Will Yahoo and Bing Apply Real-time Search Results Into SERPS

Will Yahoo and Bing apply real-time search results into SERPS? The answer is yes. The evidence is clear when both started to include Twitter in their SERPS. By joining Google with these types of results for their clients, there is an added bonus to many website operators making social media marketing now easier than ever.

Just like with other pages and how they get ranked, the more visits and backlinks a site receives, the higher the ranking in the SERPS. This is drastically simplified and just part of the algorithm that is applied to the SERPS, but a good way to explain it.

With Twitter, Facebook, Diggs, and other social media sites becoming listed in the results of a key word search by surfers, the social media marketers receive more coverage than ever before. This all started in the early weeks of December 2009, and has already shown beneficial results.  This social media marketing is the cyber world’s version of word-of-mouth advertising.

For those not sure of what I am talking about, let me explain. At the bottom of many articles there are icons from Digg, Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, and others that are popular social networks. These social networks allow members to post links to their favorite web pages that they have found. At first, this was just a way of sharing information. Soon cyber markets realized that is was an advertising gold mine and is for free.

Soon many website owners were testing the waters in this new arena. Many made postings and would send the links to their friends asking them to read it and leave comments. The best way to promote an article on one of these sites if the reader likes it is by “digging” it on Digg or “tweet” it on Twitter.  Each hit being considered a recommendation to other readers, the article or webpage moves up the rankings on these particular sites. 

Now that Yahoo and Bing joins Google in ranking these most popular articles and links, the best of the internet can be easily found. The main differences between the big three search engine results are that Google and Yahoo have integrated the results from these social pages as part of their main results from search queries. Bing still has the results on a separate page, but what would you expect from Microsoft.

Bing is the smallest of the search engines so this might be the reason why they have a different approach. By being different, they will give the web surfer an option. Only time will tell.  With Google still at 75% of all search queries and Yahoo at about 24%, Bing has a lot of ground to make up.

Will Yahoo and Bing apply real-time search results into SERPS in their attempt to keep up with the search engine leader? That was a foregone conclusion. With Yahoo following exactly what Google is doing and Bing trying a new approach, only time will tell which is preferred by the web surfing community.