Filed under: acquisition, AOL, ask, fragmenting search market, internet marketing, microsoft, ppc, purchases, search engine marketing, search engines, seo, the future of search engine marketing, the future of search engine optimisation, useful article, yahoo | Tags: consolidation, fragmentation., microsoft, msn, purchasing, search engine marketing, yahoo, ysm
Ive finally gotten round to having a little think about the big news story of the week, Microsoft tabling a bid of $44.6 Billion in cash and stock to buy its rival Yahoo. There has been no official comment from Yahoo on the reports but I thought Id document my thoughts on the impace this could have.
The portal market
Yahoo and MSN are the two big players in the portal market, the one stop shop for all you web needs, search engine, web mail, news feed, weather reports, all in one place. This is where Microsoft will gain a massive advantage and pretty much gain complete dominance. Aside from the ISP sites, which gain their visitors through having a default homepage setting in the ISP setup process, Microsoft will have a dominance in this field comparable to Google’s in the search market (more of that in a minute!). So what does this mean to MSN? Well instantly they will take on board the lions share of the portal advertising revenues around the world. Yahoo has built an advertising model which is highly lucrative and brings in a huge amount of revenue each year, utilising the latest behavioural targeting technology to keep online advertising moving forward. MSN obviously has its own advertising model and ideas on how the market is going to advance but they will automatically boost their ad revenues with the purchase. It also sets them up well for the predicted rise in online ad spend over the next few years, from $40 billion to $80 billion if you believe the predictions, dominance in a market this size is a mouth watering prospect.
The search market
This is where it gets really interesting. Microsft has struggled to gain a foothold in the search market since it launched its own PPC model in 2006 and I forecasted in a previous post (Microsoft sets its sights on 40% market share) that a purchase may be on the cards if they were to achieve their targets. The purchase of Yahoo Search Marketing (YSM), if part of the deal, would possibly take their market share into the double figures in the paid search arena. Their system is good at present, the quality of their traffic is good, its just the volume they have been missing. YSM would help boost this and make them a legitimate number 2 in this arena and they undoubtedly have the fire power to make dents in Google’s dominance (see their response here). It does raise the question, what does this mean to search agencies? the market which was due to fragment with the launch of wikia search, AOL breaking out in the US, Ask hinting at the same, is now significantly consolidated if this deal does actually go through. Does this make SEM simpler? Not really but it could be perceived that way, a post for another time I think.
How do they manage it?
This will be interesting, does Yahoo become Microsoft branded? or is it just another property of the technology giant? Does it become Microhoo? Yasoft? Mahoo? or does it become Yahoo – a Microsoft company? and more importantly for internet marketers do they keep the two infrastructures separate, the advertising interfaces, the search algorithms, the display advertising models. This is what will be the key determinant of what this means to the industry and what it means to digital agencies.
Whether the deal goes through remains to be seen, when it goes through is another question yet to be answered. What is undeniable is that it is going to influence the online advertising market significantly, in what way, remains to be seen.
Filed under: adwords, content search, google, google content, google sign in, internet demographics, search engine marketing, the future of search engine marketing | Tags: adwords, contextual search, demographic targeting, google, google content
The adwords blog has announced the launch of a demographic bidding beta test and is offering the chance for advertisers in the UK and the US to sign up for the trial. Reading into the release the targeting is only going to be available on the content network placement network and is dependent on the publisher site having the capability to provide the information on the users. If the site has this information, more often than not through a sign in system, then it will be shared anonymously to Google and the appropriate ads.
From the detail in this article the benefits of this system over MSN’s own demographic targeting system is that the system will allow you to up weight your bids by a higher percentage (MSN’s limit is 150%) and that you will also be able to choose not to show your ads to certain audiences. This is certainly an advance on MSN but the impact of it will be limited by the reliance on the publisher site and the fact that the targeting wont apply to the main Google search results, where it could have most benefit. This is obviously due to the fact that you dont need to be signed in to Google to use it although they could have implemented it for those people who have a Google account and perform searches whilst signed in. Maybe that will be in the next release, I suppose we’ll have to wait and see.
