Posts Tagged ‘Search Engines’
One sector of the online economy that has been quietly growing for some months now is that of online coupons. As with most print advertising, the traditional coupon is in decline, so advertisers have moved to the web to distribute enticing offers of discounts.
The recent launch by search engine Ask.com of Ask Deals, a massive coupon clearinghouse, means that companies doing business through the new site utilize search engine optimization (SEO) to boost the online profile of their discount offers. Ask Deals will also work via Facebook and Twitter to offer online coupons to interested customers.
Experts say that search engine optimization (SEO) could prove pivotal in driving traffic to a company’s internet coupons. Large conglomerations of coupons like Ask Deals will, necessarily, have to be easily searchable, and the volume of coupons on the site will lend itself to intelligent efforts at SEO.
As search engines merge more and more deeply with online commerce, search engine optimization (SEO) will become a more and more critical function to help businesses develop and maintain a customer base.
Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) on Monday launched an enhancement to Bing that allows users of the search engine to find certain items by viewing images instead of sifting through pages of text-based Internet links.
For instance, a search on HDTVs yields rows of images of flat-panel televisions. The results can be grouped by manufacturer, display technology, screen size, and resolution. Similarly, a query on new cars renders pictures of various models that are sortable by automaker, mileage, price, and vehicle type.
At present, Bing’s visual search engine is in the beta stage and is limited to several search categories predetermined by Microsoft. But company officials believe the technology has big potential and could help Microsoft close the gap with market leader Google.
“It’s clear that images play a big part in helping consumers with a variety of search activities,” said Bing product manager Todd Schwartz, in a blog post Monday. A study by Microsoft found that consumers can process image results 20% faster than text-only search results, according to Schwartz.
“Visual search is a new way to formulate and refine your search queries through imagery, particularly for sets of results that tend to be more structured,” wrote Schwartz. “What you’ll see is an amazing new visual search experience,” said Schwartz.
Bing’s visual search capability, which is powered by Microsoft’s Silverlight Web display technology, is the latest sign that Redmond is pulling out all the stops in its effort to catch Google. The company in July announced a far-reaching deal with Yahoo under which Bing will become the primary search engine on Yahoo’s Web properties while Microsoft gains the right to add search technology previously developed by Yahoo to Bing.
Still, Microsoft has, to put it mildly, its work cut out. Google holds about 83% of the worldwide search market, according to the most recent numbers from market watcher Net Applications. Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) holds 7%, while Microsoft, mostly through Bing, owns a mere 3.5%.
Microsoft isn’t giving up. In his blog, Schwartz said the software maker will roll out more new Bing features—including additional visual search capabilities–in the coming months.
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A Microsoft and Yahoo search deal, announced in July, will face an in-depth antitrust review from the U.S. Department of Justice, Microsoft has confirmed.
The DOJ requested additional information about the deal earlier this week, Microsoft spokesman Jack Evans said. Microsoft expected the DOJ to look into the agreement and conduct a “thorough review,” he added.
“When we announced the agreement, we said we were hopeful it would close by early next year,” Evans said.
A DOJ spokeswoman said she couldn’t comment on the Microsoft/Yahoo deal.
Under the deal, Microsoft’s Bing search engine will power Yahoo’s search site, and Yahoo will sell premium search advertising services for both companies.
The agreement took nearly a year and a half to work out and started with an unsolicited bid by Microsoft to buy Yahoo in February 2008. The goal of the deal is to allow Microsoft and Yahoo to provide more search competition to market-leader Google. As of June, Google had a search market share of over 70 percent in the U.S.
Under the 10-year agreement, Microsoft will have an exclusive license to Yahoo’s core search technologies as well as the ability to integrate them into Bing.
Microsoft revamped and relaunched its search engine about two months before the deal was announced.
In November 2008, Google called off a search advertising deal with Yahoo after the company was told the DOJ would oppose the deal.
The Microsoft and Yahoo deal must clear regulatory approval in both the U.S. and Europe. It’s still unclear whether the European Union will undertake a formal review, Evans said.
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A new report on consumer satisfaction with search engines and Internet portals says we like them more they now than this time last year. Of the major engines, only last-place AOL improved its score. The big winner? “All others.”
