July 29th, 2010 by Susie

It is often said that we live in an age of information. Certainly the networked knowledge economy has been with us for several years. However, some commentators have claimed that we suffer from an excess of information. They contend that evaluating situations and making decisions is made more problematic by the fact that we have access to such large volumes of data. It does seem that there may be something in this theory. Microsoft have come up with the slogan ‘Bing and decide’ to promote the search engine Bing. The subtext of this slogan is that other search engines are not assisting with decision-making. The question really is can Google, the most popular search engine internationally, be said to be in part responsible for information overload?

To the extent that information overload exists, it is a dilemma which haunts politicians and big players in business. Operating in a content of copious information, they can find it hard to take balanced decisions which take into account the most relevant facts. The average user of a search engine is trying to find something specific. They are not usually trying to work out whether or not to keep a national nuclear deterrent. They are merely trying to track down some data in the same way as someone might have used a library. A search engine, particularly one as efficient as Google, usually helps the user wade through the irrelevant stuff.

Google, then, does not contribute to information overload. It actually helps people to process, sift and understand data. Google is successful in large part because it is excellent at what it does. In short, it works. Therefore it would appear that Bing’s slogan is not that effective because so many users will not notice a correspondence between it and reality. The only way in which the slogan could be justified is if Bing regularly outperformed Google. If Bing helped users get to the right information faster than Google, the slogan could in part be salvaged.

While Bing has its advocates and its defenders, it superficially appears that it does not provide a superior service to Google. If it did, it would have probably made more headway in terms of market share. While some users prefer Bing, it would seem that the hegemony of Google is likely to persist for some time to come. Thus the slogan of Bing may not be backed up by the evidence which is out there. It should be remembered that many slogans are based on aspiration. This slogan is describing the world that Microsoft would like rather than the world which currently exists.

At Searchengineoptimization.co.uk we understand the importance of monitoring relevant trends in search. SEO is often about optimising for several search engines, but it is still of utility to be aware of variations in market share. It is also the case that a specific target audience may have its own motivations for preferring one search engine to another. As a search engine optimisation campaign should be a long term thing, it is only prudent to be vigilant about changes which may necessitate adjustments.

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