WebProNews

Tag: search engines

  • Are Social Signals the New PageRank?

    Microsoft  partners with Facebook to bring social relevance to its Bing search engine. This is a huge announcement  with deep implications for the future of search and whether Bing can make gains on Google. Microsoft is leveraging it’s ownership stake in Facebook to strike an exclusive relationship that can’t be matched by Google. In essence, Bing is betting that social signals are better than link signals in determining search relevance. 

    Are social signals more relevant than links? Let us know in the comments.

    Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg himself made this announcement of a social search partnership with Bing. Zuckerberg stated, "What makes this a great partnership is that in this case Microsoft is the underdog in search. In fact, I couldn’t think of anyone better to be working with to build the next generation of search!"

    One of the first products of the Bing / Facebook partnership is that via a Bing iFrame, Bing search results are native inside of Facebook searches. Now, Facebook data will be integrated into Bing and influence search results based on signals from the searchers social connections. This product, called Bing Social brings Facebook posts and links that relate to the topic searched right into search results.

    How does Bing bring the social context of Facebook into search relevance? Starting today, Bing is integrating data from your friends and social network into search results. This could include information on "likes", reviews, photos and links from your friends into your search experience. According to Bing, search results will be really personal to the user, different than what others will see for the same search. This "instant personalization" will make a search by you relevant to you alone and not necessarily that relevant to someone else.

    Obviously, the impact on SEO will be enormous. Search optimization currently relies extensively on relevant links from authority sites. If links and ‘likes’ from your personal social network become more important than links from websites then SEM’s will need to rethink their SEO strategy. 

    With the Facebook module your search results will now include information on what your friends liked or commented regarding the restaurant or movie or other item you searched for. Your Bing search results will actually be different depending on what your network of friends link to, like or dislike.

    Another big implication is with a non-celebrity people search. Search engines don’t do this well today, often giving non-relevant results for common names. What Bing is going to do is use signals provided by Facebook such as location, friends, jobs and their interests to better determine what person you may actually be searching for. Bing is opening up features that will let you additionally add and confirm data back to Facebook as well. Bing also has plans to bring in the faces from Facebook of those who liked and disliked links that show up in your search results. 

    Social search may reignite the search wars. After all, Google rose up to conquer other search power houses like Alta Vista because PageRank made search results more relevant. If social search makes search results even better, then history has shown that the most relevant search algorithm will ultimately win consumers over!

  • Google Talks More About Keeping Ranking Factors Secret

    Yesterday, we looked at a video Danny Sullivan posted at Search Engine Land, in which he grilled Google CEO Eric Schmidt about listing Google’s 200 ranking signals. 

    Clearly tired of being asked about the subject, Schmidt responded with comments like, "Because we change them. What would happen is, you’ve asked me this question for the eight years I’ve worked with you, so it’s the same question. Why don’t we publish these things. And the fundamental answer is we’re always changing. We’re always changing, and if we started saying here’s how the black box works, then all of a sudden huge incumbencies would come out about this change and that change, and we just don’t want that pressure." 

    … and that it would be revealing business secrets. 

    The company posted an article from Google Fellow and Engineer Amit Singhal on its public policy blog. It stemmed from “a debate” about fairness in search published by the Wall Street Journal. Singhal talks a bit more about Google’s secrets and competition: 

    "Making our systems 100% transparent would not help users, but it would help the bad guys and spammers who try game the system. When you type "Nigeria" you probably want to learn about the country. You probably don’t want to see a bunch of sites from folks offering to send you money . . . if you would only give them your bank account number!"

    "We may be the world’s most popular search engine, but at the end of the day our competition is literally just one click away. If we messed with results in a way that didn’t serve our users’ interests, they would and should simply go elsewhere—not just to other search engines like Bing, but to specialized sites like Amazon, eBay or Zillow. People are increasingly experiencing the Web through social networks like Facebook. And mobile and tablet apps are a newer alternative for accessing information."

    Singhal also says that Google reveals more about its ranking factors than any other search engine, and offers more tools to webmasters to take advantage. 

    Sullivan appears to think the list should be published, without revealing how factors are actually measured, but Schmidt says even the list would reveal too much.

  • Eric Schmidt Tired of Being Asked About Google’s Ranking Factors

    Danny Sullivan has posted a few videos from Google’s Zeitgeist event, and one of them is a fairly entertaining banter between Sullivan and Google CEO Eric Schmidt.  Sullivan  asks why Google doesn’t list its 200 ranking factors. Schmidt’s response:

    "Because we change them. What would happen is, you’ve asked me this question for the eight years I’ve worked with you, so it’s the same question. Why don’t we publish these things. And the fundamental answer is we’re always changing. We’re always changing, and if we started saying here’s how the black box works, then all of a sudden huge incumbencies would come out about this change and that change, and we just don’t want that pressure."

