Microsoft battling Google or Google battling Microsoft is not a new story anymore. Ever since Microsoft has entered the online business most specifically the search engine field these two titan companies in their own original niches, Microsoft for operating system and Google for search engines, have been constantly locking horns. In one of its unprecedented move Microsoft has, after revamping its search engine from MSN to Bing, acquired a partnership deal with the pioneer in the search engine field, Yahoo. With this partnership Microsoft hopes to rake in Yahoo’s internet users share and thus increase such share into a number that would then close the gap between them and Google.

Now in a more recent move from Microsoft, the operating system giant has announced that they have already inked a deal with OpenX Technologies, this latter being an independent ad server for Web Publishers. OpenX is known to have a base of around one hundred fifty thousand (150,000) websites which generates around three hundred billion ads in a month.

In the deal that was entered into by Microsoft and OpenX these companies will be cross-marketing with one another as well as refer publishers to each other, and with OpenX’s base number of websites Microsoft hopes to generate and promote their content advertisements and further hoping that this move would be dubbed as the adsense killer. This move by Microsoft clearly shows that the Redmond company is trying to battle Google on different aspects in the online business that is currently being dominated by the search engine giant. With this move coming from Microsoft it is to be expected that Google will also release their own techniques on how to take on their most persistent competitor.

Well do not expect Google and Facebook to produce record labels anytime soon, but the two leaders in their own niches the search engine and the social network respectively are going to enter the music scene in a different way. Utilising their already existing online features Google will be allowing users to listen to sample songs and then allowing the same to purchase the song directly from its search results page. With this feature Google will not only provide search to the music industry it will actually help sell the different songs online. This move by the search engine giant is viewed by most online advertisers and SEO’s to be a step towards increasing its lead in the field of search against Microsoft’s Bing. This service by Google is said to be powered by Lala.com and iLike.com, the process will be that a Lala link will allow the users to listen to the full song only once and then when such user would like to download then he or she must pay around $1 for a copy of such song.

The leader on the social media network, Facebook, on the other hand will also be offering its users an option to listen and download music through their website. Being a social media network, the songs will form part of its existing virtual gifts feature where such songs will be added to its store. United States users will be able to send friends songs that can only be played online for US$0.10 while for US$0.90 a user will be able to send a copy of the song which can be downloaded and transferred.

In the field of search engine optimisation there is only one target search engine and that is Google. Google has been revered as the search engine giant that many other search engines are trying to topple down. Up until today Google have not been overtaken by any other search engine, this is despite of the fact that competitors to Google like Yahoo and Bing have already joined forces in order to help each other out in trying to remove the title of being number one in search engine field from Google. It took a merger and a change from MSN to Bing for Microsoft to at least increase one percent in their internet users’ share. But even with that Google is still way far ahead of Bing, so why is it that after spending millions of dollars in advertising and in restructuring their search engine department from redesigning the search query page to hiring top professionals in the field, Bing has not even scratched the surface?

Well this is because Bing is not a household name unlike for Google. We can hear people say nowadays “I will Google you” but no one really is saying “I will Bing you”. Becoming a household name takes years or an intensive marketing campaign targeting the right niches and audiences. Although Bing had already brought out their advertising arsenals it did not even make Bing popular locally. Many SEO’s believe that Bing must also become a household name in order for it to at least give Google a run for its money.

With the finalisation of the Yahoo-Microsoft Deal is it really time to start planning SEO strategies for Bing? This is the major question in every SEO’s mind, with the current observation in Bing’s search results it is obvious that Bing wants to gain attention. It was previously observed that a search term used in Bing’s biggest competitor Google will yield a completely different result when ran into the search engine of Microsoft, this means that a search term ran into Google’s search query might place a certain link into the first page of it’s SERP but when ran into Bing it will yield the same link onto the second, third or even last page of its SERP, what does this mean? Well generally it means that the two competing search engines have major differences in their search engine algorithm. So to answer the question if it is time to start planning for a different SEO strategy for Bing should be answered in the affirmative. Why start planning? Well this is because of the fact that Bing is newly released and Microsoft has yet to plan its international market strategy because as of now their efforts are focused on the local side of the market. To add to that, the integration of Yahoo shell into Bing is still underway as a result of their recent merger this will officially start next year. As a result of this Bing is expected to gain a lot of traffic that is going to be funneled from Yahoo’s existing traffic. With these changes SEO companies and SEO consultants should start rethinking their SEO expert strategies and techniques in order to prepare for the coming of the Yahoo-Microsoft search engine.

When people talk about Search engine optimisation Google is already a household name. This is because Google is considered to be the search engine giant dominating it competitors Yahoo and Bing by more than a mile. The total internet users share of Google is approximately sixty percent leaving the rest divided among the other search engines like Yahoo, Bing, Ask and the others. It is because of this dominance by Google that Microsoft and Yahoo have merged together to combine their resources to improve their services and to hopefully dethrone Google in its reign as the number one search engine. Aside from spending a lot on advertising before launching its new search engine Bing, Microsoft also has created several marketing strategies and administrative moves such as hiring executives who have worked for Yahoo and Google at one point or another.

Now, Microsoft is also targeting the fastest growing market in the internet that is the Search engine optimisation. The plan to make Bing noticeable to SEO companies and SEO consultants was discovered by many already when they utilised the search engine query of Bing. Try to search using a search keyword in Google, take note of one link that is on the first page of Google’s SERP then visit Bing and try the same keyword on the search string and more often than not you will find the same link on a lower ranking and even on page two. This is a noticeable difference between the two search engines which makes SEO companies and SEO consultants wondering what is different in Bings’ search engine algorithm? This move by Bing is viewed as something that will spark the interest of many SEO companies and SEO consultants that they may also try to decipher it like what they are doing with Google, this means that there may be a lot of SEO companies and SEO consultants that may want to take this endeavor and which means that there will be a lot of traffic towards Microsofts’ Bing.