The American Consumer Satisfaction Index compares customer satisfaction among and across a number of companies and e-business and other sectors. It was released earlier today.
In the quarterly rankings, conducted since 2000, all the major search engines/portals have improved their scores over time, with only Ask.com and AOL now below their highest historic rankings.
Overall, Google leads the pack, with an 86 percent satisfaction rating, the same as last year. Ranked number 2 is “all others” with 78 percent, up 2.6 percent from a year ago. AOL improved by 1.4 percent to a 70 percent satisfaction rating. (See chart for details).
The survey was conducted before the announcement of Microsoft’s Bing search engine as well as the deal that replaces Yahoo search with Bing.
Among the industries surveyed, Internet Portals & Search Engines did quite well, with an overall 83 percent satisfaction rate, up 3.8 percent from last year, based on the strong showing by “all others” and the 1.4 percent improvement by AOL.
Internet News and Information ranked 71.5 percent overall satisfaction. Only USA Today showed improvement, up 1.4 percent to 74 precent. The category leader was “all others” at 75 percent. That left the New York Times, MSNBC, and ABCNews sites all showing significant decreases in consumer satisfaction over the past 12 months.
Comparing tech to other industries: Automobiles received an 84 percent satisfaction rating; Electronics (TV/DVD/VCR) 83 percent; and Major Appliances, 81 percent.
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Over the past few months, Google has been working on optimizing its search engine architecture for better, faster results. For some this may seem ridiculous: isn’t Google already the fastest and most reliable search engine out there? Perhaps, but Google isn’t about to rest on its laurels; it’s committed to evolution.
The secret project is named Caffeine — a wink at its speed increase — and is designed to “push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness, and other dimensions.” Right now anybody can try out its coffee-amped powers. But don’t expect a mind-blowing spectacle of change: Caffeine’s tweaks are all under the hood. I Googled myself using both Caffeine and the ordinary search and found no difference between the two. “Most users won’t notice a difference in search results. But web developers and power searchers might notice a few differences, so we’re opening up a web developer preview to collect feedback,” Google wrote in a blog post.
If you’re dissatisfied with your new and improved search results, Google wants to know. Check out the bottom of your search page and you’ll see a link asking “Dissatisfied? Help us improve.” Click there and submit feedback on Caffeine. Google is always looking to improve its systems — hence why everything stays in beta forever — and could use a shout-out.
Matt Cutts, a Google software engineer, worked on Caffeine before its release and gave some Q&A on his blog. Cutts even answers the question that is likely on many minds: is Google giving itself a makeover in response to Microsoft’s Bing? The answer is no. “I love competition in search and want lots of it, but this change has been in the works for months,” Cutts wrote. “I think the best way for Google to do well in search is to continue what we’ve done for the last decade or so: focus relentlessly on pushing our search quality forward.”
I’m not sure I believe that statement. Yes, Google has undoubtedly been working on Caffeine for months, but Microsoft has been building Bing for a while, too.
The test of Caffeine’s success rests on whether or not people will care and understand, and if the changes prove more substantial than a few additional pages of faster results.
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LegitScript, an online pharmacy verification service, and KnujOn, an Internet compliance company, have released a report analyzing Microsoft’s sponsored search results for Internet pharmacies displayed on bing.com. The report indicates that 89.7% of the Microsoft Internet pharmacy advertisements reviewed by the authors were fake or illegal Internet pharmacies.
Most of the Internet pharmacy advertisements analyzed in the report did not require a valid prescription. The authors were able to order a prescription-only muscle relaxant from a Microsoft-sponsored Internet pharmacy advertisement without any prescription.
Also, the authors ordered another prescription drug from a Microsoft-sponsored advertisement that tested positive as counterfeit.
Search engine advertising programs allow website owners to purchase visibility on the first few pages of search results, where online ads are listed as “sponsored sites.” Because Microsoft receives revenue when an Internet user clicks on a bing.com advertisement, it is generally accepted that online ads should not facilitate unlawful activity.