    He also says it’s a "business secret".

    "I agree, Google’s exact ranking formula is a business secret," writes Sullivan at Search Engine Land. "But I wasn’t asking for the secret recipe, exactly how all the things are mixed to create Google’s special sauce. I was asking what harm there was in listing the 200 various ingredients that are in the sauce."

    He provides more perspective here. 

    We do know one thing. People obsess over PageRank too much. There are 200 factors.

  • Bing Takes Advantage of IE9’s Capabilities

    As you probably know, Microsoft launched the Internet Explorer 9 (beta) publicly today. It can be downloaded here. 

    The company also took the opportunity to show off some new enhancements to Bing, to accompany its new browser. Taking advantage of the HTML5 capabilities of IE9, they’ve added some nice new features that are exclusive to Bing use in that particular browser (at least initially). 

    The coolest of the new features, while having little to do with search, is what Bing has done with its homepage. It uses HTML5 to replace the homepage image with a homepage video or an image that you can zoom in and out of. You can see this in action (along with the other new feature) in the following video.

    Bing Gets New IE9-Specific Features

    Other features are more related to search. These include:

    – Smooth transitions from one screen to the next, as you search

    – Previews of images, videos and text are bigger and bolder

    – Bing has an IE9 "jump list", which lets users search various Bing categories like travel or shopping right from the Windows 7 taskbar. 

    – New smooth scrolling that keeps a search box in place and related searches at the side, in case you need to refine as you scroll. 

    – Quick Tabs and Visual Search transitions in a new app-like experience

    The new Bing features for IE9 will be available in preview format for users of IE9 soon. No exact time table was given, but there will be a preview site that users will be able to play around with later this month.

    Are the new Internet Explorer features enough to get you to use Bing? Are the new Bing features enough to get you to use the new Internet Explorer? Are you using both? Neither? Share your thoughts.

  • Bing Takes #2 Spot in Search, Even Without Yahoo’s Help

    Nielsen shared some new search market findings, indicating that Bing has overtaken Yahoo as the number two search engine in the U.S. for the first time. That’s MSN/Windows Live/Bing, to be more precise, which holds 13.9% of the market (as of August), according to the firm.

    Yahoo holds a 13.1% share, a decline from 14.6% in July. Google saw little change, but accounted for 65% of all U.S. searches. 

    The numbers do not take into account the Search Alliance between Microsoft and Yahoo, as Bing started officially powering Yahoo searches on August 24. Nielsen says, "If we combined Bing-powered search in August pro-forma, it would represent a 26% share of search."

    August Search Market Share according to Nielsen

    "In terms of a year-over-year comparison, Google has seen little change in its share of search while Yahoo! has seen a small but steady decline, going from a 16.0% share to 13.1% (a delta drop of 2.9% or a relative drop of 18%)," the firm says. "MSN/Windows Live/Bing’s share has grown from 10.7% in August 2009 to 13.9% (a delta increase of 3.2% or a relative increase of 30%)."

    Clearly, good things are happening for Bing, and with the Search Alliance firmly in place in the U.S. and Canada, with the international transition on the way, Bing’s numbers will be doing quite well going forward. Of course they still have a search partnership with Facebook and Windows Phone 7 sales to look forward to as well.

  • Does Google Instant Mark the End of SEO?

    Does Google Instant Mark the End of SEO?

    A reporter (I believe she was from AdAge) attending Google’s Q&A about Google Instant pointed out that the new search feature tends to favor big brands. This isn’t really surprising, as it is these brands that are more likely to be searched for most often. After all, they’re big because people know them. 

    Do you think Google Instant is a threat to SEO? Share your thoughts.

    iCrossing has a list of brands that come up when you enter each letter of the alphabet (not all are brands, but many are). A is for Amazon (not Apple), B is for Bank of America, M is for Mapquest (not Microsoft), N is for Netflix, P is for Pandora, V is for Verizon, and Y is for Yahoo. 

    You must keep in mind, however, that the instant results are personalized. Google takes into account things like your location and your surfing habits when providing you results. 

    Google Instant doesn’t necessarily make things any easier on small businesses, but it’s showing big brands in cases where Google probably would’ve suggested big brands anyway. If users do a lot of local searches, it’s possible that Google could show more local results (including small businesses) for those users, I’m speculating. 

    Steve Rubel says that Google Instant makes SEO irrelevant. "Here’s what this means," he says. "No two people will see the same web. Once a single search would do the trick – and everyone saw the same results. That’s what made search engine optimization work. Now, with this, everyone is going to start tweaking their searches in real-time. The reason this is a game changer is feedback. When you get feedback, you change your behaviors."

