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Google Kicked Out By Alexa Sparky

Alexa Plugin for SEO
Does the new Alexa Sparky add-on kick out Google?

What a surprise — for the first time I got search results surfed by Microsoft's Bing search engine. And I did not even intend that. All I wanted to do was to find a particular project for a Wave client (software) I read about on the Web. I typed my query into the address bar, hit enter, and got these results below.

Not necessarily what I was looking for. But wait a second … Why didn't Firefox serve the result from Google as usually?

Internet Search With Bing
Search result from Bing! Why?
(Click on the image to enlarge in new window.)

Well, I played around with Bing a tiny bit, right when Microsoft had launched their new search service but I did not stick with it for long. Honestly, Google is my most favorite search engine. Period. Google did not only catch me for search, but with a plethora of other great applications. From Gmail, to Google Docs, AdWords, … to their translation tool, and … Wave is the latest on the list. They hooked me up. Probably for life.

So I was quite surprised that I suddenly got Bing results displayed.


What has happened?


I remember that I had updated my Alexa Sparky add-on for Firefox this week. I also remember having seen a note about new features but I kind of ignored it. Now, it's obvious what had happened. Alexa Sparky is one of the FireFox Add-ons I use.

Traffic Estimates For Websites With Alexa
Updated the Alexa Sparky Add-On
(Click on the image to enlarge in new window.)




Two new settings for Alexa


Alexa can handle search for you
Settings Alexa Sparky

With the latest version of the plugin you can have Alexa …
  • handle error cases like “Error 404: Page Not Found,”
  • and Searches.
No options for configuring what search engine to use though. At least I did not find any but Alexa’s default seems to be Bing (↑).

Sorry, Alexa.
Sorry, Microsoft.
I just have deactivated both settings.


I'm back at Google.


And here is why. The first search result, and even the second one is exactly what I was looking for.

Google results are the best
Google Search Results Are Simply Better
(Click on the image to enlarge in new window.)

Of course, you can come up with cases in which Bing gets more relevant results up-front, but as I said, “Google has already ‘hooked’ me.”

I will continue to use the add-on for having the Alexa rank of websites displayed but I don’t allow it to take control of my browser.

Yours
John W. Furst

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Jodi Kaplan on :

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Interesting, John. I did the same update - and did not lose Google search. However, I have a Mac. Maybe it was a sneaky MS thing?

John W. Furst on :

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Thanks for the feedback.

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