Not to state the obvious, but Microsoft’s Bing is a search engine. So in that case, wouldn’t you assume that workers of Microsoft would have some knowledge of internet marketing training, maybe even an inkling of how SEO works? Well one would certainly assume. Why is it then that Ciao is continually not shown in the search engine rankings? Workers of the Microsoft shopping site are convinced that their poor rankings on Google are not the result of their poor SEO but rather direct interference from the Search engine giant.

Microsoft is not the only company to complain that Google are interfering with their SEO campaign. UK search site Foundem.com and French legal information site ejustice.fr have all lodged complaints with the European Union that state Google is unfairly demoting all competitor websites.

This might be the first time that Google has been accused of penalising its competitors, but it definitely isn’t the first time that Google’s internet marketing training techniques have come under close scrutiny. Google was once accused of manipulating its SERPS to promote its own services at the expensive of others and some have even likened SEOing their site correctly in the eyes of Google to a particularly complicated game of Blind Man’s Bluff. 

According to the Telegraph, the European Union haven’t yet decided whether or not to formally launch an investigation, but they are taking the accusations very seriously. Google have claimed that they don’t pick and choose favourites but rather works to produce the most relevant and useful search results to users. With Google, being forced to answer difficult questions over their ranking algorithms, should we expect to see more accusations from the search engine giant within the next couple of months? It’s difficult to predict what exactly will come out of this investigation, but you can guarantee that we’ll be staying tuned in to the very end.