    He’s not wrong about that, but I’m not sure that makes SEO irrelevant. Google has been showing different results to different users for quite a while now. This is really just an extension of that. 

    Businesses might want to try (and have other people try) doing searches for keywords that they would expect people to use to find their site. See what comes up (keep in mind the personalization) and work from there. Easier said than done no doubt, but it’s something to consider. Think about what kinds of people will be interested in your products and what other kind of searches they might be doing. It’s not a science, but again, perhaps something worth considering. It might mean getting to know your customers better, which can’ t be a bad thing anyway. Maybe it means asking them to take surveys. Maybe it doesn’t. 

    The whole thing doesn’t help organic SEO’s case in the old SEO vs PPC debate. I’ll give Rubel that. 

    Speaking of PPC, Google says Google Instant changes the way it counts impressions. "It’s possible that this feature may increase or decrease your overall impression levels," says Google’s Dan Friedman. "However, Google Instant may ultimately improve the quality of your clicks since it helps users type queries that more directly connect them with the answers they need."

    Google Instant with Ads

    Trevor Claiborne of the Google Analytics Team says that Analytics users might notice some fluctuations in AdWords impression volume and traffic for organic keywords. "For example, you may find that certain keywords receive significantly more or fewer impressions moving forward," he says. 

    You should read this post on the Google Webamster Central blog. It says that impressions are measured in three ways: the traditional way, when a user clicks on a link that appears as they begin to type, and when a user stops typing, and the results are displayed for a minimum of 3 seconds.

    Sidenote: Google’s Matt Cutts weighed in on the whole will Google Instant kill SEO thing. "Almost every new change at Google generates the question ‘Will X kill SEO?’ Here’s an video I did last year, but it still applies," he says.

    He says, however that over time, it could change SEO. "The search results will remain the same for a query, but it’s possible that people will learn to search differently over time," says Cutts. "For example, I was recently researching a congressperson. With Google Instant, it was more visible to me that this congressperson had proposed an energy plan, so I refined my search to learn more, and quickly found myself reading a post on the congressperson’s blog that had been on page 2 of the search results."

    Google Instant will likely become increasingly important to search marketing, because not only will it roll out to more countries (it’s starting in the U.S. and a select few others), but it will soon come to mobile and browser search boxes. Each of these factors will greatly increase how often Instant results are displayed. 

    The mobile factor actually has implications for Google retaining a substantial amount of mobile searches in general. The better (and quicker) Google can give results on any kind of query, the less reason users have to go to different apps to acquire certain information. 

    Google clearly said that ranking stays the same with Google Instant, but it will change the way people search. It will affect their search behavior, and that is what search marketers are going to have to think about more than ever. You should also consider that some people will simply deactivate the feature, leaving them open to Google’s standard results.

    Tell us what you think of Google Instant. Do you like it or not? 

  • Is Google About to Give Results While You Type Your Query?

    Google is holding an even later today in which it is expected to unveil some new search-related product. Yesterday’s highly publicized Google doodle, which had the Google logo turning into a bunch of balls flying around as your mouse got closer to it, is presumed to be a clue to the new product launch. 

    Google has another logo change today. It simply displays the Google logo in a a gray hue, which turns into the standard Google colors as you type. This is thought to be another clue. 

    Yesterday, a mysterious Google Labs experiment appeared, called Google Scribe, which gives you suggestions for your next words and phrases as you type, based on several factors. This may also be a clue, because another Google experiment was recently discovered, which has search results appear as you type in your search query. 

    This may or may not be what Google is unveiling today, but my guess is that it’s probably at least part of it. Barry Schwartz says more people are reporting seeing the feature. 

    After Google Scribe popped up in Labs with no official announcement, I contacted Google to learn more about it, but the company has not yet responded. 

    Google CEO Eric Schmidt also made some interesting comments this week about search, saying that search should become more automatic.

  • Why Are People Searching Less Than They Were a Year Ago?

    Nielsen released its version of the U.S. search market rankings for July this week. Google is of course on top with 3 out of 5 searches (64.2%). Yahoo came in second with 14.3%, leaving Microsoft in third at 13.6%.

    Yahoo and Microsoft both gained in month-over-month share (2% and 4%, respectively). This is all good for Microsoft, as Bing has now completely overtaken Yahoo’s organic results in the U.S. and Canada. We’ll see our first glimpse of how this is working out next month.

    Do you think Microsoft and Yahoo combined can take on Google? Share your thoughts.

