It’s been a busy summer, and as usual my own work suffers as a result. It’s been nearly two months since I posted on here, fortunately not much has actually happened in the world of search. Other than Google putting the Caffeine version into beta so that webmasters could test it for them. The results? There seems to be unanimous agreement that it is faster, that there will be more competition for single keywords, and that there will be less competition for long tail search terms.
Ever wondered what’s the best search engine? Which of the Big Three (Google, Yahoo, Bing!) delivers the best results to your queries? Well, wonder no more. Over at BlindSearch, Michael Kordahi has put together a white label experiment that allows you to make a query, then delivers results from those 3 search engines, without you being able to tell which engine has delivered which - until you vote for the one you believe is best.
I tried with 6 queries, none related to the other, and scrutinised the results delivered until I could figure out which one was best. This is not as easy as you might think, so if you’re going to try this experiment I’d recommend using queries the answers to which you’re already familiar with. For example, I’m often searching for posters of Killing Joke (I’m a fan of the artist who created most of their early art work), so my first query was “Killing Joke posters”. Stuff relating to the Batman comic of the same name does not interest me, so it was easy to spot the fluff. When I chose the results that I felt best matched my query I was surprised to find that Bing! was the hands down winner. Yahoo won the next round. But Google was top of the bunch, winning 4 out of 6.
The experiment was set up by a Microsoft employee, who states “This site is not affiliated with my employer, it is not a Microsoft initiative, it’s simply me having fun in my spare time.” I’d be inclined to believe him.
Here’s their introduction to the new search engine: Bing
Looks good, but will it be able to oust Google? A lot of the stuff it’s talking about has already started to appear in Google, and to be honest, I don’t see anything that hasn’t been done before.
The folks over at AdAge are reporting that Microsoft are set to launch an advertising campaign costing anywhere between $80 million and $100 million. Compare that with Google who spent $25 million on all its advertising last year, according to TNS Media Intelligence. Of course, not all that was spent on promoting it’s search engine, some $11.6 million of that focused on recruiting.
AdAge seem confident that the new engine will be called Bing, and not Kumo as has been previously touted, although there doesn’t seem to be any discussion of why this name was chosen. Regardless of what it is called, Microsoft face an uphill struggle in shifting the balance of power in the fight for our searches, and throwing such a large amount of money at an advertising campaign shows how seriously MS are taking the issue. Whether they’ll be any more successful than all the previous off-line campaigns is anyone’s guess, but the news made me think of past campaigns by search companies begging for our traffic. I did a little bit of searching on youtube to see what I could find, and discovered this gem of a compilation created by the good folk at SearchEngineLand.
The first thing I noticed is the number of now defunct search engines, which should be a sobering thought for the Microsoft team.
I received a rather hilarious spam email this morning, from a company offering to manage my Google Adwords accounts. Nothing new there, I get quite a lot of them. What separated this chaff from the wheat was their rather incredible lack of mastery of basic adding up skills. Alongside a large slogan informing me that Business Directories are Dead was a column of figures, indicating the massive grip that the search engine colossus holds over the market, with competing forms of advertising listed beneath. Now, that Google holds a 91% share of advertising revenues was a bit of a surprise, but it was the rest that almost resulted in my morning cuppa being coughed up onto the keyboard. Direct Mail has a share of 59% (you can see where this is going already), Magazines - 56%, TV - 55%, Radio - 49%, Newspapers - 49%, and poor old Golden Pages a measly 34% share. All combined to make up almost 400%.
These cowboys, for want of a better or more accurate word, have the Adwords Authorised Reseller logo in their email! Are they? Are they really Authorised Resellers for Google Adwords? If so, what does that say about Google’s quality control? The final punch line in this absolute joke of an offer is that there is a wee asterisk next to their column of figures, and a scan to the bottom of the page reveals that these figures are sourced from “Google AdWords Customer Satisfaction Survey: 12/03-01/04, U.S./Canadian advertisers.”
So there you have it. If you’re seeking a professional company in Ireland to manage your Adwords accounts, this shower of muppets should probably be avoided at all costs. You’d be better off spending your money on a trip to Switzerland, where you could shout your messages from the mountaintops in an unusual musical fashion.
