A few days ago, Microsoft Advertising offered a little bit of hope to those businesses who want an idea of where they rank in search results. While Google is planning to remove this data (for a variety of reasons we’re about to get into), Microsoft Advertising is continuing to offer data to this effect for the time being, which is a point of difference that could work well for them as Google continues to push into well researched new frontiers, but frontiers that often confuse businesses nonetheless.

The certainty factor could bode well for Microsoft. However as is always the case, it’s not quite as simple as it sounds. Keep in mind that we’re talking about Bing & Yahoo! Advertising here, not Google Ads. So while Microsoft might be looking to capitalise on what users want that Google is taking away, it’s on a platform that only has around 30%-35% market share. Still, nothing to be sneezed at.

With all of this said, we’d be remiss not to get into why Google is removing this data. For starters, Google is removing position tracking related data mostly because the old adage of “Position 1-10 generally means page one” just isn’t true anymore. Google’s front page, in particular, can be pretty busy these days with ads, maps listings, shopping results, image and video results thrown in on occasion, the knowledge graph and suggested/related queries, not to mention anything new they’re currently testing. With all of this going on, “position” number 1 could be waaaay down the page, so it makes sense that this isn’t the best way to track your results anymore.

We’d be inclined to agree for the most part. For our clients, we know that conversion/sales data is much more important and the very narrow focus on rankings that some businesses have developed can really take focus away from what actually matters, so this makes sense. As far as Bing and Yahoo! are concerned though, although they do also experiment with many different kinds of results, the traditional results still play a much more prominent role on the front page, so keeping ranking data, for now, is probably a smart move.

For more on exactly what data we’re talking about and for a more detailed breakdown, visit searchenginejournal.com