    "In terms of a Year-on-Year comparison there has been little change in Google’s share but more significant movement amongst its closest competitors," says Nielsen. "MSN/Windows Live/Bing’s share has grown from 9.0% to 13.6% (a delta increase of 4.6% or a relative increase of 51%) while Yahoo!’s share has fallen from 17.1% to 14.3% (a delta drop of 2.8% or a relative drop of 17%). Consequently, over the last year Yahoo!’s delta lead over MSN/Windows Live/Bing has been reduced from 7.1% to only 0.7%."

    Nielsen July Search Stats - People Searching less in general?

    Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft account for more than 9 out of 10 searches (92.1%).

    The total number of searches in the U.S. over the last year has gone down by 16% from 10.5 billion to 8.8 billion. This is a very interesting stat. I wonder how much of this has to do with increased use of smartphones and mobile apps, taking the place of traditional searches. There are some other good points in the comments.

    Why do you think people are searching less? Comment here.

  • Google Gives Realtime Search a Homepage

    Google has given its realtime search feature its own homepage at google.com/realtime. Searches from this destination still take you to the updates section of a regular Google search.

    While realtime search on Google itself isn’t new, there are still some new features Google has revealed along with the homepage. Product Manager Dylan Casey writes:

    On the new homepage you’ll find some great tools to help you refine and understand your results. First, you can use geographic refinements to find updates and news near you, or in a region you specify. So if you’re traveling to Los Angeles this summer, you can check out tweets from Angelenos to get ideas for activities happening right where you are.

    In addition, we’ve added a conversations view, making it easy to follow a discussion on the real-time web. Often a single tweet sparks a larger conversation of re-tweets and other replies, but to put it together you have to click through a bunch of links and figure it out yourself. With the new “full conversation” feature, you can browse the entire conversation in a single glance. We organize the tweets from oldest to newest and indent so you quickly see how the conversation developed.

    Google has also added "updates" content to Google Alerts. You can now create an alert specifically for updates to get an email anytime a keyword appears in Twitter  or other sources Google uses for realtime search. You can also set them to email you once a day or once a week so your inbox doesn’t get flooded.

  • Google Activity That May Have an Impact on Rankings

    There are currently some interesting happenings with Google search that webmasters may want to pay attention to. The company, which is always busy, has been making moves, which may greatly affect its flagship product – search. This is all in addition to everything the company is doing in social media, mobile, gaming, advertising and everything else (which all may have their own separate impacts on search).

    Have you noticed recent changes in your ranking? Tell us about it.

    Algorithm Change

    Google makes changes to its algorithm all the time, but when a change comes with an announcement, you know people are going to talk. On Friday, Google announced a tweak designed to surface multiple pages from a single site for relevant queries.

    "For queries that indicate a strong user interest in a particular domain, like [exhibitions at amnh], we’ll now show more results from the relevant site," says Google software engineer Samarth Keshava. "Prior to today’s change, only two results from www.amnh.org would have appeared for this query. Now, we determine that the user is likely interested in the Museum of Natural History’s website, so seven results from the amnh.org domain appear. Since the user is looking for exhibitions at the museum, it’s far more likely that they’ll find what they’re looking for, faster. The last few results for this query are from other sites, preserving some diversity in the results."

    Google Tweaks Algorithm

    Not all webmasters have been thrilled with this. "Brace yourselves! Another Mayday disaster coming," one person commented on our story about it.

    What do you think of this algorithm change? Comment here.

    Experimenting

    Just as the company frequently changes its algorithm, it also frequently experiments with different features, showing them to small sets of users before either turning them into full-fledged features or throwing them away. The jury’s still out on this one, but a new experiment has been spotted, which alters search results as you type your query.

    Think of this like autosuggest taking over the entire SERP. The video demonstrates:

    Again, this is only an experiment at this stage, and it may never make its way to the mainstream Google experience, but people are already expressing a great deal of concern about it (particularly with regards to queries that begin with words that could yield undesired NSFW results).

    My guess is that Google would have ways around that issue, but it remains to be seen if users/webmaters will have to deal with it. If the feature does come to fruition, this is something SEOs are going to have to consider, as it could have a big impact on the habits of searchers. You may, for example, want to optimize more for the earlier words in a longer key phrase, in addition to the key phrase itself. But, we’ll see.

    Should Google change search results as you type? Comment here.

    Google Crawling Sites From Numerous IPs

    Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable points to some discussion from SEOs in Webmasterworld, who have found for the first time that Googlebot is now crawling from several different IP addresses at the same time. One webmaster said, ". their fast activity notified me so I took a peek to see who was scraping the site… I’ve never seen Google spider so fast and from so many IP addresses, they were all valid Google ip’s but there was like 10-20 of them running at once."

