Is Bing Gaining Momentum?
Many of you are having issues with Google Adwords, so I am going to start off by stating the obvious:
“Google Adwords is frustrating the hell out of a lot of people”.
Reports on the web indicate that well over 100,000 Adwords accounts have been suspended, many for unethical activity that was taking place. However, many accounts were deleted though they were following the Adwords guidelines. Google does have the upper hand in any situation and within their “terms 
of agreement” they state that they can basically remove any account they like.
Over the years Google has held a stronghold in the search market with close to 72% of the search market share.
Then came along Bing in 2009. MSN Search was becoming very difficult to brand for Microsoft as a search engine and it simply was not at the cutting edge of search technology. They had to do something…so they started off by a new name and new look (which I happen to find very appealing).
Bing also ramped up their search engine development team, coming up with some great new ideas, some of which Google was caught “copying”. This could be because the Google user satisfaction surveys produced horrible results which sent Google back-peddling and seeking out the reasons why other Search Engines were able to penetrate their audience.
Sure, Google owns Android, but the core of their business is search, and 95% of all the money they make is from search. If the people using their search aren’t happy, then they go elsewhere. If users go elsewhere, they have less traffic to monetize via their search, less brand integrity, and lowered brand awareness.
The biggest hit so far has been to “affiliate marketers”. If you are reading this, chances are you are an affiliate or at least know about affiliate marketing. Google Adwords has really clamped down on people that are promoting products that they don’t own…
But why smack around your top advertisers (affiliates)?
I have my personal views on this, but I do think that there is two sides to this story. Many affiliates out there have been promoting “scam” related products/services in Google Adwords for too long.
What has been happening is that the people that have been subject to these sort of offers and have been ripped off have contacted Google personally, complaining that they were ripped off by the search engine. Some of the most famous scams are the “Get paid to write Google Ads” and “Acai Berry” trial offers. There are also others, but these are the most prominent.
Yes, I do agree with giving these advertisers the boot and I do think this should have been done much earlier.
However, what Google has done is bundle entire industries and sets of advertisers into groups. In many cases they assume if you are promoting a money related to “making more money” or “losing weight” or Clickbank products that you are a scam.
We all know that there are legitimate products and services out there within these niches…but advertisers are being suspending simply for trying to start campaigns within them. I know many people that this has happened to, I have seen a lack of support from Google. In essence, a lack of explanation that leaves the suspended advertiser standing around “wondering” what the heck they did wrong.
I hear a lot of “why me” and “what did I do”…and if you have found yourself frustrated and in this position, you are not alone. Google is shutting people down for no reason (well, their reason is that they don’t need a reason).
Think of it this way. If a supermarket were to find out that one brand of pizza was making people sick, they would remove that pizza from their supermarket right. Fair enough.
However, if they followed what Google has done, they would remove all pizzas from their supermarket and maybe even the ingredients that go into the pizza, not giving their customers the ability to buy pizza anymore. Does this sound logical? You can come to your own conclusion…
Have you looked at the Google results lately?
Where have all the ads gone. What happened. Are people no longer advertising in Google? Trust me, they are trying. Search terms that once had 40-50 advertisers under them now have less than 5…and in many cases ZERO.
This is really unbelievable and although it is presenting a lot of frustration to advertisers that have been slapped, it is also creating a brand new opportunity. We are currently implementing some strategies that have proven successful with Google’s new changes…and have floundered with some techniques that didn’t work (although were 100% ethical).
One thing we do know, this has to be costing Google a lot of money. Like any good business though, their have a long term vision. They will sacrifice money now if it will mean longer term success in the future…and with the renewed competition (Bing/Yahoo), they have become a bit more serious about retaining their once invincible market share.
So here we are in mid 2010. Things are starting to change. Bing has gone from a 9% to almost a 13% market share. Bing and YSM are sharing technology and joining forces…they are becoming a QUARTER MARKET SHARE entity.
Big things are happening and there are big shifts that will be altering the way we market through 2010/2011.
What I think might happen?
I fully believe Google is going to continue losing market share. You see, when advertisers, affiliates, and Internet marketers get frustrated and pissy, it can cause a ripple effect in not only how they advertise, but what search engines they will use.
I mean, if Google without reason takes you out of their advertising platform, why should you continue earning them revenue by using their search. Why not perform your own searches within an engine like Bing or Yahoo…which produces equivalence in quality.
Then I think Google is going to realize that their advertisers were an integral component of their business model and will start becoming more flexible on their advertising rules and regulations. They aren’t going to allow illegal activity or the promotion of unethical products/services, however they may not be so quick to pull the “suspend” trigger on high quality accounts.
When marketing companies start creating their marketing agendas, talking about alternatives to Google, and start using different search engines themselves, it is going to have an outright negative effect on Google’s market share. They are going to lose a bunch of it and I can honestly see that Yahoo/Bing combo taking close to 40% of the overall searches in North America within the next year.
Many Alternatives to Google are opening up…
Many companies and marketers are already starting to move a large component of their advertising budgets outside of adwords. Many large websites are moving to their own advertising platforms (that is, run their ad placement technology in house) and there are social networks like FaceBook that are really starting to understand and deliver great advertising solutions.
