Alright I know I really should just let the Microsoft Office cheating campaign go, so here's hopefully the last time I'll mention it here.
I got curious when looking at my post list earlier, as my '
Office, it's worse than cheating' post got more views than any other recent post. I checked out the referrals and found that quite a few came from google searches so I conducted some google searches of my own.
Googling 'office it's not cheating' (no quotation marks):
Googling the same, but Australian sites only:
Notice that the blogs.msdn.com entry has disappeared (as it's US hosted), and also note that I'm before entries from mainstream media sources too
.
Now, if I alter the search slightly, and take out the apostrophe, so
googling 'office its not cheating', Australian sites only (no quotation marks):
The official 'It's not cheating!' site isn't even on the first page anymore! I'm on top, followed by the mainstream media sources
. This is a very easy typo, or variation because the user was lazy (as I often am on this blog too). Something went wrong with the SEO (search engine optimisation) on the site. Only when you click through to the
3rd page of results (which no one does, unless they're desperate) do you finally see the official site:
Maybe the google gods are playing a mean trick on Microsoft (thank you google gods for the traffic
). Or maybe the poor SEO on the 'It's not cheating' site is to blame, I mean look at the summary that google got out of it.
The results on Live Search aren't as good for me. I'm still on the first page when its Australian sites only, but further down. The summary for the official site still sucks:
And if you
take out the apostrophe and repeat the search, I'm still on the first page, but the official site disappears from the first 5 pages of results, after which I gave up.
Moral of the story? Google rocks, Live search is still playing catch up, SEO is important, blogs and their readers rule!
Thanks to all who got the post bumped up there! Maybe someone within Microsoft will take my points into consideration now. The offer's great, just the promotion's not.
P.S. as I mentioned in the other posts, I'm not a Micro$oft hater - you only have to look at my current skillset to work that out.