How do you optimize your Website for Google, Bing and Yahoo? A couple years ago, people would have said, “Just optimize for Google.” With roughly 80% of search engine traffic and not much noticeable difference between the search engine rankings for most phrases, this was probably pretty good advice, from a time efficiency standpoint at least.
But today, there are some definite differences in search engine returns from the major providers. And with Bing’s latest announcement, it looks like that trend is going to increase. Because Microsoft has officially partnered with Facebook to add “social relevance” to its Bing search engine.
This is in stark contrast with Google, who has historically maintained that back links are the highest signal of site authority. But, since Google’s algorithms aren’t wholly public, who knows if Google has not already incorporated social influence as a search engine factor.
But what Google won’t have is that via a Bing iFrame, Bing search results will now be native inside of Facebook searches. So, your network’s Facebook activity will affect your search results. And if users find that this greatly improves their search engine results, Bing could have found their competitive advantage in the search wars against Google.