SEO Rant: Stop Saying MSN If You Live In 2010

This actually rhymes, so say it with me now: "Stop saying MSN if you live in twenty-ten!"

After receiving an email from an Internet marketer yesterday who offered SEO (Search Engine Optimization) services to increase my rankings in "Google, Yahoo, and MSN," I had just one snarky thought course through my head (which I then posted on Twitter):

Seriously. If you're an SEO consultant/freelancer/agency right now in 2010 and you want to offer customers value and truth, then at least get the names of the search engines right! Bing officially replaced MSN as Microsoft's search engine almost a year-and-a-half ago, so why not take the 15-45 seconds to fire up Dreamweaver (or whatever you use to edit Web pages) and make the change(s) on your site? And while you're at it, how about those emails you're pushing out, too? And, yes; I realize you can still go to MSN, but the search engine it utilizes is Bing. Microsoft has integrated the functionality of Bing into almost every product of theirs at this point: MSN, Windows Live, Xbox 360/Live, Windows Phone 7, et al. There's even a Bing app for the iPhone, Blackberry, and Android!

That's right; a Bing app. Not an MSN app! But a Bing app.

The SEO landscape is one that is inherently filled with hills and valleys, so with all the changes in terminology and techniques that we must adapt to, I'm a bit puzzled as to why this one has eluded so many people. I mean, I know that Bing is really only worth mentioning insofar as it's Microsoft's search engine (let's face it: its market share is nowhere near Google's at the moment and all we SEOs *really* care about is Google), but still. It's not MSN, it's Bing.

Let me clarify here that I'm not blasting all of my wonderful friends and colleagues in this industry who still say "MSN." I'm simply saying that it's outdated verbiage and something that only puts you in the company of outdated SEOs who use it out of ignorance (and that's giving them the benefit of the doubt). A year-and-a-half later, it just *might* be time to stop saying "MSN" and start saying "Bing" -- no matter how much you may hate saying it. :)