It’s all go go go in Search Engine Land.
July 21, 2008 | Google, Keyword Research, Live (MSN), Search Engine News, Yahoo
Everything’s kicking off in Search Engine Land and it isn’t just in the boardroom:
First we had the on-off Yahoo - Microsoft Deal.
Then we had the Yahoo - Google deal.
Microsoft has since bought Powerset
Yahoo shareholder Carl Icahn is trying to oust the whole Yahoo board that resembles all the best plots from Eastenders rolled into one which will play out on the 1st August at a shareholder meeting
Yahoo and Microsoft are placing themselves in the best position to buy AOL, which is partly owned by Google, give all the fallout of the above.
Phew! As if that isn’t enough boardroom shenanighans all three companies haven’t forgot what they normally do - Search:
Microsoft has been working on AdLabs, feedback I’ve read says the advertising platform is much improved, so much so that Companies who run PPC for clients are beginning to see Live starting to overtake Yahoo as the next best thing after Adsense.
Yahoo has recently bought analytics company Indextools to compete with Google Analytics.
Google seem remarkably good at forgetting what there best at and want to be better at everything else too but still have that incredibly annoying nack of still having their core service performing outstandingly. We’ve had amongst many things the continuing development of various software tools such as Google Docs, forays into the mobile phone market with Android, we’ve had Google launching a new virtual world called Lively, we’ve had Google webinars and…
Last but by no means least we had the change to the Adsense platform where Google are now giving actual figures on keywords research. Keyword Research is critical to every project we do and is always the first stage of any project. We’d be stuffed without it, optimising a keyword is easy, ok it’s not as easy as all that i hear you say, but the point is what do you optimise for? This is why doing research is so important. There are a number of keywords tools. As I’ve mentioned before Microsoft have launched Adlabs which is mightily impressive and at the moment looks far better than anything the other two are doing, however Live has about a 5% market share, 10% if were being generous. Ultimately doesn’t matter how great a tool is you can’t optimise something in Google (70% market) with figures from MSN. Now Google give us the figures we can do exactly that.
Previously using overture data (Yahoo PPC) was the next best thing until they stopped running actual figures live and changed it for something far less superior, they do still run figures people keep telling me, yes they do but I kindly point out they’re from Jan 07, that is they’re not live, be interesting to see what Yahoo will now do, give that the other two now run live figures.
Wordtracker and Keyword Discovery are other popular tools, however if you want to optimise for Google your better of using AdLabs given the market share. Both give out a plethora of bizarre keywords combinations that make it very difficult to actually work out what terms people are using in Google. People tell me Keyword Discovery is good but it’s so US biased that us poor folks in the UK can’t really tell how good it supposedly is, personally I doubt it!
The feedback so far is that figures are very accurate. One thing I know, it makes my life a lot easier.
Live: Fight back or Desperation?
July 17, 2008 | Live (MSN), Search Engine News
A few days ago I posted about Microsoft’s failed attempt to buy Yahoo and the subsequent deal between Yahoo and Google. Now it’s rumoured Microsoft has agreed to buy little known search engine Powerset for $100M, Powerset’s actual value is less than half the rumoured offer, but reminds me of when Google bought YouTube which had never even made a profit.
Powerset is what is termed a “semantic” search engine, you ask it questions and it give you more intelligible results, supposedly. Powerset is currently operating in what I’d call beta mode, that is it’s under development. It currently draws results from only two sites, one of which is Wikipedia, so who knows if it really works?
For $50M more than the going rate Microsoft obviously not only think it does, but think it can gain them more of a foothold in the Search Market. Personally Ask have already tried and failed in an attempt to provide a more intelligent search. Broad Search is the future of search, ideas of “Semantic” are rife on the web yet users don’t necessarily understand what people actually mean web these this and other terms such as “web2.0″.
The question is, is this the beginning of the Live fight back or does it smack of desperation? Desperation to me!
Yahoo would rather dance with Google than Live!
July 1, 2008 | Google, Live (MSN), Search Engine News, Yahoo
Unless you’ve been in a monastery you’ll already know that Microsoft recently tried to purchase all or part of Yahoo. What you may not know that as soon as the deal was dead, with both companies announcing that actually hell would all but freeze over before that would happen, Yahoo announced a deal with both companies chief rival, Google to carry Google’s PPC platform, Adsense. This news has been met by a mainly negative response from the industry with the average commentator alarmed at how Google may dominate the Search Market even more than it does now.
Both companies seem all set for this to go through and announced they would give US Governement watchdogs three months to go over the deal and approve it. But what does this mean for us users?
If the deal does go ahead we will see something that rarely happens, that is two industry giants co-operating in a joint venture. More than co-operating, they seem to be on a joint mission to all put extinguish Microsoft from the Search Market altogether. In terms of developing their services we’ve seen much activity from all three major engines recently in terms of Adlabs, Analytics and ventures into the mobile phone market.
It will be fascinating to see how this plays out, Yahoo has been much criticised by it’s shareholders, with Yahoo executives also dropping like flies, with one recent ex-Yahoo employee recently joining Russian search engine Yandex. Ultimately it seems Yahoo are happy to play second fiddle to Google and top of both companies Christmas list is the wish for Live to all but disappear.
It also surprised me to learn recently that actually Google will soon overtake Microsoft in stature, given the dominance of Microsoft in the PC market, this says more about not only how Google dominates it’s prime market but also about how successful Google has been as it’s spread it’s wings into other fields.
