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2005-03 UPDATE - Market Snapshots
of the WEB
March 2005. Vertical search is the future,
coming very quickly, and marketers will fail to understand this at their peril.
-source: Danny Sullivan
COMMENT 2005-03. This was pronounced
at the Search Engine Strategies show in New York. Local search and shopping-category
returns such as from Froogle are included in the term Vertical. Danny Sullivan
is perhaps the most respected commentator in the world on search engines.
March 2005. Searchers - especially shoppers
- as they become more sophisticated Web users leave their original search to explore
likely vertical engines (for price comparisons and reviews, for example) displayed
in the search results or in ads.
-source: Hitwise
February 2005. Paid search will double
in four years, from a $2.6 billion market now to one worth $5.5 billion in 2009.
This growth will be driven by four key vertical markets: retail, financial services,
travel, and media/entertainment.
-source: Jupiter Research
February 2005. Google has added several
vertical business-to-business (B2B) sites to its AdSense program.
-source: Google
March-February 2005. Google's share of
search is reduced, standing now at between 55 percent and 47 percent of searches.
-source: Hitwise, Nielsen//NetRatings
February 2005. Google users exhibit stronger
loyalty than users of other engines. Google shares 21 perecent of its traffic
with Yahoo, while Yahoo shares 39 percent of its traffic with Google.
-source: Nielsen//NetRatings
2005-01 UPDATE - Market Snapshots
of the WEB
December 2004. Google's share of US searches
is now 44 percent, from 79 percent in January 2004. Yahoo accounts for 32 percent,
MSN is 15 percent, and AskJeeves is 6 percent. In 2005 watch for desktop search
and other technologies to shake up traditional optimization paradigms as individual
users now receive different Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS).
-source: Danny Sullivan
December 2004. UK advertising agency Aegis
Group acquired the Search Engine Marketing (SEM) company iProspect for $50 million.
-source: Aegis Group
December 2004. North America will spend
$4 billion in 2005 on Search Engine Marketing (SEM). Three-quarters will go in
payments to search providers, one-quarter will go in fees. Of the fee amount,
two-thirds will go to advertising agencies with inhouse capabilities, and one-third
will go to independent agencies and managers. Of the four billion total spend
on search marketing, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) will attract almost half
a billion.
-source: SEMPO
COMMENT 2005-01. SEMPO (Search Engine
Marketing Professional Organization - a somewhat artificial and contrived entity)
includes SEO as a subset of SEM. Most people regard the two terms as two separate,
peer operations, with SEO meaning the deliberate improvement of your position
in a search engine's "natural" results from a search, and with SEM pertaining
to the management of pay-per-click advertising and listing programs such as AdWords.
2004-11 UPDATE - Market Snapshots
of the WEB
October 2004. About 20 percent of search
query is local. Internet mapping is the top search activity among online shoppers.
Only 35 percent profess loyalty to a general search engine.
-source: BizRate, The Kelsey Group
October 2004. Google launched an automatic
service whereby a merchant's free product listing in Froogle can be converted
to an AdWords ad, with Google making the best determination of the applicable
keyword(s).
-source: Google
October 2004. Google Desktop Search unveils
its own hard-drive search, for users to search their computers for files.
-source: Google
September 2004. Copernic, which has offered
a desktop Internet search tool for eight years, now offers its hard-drive search
service, which allows users to search their PCs for files, email content, and
such.
-source: Copernic
September 2004. Search engine marketing
firms control a combined budget of $1.3 billion marketing dollars.
-source: JupiterResearch
2004-05 UPDATE - Market Snapshots
of the WEB
May 2004. An affiliate network issued
a challenge to the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) industry around the world
to manipulate a website into top position in the Google search results for the
keywords "nigritude ultramarine". In three weeks since the official
announcement on May 7th of the keywords (which were chosen because they didn't
exist in the Google index), around half a million search results are now found
in Google. This is a rare opportunity to watch some of the techniques and players
of SEO operating in public, right now, in real time. The contest is counting down
to the first prize on June 7th, with a further prize to be awarded on July 7th.
We have the full story, with key links, on a separate page, here:
The Great nigritude ultramarine
Massacree!
-source: hunter and associates
April 2004. Seven out of ten searchers
prefer to click on an organic search link in Google, while three prefer to click
on a paid AdWords listing. For Yahoo, six will take the natural search result,
versus four taking the ad. AOL users split evenly five to five. MSN reverses the
Google experience, with seven out of ten searchers choosing the paid click and
three choosing the "natural" listing. No data was captured to explain
if MSN's users actually understand that they're choosing paid listings, and the
report speculates on this, given that the design cues of MSN have always been
very minimal compared with Yahoo and Google, both of whom make the distinction
between the types of content quite clear. The report advocates that marketers
include both organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
advertising in their marketing efforts, while acknowledging that keeping up with
Google's algorithm changes can be a costly ordeal.
