Microsoft Favors Advertisers Over Searchers

Writing by Nick Stamoulis Tweet

This is wonderful news (I think), but did it improve search at all?

For once I’d like Microsoft to come out and say we’ve made sweeping changes to our search engine indexing algorithms that will improve the results in our search engine for searchers. Everyone will benefit. Searchers will benefit by getting better results, which will lead to more people using the search engine and more people advertising in return. More advertisers will lead to more revenue for Microsoft, which will lead to more money available for use in research and development. But it looks like Microsoft has found another way to get the money for R&D. Instead of improving search they’ve decided to go the route of capitalizing on the needs of advertisers. Therefore, searchers lose; advertisers win.

This is the exact opposite of the way that Google has approached search. Of course, now that Google has secured top spot in search and PPC, it looks like their advertising policies are becoming more and more favorable toward advertisers than searchers. Good thing their advertising policies and search policies are separate. Not true of Microsoft’s policies. Another reason to stay with Google.