    Acquisition

    Google acquires Like.com

    The other day, it was officially announced that Like.com has been acquired by Google. Like.com is a shopping search company offering visual search technology and an automated cross-matching system for clothing and other merchandise.

    At this point, it’s unclear what Google has planned for this technology, but it could very well affect search results for shopping queries, which means it could affect small business visibility for better or for worse. Shopping search is going to be an area of Google to keep an eye on.

    Have you noticed anything else interesting happening with Google search within the last week or so? Are you seeing things that are impacting your rankings? Let us know.

  • Google Tweaks Algorithm to Show More Results from a Domain

    Gooogle announced today that it has made a change to its algorithm that is supposed to make it easier to find multiple pages from a single site.

    "For queries that indicate a strong user interest in a particular domain, like [exhibitions at amnh], we’ll now show more results from the relevant site," says Google software engineer Samarth Keshava. "Prior to today’s change, only two results from www.amnh.org would have appeared for this query. Now, we determine that the user is likely interested in the Museum of Natural History’s website, so seven results from the amnh.org domain appear. Since the user is looking for exhibitions at the museum, it’s far more likely that they’ll find what they’re looking for, faster. The last few results for this query are from other sites, preserving some diversity in the results."

    Google Tweaks Algorithm

    "We’re always reassessing our ranking and user interface, making hundreds of changes each year," adds Keshava. "We expect today’s improvement will help users find deeper results from a single site, while still providing diversity on the results page."

    This change may prove to be helpful for a lot of searches, but they could still do more in this area if you ask me. For exmaple, they could rank tag pages (commonly used on news sites and blogs) as top results for appropriate searches.

    For instance, if I search for "WebProNews SEO articles" or "SEO articles on WebProNews", it couldn’t get any more relvant than the WebProNews SEO tag page. That points to every SEO article we have. Yet, this result is nowhere to be found for either query, and it’s certainly not unique to us (ironically, another article in which I made a similar complaint ranks at the top). These pages aren’t often linked to, so they don’t get the PageRank, but does that make them less relevant for queries like this?

  • The Search Market Isn’t Always What it Seems to Be

    Like most studies, surveys, and stat counts related to Internet user behavior, search market stats should generally be taken with a grain of salt. While they can give us a general idea of which search engines users flock to, there are too many variables to paint a completely accurate picture.

    What’s your search engine of choice? Why? Let us know.

    comScore has added an "explicit core search" metric to its search market reporting. The firm defines this as user engagement with a search service with the intent to retrieve search results. In other words – a user searching for something from the search box.

    While some may have assumed that was always the case, reports haven’t always reflected actual searches by users only. As Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan points out, "Companies such as Yahoo and Microsoft have inflated traditional metrics through the use of ‘slideshows’ and other ‘contextual search’ activities."

    "Since March, Yahoo in particular has been gaining notable share by generating searches that many probably wouldn’t consider an actual search," he writes. "For example, someone might be viewing a photo slideshow. Clicking to advance the slide causes a page reload in a way that is counted as a ‘search’ under comScore’s traditional metrics." Sullivan has written several articles related to this, which he lists here.

    One interesting piece of information that Sullivan gleaned from an interview with comScore is that they do not take into account map searches across any of the search engines in their core search numbers. This is a significant part of search marketing, particularly for local businesses, and is something to think about. News searches are counted.

    comScore’s July numbers for explicit core search (according to JP Morgan, who obtained an early copy) indicate that Google’s share dropped slightly in July from 66.2% to 65.8%. Yahoo’s share increased 17.1% in July from 16.7% in June, and Microsoft’s share stayed flat at 11%. Again, that’s Google down, Yahoo up, and Microsoft flat. That means good things for Bing.

    Reasons Why Things Are Looking Up for Bing

    Xbox Comes to Windows Phone 7

    Windows Phone 7 is on its way to the smartphone market. While it remains to be seen if it can really be a contender, particularly with Google’s Android taking off, it will put Bing front and center for its users. In fact, the company will be making games a big part of the Windows Phone 7 experience, with direct connections to Xbox, which could provide a nice boost in usage. In case you haven’t heard, Xbox is pretty popular. More Windows Phone 7 users mean potentially more Bing users.

    There’s also a little site called Facebook. It’s got over half a billion users (and counting), and a search function. While that search function may leave a bit to be desired, the web search results are coming from Bing. People are spending more time on Facebook, which puts that search box pretty close by during a significant part of their online experience. Facebook is moving up the charts as an online video destination as well, which means even more time spent. That doesn’t even take into account the fact that Facebook is practically connecting the entire web to itself.

    A recent report from Chitika indicated that Firefox-based Google searches accounted for searches than total Bing or Yahoo searches. Google’s contract with Mozilla is due to expire next year. Expect Microsoft to make a bid to become Firefox’s default search option. That could be a significant booster.