-source: iProspect
2004-03 UPDATE - Market Snapshots
of the WEB
March 2004. Yahoo unveiled a major contribution
to local search with SmartView, an enhancement of its Yahoo Maps feature. The
user has to map an address first, then SmartView returns optional local points
of interest such as restaurants, theaters, etc. Yahoo is pulling data from its
Yellow Pages listings, and other existing Yahoo databanks.
-source: Yahoo!
March 2004. Within a week of SmartViews's
debut, Google released from its lab a beta version of local search. Not quite
public at this time of writing, it can be found at:
http://local.google.com/
-source: Google
March 2004. Verizon launched SuperPages.com,
its online yellow pages featuring Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. The technology
is drawn from FindWhat.com, a paid-search provider. This service allows small
businesses without a website (perhaps as much as 70% of small business) to appear
online in local search.
-source: Verizon
COMMENT 2004-03. Search is a big
topic currently, with multiple developments to report. Local search is finally
happening, and small businesses should pay attention. Yahoo's challenge to Google's
supremacy is largely welcomed by the marketing industry, Microsoft has yet to
reveal its hand. Search industry technologists say they have barely begun to develop
the features that already are known to be desirable - i.e. search will be a booming
thing for some years to come.
February 2004. Local search will produce
revenues of $2.5 billion by 2008. One in four online buyers seek merchants geographically
close to their locations.
-source: The Kelsey Group
February 2004. Yahoo formally dropped
Google search results from its properties and implemented its own technology drawn
from its recent acquisitions of Inktomi and Overture (and thereby AllTheWeb and
Alta Vista). Yahoo Search Technology (YST) resembles Inktomi results, but with
a cache similar to Google's, which Inktomi never had.
-source: Yahoo!
2003-09 UPDATE - Market Snapshots
of the WEB
COMMENT 2003-09. This may be the
most tumultuous year ever for search engines, in an industry that has lived by
paradigm change. The monetization of search, and the monetization of content through
the use of search, is a rapidly expanding frontier: profit abounds.
Microsoft has entered the search arena. A stealth robot clumsily crawling sites
was spotted in May and traced to Microsoft (and banned by annoyed webmasters).
The company has cleaned up its approach, and MSNBot now continues on its rounds,
learning to crawl. A few weeks ago MS applied for patents on the search technology
it proposes to use.
eBay with 20 million users, and 80 million searches per day, is adopting the pay-per-click
model whereby users can bid for keywords and have their own ad banner appear in
search results. Ad rotation users can upload their own graphic, which includes
Flash.
Many news sites, including CNN.com and NYTimes.com have added paid listings to
their search results. Conversely, Amazon.com now carries Google's AdWords (the
text ads you see along the right side of a Google search page) within its own
pages. And eBay, a pervasive advertiser in Google's AdWords, has recently purchased
a million additional keywords, according to an unsubstantiated report.
Yahoo!'s agreement to use Google for search expires at the end of this year, and
Yahoo now seems set to replace Google with its own search. This surprised us -
over the years Yahoo has replaced Alta Vista with Inktomi, and then Inktomi with
Google, each time to offer the best search to its users. Is Inktomi as good as
Google for universal search? This may not be the point any longer, as Yahoo now
contains so much data and goods within its own branded universe. A point to watch.
Google continues to evolve, but its capabilities are a matter of great speculation
at present, following huge changes in its indexing patterns during its last update.
Google has rolled out its AdSense program whereby text ads can be inserted into
participating content-rich websites based on algorithmic determination of the
theme of the entire page - this is a major advance over pure keyword distinction,
and is beyond doubt the new standard. Overture, with its acquired Fast and AltaVista
properties, is unveiling its own version of this "contextual relevance"
service to compete with Google.
And Microsoft is crawling. Microsoft is deeply vested in fuzzy search, which is
to say the intelligent guessing of what you were really trying to find when you
typed in that word. No doubt MS will embed its search as exclusively into its
new operating systems as the courts will allow, and it has long embraced the paid
listing model of search. We have always regarded Microsoft as a merchandiser rather
than a technology provider, and the entry of the company into search portends
an immense play for market share, rapid and soon.
2003-07 UPDATE - Market Snapshots
of the WEB
July 2003. MSN will carry eBay listings
above the search returns for certain queries. MSN also carries Overture text ads,
LookSmart pay-per-click directory listings, and Inktomi pay-for-inclusion search
results. MSN accounts for 24% of all shopping referrals from search engines.
-source: MSN, WebSideStory
July 2003. Yahoo! is acquiring Overture
for $1.6 billion. Yahoo acquired Inktomi last December, Overture acquired FAST
(AllTheWeb) and Alta Vista in May. Yahoo talked with Overture for a year prior
to the purchase.
-source: Yahoo!
July 2003. Overture will deliver Web search
for Freeserve, the UK's largest ISP. Overture will supply actual search, using
a component of its recent acquisitions, AllTheWeb, and Alta Vista. Overture aims
at overseas expansion, and Freeserve is owned by Wanadoo Group which contains
several other European properties. More significantly, this deal is a triumph
over its rival Google, which formerly held the contract.