Filed under: AOL, ask, combining paid and natural search, fragmenting search market, holistic search, image search, innovation. search engine marketing, msn, natural search, new products, personalisation, personalised search, personalising search results, search engine marketing, search engine optimisation, search engines, search resources, serp, the future of search engine marketing, the future of search engine optimisation, universal search | Tags: ask.com, google, msn, search engine dominance, search engine marketing, universal search, yahoo
Search engine land reported today the release of some new functional by ask which allows a user to upload their own personal background image for the search engine. The functionality to add a skin to the background has been available since last year but this was only for predetermined images and wasn’t customisable. I like the idea of customising the results page and this is a much simpler solution than Google’s which involves xml information rather than a simple image upload. It is also much more flexible and interesting than msn and yahoo’s offerings which only allow the selection of different colour palletes for the page.
This functionality is just another stage in the battle for search engine supremacy but also for loyalty within internet users through added value. Yahoo had this a long time ago through positioning itself as an information portal and one stop shop for your internet needs (email, news, sport, search…) a similar position taken by MSN. Then Google smashed this with its simplicity and accuracy of results. But even the big G has recognised the need to give people more and through iGoogle struck a balance between information on the page and usability by allowing the user to choose which information feeds they received. The issue at the bottom of all of this is keeping people using your page/engine, setting it as their homepage, and a base for all their online activities. If they can use your site for everything they need online whey would they go elsewhere? The longer a user in on your site, the more searches they do, the more ads they view, the more ads they click, the more money you make! Simple. Expect a lot more releases like in this in the next 12 months as the battle continues.
It’ll take a lot more functionality for Yahoo, Ask or MSN to catch Google but I do know people who now use the Yahoo homepage as they prefer it to Google so there is some movement going on. You can check out the Ask function on the US site here, it is not yet available in the UK.
Filed under: fragmenting search market, innovation. search engine marketing, personalised search, personalising search results, search engine marketing, search engines, search resources, the future of search engine marketing, the future of search engine optimisation, universal search, wiki, wikipedia | Tags: wiki, wikia, wikia search, wikipedia
I had my first look at the Wikia Search alpha today and I have to say the results are absolute pants! To be fair to them the people at Wikia do say the results won’t be great at the moment as the basis of their engine is that of user reviews and not so much algorithmic search, hence results will improve rapidly over time as listings begin to get scored by users. I have to admit that I like the idea of a user ranked search engine, after all, how many websites do you come across which have absolutely no relevance to your search phrase? (my blog ranks rather highly for “search pornsex” for example!) But not only that, a user can make more judgements on things like usability and site layout than a search engine spider which should further help the best websites rise to the top. The process appears relatively simple, hover over a result and a five star scale will appear allowing you to score the result, this will then be used along with the algorithmic properties to determine a websites position. This will be wholly reliant obviously on users picking up on and participating in this ranking process so I will be watching with a lot of interest how the results improve over the coming weeks.Aside from the standard results there is also going to be a section at the top of results reserved for “mini articles” on each subject. According to Wikia “These will vary in purpose according to the circumstance, but the primary uses will be:
- Short definitions
- Disambiguations
- Photos
- See also “
Generated by the users these will obviously take the same form of the Wikipedia pages and will undoubtedly include some Wikipedia content for sections yet to be populated by the new system. Wikia Search undoubtedly has the potential to become the most relevant search engine but the worry, as has been the problem with tagging sites such as digg in recent times, is that people begin to play the system, creating alias accounts to boost their own contents ratings and therefore rank, totally devaluing the whole platform. If Wikia Search really does become the next number one contender to the big G then the temptation to find a “quick win” within its system will grow stronger in line with its visitor stats. At present I believe Wikia plans to get around the duplicate account problem by basing its user on IP address but that doesn’t sound like to much of a robust system to me and I cant imaging it will be long before the spammers have an easy way of beating it.
I may have sounded negative in this post but I honestly hope Wikia Search succeeds, I hate the dominance Google has on the search market. I also love the thought of users producing the search results rather than a piece of software. On this initial offering I think there is a long way to go with the next big pretender.
Filed under: google, innovation. search engine marketing, search engine marketing, search engines, the future of search engine marketing, the future of search engine optimisation, travel search, universal search | Tags: flight status, google, google flight search, google flight status, universal search
Google announced on its blog yesterday the launch of a new tool for universal search, the flight status function. All you have to do is search on the airline and the flight number and Google will tell you whether it is delayed or on time and its departure and arrival times. its a useful little tool this one as it removes the need to find the airlines web page and with a lot of people having Google as their homepage or using a tool bar it speeds up the process. I would be interested to see if it cover ALL airlines though and how accurate and frequently updated the information this as this is key. Without accuracy the tool may as well not exist.
