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Archive for August, 2009

Google is good at Search, Google is good at making money

Thursday, August 20th, 2009

The big three search engines all reported their quarterly earnings a couple of weeks ago. No guesses for who came out top of the heap.

Microsoft online ad revenues, the part of the business in which their search engines sit, were down 14% for the quarter. Even further behind, Yahoo figures were down a whopping 16%.

And Google once again confounded the critics and the recession by revealing revenues up another 3%.

This is as much about what Google does right, as what the other two do wrong. When it comes to Microsoft, as we mentioned previously, Bing has gone down very well with both consumers and experts, although some have questioned whether bing will end up being a has-bing…

Microsoft is making other moves to boost its online advertising revenue, with a recent announcement of an online version of their desktop based Office Suite. Although that might be as much about pressure from the likes of Linux based Open Office and of course Google Docs.

Google has recently made further inroads into areas previously dominated by the other two. This month they announced the launch of ad exchange where banner inventory can be openly traded. Yahoo are already in this space, and Microsoft say they too will enter next year. The company that gets it right is ensured another huge revenue stream.

Who is going to win the race? Well from a users perspective I think few can doubt the ease and depth of searching on Google compared to the other two. And the rate of innovation at Google means that anyone else is going to have a hard time catching up. Of course as any advertiser will tell you, Google’s tools far outstrip the others for ease of use and for results too.

Google’s dominance looks pretty set. But I wonder for how long will we put up with a single big company occupying our online experience? Leave us a comment below.

Tags: google
Posted in Search Engines | 2 Comments »

Is Real Time where search goes next?

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009

Two of the three big search engines have made announcements this month about new developments in ‘real time’ search.

Real time search has been seen as the next big thing for search engines. Much as it sounds, ‘real time’ search means getting up to the minute results pages – even for articles and posts that have only just been made – rather than a traditional ‘index’ of the web which has been compiled over the last 3 months.

It has been ushered in due to Twitter’s search function which allows you to see what people are Tweeting about right now.

To prevent themselves been left behind in a potentially lucrative market, both Google and Microsoft have developed ‘real time’ additions to their products,

In a previous newsletter we showed how Google allows you to see if any new instances of a search query have been added in the last 24 hours. Google has also updated its Blog Search, which includes the opportunity to see the latest posts from popular blogs.

And Microsoft’s new search engine ‘Bing’ has just announced a trial that means that the latest Tweets from a few high profile users will be instantly displayed in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

But how useful is real time search to us consumers? Do we really care if someone has just Tweeted about the subject that we’re searching for – will that really make any difference to us?

It probably depends on the sorts of things that you’re searching for. If you want to know the latest developments in Michael Jackson saga, then  its pretty important to have instantly available results. But if you’re researching a place to go on holiday, then it’s not going to be quite as necessary.

One problem with real time search is its inaccuracy. Web pages with true and accurate information are often linked to by other web pages. These links – amoung other things – ensure that those pages rank well in the results pages. As a consequence, more people see these accurate pages. It’s a positive feedback loop.

Whereas a 140 character Tweet is at the other end of the scale. Apart from being unverified, it might be a joke, a rumour re-tweeted. If other people then search for and find that Tweet in the SERPs, and then subsequently find it to be untrue, then those people will loose faith in that search engine’s ability to return accurate results.

So maybe Google has got the balance right with this one. Bing has no way of knowing how accurate the Tweets in their SERPs are. Whereas blogs – which by their very nature are a bit more accurate and more thought out that Tweets – might be a good way to capture that ‘real time’ essence without compromising accuracy.

What do you think? Would real time SERPs help you promote your website? Do you as a user want to see Tweets in the SERPs? Leave us a comment below.

Tags: google, twitter
Posted in Search Engines | No Comments »