-source: Overture.
July 2003. Microsoft now has its own
Web crawler, MSNBot, formally acknowledged in June. The company applied for the
patents on its developing search technology in July, and has tripled its search
staff. The company will reassess its relationship with Overture, following the
Yahoo acquisition.
-source: Microsoft
COMMENT 2003-07. Unless Microsoft
buys Google, there will eventually be three major players in the world of search,
and monetized search: Yahoo, Google, and MSN. All three will serve search, keyword-based
ads, and contextual ads placed across the Web in non-commercial websites with
appropriate content and high traffic. The Pay-Per-Click model based on keyword-bidding
has in fact delivered relevant content to millions of users looking to buy something
through the Web. Profit abounds in this frontier area of the Web.
Search technology is driving commerce. All the Web is changing as free websites
are shown new ways to pay their server costs. Pay-for-performance search is expected
to attract as much as $2 billion in Internet advertising this year, up from $100
million three years ago in its infancy.
Google has rolled out its AdSense program whereby text ads can be inserted into
participating content-rich websites based on algorithmic determination of the
theme of the entire page - this is a major advance over singular keyword discrimination,
and is beyond doubt the new standard. Overture, with its acquired Fast and AltaVista
properties, has unveiled its own version of this "contextual relevance"
service to compete with Google. Microsoft intends to develop a similar system.
June 2003. eBay will begin serving banner
ads triggered by keywords in searches. Sellers bid on keywords in the now-familiar
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) model. Tests of the new program have seen purchase rates increase
by 35%. eBay chose not to partner with either Google or Overture, instead developing
its own program using Conducive, a DoubleClick breakaway company that uses DoubleClick's
ad serving system.
-source: eBay
2003-07 UPDATE - Market Snapshots
of the WEB
December 2002. Yahoo! is buying the search
technology provider Inktomi, and initially intends to use Inktomi's technology
to enhance and diversify its offerings to its users within the Yahoo inventory.
Yahoo has attracted 200 million unique users over the last six months, and has
100 million registered users throughout its properties worldwide. By year end
2002 it had 2 million paid subscribers to its services, and growth of the paid
subscription model is a key goal.
- source: Yahoo!
2002-11 UPDATE - Market Snapshots
of the WEB
October 2002. Google commands 51% global
usage share. Yahoo! has 20%, MSN has 9.4%, AOL has 3.5%. All are rising. Lycos,
in fifth place, is falling, down to 3%.
-source: OneStat
COMMENT 2002-11.
Google runs the ex-directory searches for Yahoo and AOL also. MSN alone of the
big players is powered by Inktomi now, still responding to meta tags, while Google
doesn't index them. In terms of promotion, it becomes ever more necessary to build
a Google-friendly website.
October 2002. Inktomi will spider Amazon's
entire product catalog into its pay-for-inclusion search index. Inventory will
be updated in real time through a direct XML feed. Amazon is the most notable
of several such merchant partnerships recently.
- source: Inktomi
COMMENT 2002-11.
Inktomi was once the innovative technical wonder that Google currently is, but
sidestepped into revenue models servicing commerce. It was always a technology
provider to brand name front ends, never a presence itself.
2002-05 UPDATE - Market Snapshots
of the WEB
COMMENT 2002-05.
AOL announced May 1st that Google is now powering its searches. Sites built to
perform well in Google should now experience a net gain in visibility in AOL.
We used to say that Google was worth half the Web, and the other half was Inktomi.
Inktomi was once the best search technology on the Web, and supplanted AltaVista
as the leader some years back. Ever smart Yahoo! adopted Google as its search
technology (it previously used Inktomi, and before that AltaVista). With Yahoo!
in the mix, a website that was well indexed by Google could reach, as we said,
half the Web for free, since listings in Google are free of charge.
To get the other half of the Web you had to pay money. Search engines over time
have moved to a pay-for-listing, pay-for-clickthrough business model. Inktomi
has no public portal, but powers the giants MSN, AOL, Netscape, all of which have
been returning commercialized results for some time now. LookSmart became a pay
venue, and GoTo (now Overture) developed a successful business model selling keywords
to the highest bidder. For promotion, this often works: we have gained excellent
results from pay-per-click. For searchers, maybe not so good. AOL users are in
for a pleasant surprise now as they actually begin to find the things they're
looking for, rather than being served the high bidders.
With Google now worth about two-thirds of the Web for traffic, will it surrender
to the commercialization model? Google is gaining fans and revenue from its "Adwords"
program, the little ads you see to the right of the search returns. They have
been very effective, and cheap, but surely soon the prices must get bid up and
up. Maybe Google is different: it's a privately held company, intelligently managed,
a quiet operation with multiple ambitions that burst into view with every new
tweak and feature it comes up with. Google has quirks: sometimes it loses our
websites out of its index while it experiments internally with new refinements,
and this gives webmasters very upset stomachs. But overall, we think that Google
is the website owner's greatest friend on the Web.
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