On Sunday, Macworld reported that Microsoft has discussed “de-indexing” its news website from Google. In effect, News Corp content would cease to appear in Google’s search engine results.
Now this is hard ball at the big league level. If the information is correct, Microsoft will be setting a target on the value of content. This is a massive shot in the arm for newspapers publishers who have been floundering trying to come up with an online revenue model. The ramifications for digital content are enormous.
Microsoft has been doing all the right things in the search arena and the results are staring to show. Comscore recently reported that Microsoft’s Bing percent of searches from 9.4 to 9.9% in October. While Google broke the 65% barrier and continues to dominate search, a deal of this kind by Microsoft is a game changer.
Microsoft’s market share would increase dramatically as user’s rotate between the 2 giants to make sure they have all the resources they require to research, shop or simply to be informed. As an SEO company, the increased traffic Microsoft would acquire would force our hand to take Bing more seriously but the traffic would be worth it.
More importantly, a deal like this might provide the solution that newpapers have been searching for for years. Don’t you just love competition?