Not to mention the Bing/Yahoo merger, which undoubtedly will have an impact on paid search.
And finally, for those “customer centric” folks, I ran a test?
I sent a question to the Bing advertising team this week just to see what sort of response I would get. People are getting used to “canned” answers, no explanation, and in many cases rude responses within Google, so I wanted to see how the support was elsewhere.
Bing sent me a personal 12 paragraph response from a personal rep in a brand spankin’ new account. I do have another account that has been around for some time, but I just wanted to run a test on a newbie account to see how they would act.
Someone took 30 minutes out of their day to respond to me. Now that is how you treat an advertiser…or a client who runs your business.
We grew our business at WAU by actually responding to people and putting our clients first, so I fully understand and believe in the personal interaction model.
I am not picking a winner in the search world right now now, but we all know who the leader is now and exactly what they have to lose if they continue making radical decisions. I could be way off in even saying “radical”, but in my honest opinion and from some of the feedback i have received, a big shift is about to take place in the paid search world.
Let me know what your thoughts are…leave me a comment, rant, suggestion, or question below.
Kyle
Wealthy Affiliate Co-Owner
www.wealthyaffiliate.com
PS. My ultimate decision. I have switched my daily searches to Bing for the time being.
I am totally new to all of this. I use Bing because it is easier for me to get around in. I also like their homepage because I learn a lot about a lot of different places, things, etc. When I get to the point where I actually set up my website I will probably use bing. Thank you for the important information that I will need to get going.
I’m one of those people that jumped ship. Google was driving me nuts, it seemed that they were always changing rules whenever they wanted.
I was spending more time trying to kiss their ass than I was Marketing on Adwords.
As an affiliate marketer, I have been from many different angles by Google. This is not the first “impact” blow that I have received thus far in my career and I am sure it is not going to be the last. The bright side for me is knowing that many people are not willing to abide by the rules…they often times think they can make their own.
Being honest to yourself and what you stand for, be willing to work hard, and don’t beat the horse when it is already dead. There are new affiliate marketing avenues that open up when others close down. Follow the trends not what others are doing.
Jake S.
PS. Excellent blog post.
You are so right. Google got a little bit too high and mighty and stopped being considerate to people who have spent their hard earned bucks on their campaigns. I know for me, I am using other PPC venues. Google is not the only game in town.
@ Stephanie
I don’t think Bing has enough users to realize that their paid search is out of wack for many of their search terms. There is no way people should be paying even over $1.00 for keywords that have limited listings and with some test I have run, there are keywords with 3 or less ads that they want up to $25 for. They better sort this out when the full merger takes place because they will lose all their advertisers if they are going to try to gouge.
Bing/YSM also need to realize that outside of Google there are many alternatives to that as well. Many larger sites are moving to their own in-house ad networks, there are ad buys on highly ranked domains, smaller search engines, facebook, etc…
Google seems to be starting to lax on domains that do fit their criteria…I believe they have been a clean wipe and then rebuild with Quality Advertisers…but in the mix of the initial wipe they took out some of the quality sites which will eventually be let back in. Only time will tell really.
Thanks for your comment,
Kyle
Great post Kyle and I have to say that I fully agree with you! Google is an excellent search engine who really do have their end users in mind but they are really shooting themselves in the foot with their advertisers. I could not beleive when they pulled the plug on my account which I had running for years and not just one site but ALL OF THEM!! So after attempting to change my sites 3 times (which is a crazy amount of work) I finally gave up and went to Yahoo and Bing which have been converting actually quite well for such a small market share.
BUT HERE IS THE BING ISSUE!!
Yes Bing has excellent customer service which is sooooo refreshing after pulling my hair out with Google customer service for years. But the new Bing/Yahoo merger is potentially going to put advertisers like me out of business. Here’s why: Right now Yahoo is the middle man, Google is the Big Guy, and Bing is the small up and coming guy. I do most of my advertising on Yahoo because the traffic is relatively cheap and converts. But since the new Bing/Yahoo (Adcenter) merger my cost per click (CPC) has gone up and this is no joke:
Yahoo – $1.25 for first or second place on the listings
Bing – $25.00 for first or second place on the listings
Ok I realize that this is not all my keywords but the ones that make money have gone up that much. Also as many of us know the bidding price is not actually what you pay. So I tested it out and I bid $10.00 on my #1 converting keyword. Day 1 not bad but still ridiculous I actually got 1&2 position for $1.95 average CPC. Ok ok not it’s not $25 so I can live with that BUT Day 2 same $10 bid I discovered that I was paying $6.25 average CPC!!! That’s right people $6.25 haha YEAH RIGHT no one can make a decent profit off of that!! I know that me and many internet marketers are dreading the day when Yahoo is going to be gone and it will be 100% Adcenter…EEEEEKKKKK!!!!!!
BING TAKING OVER YAHOO IS LIKE KIA TAKING OVER LEXUS AND GETTING RID OF LEXUS!!
