So Bing UK is out of BETA huh?

So Bing thought they’d jump on the ‘our results don’t contain non UK specific websites’, which is in relation to Google’s decision to weaken the Geo-filter in mid June.  This decision resulted in the SERPs being flooded by non-UK specific websites – and had Matt Cutts running to the hills after being chased by angry webmasters.  But we can always rely on Bing to produce relevant results to a UK audience for universal search terms right?…..Right?!!!

Well apparently not, even if I am judging the results a mere four days after the official statement was released on their blog.  It turns out that the example they provided within the statement isn’t actually true at all!  If you search for the term ‘football’ within Bing UK you’d expect to get the BBC or SkySports – who will offer you in depth analysis, news and statistics on the beautiful game.  Bing also thinks you might be interested in the NFL website  – according to these results (something they said would not happen on their blog):

NFL website showing up in Bing SERPs

Brilliant stuff!  After putting up a blog clearly explaining the changes to the search engine and that now it is out of BETA testing they are free to serve up UK related results to a UK audience – you’d expect them to make sure the example they provided is actually true.  It gets worse if you take a look at the image and video results being returned at the bottom of the page:

American Football related results being returned in Bing

You’d probably expect a clip showing a superb goal in the World Cup from Brazil or a masterful pass from a Ballon D’or candidate not some clip art pictures that wouldn’t look out of place on a birthday card you received from your Grandad when you were seven – nor for that matter an American Football and a stack of American Football clips.  Am I the only one missing something here?  This reminds me of those inventors that go on Dragon’s Den and the prototype doesn’t work.  You can hear the cries from the Bing office ‘It worked earlier…honest!’.

Now would have been the best time for Bing to nail those results and get one up on Google (in light of the summer change).  Bing should be boasting about the relevancy and usefulness of their results – not stating they’ve fixed something when they quite clearly haven’t.  I regret to say that on that basis – i’m out!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 17th, 2009 at 6:17 pm and is filed under Online News, SEO Watch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.