    Search Market Breakdown according to Chitika

    Chitika also released a report this week indicating that Bing had surpassed Yahoo in search market share, based on the search traffic going into the Chitika ad network. While that’s not reflective of as big a picture as comScore’s numbers, it’s still an up arrow for Bing.

    Search Market in July

    Let’s not forget the big Yahoo-Microsoft Search Alliance, which will effectively mash Yahoo’s and Bing’s shares together, complete with adCenter ads. This is set to go down any day now (late August).

    Then there’s Microsoft’s massive marketing budget for Bing. You’ll continue to see Bing commercials on television, increasingly implanting that Bing brand into the minds of the masses, while Google does little to advertise its bread and butter. I’m not saying Google is in danger of losing out to Bing anytime soon, but it stands to reason that more people will continue to search with Bing one way or another.

    With all of this in mind, webmasters and business owners should check out Bing’s newly refreshed webmaster tools. As more use Bing, the need for a search presence (organic and/or paid) there becomes more vital.

    Update: Microsoft just announced that the Yahoo organic search transition has started. From the announcement:

    In the upcoming days we will begin the organic (algorithmic) transition, which means that soon Bing will begin to power the English language organic search results on Yahoo! Search in the U.S. and Canada. Once this organic transition is complete, Bing will power 5.2 billion monthly searches… that’s 31.6% of the search market share in the U.S. (290 million monthly searches and 8.6% share in Canada).

    Should Google be worried? Tell us what you think.

  • Yahoo Completes Bing Transition for Organic Results (in US and Canada)

    Last week, Yahoo announced that it had begun transitioning Bing results into Yahoo results – a product of the Search Alliance between Yahoo and Microsoft. Now, the companies have announced that the transition of organic results in the U.S. and Canada is complete.

    This applies to web, image, and video search on Yahoo for both the desktop and mobile experiences of Yahoo Search.

    "With this week’s milestone behind us, Yahoo! will continue to drive technology innovation in the search experience to bring more value to users and advertisers alike," says Yahoo SVP of Search Products, Shashi Seth. "We are focused on creating rich, immersive experiences that foster serendipitous discovery for people across the Yahoo! network.  As we shared last week, we are also working hard on finalizing our revenue model for the Yahoo! Search BOSS program going forward, and will be offering other search-related tools for publishers in the months to come."

    "We continue to work hard on the migration to adCenter, and are optimistic about completing this phase later this fall," says Microsoft’s SVP of Online Services, Satya Nadella. "As we have said all along, our primary goal is to provide advertisers with a quality transition experience in 2010, while being mindful of the holiday season."

    Both companies have indicated that the transition has gone smoothly, with Yahoo praising the speed at which the teams were able to get it done.

    So, what are your thoughts on Yahoo’s new search results? If you were a Yahoo user before, now you’re choosing between Yahoo’s and Bing’s user interface.

  • Bing Finally Comes to Yahoo

    Yahoo users (in the U.S. and Canada) will start seeing Bing results for organic searches this week. Yahoo and Microsoft announced that the transition is starting, and that the paid search transition is in the middle of testing.

    "Later this week, we will begin the work of transitioning the back-end technology for Yahoo! Search over to the Bing platform," says Yahoo. "This is an important step toward our goal of improving the overall relevance of Yahoo! organic search results and attracting a larger audience to Yahoo! Search, to ultimately put your ads in front of more potential customers."

    "Soon, you’ll be able to access a transition portal from within your Yahoo! Search Marketing account," the company adds. "This portal will walk you through the simple step-by-step process of creating a Microsoft Advertising adCenter account and importing your campaigns, or linking an existing adCenter account that you may already have."

    The portal is currently being tested with a limited number of accounts. Users will be emailed when it’s available.

    Yahoo still intends to have the transition in place before the holiday season, but may elect to wait until 2011 if they feel like that would improve the user experience.

    "Once this organic transition is complete, Bing will power 5.2 billion monthly searches… that’s 31.6% of the search market share in the U.S. (290 million monthly searches and 8.6% share in Canada)," says Microsoft’s Tina Kelleher, referring to comScore data (more on that here).

  • Yahoo’s Organic Results Will Be Bing-Powered By Late August

    Yahoo and Microsoft have provided an update on advertisers’ transition to adCenter as the Search Alliance gets underway.

    Yahoo advertisers will soon either have to create a new adCenter account or link their Yahoo account to an existing adCenter account. Later this month, Yahoo advertisers will see an "adCenter" tab in their Yahoo Search Marketing account. This will take advertisers to the beginning of the account transition process where they’ll be walked through the steps.

