eVision
Online Marketing Newsletter
December 2004
This
is the first newsletter in a few months. There
hasn't been much major news (except for Google's
IPO which didn't affect search engine results)
But
now we have what could be one of the biggest
news stories of the new year:
MSN
has released its new Search Engine in Beta.
MSN
long awaited search engine has been released
in Beta form. You can try it here;
http://beta.search.msn.com
For
a long time the results you've see at MSN search,
http://search.msn.com,
have actually come from the Inktomi Search engine
which is now owned by Yahoo. We expect MSN will
replace these Yahoo results with its new search
engine early next year.
As
we've been predicting for well over a year,
when this happens, the search world will change
from two major players to three.
At
the moment there are really only two major search
engines, Google and Yahoo. Google's share of
the search market is about 50%. Most of these
searches are performed at the Google and AOL
search sites. Yahoo, which owns Inktomi, AltaVista,
and All-the-web as well as Overture, accounts
for about 44% of searches. That leaves about
6% for all the others!
Yahoo's
share of the search market currently includes
searches performed at MSN search. MSN sees about
15% of all searches so after MSN moves its new
search engine into place we'll have three major
players with approximately the following share
of searches
| Search
Engine |
Search
Share |
| Google |
50%
|
| Yahoo |
29%
|
| MSN
Search |
15%
|
| Total |
94% |
MSN's
new search engine will be responsible for about
15% of the search market when it is released.
2005 should be an interesting year as we watch
to see if MSN gains search share on Google or
Yahoo. And of course we'll have a new search
engine to learn how to optimize for.
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Local
Search and Microsoft's New Search Engine
Local search has been evolving for
all the major search engines. Basically a search
engine tries to offer up what it thinks are
relevant results in your local area for some
searches or at your request.
Search
on "red widgets”, for example and
Google may display a link near the top of the
results asking if you'd like to see results
for your search in your area.
This
works fairly well if you include a "localization”
phrase in your search term such as "red
widgets Connecticut”. The problem has
been when you don't include a localization term.
In the past most search engines would then look
up the address of the server you use to connect
to the internet and display results for that
address. However, people are not always located
in the same area as the server. For example
AOl's servers are in Virginia, so many AOL users
would see "local” results from Virginia
even if they lived in Oregon.
However
local search is evolving and MSN's new search
engine looks like a big step in the right direction.
Right
next to the search button on the new MSN search
engine (http://beta.search.msn.com)
is a big "Near Me” button. Type in
a search phrase and click "Near Me”.
At the top of the results MSN displays "Web
Results Near Me” with a town and state
listed. If the town and state is not correct
just click on the "town, state” (it's
a link). You'll be taken to a page where you
can "personalize” the search results
and correct the town and state. Any time you
ask for search results "Near Me”
in the future, from that computer, you should
get reasonably accurate results.
Yahoo
and Google have similar local search systems
they are testing and evolving.
As
Local Search evolves we should be able to do
a much better, more cost effective job of search
engine marketing for sites that focus on a more
local territory. It should be easier to get
near the top of the results for a local search
as there should be much less competition from
other web pages. Also, the costs for search
engine advertising (the Pay Per Click ads often
called Sponsored Links) should be lower than
ads with a national (or international) focus
as there should be less competition for them
too.
Local
search will also make the use of online yellow
pages much more important. The search engines
are starting to include results from online
yellow pages in their local results. Google,
for example, displays results from the online
Yellow Book listings in its local search.
George
Aspland
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