I just switched from Google to rival search engine Microsoft's Bing. Will I stay with Bing? Time will tell.

From The Wall Street Journal:

If search results are all about relevance, Google could be risking its own.

In local search, for instance, by promoting its own results over other, perhaps more relevant sites, as suggested by a Journal report Monday, Google may be doing users a disservice. It also may be giving rivals like Microsoft a chance to take share.

Arbitrating website relevance for searchers, as Google does, is a tall order. Results that one web surfer finds informative may be useless to another. Google's two-thirds share of searches, according to comScore, suggests it has managed well, historically. Yet Google's investment in its own content has to conflict with its role as a neutral arbiter.

Google says its search results are engineered for users. And admittedly, some publisher complaints about their Google rankings are little more than sour grapes.

Some sites that are original and relevant appear to be suffering because Google has designs on their traffic. Yelp.com is a good example. Google views local search as strategic and is investing heavily to make its local results better. With its vast array of user reviews, however, Yelp offers some of the best local content available. Indeed, Google tried to buy the company last year.

But in the latest version of its local results, Google appears to be downplaying Yelp web pages in favor of its own results that aren't as relevant. The risk is that searchers bypass Google as a result.

This could provide an opening for rival search engines, particularly Microsoft's Bing. Since its integration with Yahoo's site, Bing already is a more vibrant rival. With a combined 28% of search queries, it remains a distant second. That can only change if Google forgets its priority is its users.