According to a report by Chitika, Bing has passed Yahoo! as the No. 2 search provider in the U.S. Google still holds No. 1 with more than 80% of all searches.

This isn’t really that a big a deal. Since Bing is taking over Yahoo!s search technology anyway, and that move should be finished by the end of this month, it really just means that Bing can count more searches in its share than it could before. With Bing holding onto 11% of the searches made in July and Yahoo! at 6%, that means the No. 2 search engine has the lion’s share of the 19% of search share that Google doesn’t have with a total of 17% of the complete pie.

Bing really passed Yahoo! in January of this year when it garnered more than 7% of search and Yahoo had just over 6%. Google at that time had 83.59%. Since then, it seems, Bing has taken a couple of percentage points away from Google. Now the question remains: Can Bing take any more search share from Google?

It will be a long road uphill for Bing, but I wouldn’t say it’s impossible. What do you think?

It’s interesting watching developments in emerging markets like search and social media. For the past decade Google has dominated search and has just grown its market share more and more while its competition has declined. It just hasn’t seemed possible that anyone could catch up. Then, enter Facebook.

Facebook and Google have not exactly been competitors. But, technically, they are.

Google is a search engine. Facebook is a social media platform. Its growth into one of the largest and most trafficked websites online is itself an extraordinary success story. As is Google’s. Even though these two companies appeal to their respective users in very different ways, they can be considered competitors in one very important respect. They compete for traffic.

You could also say they compete for advertisers. After all, advertisers want to spend their money where the greatest hope of success is. Generally, that means where the people are. Traffic.

In Facebook’s case, however, that hasn’t exactly proven to be a huge feather in the cap. Google AdWords is still the No. 1 choice for online advertisers, which makes Facebook’s recent acquisition of Chai Labs an extraordinary event.

Google has had so many acquisitions that not many people even notice them any more. And no acquisition has taken the company from its emphasis on search, which is a good thing. But Facebook has not made a habit of adding new companies to its portfolio. The fact that one of its first acquisitions is a search technology provider means that Facebook is planning to enter into Google’s domain – and it’s just as well since Google has entered into Facebook’s a number of times. The question before Facebook today is whether it can take a purchase like Chai Labs and churn it into a public offering that will help it to rival Google in the one area where Google has excelled better than anyone else? Can Facebook become a search monolith without compromising its ability to provide a social platform?

Earlier this week Google launched a small business blog. It’s a significant development for Google, and for small business owners, for a number of reasons.

• First, have you noticed that all of Google’s blogs are on Blogspot, the free blog host? It’s another way for Google to promote the free blogging platform although I recommend that you get your own domain name and run it with WordPress.
• Google has been catering to small businesses for some time, but not all small business owners know what Google has to offer. The small business blog gives them a chance to see first hand.
• Google used its small business blog yesterday to announce a partnership with the U.S. Small Business Association in “Tools for Online Success.”

When Google, the largest search engine online, tells small business owners that it’s time to have a web presence then you know it’s time to get a web presence. In a few years it won’t have to be said. Small business owners will just know. If you’re not online now, you’re late. But it’s never too late.

If your business was listed multiple times in Google Places, would you be happy? Yelp isn’t.

Here’s a good summary of what may be going on:

Moreover, Google is using Yelp data to bulk up their Places offering. Yelp can’t like that too much. In fact, we’ve heard they’re particularly unhappy because they used to have a deal with Google for this data, but they pulled out of that deal a couple years ago. But Google decided to use Yelp’s data anyway simply by crawling it. Yelp can’t stop them from doing that unless they want to delist themselves from Google — a move which could kill them.

In other words, Yelp used to pay Google (or Google paid Yelp) for the privilege of getting its information in front of searchers then Yelp decided not to do that any more. So Google just started crawling Yelp’s pages and listed the information for free. It’s for user benefit, right?

But whose users?

Obviously, Google is concerned that users of its search engine will appreciate the information and that’s what they’re catering to. But Yelp would rather see those users on its own website. The problem is, some of those users likely will end up on Yelp’s website since Google Places links to it. Rarely does Google provide searchers with results without linking to the page from which the information is taken (I can’t think of a time that it ever has).

Google can’t make searchers click on the link and visit Yelp, but it’s likely that Yelp will pick up some users it doesn’t already have because it is listed in Google Places. I doubt that Yelp will lose any users to Google Places. If it does, that would be a turning point in search behavior.

What do you think? Should Yelp be happy with its privileged status on Google?

According to Experian Hitwise, Bing gained 7% in search share from May 2010 to June 2010. But if you look at the numbers they are 9.23% and 9.85%, respectively. That’s a 7% increase.

But here’s the kicker: Google lost slightly less than 1% of its share of search. In fact, it was .52%. That fell to Bing, plus some.