Recently the Irish online business directory, www.whatswhat.ie, has become aware of an aggressive campaign by a UK SEO company targeting Irish SMEs by falsely offering the companies improved rankings in Google’s SERPs. Hundreds of businesses listed in the directory have been contacted by this company which claims to be working on Google’s behalf. The essence of the offer is that when a company discloses its credit card details, it will jump up the rankings in Google within 48 hours.
Whatswhat contacted Google, who confirmed that the UK company’s claims are completely false, responding with the following statement
“We’re extremely concerned to learn of companies without affiliation to Google using our name to mislead or mistreat small businesses who want to advertise online. Our legal team investigates such abuses and we continue to work with the relevant authorities to combat the problems caused. We always urge businesses in the UK and Ireland to work only with agencies they know and trust. We have established a programme of Authorised Google AdWords Resellers whom businesses can trust to manage their advertising on Google. Alternatively, they can do this directly with us at adwords.google.com.”
This piece of news was first published at www.irishpressreleases.ie but unfortunately it makes no effort to name and shame the company involved, which is a real shame. If anyone out there has been approached by this company, we’d love to hear about it here at Avatar Web Solutions.
There have been a couple of developments in Social Media over the last month or so, neither appearing terribly important at the time, but when looked at together may prove a pointer to the future of social media. The first was the widely reported acquisition of Summize by Twitter, leading to a powerful search tool on Twitter itself. Previously, Twitter had offered the service “Track”, but this hadn’t be a success, possibly because it didn’t work. Often. A number of news emails arrived in my basket, and a number of them referred to articles suggesting that Twitter would become a main rival of Google. I’m not 100% convinced, to be honest. I’m not what you might call an avid tweeter, possibly because I doubt too many people care if I’m stuck in traffic, or not having a donut with my coffee. I am an avid reader of tweets, possibly because other people lead more interesting lives. But mostly because people like Matt Cutts, Robert Scoble, Tim O’Reilly and Jill Whalen are keen tweeters, and a link in one of their tweets has a very good chance of teaching me something new.
So, although I don’t post too often there, I pop in regularly, and am a part of that tweeting community, yet I don’t see how Twitter is going to have too significant an impact on Google in the near future. This is for one main reason: the different search facilities will be used for different reasons. Twitter will search all it’s own community for the terms entered, and filter results accordingly, but it requires that whatever being searched for is already in the Twitter world. Of course, as more and more users join that community, the greater in size it’s index will become. Twitter is a microblogging platform, which means that each tweet is restricted to 140 characters, and must link to an external site if more information than that needs to be given. I can see how it will develop as a search tool for very recent news (the Hudson plane crash appeared on Twitter before it appeared on any online news source), and for recent product or service news, but as a general search engine for information it will be hard to match the sheer size of the Google index. I doubt Google are too worried at present, but I expect they will be keeping a very close eye on developments there.
The second bit of news to grab the attention was the changes made in the Facebook layout. Essentially, Facebook decided to mimic Twitter, and reformat the home pages of all its users to display, a la Twitter, the news feeds from friends in each user’s network. Facebook has seen some incredible growth since its inception, but has nevertheless struggled to find a means to match profitability to its growth, and this might be a first step in that direction. One of the main changes is that Facebook now allows the user to update their pages with their Twitterfeed, more proof if any were needed of the intertwining of development in social media applications.
Google’s Matt Cutts has provided a nice video and an explanatory slide show to help webmasters understand the new tag better. So, pop over to the Matt Cutts Blog to get the low down.
It appears that the joint advertising deal between Google and Yahoo was canceled a mere 3 hours before the U.S. Department of Justice planned to file antitrust charges to block it. According to the lawyer who would have led counsel for the government, Sanford Litvack:
“The never-filed government complaint would have charged that the agreement violated Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act, Litvack tells the Am Law Daily in one of his first interviews since the companies canned the venture. Section 1 bans agreements that restrain trade unreasonably. Section 2 makes it unlawful for a company to monopolize or attempt to monopolize trade. ”
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