Filed under: innovation. search engine marketing, search engines, the future of search engine marketing
Are any of the search engines below the future of search as we know it? we have been lacking a little innovation for a while and I would welcome a new contender. Some of those listed are more gimmicky than anything else and arent going to be scaleable as a business but that doesnt mean there arent a few little gems in here which could be utilised by one of the big guns to improve their results.
The Hunt for Search Engine Innovation, Part 2 by David Berkowitz, Tuesday, March 20, 2007
GOOGLE SHOULDN’T REST on its laurels just yet. Last week, we blazed through Charles Knight’s Top 100 Alternative Search Engines and found many areas where innovation was lacking. This week, we’ll visit some of the high-impact innovation categories and engines.
Sorting the engines into categories isn’t a perfect science, as many engines are hybrids. URL.com is a meta-search engine combined with user rankings, Ujiko combines a graphic display with user ratings, Exalead combines category filtering with image search, and Polymeta is a metasearch engine with filtering based on keywords and categories that also includes vertical and multimedia search. Don’t try too hard to sort it all out; by and large the most impressive engines have a clearer value proposition. Let’s see what they’re made of.
High-Impact Engines
Vertical niches: Goshme, discussed last week, aims to aggregate all vertical engines in one place. On the Top 100 list, the most innovative vertical search engine is Like.com. Microsoft’s recent Medstory acquisition also signals that the major engines are watching the vertical startups.
After last week’s column, Jessi Zambrano wrote about Indeed.com, a job metasearch engine not included on Mr. Knight’s Top 100 list. Job search engines have been among the most successful innovators, and they’ve also been among the priciest search-related acquisitions. Searching for jobs is also one of the few search activities that truly matters to consumers’ lives. Compare shopping search (“I want a good deal on something I plan on buying”) with job search (“I want a new/better job”), health search (“I’m trying to diagnose/care for myself or a loved one”), and dating search (“I’m lonely”/”I want to start a family”). The latter three categories really matter, so expect search pioneers to emerge from them. I’d include some kind of food search in that bunch, but once you’re online, searching for food is generally not a matter of fulfilling primal necessities but finding a decent takeout joint.
Multimedia search: Here’s where there’s the most need for improvement, and several startups have a leg up on the major engines — for now. The Top 100 list includes just a few examples of multimedia search engines, and they focus on video. Blabline is simply a Google Custom Search Engine. Clipblast bills itself as the world’s largest video search engine, though I’m not sure how it defends the title (my bet: the honor goes to YouTube, MySpace, or most likely Google). Blinkx has the most momentum, and it’s a favorite of Search Insider columnists; Aaron Goldman recently wondered if Google should buy Blinkx, and I predicted back in January 2005 that it was a ripe acquisition target.
Semantic Web: It’s getting harder and harder to write about any form of Internet innovation without factoring in the semantic web. John Markoff recently covered the topic in The New York Times, and by the time the Times gets to reporting on technology, you know it’s old news. The one semantic engine on the Top 100 list is Swoogle, a database impenetrable to anyone without a computer science degree (I can, however, tell you the difference between a rondeau and a villanelle).
That Swoogle is hard to parse is in a way ironic, as the gist of the semantic Web, to oversimplify it, is to provide a way for all forms of online content to better understand themselves and each other. For instance, if a search engine or other content site were to index or link to this column through the lens of the semantic Web, it would know that this column has everything to do with search engine innovation and nothing to do with obscure forms of poetry. It would also realize that Aaron Goldman is an esteemed MediaPost columnist and not this septuagenarian who has jogged 200 miles in 72 hours, and it would surely never mistake me for the more infamous individual who shares my name. In the most utopian visions for the semantic Web, such as those shared at a DoubleClick Industry Insighters Salon earlier this month, the Web will be so adept at understanding your own interests and wants that you won’t need to search for anything at all.
That’s one of those beautiful ideals, to become so good that you make yourself irrelevant. Could we really get there one day with search?
It’s unlikely. Even if any form of search became that good, we’re still hunters and gatherers at heart. We’ll always want the empowerment of thinking that searching is a skill, and if the right result is presented to us, we’ll take the credit, even if a computer programmer or algorithm actually made it happen. That means that the ideal search engine of the future, the standard every engine should shoot for that truly gives consumers what they want, will be one step shy of perfection.