So what are we to make of these numbers? Is Bing more competitive now? Not hardly.

Well, let’s qualify that. Bing is more competitive, but only slightly so. They aren’t exactly overtaking Google by a storm or anything. But when you add the Yahoo! search percentage in there, the two search engines together own over 24% of the share of search. That’s starting to get there.

Bing definitely has a better share of the search market today than it ever has before. But it’s creeping up at a snail’s pace. It just doesn’t seem to be fast enough to give Google any real competition. But do you think it will ever happen? Will Bing become a major player in search?

Not too long ago Google ran a trial of a new feature for Google Maps, called Tags. Today, they’ve announced that they’re rolling out Tags to all 50 states.

Essentially, what Tags are is a way for local businesses to identify specific offerings they have that might entice customers to patronize them. If you offer any of the following then you can Tag your local business listing on Google, called Google Places:

• Coupons
• Videos
• Websites
• Menus
• Reservations
• Photos
• Custom messages

In essence, if you’re doing business online and you serve a local audience then you should find a way to add a Tag to your Google Places profile. It will make your business more competitive and easier for customers to find you.

The title of this post is somewhat misleading. There’s no reason to beware the Bingbot, but if you notice that it is called “Bingbot” rather than MSNbot then kudos to you.

Webmasters who check their site logs know that their websites get crawled by search engine spiders, also called bots. Google’s is called Googlebot. Until now, Bing, the search engine owned by MSN, has called its web crawler MSNbot. However, a recent WebProNews article has announced that MSN is now calling its bot Bingbot. What that means is when you check your site logs it will no longer say “MSNbot”, but “Bingbot”.

That may seem like a minor change, and it really is, but its significant enough that you should know about. Otherwise, you might think it’s an additional bot. It’s not.

Something else you should know is that you do not have to change your robots.txt file to allow Bingbot to crawl your site. It will respond to your allowance of MSNbot.

Google likes to experiment. One of the ways Google is experimenting right now is with letting publishers submit their original news stories to Google News for greater exposure. But what constitutes a publisher in Google’s eyes?

For now, the experiment is only open to certain publishers, which means that I haven’t been invited. When and if this experiment is rolled out to the public, will their be stipulations about what kind of news is eligible for submission and will there be stipulations about what publishers will be allowed to submit news? Will it be open to anyone?

According to Nieman Journalism Lab, the following news organizations are currently involved in the experiment:

• The Washington Post
• Newsday
• Reuters
• Slate

But that’s not all. According to the Nieman article, the experiment includes “less than a dozen news outlets”.

The experiment is called Editors’ Picks, so named because it allows the editors at the various news outlets to pick the stories they deem are worthy of promoting through this outlet. My guess is that when the experiment is released out of beta that only bona fide news organizations will be allowed to participate, but how broadly defined will that be? Any ideas?

Google has finally rolled out Caffeine completely for the public. And if you’re wondering what that is then brace yourself because it’s pretty significant. It’s significant from a search perspective as well as a marketing perspective.

For searchers, it means that information can be found a lot more quickly. For marketers it means that information will be indexed a lot more quickly.

Google explains that the old indexing system had most websites going for a couple of weeks before you’d expect to see them in the search results. Google Caffeine makes that process a lot more immediate and that’s very important from both a search perspective and a marketing perspective. The downside is that Google is also indexing more of the Web and that means more potential competition for you. So your marketing had better be right on cue.

Of course, Google hasn’t given up on relevance. And neither should you. Focus on your website content on relevance to your audience using the best keywords for their search habits. Let Caffeine do the rest.

Google doesn’t usually go public with its search algorithm changes. Search marketers usually have to guess what they mean. And there are so many of them that trying to keep up with them all is a bit of a nightmare. However, Google has confirmed a recent update, which is being called Mayday.

SEO is not a zero sum game; however, some algorithm changes can seem to be that way. If I’m reading this correctly, large sites that aren’t reaching their full potential will get a boost under this change. That means other sites will have to fall – at least where long tail search phrases are concerned.

So my question to you is: Have you noticed any changes in search rankings in the last month? If so then it means one of two things:

1. Your site is a large site that hasn’t done well in the optimization arena and so isn’t getting the attention that Google believes it deserves; in this case, you’ll see a boost in your search rankings.
2. Or, maybe your site is a large site that has a good handle on SEO and you really need no help getting rankings; you might have seen some slippage in the rankings for certain long tail keyword phrases. If that’s you then depending on how many competitors got Google’s help, you could still be within the neighborhood for those keyword terms.

Now, do you see yourself in there?

I’d really like to know how many small businesses have been affected, either positively or negatively, by this change. Sound off, please.