More to come on this, but my three thoughts are:

1. Bing is actually quite a decent search engine (shock!) and if they build on this solid base Microsoft will eventually have something (in some way) to rival Google. Apart from the fact that (more shock!) Bing is more than just a re-brand and Microsoft have actually got some thing right, this thought is based upon the law of diminishing returns (Google can’t make as many leaps and bounds in the search side of the business as Microsoft can at this point in time). Therefore if MS continue on this track they will eventually make enough ground to be a serious contender. Whether anyone (or enough to make it interesting) will use their engine is another matter (see item 2… they just have).

2. Today’s Yahoo and Microsoft announced that they will pair up on the natural search front gives them enough joint searchers to make this a distant but worthwhile contender to Google’s strength. UK wise they still have to make a lot of ground even jointly, but worldwide their combined power is now significant. Like item 1 they now need to build on this to make the alliance a good and seamless one, that way they can develop the offering and seriously market to entice users to switch them from Google.

3. A really little point this, but try http://pagehunt.msrlivelabs.com/PlayPageHunt.aspx. This is the first time I have found something from Microsoft on the search front that overtly tries to go the extra mile. As said it is a small thing (and the current version of this test, isn’t wonderful), but it does show a sign that they have got some people who will try to push things along. If they engender this spirit then the momentum may just mean that they get a group of people who want and believe they can upset the big guys (I know it sounds strange saying that about Microsoft, but in this instance it is very true). Mind set wise this is absolutely crucial and a really difficult one for Microsoft (bearing in mind how arrogant they can be).

So there you go. I will now start to take a bit more interest in Microsoft/Yahoo from a natural search side (PPC wise I always did). Who knows maybe this time next year we will have a slightly different story on our hands. A long way to go though but a least this time they have made a real start.

P.S. to celebrate this I have now added a ‘Bing’ category, who would have thought it!

As you will have noticed I put up a box on the top right a while ago offering a free SEO assessment (from a top UK SEO no less… self proclamation is it really needed or worthwhile?). Well, we have got to the stage now where I am getting about two or three enquiries per day for this; thank you! Every person who submits a request gets a personalised assessment back. Some are brief and some are somewhat longer (depending on my current time pressures), but all of them should add some insight and value to the SEO situation for the site concerned.

There were two reasons I started this service. The first was to keep myself fresh (you know what I mean) and ‘with it’ with new sites and situations to look at and analyse. The second was to, maybe, get some paid assignments out of it too. This is when the initial assessment is greeted with a ‘let’s talk further’. I am pleased to say that I have hit the mark with both of these goals so far.

So what has changed? Well, I would like to open these out a bit and maybe once a month use a particularly good (or bad) situation and write about it publicly. The good news here is that the public ones will be quite in depth (the ones that usually have a fee attached if the person/company wants me to go a lot further) and this (public) assessment will now be free. This will only be by agreement (if you ask for an assessment you won’t now suddenly find me dissecting your site in a live post) and also I will make sure the version that appears here is a little bit more truncated that the one you will get. Hey, we might even do some live video or screen cam ones.

Now, here comes my get out. If this takes off too much I may have to rein back on the amount that I can do and be more selective. But let’s see how it goes.

If you would like me to give you an SEO assessment overview of your site, just send your detail via the contact form. You never know you might be the first one to get an extended assessment for free and make it on to the site too.

P.S. as the name of the site suggests this site is (meant to) concentrate on the UK SEO scene. So, please don’t be offended, but I do ask for the sites submitted to be UK based (doesn’t need to be  hosted in the UK, but needs to be administered in the UK). However, if you have a site outside of this region and you think (or know) I couldn’t resist to delve further on the SEO side you are welcome to submit it and give it a try!

Here it is…

1. Pick one of your competitors on the web who are doing better than you for your chosen search term (better to choose one of your less competitive terms/competitors for this tip).
2. Go to Yahoo Site Explorer and input their URL and hit ‘Explore URL’.
3. Choose the ‘inlinks’ tab.
4. In the ‘show inlinks’ on the first drop down menu choose ‘except from this domain’ and on the second choose ‘entire site’.
5. Now click ‘Export first 1000 results to TSV’ (you may have more than 1000 in your list, but Yahoo will only give you access this way to the first 1000. You can play around with some different search parameters to distill this some more. However, as mentioned before a more ‘niche’ area and picking a competitor with less than a 1000 results would be better).
6. Once you have the TSV file you can open it in Excel or the spreadsheet programme of your choice.
7. Now have a play around. Use your imagination! Think about what you can do with this data. As an example you could do a search for the competitors name and this will find the page titles and pages that mention (and are usually dedicated) to that company. This is usually either a directory you could assess the worth of or even better it might be a website that takes outside content and will be prepared to give you a page.

There are a lot of programmes out there that help you do things like this too. However, I just thought that if you are sitting there wondering what you could devote half an hour of link building time to and is FREE, then this could get you going.

Good linking…