Is the Apple tablet taking over search engines?

Real-time search has been the talk of search engine mechanics for a better part of a year now. So in the sluggishly fast paced world of Apple tablet rumors how do the big two search engines compare?

Searching for the generic term “tablet” in both Google an Bing, what shows up more frequently: breaking news rumors about the mythical Apple tablet or links to the Microsoft Tablet PC ecosystem?

Here’s Google’s take on the term “tablet”:

Shown in yellow highlights are references to the Apple tablet–which remember hasn’t even been announced or officially acknowledged by Apple–and circled in red are references to Microsoft’s existing Tablet PC ecosystem/devices.

In large part because of how Google search results are reported back, there’s no doubt that the Apple rumor mill has bubbled up to prominent positions in Google. Yes, Tablet PCs get mention, but about on par with non-PC tablets too.

What about Bing? Well, searching for the generic term “tablet” returns these results:

Again, Tablet PC references are circled in red. Yes, there are a reasonable number of Tablet PC returns in the search. Makes sense, Bing and the Tablet PC concept are Microsoft efforts. I’d expect them to play nicely together.

What is more interesting to me though, is that there’s not one single reference to an Apple rumor on page 1 of Bing’s search results. Not one. You could argue that Bing is doing a pretty good job here of hiding Apple tablet rumor chatter–most of which is probably going to be wrong anyway. I’d buy that.

Every search engine has its idiosyncrasies and Bing probably just needs a little extra help to get more Apple rumor news.

But let’s face it, on the Google side of the world, if the Tablet PC community doesn’t speak up a little it may get overwhelmed off of Google’s coveted top search results and given that so many people use Google, this may not be such a good thing.