Blacklisted by Microsoft
When I started this blog I paid careful attention to my search rankings at the big three search engines (google, yahoo, and live.com) for the term “Daniel Hardy”. Shortly after its inception I was able to snag the #1 slot at Live.com, #3 slot at yahoo.com and #4 slot at google.com. Today the picture has changed a bit with the most interesting jump coming from Live.com.
It appears that I am no longer listed at Live.com. I am not sure how this works as my rankings on the other two have increased to #1 at yahoo and #2 at google. The conspiracy theorist in me (while small) thinks that perhaps all the discussions of Ubuntu are at the root of this decline. More likely this is a great demonstration of what a difference there is between these search providers.
Personally I find this difference to be extremely valuable. It is like a second opinion or another perspective on a given topic. Unfortunately one of these companies may soon be broken apart and melted into one of the other two. Hopefully this will not be the case but it is a tough world and Google is a monster of a competitor.