Aug
3rd

Move Over Twitter

Posted by Luke on August 3, 2009 at 10:16 am

Move over Twitter. Yahoo! and Microsoft will be saturating the headlines for some time. This combination of technical resources and search technologies could have a significant impact on the digital marketing industry. Such potential brings an endless number of questions; many of which have no answers at this point.

From a paid search perspective, there’s the potential to reach nearly 100% of the search market with two search ad platforms (AdWords, adCenter). No more logging in and out, or working with bulk spreadsheets to update and optimize your Yahoo! accounts. Perhaps Yahoo! can teach adCenter specialists about adjusting minimum bid requirements at the end of the quarter when revenue pace is below projections. Yes, I’m skeptical.

While answers on the paid search side may be a little more direct, answers for developers and SEO specialists are vague and speculative. If I rank well in Bing then I’ll rank well in Yahoo? Are we in danger of losing the Yahoo! Directory or Delicious?

Despite speculation and ambiguity, our friend Rand Fishkin offers up some advice on what we need to know and what actionable steps we can take.

#1) SEO for Bing is Worth Your Optimization Effort
Bing’s algorithm, while certainly an upgrade from Live.com, still has a few noticeable preferences, such as concentration on keyword use in subdomains and root domain names. Bing’s results are, by default, “richer” than those of Yahoo! and Google. Although Yahoo! will be controlling the user interface on their end, it’s likely much of that “richness” will make its way into the Bing results inside Yahoo!. Bing also surfaces only the top 5 results for many queries, meaning a higher concentration of clicks on those top results.

#2) We May Lose Yahoo! Link Data
This change would likely see the rise of more proprietary link indices as well as the breaking of a large number of internal and external tools that rely on Yahoo! for their link data. We may not know for sure for some time to come, but it may make have a substantive impact on the link research landscape.

#3) Bing’s Webmaster Tools Are Important
If you don’t have an account with Bing Webmaster Tools, now is the time. Although not yet as robust as Google’s, Bing WMT is working hard to catch up and even surpass their rivals with features that will prove valuable for webmasters on all platforms. The data you get from Bing WMT will also be important for conducting better organic SEO campaigns on that engine, and seeing how Google & Bing may view your site differently.

#4) Yahoo! & Bing Local Become More Essential
We’re still not 100% sure of the status of local search – according to the ReadWriteWeb piece, Yahoo! may consider this a “consumer service” and not part of core search. However, if Bing is serving up local listings in the search results (as they do now), Bing’s local registration is going to become very important for local businesses. Check out Bing Local and their local listing center in the near future if this impacts you.

#5) Yahoo! Maintains UI Control for their Search Experience
This means that Yahoo!’s results ordering, layout, sidebars and searcher focus may continue to be unique from Bing, thus requiring that SEOs still pay attention to the differences in the two engines and optimize accordingly. It will be tough to know the extent of Bing’s integration until it launches, but there’s a lot of room for variation, which means complexity for SEOs.

#6) Yahoo! Will Become a More Powerful Content Competitor
With Yahoo! out of the core search business, many people, myself included, expect them to focus even more on the content side of the business. That means properties inside Yahoo! News & Media Group are going to get more attention and more investment. If you’re competing with Yahoo!’s content now, that battle may get tougher in the future.

The big takeaway from a digital marketer’s perspective is that Yahoo! pay-per-click advertising platform will eventually disappear and Yahoo! will be replacing its search index with Microsoft’s Bing. Regardless of the agreement, the actual transition and implementation is still some time away.

If you were ignoring your positions in Bing prior to this deal, then tsk-tsk.

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Jul
30th

Yahoo! & Microsoft – It’s Not What You Think

Posted by Vern on July 30, 2009 at 8:47 am

It’s old news by now. Microsoft and Yahoo! have joined forces in an attempt to counter Google’s dominance of search. Steve Ballmer and Carol Bartz were all smiles during the announcement on Wednesday. But what’s really going on here?

I contend that the deal is not about partnering to battle an adversary. It’s all about bolstering a struggling profit center at Microsoft. And from Yahoo’s perspective, search is a dying technology, time to move on to the next big thing.

