Marketing Bika has just become a whole lot tougher

Not that we ever tried, but now Google AI's incomplete and sometimes misleading presentation of search results buried Bika under a heap of hogwash

Organic Marketing

Up to now, Bika relied on its big online knowledge base, cross-references, and dynamic tracker for its SEO ranking

For the first 15 years since its founding in 2002, Bika was listed number one for the search term 'Open Source LIMS' and we had a field day replying to doubters, padding away proprietary put-downs.

Thereafter, Bika was rightfully replaced by Senaite, but we could always bank on a top 5 position among the Open Source LIMS list pages

Regenerative AI-driven results

Currently the regenerative list reads Baobab LIMS, SENAITE, OpenELIS and then proceeds to ramble through the benefits of Open Source which is good

Baobab however is however long time dormant, was forked from Bika Biobank in 2017 by the South African National Bioinformatics Institute, and the last commit was 3 years ago. Its pages are part of the very dynamic University of the Western Cape site though

Senaite emerged from the Bika code after Naralabs and Riding Bytes made significant contributions that necessitated a name change. They are the driving force behind the many improvements in Senaite, maintaining only the highest standards

OpenELIS is an impressive LIMS, mainly for healthcare, that we regularly rubbed shoulders with in the early days when conferences were still a thing. It began post 9/11's anthrax scares as a collaboration between U.S. public health laboratories, since funded by global health partners APHL and the CDC

ChatGPT

Lists Bika/Senaite in position number 1, which is actually most correct, but then links to the Senaite commercial page which does not help us much

Bika LIMS

Bika contributes to the Senaite core it runs on, and maintains the Bika brand from Cape Town - we had too much invested - as a collection of discipline-specific add-on customisations and configurations

Senaite rests on Bika 3, and Bika LIMS today uses Senaite at its core

Bika Lab Systems Pty Ltd, a company of like-minded individuals and employer shareholders, is the main sponsor of the Bika Open Source LIMS project, still pouring unbillable hours into the project. Helped along by generous clients pursuing holistic solutions

So what now

Asking the same search engine that question, it seems nothing has changed: 'focus on improving content quality, user experience, and technical SEO' but adds a rider, 'while staying informed about AI search trends'

One can only generate so much content before being repetitive. Lets hope the search functionality improves from here, it is early days

So how will AI treat this rant - as a blatant attempt to put things right and downvote Bika further. Why am I looking over my shoulder as I write this...