Luke Hubbard

Today, I read a great article on the advantages of Microsoft’s new search engine Bing:  Google VS Bing User Centric Eye Tracking Study.

The main advantage that Bing has over Google is its 3 column format. Because the first column on the left contains useful information, users tend to notice the sister column on the right, the ads. Here’s the eye tracking study image, which shows Bing on the left and Google on the right…
 

Specifically, notice the right side of both images. Bing (left) had more users reading the ads than Google (right).

All in all, I think eye tracking studies have limited purpose. Yes, they show the movement of the eyes, but they fail to take into account what the user is actually thinking. For instance, even if users always notice Bing ads, it doesn’t mean that those users will find them helpful. In fact, users may only be noticing the ads because Bing is new and they are trying to figure it all out. If Bing fails to provide a solid user experience and quality search results, then it will not gain any traction against the other search engines.

Microsoft is spending considerable advertising dollars on promoting Bing.com, and they hope it will be a Google killer. Unfortunately, I just don’t see it happening as the search engine doesn’t seem to have any huge advantage over Google or Yahoo. Also, I don’t see any better results than what MSN or Live.com provided.

So far, I see no improvement in Microsoft’s search algorithm. If I want to find information, and find it fast, I will continue to use Google and Yahoo.

Wondering where to go to submit your website to the search engines?

To have your website crawled by the search engine spiders, so that it begins to show up in search engine results, simply go to each of the links below. Each link will ask you to submit your site URL such as http://www.lukehubbard.com

Note that the following three search engines make up over 90% of all search engine traffic. Do NOT get ripped off and pay someone to submit your site to all the thousands of small search engines. If your site is well optimized and offers value, it will begin to show up in those search engines anyway. In fact, if you have a fantastic site, you don’t even need to submit it to the links below as chances are that the search engines will find you anyway. However, if you’re a new site and want to ensure that you’ll get found by the search engine crawlers, then go to each of the links below.

Submit URL to Google

Add site to Yahoo

Submit site to MSN