    "Once you create your adCenter account, it will be active and your ads will be eligible to serve on Bing right away," Yahoo says. "As a result, you’ll be managing both your new adCenter account and your existing Yahoo! Search Marketing account in parallel until ad serving for Yahoo! traffic transitions to adCenter, so plan to budget accordingly."

    Advertisers will need to download Silverlight to look at the differences between their Yahoo and adCenter accounts.

    As far as organic search results, Yahoo says Bing will start powering Yahoo results in late August. Yahoo will email a confirmation to advertisers once the adCenter tab becomes available and once the organic search transition is complete.

  • How Facebook Handles Questions Could Play Key Role in Future Search Habits

    Facebook’s new Questions product, launched in beta earlier this week, has a great deal of potential for answering the questions of half a billion people (the most recent number of Facebook users reported by the company).

    Will you use Facebook Questions to seek answers? Let us know.

    As competition between Facebook and Google over Internet user time and attention continues to increase, this may be yet another area where Facebook has a bit of leverage over the search giant. Q&A is becoming a big area of focus throughout the industry with many smaller players fighting for a piece of the pie (not that all of the players are small).

    Google has Aardvark, which it has yet to really do anything incredibly significant with (at least related to Google search). Yahoo, of course, has Yahoo Answers. Ask just reinvented itself with a focus on community and web-driven Q&A. That’s just a few examples. Facebook has a major advantage, however, with that half a billion users, and the simple fact that many of those users spend a great deal of time using Facebook.

    Facebook Questions data could be very useful to search engines and their users, if the product itself lives up to its own potential, but it remains to be seen if Facebook will be willing to share that information. The company is already notorious for being stingy with its data, from the open web perspective, despite its own "open" graph initiative.

    Facebook told Search Engine Land that it doesn’t have plans to give search engines access to its questions and answers, though they didn’t rule out future consideration. The decision could be an important one strategically for the company in the future, particularly as Google continues to move toward trying to steal some of Facebook’s thunder (the key word there being "trying"…I should mention this notion has been downplayed by the company).

    Microsoft has to be pretty interested as well, as it is frequently looking for new ways to compete with Google and it already provides Facebook with its own web search results.

    Q&A is becoming an increasingly interesting segment of the search industry, and one where there is distinct possibility of shaking up Google’s share, thanks to an increasing number of players, the diversification of how people actually do their searching/information gathering, and blossoming mobile application ecosystems.

    Facebook, Google, and increasingly Bing all have their places in these ecosystems, and Facebook Questions could conceivably play a powerful role in tipping x amount of searches in one direction or another.

    Do you see Facebook Questions as a potential disruption to the search industry? Share your thoughts in the comments.

  • Microsoft Doesn’t Plan to Let Yahoo and Google Do Their Thing in Japan

    Microsoft is pissed that Yahoo Japan is going with Google rather than Bing. In fact, the company is reportedly moving to block the deal from going through.

    Jay Yarow at Silicon Alley Insider provides the following statement from a company rep: "We plan to present evidence to the Japanese FTC explaining why we believe that this deal is substantially more harmful to competition than Google’s deal with Yahoo in 2008 that the DOJ found to be illegal."

    According to Yarow, Microsoft estimates that Google and Yahoo joining forces in Japan would give the companies 98% of the Japanese search market.

    Earlier this week, it was revealed that Yahoo Japan is turning to Google to power search engine listings. Naturally, with the highly publicized deal between Microsoft and Yahoo, this raised more than a few eyebrows, including Microsoft’s.

    The decision was ultimately not Yahoo’s choice, however, as they actually do not control the majority of Yahoo Japan. SoftBankCorp, a Japanese ISP and cell phone provider controls 40% to Yahoo’s 35%.

    eWeek recently shared some words from both Microsoft and Google on the matter. Basically, Microsoft has called it anti-competitive, and Google has said it isn’t. Google maintains that it will only license Yahoo Japan ad technology, rather than supplying ads.

    Meanwhile, Microsoft’s "Search Alliance" with Yahoo is already starting to take effect. Last week, Yahoo announced that it has begun testing organic and paid search listings from Microsoft, with up to 25% of its U.S. search traffic seeing Bing and adCenter results.

    The company said it will be integrating Microsoft’s mobile organic and paid listings in the U.S. and Canada in the coming months, and anticipates that U.S. and Canada organic listings in both the desktop and mobile versions of its search will be fully powered by Microsoft as early as August or September.

  • Yahoo Goes Google Instead of Bing in Japan

    Yahoo Japan is turning to Google to power its paid and organic search engine listings. This comes as something of a surprise as Yahoo has a huge deal in place with Bing that is just getting started, but Yahoo doesn’t actually own the majority of Yahoo Japan, so that version of Yahoo gets to do its own thing.

