries and generally anything having to do with 2012. I like knowing that people can search using those keywords and find their way to FHQ to discover what I hope they perceive as meaningful information. Hey, that's why this site exists. I could certainly do all the things that I do here and not post them, but why not share? Increasingly the internet is transforming into a highly efficient means of sharing information from the mundane to academic research. [FHQ lies somewhere in the middle, but operates under the assumption that what may be mundane to one man, may be enlightening/academic to the next.]
But what about Google and Bing? Well, to my mind there was no better way for me to check out the search abilities of the upstart, Bing, than to use the typical keywords that guide traffic to FHQ. If Bing is so good/better than Google, then it will do the same and more in terms of introducing more eyeballs to FHQ, right? Sure, theoretically. But that's not what I found. Where FHQ would appear high on the Google list, it rarely appeared at all in Bing searches.
Huh?
Here are some examples:
2012 electoral college map (Google, Bing)
2012 primary calendar (Google, Bing)
Divisive primaries (Google, Bing)
*For the record, Yahoo settles in somewhere in between both ends of the Google/Bing spectrum.
This struck me as odd. But then I realized that Blogger/Blogspot is a Google service and it occurred to me that either Google is protecting their own or Microsoft is penalizing those outside of its accepted list of blog services. [Nah, surely big, competing businesses wouldn't do that!] In the end this is all very interesting to me. Look, FHQ gets a meager amount of traffic in the grand scheme of things, so it isn't that big a deal. But it is curious and makes me wonder if this has affected other bloggers out there.
Plus, it is a slow Saturday and this was something I was thinking about.
Recent Posts:
What's Wrong with 2012 Polls?
State of the Race: New Jersey (7/16/09)
Romney Leads 2012 GOP Race (...and in more than just the Gallup Poll)
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