SEO Blog

The Internet is rarely a stable place. However, developments in the last few months, particularly in the realms of search, appear to far outweigh those in recent memory.

First of all in June, Bing gets announced. There’s a major furore as Microsoft sneaked it out a few days early, possibly in an attempt to avoid Google attempting to trump them – which they actually did with the announcement of Google Wave on the very same day.

Then, last month, Yahoo and Microsoft finally brokered a search deal that many had previously assumed was dead in the water. With Yahoo losing ground in search but still earning tidy profits and huge volumes of traffic elsewhere, the 10 year agreement between the two appears to be mutually beneficial. Not least because they’ll be using the Bing search engine, which is excellent but simply can’t break the dominance of the top two.

Suddenly the talk was all about MicroHoo/YaBing and how they were going to overhaul Google; well at least most thought they’d have a better chance if they stopped scoring points against each other. For the first time in quite a while, the Google team were a little quieter and seemingly concerned that a Yahoo and Microsoft partnership could mount a serious challenge.

Then, when all the dust has settled over the YaBing deal – which after all won’t be completed until early 2010 due to anti-competition checks – Google comes up with Caffeine. There’s no fanfare, no egregious ceremonial procession, just a little query on their blog requesting Beta testers.

Bringing real-time far closer – eclipsing Bing’s attempts to integrate some popular Twitter feeds within their search – it looks like Google may have given their rivals five minutes of fame before promptly snapping it back and getting on with the status quo.

As Google Caffeine comes into prominence more and more, it will certainly be interesting to see how it differs to the service we’ve come to expect. Already the speed seems to have increased, SERPs are featuring a different layout with various ranking alterations and even the paid search sidebar has moved closer to the actual search results – thus making them visible and hopefully profitable.

But the collective might of Yahoo and Microsoft cannot be simply glossed over. They have years of search experience between them, and if anyone can out-innovate Google at the moment, you have to believe that it will be them.

So whilst it has been an interesting few months in the world of search, don’t expect it to slow down any time soon.