As Social Media continues to expand and lure in vast volumes of Internet traffic, where does its fustier, slower (methodical if you will) and more derided website marketing compadre, SEO, now fit in?
Search Engine Optimisation has been saddled with a reputation for being something of a shadowy practice; online alchemy, created to appease the search engine gods. The thing is though, it works. Better still, it continues to work to this day.
Social Media has emerged from the Friends Reunited Petri dish and exploded into a full-grown living organism, consuming everything in its path; or, at least, nearly everything. Facebook has experienced the most meteoric of rises, propelled by the slipstream of fading stars like MySpace, it has slipped seamlessly into the top 3 sites in the world (2nd by some metrics, 3rd in others) and gained itself over 350 million users.
Thanks to Facebook, along with Twitter, YouTube and a whole multitude of bookmarking cohorts, Social Media has got the world communicating in real-time. This free network of conversations has engulfed the Internet and opened the door of opportunity to marketers. Inevitably, when something huge comes to dominate an entity as the Internet, something has to make way; but is that thing SEO?
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Latest figures show that Google has continued its search engine market dominance, Bing has made small gains and Yahoo are spiralling into search oblivion.
Once again we take a look at the search activity of users both sides of the pond to gauge how the search engine market is developing. Since our last report in November [see: Search Engine Market Share Statistics - November 2009], Google have continued to strengthen their vice-like grip on the industry whilst Bing have been picking up some of Yahoo’s deserters.
Google now control over two thirds of the U.S. market, extending their share from 65.4% in October up to 67.3% two months later (statistics courtesy of Nielsen). Here, the search giant is now just shy of a 90% share, being the engine of choice for 89.68% of all searches, which is in itself a 0.94% leap (figures from Hitwise). But for all these gains there have to be losses, and unfortunately for Yahoo! they have been the hardest hit.
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Following Google’s very public fallout with the Chinese Government they remain surprisingly unscathed. Their rivals on the other hand are enduring travails aplenty in the aftermath; so who exactly has come out of this scandal worse?
Whilst Google are reporting ‘business as usual’ behind the bamboo curtain, ascertaining how true that actually is can’t be done without delving deep into the realms of speculation. What we do know though is that Yahoo! have received a severe reprimand from their own Chinese counterparts, Alibaba, for seemingly siding with their search rivals in the Chinese hacking scandal. Likewise, Microsoft have been singled out for blame due to a flaw within their Internet Explorer browser that allowed Google to be hacked; an issue that has subsequently led the French and German Governments to suggest that their respective citizens abandon the Internet browser in favour of the various alternatives available.
So whilst Google have been at loggerheads with the Chinese authorities and threatening a withdrawal from the country [see: Google Threatens China Walkout], their search rivals have done little to steal the initiative. Of course it is all hypothetical at this point, but Yahoo! appear to have dug themselves a bit of a hole by siding with Google – not least with the aforementioned Alibaba – and Microsoft could lose more ground with their browser’s blacklisting in Europe.
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Each month the statistics for search engine usage are published for the world to digest and reflect upon. Whilst the numbers may only marginally fluctuate from month to month, the outright leader always remains the same – Google.
Internationally Google dominates search. According to the latest figures, supplied by ComScore, they have secured almost two thirds of the US market, weighing in with 65.4% of the combined 13.8 billion unique searches. Yahoo achieved only a quarter of that, with a diminished share of 18% whilst a resurgent Bing fell just short of double figures with 9.9%. The rest, which includes AOL and Ask, account for the remaining 6.70%.
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From an innovative Stanford search engine experiment from two students named Sergey and Larry back in 1996, Google (originally under a project name of BackRub) has seemingly grown exponentially. But today Google isn’t just known as the world’s number one search engine, it’s an online empire that has achieved everything from mapping the oceans to now dominating the news.
Last week Google received their highest ever amount of traffic to their UK news site. Whilst it is widely attributed to the influx of celebrity news stories, mostly revolving around the deaths of Patrick Swayze and Keith Floyd, as well as the more tabloid tales of Kanye West and Katie Price, the massive leap in popularity will have caught the eye of many.
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Microsoft’s (relatively) new search engine Bing has continued to eek away the lead of its more established counterparts, most notably Google. The latest figures from the US show that Bing now commands 8.9% of the search market there, up half a percent from 8.4%. Conversely, Google has since slumped by 0.3 of a percent down to 64.7% for the month of July.
This trend has continued in the search figures, with Bing attracting 29million additional searches; representing a 2.4% increase from June’s figure of 1.21billion. Once again, Google was impacted with a 4% loss of 352million; although with over seven times the total search volume of Bing, they won’t be overly worried.
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If anyone thought that the deal between Yahoo and Microsoft was done and dusted they’d better think again. Stories have continued to emerge since the agreement was finally brokered last week over how this working partnership will function, and just what Yahoo are getting out of this whole deal.