LegitScript President John Horton said, “We were able to purchase potentially addictive drugs without a prescription or any age verification via bing.com ads. We also received counterfeit medication. Microsoft profits from these illegal ads, which put Internet users at risk.”
The study also found disclosure gaps in bing.com’s advertising program, showing how an advertisement that appears to have been placed by a legitimate pharmacy links instead to a “rogue” online pharmacy.
“We urge Microsoft to fix this problem,” Horton and Bruen stated. “By continuing to allow these advertisements, Microsoft is facilitating prescription drug abuse and the proliferation of counterfeit drugs, both of which put our most vulnerable citizens at risk.”
The full report is available here.
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Yahoo! Inc., which is building a regional data center in Lockport, has formed an Internet search partnership with Microsoft Corp. that Yahoo says will lift its annual operating income by about $500 million.
In the long-awaited 10-year deal announced on Wednesday, Microsoft will power Yahoo’s search tool while Yahoo will become the exclusive sales force for both firms’ premium search advertisers.
Under the agreement, Microsoft will license Yahoo’s core search technologies and Microsoft’s Bing will become the exclusive algorithmic search and paid search platform for Yahoo sites.
In addition to increasing its annual operating income, Yahoo said the deal will provide it with $200 million in capital expenditure savings and an annual operating cash flow benefit of $275 million.
In June, Yahoo announced a decision to locate its Northeast data center on a 30-acre site in the Lockport Industrial Park near the Delphi Thermal Systems complex.
The new operation, which includes a 190,000-square-foot structure, could initially employ 125 people, the company said.
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Story time, kids! Once upon a time (July ’08) in a corner of the web far, far away, a search engine named Cuil challenged Google. While claiming to search more pages of the net than anyone else, it was found to be slow — and came under fire from critics — and quickly fell back into insignificance.
Since then, Cuil (pronounced “cool”) has tried to stand out by including supplementary search results, such as including timelines and geographical “maplines.” Now, Cuil would like to further beef up its results by including related results from social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. According to Seval Oz Ozveren, the engine’s VP of finance and business development, it’s something that hasn’t been done before.
“We are trying to leverage the information found on users social networks to enhance search results,” he told the Technology Review. “This is similar to what Amazon or eBay already does: ‘People who bought this book, also liked this one’ … nobody has actually done it to date.”
While social networking sites are currently searchable through internal means and by way of specifically tailored apps, Cuil’s method would put it out there along with whatever you’re searching for. This has some pull in two big ways: socially driven advertising is a hot new market and, especially when it comes to Twitter, breaking news and viral fads are appearing first on social networks.
The engine plans to include the new functionality in August. Whether or not it will help Cuil recapture the magic and go toe-to-toe with Google — something that Bing, which hasn’t been crushed, is arguably doing — will have to be seen.
So we know you Google. We’ve asked if you Bing. (That just sounds dirty.) Is anyone out there staying Cuil?
Microsoft Corp.’s (MSFT) Bing posted higher search-engine growth on a weekly basis in June than its three main rivals, according to online Web site measurement researcher Hitwise, though Google Inc. (GOOG) continued to distance itself from its rivals.
The software giant’s search engine has gained market share on a weekly basis since it was launched last month, going from 3.4% in the first week of the month to 6.63% by month’s end, according to Hitwise. Microsoft, long an also-ran to Google, is hoping Bing becomes a bigger player in the lucrative online-advertising arena.
Still, Google accounted for 74% of all U.S. searches conducted for the four weeks ended June 27, up fractionally from May and the prior year’s 69%. Yahoo Inc. (YHOO) accounted for 16% last month, up a bit from May but down from 20% last June. Microsoft’s sites dipped a bit from both periods, to 5.3%, while IAC/Interactive Corp.’s (IACI) Ask.com slid to 3.2%.
Longer search queries have increased in popularity over the past year, said Hitwise. It noted average searches of five to more than eight words in length increasing 8% from a year ago. Searches of eight or more words increased 16%. At the same time, shorter search queries – those averaging one to four words long – fell 2%.
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My name is Kyle Kazak and I am the CEO and President of Kazak Media, a local Internet marketing firm that specializes in web design, local SEO, and pay per click management. We are located in Petaluma, CA, USA.