Google Slows Down, Bing Rebrands and More – The Week in Search

It’s been a bit of a crazy week on the interwebs, with most of the attention being on the anti SOPA movement with plenty of big name sites taking part in the “blackout” for the day to try and showcase what the internet would look like if SOPA was to go ahead.

However, we decided not to cover that story due to the amount of information out there about it already – plus it’s not technically SEO news so we thought we’d stick to our usual coverage of all the other things that happened this week.

Google are really starting to get into hot water from all angles, with yet more action being taken against them. Are Google getting too complacent? Still – with the release of their 2011 Q4 earnings, it’s no wonder they can afford to chuck money at their problems, but can this last forever?

With Bing really ramping up i’s efforts to nibble away at Google’s market share – this latest move by Bing to “rebrand” from the strap line “The Decision Engine” goes someway to showing what they think a search engine should do.

So let’s pull back the curtain on this week’s SEO news below!

January 17th

Jerry Yang Out At Yahoo
Yahoo just announced that co-founder and former CEO Jerry Yang has resigned from the company’s Board of Directors and all other positions with the company…

January 18th

Jerry Yang: What Yahoo Employees Have Said About Him …
As you may know, Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang has resigned from all positions at the company. Glassdoor has taken the opportunity to share what some Yahoo…

Google Fires Rogue Contractors for Vandalizing Competitor’s …
In the past week, Google has profited from the sale of illegal and …

January 19th

Google Reports Q4 2011 Earnings, $10.58 Billion in Revenue; 90M …
Google Reports Q4 2011 Earnings, $10.58 Billion in Revenue; 90M Google+ Users … 2011. Google Reports Q3 2011 Earnings, Record $9.72 Billion Revenue …

January 20th

Google Slowed Crawl Rate to Aid Websites Protesting SOPA …
Bing may have seen a bit of a boost in the fresh results department as a result of their slightly faster crawl rate on SOPA Blackout day, while GoogleBot slowed down substantially. Plus, a new infographic shows just how many …

The Decision Engine is Dead: Now Bing is For Doing
Bing is evolving. Emphasis on the “ing.” Microsoft’s search engine is ditching the “decision engine” label and rebranding with a new message: Bing is for doing. And Bing is no doubt hoping that the rebranding will stop people …

Google’s New Page Layout Update Targets Sites With Too Many Ads
Is your website ad heavy? You may be in trouble. Google has announced a new algorithm tweak that will lower the rankings of websites that Google determines is providing a bad user experience – a move Google hinted was …

In Closing…

What does the “Too many Ads” update mean to you? Do you fall into this category? Do you like the idea – or do you think it’s just plain hypocritical from Google?

Over the last few months, have you started using Bing more? If so – how have you found the results in comparison to Google? Do you feel it’s a good move by Bing to try and market themselves differently?

Remember – hit us up in the comments below with your thoughts about this week’s news!

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