Well, according to some sources this morning they’ll be getting $150million in three bitesize chunks over three years. For their part, Microsoft will be recruiting 400 Yahoo personnel into its ranks; all of which is supposed to help make the transitional process far smoother.
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The tit-for-tat exchange between Microsoft and Google continues to gather pace. In the run up to the long-awaited Windows 7 operating system, Google announce Chrome OS. As Google look to bury news of Bing’s surprise early release, Microsoft partner up with Yahoo to start a more concerted effort to down the search leaders. Now Google are ramping up their efforts to market their online office applications; clearly a direct competitor to Microsoft’s Office suite.
They’ve even returned to a more traditional form of advertising. In order to gain extra business Google will be plastering billboard advertisements on major highways surrounding a number of American cities. Maybe the resurgent Microsoft, a company that has long since been blighted by the likes of Live Search, Windows Vista and Internet Explorer 6, has gotten to Google. Or maybe, and most probably, they developed this package in 2007 and need to give it one last push to see if it has any legs.
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There have been few stories that have garnered quite so many virtual column inches as the Microsoft and Yahoo merger agreed earlier this week. The conclusion to a drawn out and often barbed takeover bid of the software giant and the second largest search firm has taken many by surprise.
Yes, Yahoo did the right thing by accepting that their search but somewhere in the process they have managed to lose the “boatloads of cash” Carol Bartz said they would have to be offered and replaced it with “boatloads of value.” Unfortunately investors appear to be more interested in the more tangible financial benefits of a cash heavy takeover, with 16% of their value wiped off almost as soon as the deal was struck.
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The day has finally come where the oft-mooted deal between Yahoo and Microsoft may actually come to fruition. After more than a year of legal wrangling and buyout proposals, the two search giants appear to have come to an amicable agreement. Not before time too.
Yahoo currently holds a very strong second position in the global search volume charts with Microsoft’s Bing trailing some distance behind in third. Unfortunately for both, Google are leagues ahead and have been for some time. A collaboration between the nearest competition has always been the only realistic way for anyone to usurp Google’s stranglehold, and finally that looks like it could happen.
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With the first concrete announcement regarding the release of Google Wave issued today, the future of search engines has never looked so unclear. Wave will be distributed to a lucky 100,000 initially on September 30th according to a number of sources, including The Telegraph. With the new feature offering full integration of email, instant messenger services and elements of social media, it looks set to become the online communication choice of the future. Or will it?
Microsoft have already jumped the gun, being the first search engine to provide an official tie-in with Twitter. Bing has incorporated some elements, including tweets from the leading Twitterati within their search (covered in Bing Unleash Real-Time Search); something that neither Yahoo nor Google have been able to match thus far. They’ve gone a stage further too with full real-time and conventional search on BingTweets.
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The headline story of Yahoo’s quarterly review is undoubtedly the 15 per cent drop in search revenue. A general trend away from paid search has hit the major engines hard, but seemingly Yahoo are suffering more than most.
The loss of revenue in paid search was attributed to “fewer click-throughs and fewer buyer intents” by Yahoo chief executive Carol Bartz in a report by the Financial Times. She was quick too to brush off claims that search volume may also be suffering, although clearly the dramatic drop will have raised some questions by those within the company and others with a vested interest.
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After a good deal of development and preparation, Yahoo are nearing the release of their new look front page. The hugely interactive portal is being mooted as a competitor to the already popular iGoogle interface. With the combination of Yahoo’s email and news superiority, execs within the company will no doubt be hoping that they can capitalise on their successes to boost their flagging search.
With the current page blotted by unpopular Yahoo services, noises from within the company appear to suggest that these will be a thing of the past. In an interview covered by The Telegraph, Senior Vice President Tpan Bhat even went as far to say – “Every pixel on the page is relevant now. We have taken out a lot of our own stuff that was creating a dead zone for our users”; a sentiment few would argue with.
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With the amount of coverage the various search engines have been getting over their rankings and popularity recently, I decided to do a little experiment. Using Alexa rankings, the authority site when it comes to gaining statistical data about websites, I compared four of the major search players: Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.
A quick glance at their top 500 list will tell you that Google and Yahoo command the top two positions when it comes to global traffic rank. Therefore it is of little surprise to see both dominate the chart when it comes to reach. Google remain fluctuates on a figure between around 30 and 35%, with Yahoo on a far smoother horizontal bar at around 26% of all internet users who visit the site each day.
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Despite shelling out millions in developing and marketing Bing, Microsoft’s plans to conquer the search engine world don’t appear to be stopping there. Overnight it emerged that the IT technology giants are in late stage negotiations to finally seal a deal for Yahoo.
Patience clearly isn’t a word bandied around too readily in the halls of Microsoft’s Seattle HQ. Whilst Bing remains stuck in third place with only an 8.4% share of the US search market, it is still growing. Yahoo on the other hand is facing shrinking search volumes and a brand that is arguably more synonymous with news than it is with its status as a search engine.
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