    According to Kara Swisher at Boomtown who broke the news, Yahoo only holds a 35% stake in Yahoo Japan, while SoftBankCorp, a Japanese ISP and cell phone provider controls 40%. Yahoo has made the following statement on the matter:

    Yahoo! Japan announced that it has chosen to implement Google as its backend algorithmic search engine and paid search infrastructure. Yahoo! Japan made this decision as an independent and separate publicly traded company, in which Yahoo! holds a 35% equity interest. We amended our agreement with Yahoo! Japan as a result of this decision, and we do not anticipate that this amendment will have a material financial impact on our revenues. We will provide support, as required by our agreement, for the search experience Yahoo! Japan has chosen for its business, and we will continue to partner closely with Yahoo! Japan in other areas including mail, messenger, mobile, our content properties and more.

    This decision by Yahoo! Japan does not impact the global rollout and implementation of the Yahoo! search alliance with Microsoft, except in the Japanese market. We remain confident in our transition plans for the search alliance, are driving innovation in the user experience around search on the Yahoo! network, and continue to be committed to our alliance with Microsoft.

    Last week, Yahoo announced that it has begun testing organic and paid search listings from Microsoft, with up to 25% of its U.S. search traffic seeing Bing and adCenter results.

    Yahoo will be integrating Microsoft’s mobile organic and paid listings in the U.S. and Canada in the coming months. The company anticipates that U.S. and Canada organic listings in both the desktop and mobile versions of its search will be fully powered by Microsoft as early as August or September.

  • Google Indexes Over 10 Billion Images

    Google launched a new version of its image search today (as well as a new ad format) and in the announcement, Google dropped a few interesting stats about its image search growth.

    Google Image Search first came out in 2001. Back then, Google says it indexed around 250 million images. By 2005, the company says it indexed over a billion. As of today, it’s over 10 billion.

    Google Has a New Image Search design

    "When you think about ‘information,’ what probably comes to mind are streams of words and numbers," says Google Images Product Manager Nate Smith. "Google’s pretty good at organizing these types of information, but consider all the things you can’t express with words: what does it look like in the middle of a sandstorm? What are some great examples of Art Nouveau architecture? Should I consider wedding cupcakes instead of a traditional cake?"

    "This is why we built Google Images in 2001," adds Smith. "We realized that for many searches, the best answer wasn’t text—it was an image or a set of images. The service has grown quite a bit since then."

    Google has released numerous features to Image Search over the years, and is always experimenting with design tweaks. This will likely continue.

    The new version of Google’s Image Search is in the process of rolling out.

  • Google Launches New Image Search Ads

    Google Launches New Image Search Ads

    Google began rolling out a new design for its image search today, and along with that came a new ad format. The format is called (appropriately) Image Search Ads.

    "These ads appear only on Google Images, and they let you include a thumbnail image alongside your lines of text," explains Google Images Product Manager Nate Smith. "we hope they’re a useful way to reach folks who are specifically looking for images."

    Advertisers can review specific performance metrics for their ads on Google Images. They are priced the same as standard AdWords ads with cost-per-click pricing.

    Advertisers can create the ads using Google’s Display Ad Builder. They can use a template to pair relevant ad text with targeted images.

    Display Ad Builder

    To create an Image Search Ad, simply go to your AdWords account, select the campaign or ad group where you want to create it, click the Ads tab, select Display ad builder from the "new ad" drop-down menu, then select "templates for search" and choose Image Search Ad.

    Google recommends that advertisers create a new ad group so that they can target keywords, adjust bids, and track performance for ads specifically on Google Images.

  • Foursquare Coming to a Search Engine Near You?

    Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley says the company is in talks with "everyone" in the search space including Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo, according to a report from the UK-based Telegraph.

    How any of the search engines would integrate Foursquare data is anybody’s guess, but Crowley told the publication the company’s data "generates hugely interesting trends which would enrich search". The major search companies have offered no comments on the matter.

    The geo-location space is only going to get more competitive with Twitter now offering its own version and Facebook expected to launch new location-based features anytime. It remains to be seen just how much of the market Foursquare will attract moving forward. That said, it is certainly in the forefront of this space at this point.

    Last week, we looked at a survey from MerchantCircle, which found that awareness of services like Foursquare is growing rapidly among local merchants, but there is a pretty big gap between those using them (or planning to) for promotion and those who are not. Search engine integration would certainly give merchants something else to think about.

    Local Businesses Promoting with these services

    Foursquare recently announced the closing of a new $20m Series B round of funding with Union Square Ventures, O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures and new partner, Andreessen Horowitz.

    How would you like to see Foursquare data integrated into search? Would you find it useful?