It’s the holiday season, and that means its time for people to start buying tons of shiny baubles they find on the Internet. As the shopping searches start to pick up, Microsoft is taking aim at Google with its new “Scroogled” campaign. At issue is Google’s decision to turn Google Shopping into a paid listing site. Although, Microsoft’s Bing might not be the best messenger for this news.
Google announced last summer that its previously organic Google Shopping results would transition to a pay-to-play model. Retailers that want to have specific products show up when users click over to the shopping tab, have to buy advertising space. This is notable mostly because Google has always been adamantly opposed to taking payment for any search listings.
The Bing Scroogle site links to Google financial disclosures and blog posts that lay out this grave injustice. According to Bing, consumers are not being served honestly by Google because a previously free and open method of search is now composed of ads. Microsoft has the broad strokes right — this is a troubling move by Google. However, Bing might be even more dishonest about its shopping results.
Google marks all its shopping results as ads now, but Bing includes the notification, “Payment is NOT a factor used to rank search results in Bing.” According to an investigation by Search Engine Land, Bing’s shopping results are also paid, despite the disclaimer. To get a product listed on Bing, sellers have to pay to get into the Shopping.com program. A Microsoft spokesperson pointed out that Bing does have a limited free product submission program which is currently closed. That doesn’t really help.