Steve Ballmer

Ballmer is a master of business gamesmanship and negotiated a one-sided agreement to buy Yahoo’s search market share. He orchestrated a chain of events over the past year that left Yahoo! with no upfront payment (Bartz’s “boatloads of cash”) and guaranteed income for only a portion of the agreement term. Yahoo! does all the heavy lifting, maintaining a sales force and customer service staff. Bing scales to a size where it can make a significant contribution to Microsoft’s bottom line. Brilliant!

How’d he do it? What’s the best way to stop your competitor from innovating and improving their product? Tell them you want to buy them. Tell them you like what they do, appreciate what they’ve done in the past and want to talk about an acquisition. How long did the off and on buyout/partnership talks go on between Yahoo! and Microsoft? When’s the last time Yahoo! presented anything truly innovative in search marketing? Remember the Panama launch? Seems like forever ago. Yahoo! has coasted ever since, as Ballmer put a deep freeze on Yahoo! R&D by talking deal, all the while developing a pretty darn good search engine.

On the other side of the deal – I have to believe Carol Bartz is clairvoyant. Why on earth would she agree to give up so much for so little? It’s pure speculation on my part, but, maybe she’s seen the future and search isn’t part of her vision. Perhaps she’s looking to get on board the “social” train in a huge way. After all, practically every internet user on the planet touches a Yahoo! property on a daily basis. Does she have a secret master plan to monetize those eyeballs?

The next big hurdle for the deal, the Department of Justice, will certainly push implementation into next year and beyond. It could be two years before we searchers, or the companies for that matter, see any tangible benefit from this union. That’s forever in internet years. In the meantime, Twitter and Facebook continue to grow, capturing the hearts and minds of internet users and advertisers. Will search as we know it in 2009 be relevant in 2011? It’ll be fascinating to watch what happens. And I’ve got a front row seat.

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Jun
19th

Did Bing Awaken a Sleeping Giant (or: Anybody Want a Peanut)?

Posted by Jake on June 19, 2009 at 10:17 am

Since Microsoft launched Bing (their new search engine) several weeks ago, the world of internet search has been inundated with news and opinions about this new venture. Statistical analyses have been showing up in droves, although not everyone’s numbers exactly match up. However, one thing that all the numbers agree on is that Google is still the King.

Google has succeeded for so long in part because no one really presented a legitimate challenge. Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz says out loud that “we are not a search company,” so even with their number two slot they clearly have no interest in taking on the Mountain View colossus. Microsoft’s Live Search never really captured searchers’ imaginations, and the rest are too miniscule to pose any significant threat.

Recently, Microsoft Binged and Decided that the time was right to assume the role of David to Google’s Goliath. A marketing budget estimated in the neighborhood of $80-100 million shows that they’re serious.

What Microsoft may have just done is awaken a sleeping giant. And I don’t mean the friendly “Anybody Want a Peanut” Andre the Giant; I mean the angry, choke Hulk Hogan until young children cry Andre the Giant. This isn’t to suggest that Google has been resting on its laurels over the years, but there just didn’t seem to be the immediacy and the urgency that Bing has brought on.

For instance, there’s Google Wave, a “real-time communication platform” that will be unveiled to the public later this year. Google curiously started showing off the service right about the time Bing was set to launch. Surely this was no accident. Also, James Doran of the New York Post reports that Google co-founder Sergey Brin “has assembled a team of top engineers to work on urgent upgrades to his Web service,” and that Brin “is himself leading the team of search-engine specialists in an effort to determine how Bing’s crucial search algorithm differs.”

Should Brin and the rest of Google really be so worried? The early numbers for Bing, whichever you choose to believe, are just that: early. It is still too soon to proclaim any kind of shift in searcher behavior. Many are still just hearing about Bing and the advertising blitz will ensure that more people are at least made aware of it, and many more are still likely to give Bing a try. But will they make a permanent switch? Early reviews of the engine seem mostly positive, but many seem to be viewing Bing as an accompaniment to Google, not a replacement.

Personally I think Google has little to worry about. Their search share is still in a fairly dominant position, and I think that after the newness of Bing wears off, people will go back to old reliable Google. Part of the reason I believe this is that Brin and company are obviously taking the Bing threat seriously, which will no doubt lead to more innovations from Google the Giant.

And where does all of this leave the Pay-Per-Click marketers that use Google, Yahoo, and now Bing to drive sales? Nothing internally changed during the switchover from Live to Bing, but the big difference is that a lot more eyeballs are drifting over towards Bing, and now is the time to capitalize on that. With the potential for more traffic, and in turn, sales, marketers should be looking to increase their presence in Bing and strike while the iron is hot. The buzz around Bing may or may not last, so get everything out of it while you can.