What is going to happen when all the traffic and advertisers are using Bing and Adcenter?? This means more advertisers and more traffic which mean more competition and higher CPC prices because Bing has no quality score (like Google does to keep your CPC down) so who ever bids the most will win!! Trust me I have been on the phone with Yahoo and Bing for the past couple of weeks and they can’t dispute my claims they just keep saying “just wait and see what will happen when the merger takes place!!” Ugg yeah right lol.
SO WHAT DID I DO??
Well I know that I can’t make a profit off of that kind of CPC prices so I went into Wealthy Affiliate and did my research on SEO and ways to make Google happy. Yes I went groveling back to Google haha. So I completely rebuilt one site all new content, more backlinks, and made sure that the site was as optimized as I could make through the use of WA tutorials and forum posts. Well I put the site up 3 days ago and SHIZAAMMM I looked this morning the the campaign and site was approved! I couldn’t beleive it I almost wanted to cry…no joke they usually just shut me down right away.
Now I have been through this with Google before but I am hoping that maybe just maybe they have calmed down a bit since they have lost so much revenue through their advertisers. And I honestly do want to work with Google because they have standards for a reason…at least you know that you are not going to be getting all of the crap pages when you use them! You will get relevant direct results that usually are exactly what you are looking for.
Anyways the moral of this long winded story is that YES Bing is new but they are still going to be working out their glitches for a while. If you have given up completely on Google then don’t! You will make way more money advertising with Google AND Bing so do what you can to make it work with both of these search engines!!
Best of luck to all the internet marketers out there!! Don’t give up and make each failure and learning experience!!
I felt the shift in trend coming on and its about time the monopoly starts to crumble. With the era shifting towards social media. Google is loosing and faster than we can now see and is going to continue if they dont come up with something relative to the era shift, buzz is a joke compared to twitter and an embarrassment to google in my opinion as is blogger to wordpress. and as for adsense payments talk about peanuts.
Hi,
Relieved to see I am not the only person that Google slapped. The ironic thing is that when they did it I did not have ANYTHING for sale on my site. Just their ad links. Everything is FREE and I provided tips only. Google closed my account stating that I clicked on my own links….WRONG!!!!!!
I never did that. They never responded to my pleas to re-instate my account. I even tried to redo it with another website, but they said the content was not what they were looking for. ???? HUH? I guess I am really dumb..I thought that it was beneficial to Google to have websites out there in cyberspace that allowed them to have their “paying ads”. WOW..Talk about an eye opener your blog is..I have since changed my default search engine to Yahoo. and Google can KISS my *&%!
Thanks for letting us “non-geeks” know about this. Oh, yeah, If you search for my site on Google, It is ranked #1 on the page…..Who is the dumb one now?
The search engine dynamic continues its long, steady evolution. If Googles numbers drop too drastically, you can bet-a Bing they will change, and for the better, methinks!
It is actually quite amazing just how many advertising forms exist outside the control of “big, bad Google”. Some of them are downright exciting. Get busy and do your research in advertising, not
always the next best e-mail string or fantastic OTO!
The message Google is currently receiving is well-earned and not over, by a long shot!
This all is making me feel very concerned about my own attempts… I just started with Google AdWords and I only have one campaign so far. I´ve been waiting for my ads to rise to the first page (btw, do people click sponsored links if they aren´t on the first page?) but as there is absolutely NO COMPETITION due to the fact that either the competition has been wiped off by Google or there just isn´t anyone else in my niche, shouldn´t my ads rise up straight away?
I am newbie, no experience about SEM advertising and I promote ClickBank products. Do I “pose a threat” as a “scam” to Google? If I do, this is moving next door to paranoia.
Thank you for answers beforehand and more importantly, understanding
Eemil Varesmaa
Hi:
Google acts like the 800 lb. gorilla.
They have arbitrarily suspended my email account TWICE because
I did not have a current mobile phone number (lost my cell phone
twice).
They are betting heavily on mobile search and screwing anyone
who does not provide a cell phone access.
Also, it has long been clear to me that there is an INHERENT CONFLICT
OF INTEREST IN GOOGLE’S BUSINESS MODEL.
Google’s hostility to paid links sold by Web site owners means that
a lot more advertisers are being driven to Google Adwords.
HOW CAN GOOGLE TELL WHETHER A LINK IS BEING BOUGHT
PRIMARILY FOR BACKLINK AND PAGE RANK VALUE OR BOUGHT
FOR TARGETED TRAFFIC PURPOSES????
The fact that Google punishes sites that buy paid anchor text links
(dofollow??) means that these sites are being driven to Google
Adwords as one of the advertising alternatives.
Hope I have made this conflict clear.
Thanks for an insightful post.
@ Jarret
I disagree that affiliates are junk. Often times they invest more time and research into a niche than the actual merchant does. That is right…I would argue that some affiliates know niches much better than the companies hosting the affiliate programs. I can attest to this because I have been an affiliate in situations like this over the years. I do agree there is a lot of junk out there (not so much anymore), but there also are a lot of dedicated, hard working, and knowledgeable subject matter experts…who go by an alterego, AFFILIATE.
Kyle