Image: Courtesy of Amazon

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Jun
16th

Microsoft Drops the Hammer on Click Fraud

Posted by Nick on June 16, 2009 at 1:48 pm

It looks like Microsoft is taking some action against click fraud, filing its first lawsuit for the crime against three people in Vancouver and a few other unnamed parties.

While the software developer and recent parent to Bing is seeking $750,000 in damages, one of its major reasons for filing the lawsuit is that it wants to be more active on the enforcement side of fraud cases. They want to create a deterrent for would-be participants in click fraud. In a recent NYT article, Tim Cranton, associate general counsel for Microsoft said:

“We think there’s a good place for enforcement, basically to say, ‘You think this is a game, cat and mouse, back and forth. At some point, once we figure out who you are, we’re going to hold you accountable for it, it’s going to be expensive, and we’re going to deter you from doing it because you’re ripping off advertisers and people online.’ “

Whoa. He sounds pretty serious. You hear that scammers? Microsoft click-police are on patrol and out to get you! And why shouldn’t they? The article goes on to say that there are already stiff legal penalties for wire and mail fraud. Why not click fraud? Good point.

This certainly won’t be the last click fraud lawsuit filed by Microsoft, or other search engines for that matter, but it will at least help set a legal precedent.

What does this mean for all those Bing paid ads? It means the streets might be a little safer, at least for those navigating through Microsoft’s neighborhood.

While most, if not all, PPC managers run some sort of click fraud monitoring system already, it’s nice to see the search engines actively pursuing some click-justice on behalf of its users. They’re lending a helping hand to make the online ad space friendlier. It’s anything but a “Problem Solved!” type of situation for PPC managers battling click fraud, but at least it’s a step in the right direction.

Image: 365_299 – Compute this! by Guin’s View

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Sep
18th

Microsoft & Powerset Combine Innovations

Posted by Alex on September 18, 2008 at 12:02 pm

Last May, I wrote about Powerset, a new, alternative search engine that boasted improvements to the way we find information by unlocking the meaning behind ordinary language. My exact words: “This Powerset version allows users to search against material within Wikipedia using natural language.”

Since the launch, Powerset has gone through some changes and was recently bought by Microsoft. The higher-ups at Microsoft were impressed with Powerset’s capabilities and interface innovations, so they teamed up to create a shared vision:

To take Search to the next level by adding understanding of the intent and meaning behind the words in searches and webpages.

Today, Powerset continues to forge ahead with that same goal in mind. Over the last few months, teams from Powerset and Microsoft’s Live Search have collaborated on ideas and designs, and have come up with several projects that will be released over the next 30 days.

These projects were designed with the goal of improving Live Search and Powerset simultaneously by integrating technologies from both search engines. So, without further ado, I would like to introduce three new projects from the collaboration efforts of Powerset and Live Search.

Freebase Answers

This Wikipedia-like project is open to anyone who would like to contribute information; it is “an open, shared database of the world’s information.” Microsoft is utilizing Freebase in order to provide expanded and improved answers for Live Search. A lot of search results today don’t show answers for topical queries such as musicians, albums, and films, but by using Freebase, Live Search is able to return a topic summary that includes links, a result very similar to the Freebase Answers in Powerset.

Improved Wikipedia Captions

Another one of Powerset’s nifty features is that it utilizes semantic technology in order to create improved Wikipedia captions for various articles. And, with the help of Powerset, Live Search will now be able to pull these improved captions into its search result pages that include Wikipedia results.

The Factz Engine

“Factz” from Powerset are concise representations of information that are taken from sentences using three parts; the subject, the relation, and the object. From those parts, a list containing related searches for a set of queries is generated. For example, a search for “chicken recipes” will generate the following list of “Related Searches”:

Baked Chicken Recipes
Oven Baked Chicken Recipes
Easy Chicken Recipes
Chicken Soup Recipes
Low Fat Chicken Recipes
Lemon Chicken Recipe
Fried Chicken Recipes
Chicken Pot Pie Recipe

These projects are currently being tested on a small, randomly selected audience, so any search at Live.com could potentially contain one of the above projects as a bonus tidbit of information. Microsoft and Powerset say that they will continue to work together to help improve each other, and I will be here to report the results back to you! So, until then!

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