Bigmouthmedia search engine news: brand-monitor

Google hints at new ad formats at SES New York

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 12:00:00 GMT

During a heated Orion Panel at Search Engine Strategies New York Google hinted that the search engine is developing advertising options suited to Universal Search.

Google's Universal Search blends traditional text search results with videos, news, maps and other data. John Battelle noted that Universal Search seemed to break Google's traditional revenue model of driving traffic to websites and monetising the click. In some cases Universal Search result pages offered by Google are the only page a searcher looks at as the searcher has no need to look any further.

In response to direct questioning from Federated Media's Battelle, Google conceded that the search engine had explored advertising options suited to Universal Search. The comments came from Jack Menzel, Google's Product Manager from Universal Search.

Menzel later admitted that he was surprised by statistical analysis provided by comScore. James Lamberti, Senior Vice President of Search and Media at comScore, took the Search Engine Strategies' audience through analysis of over 1.2 billion search queries at Google. ComScore's figures showed that 17% of Google results ended in some aspect of Universal Search being shown. Of the original set of 1.2 billion searches over 220 million search results included one or more video, news, map, weather, stock or image results.

ComScore's data mining revealed that the number of clicks on Google's AdWords reduced whenever an Universal Search element was present on the results page. The panel, moderated by Search Engine Watch's Kevin Ryan, discussed whether this reduction of clicks represented a threat to Google's earnings.

Lyndsay Menzies, from the digital marketing agency bigmouthmedia, explained how Universal Search increased both branding considerations and tracking challenges in search marketing. Menzies noted that a shift in thinking was required from brands previously used to ROI and ROAS only analytic models from their search campaigns. Universal Search is both an opportunity and a threat to brands.

Mike Grehan, co-moderator of the panel, and bigmouthmedia's Menzies noted that the expectations of searchers are changing. Searchers are increasingly familiar with rich interfaces offered by web 2.0 sites and the vanilla "ten blue links" format traditionally offered by Google would begin to disappoint. Universal Search represented Google's efforts in offering the most relevant search results to this generation of searchers.

Taking the audience through a typical e-commerce scenario, Menzies described how a search for a laptop may begin with the user examining pictures of different laptops on Google Universal, then researching via organic results before completing a purchase through an AdWords link.

The debate concluded with comScore revealing that although paid search clicks reduced on Universal Search, conversation rates increased. Google also reminded the audience that the search engine intends to continue to experiment with search results formats.

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Verb Wars: Google Not Winning

Fri, 28 Dec 2007 12:00:00 GMT

In October 2006, Google's blog asked us all to help save Google. The search engine wanted to stop their name going the way of zippers, baby oil, brassieres and trampolines. The challenge was to keep 'Google' as a trademarked term and out of common usage.

Google's own Google Trends product allows us to see that the phrase "googled" spiked in usage round about the same time as the blog post and has shown no signs of declining since then.

Google does not object to the word "googled" as such but to the word being used as a generic replacement for the concept of web searching. Google's lawyers would object to the phrase, "I googled Steve Jobs and..." but not to "I googled for Andy Beal on Google and..." In fact, Google gives us examples of uses of 'googled' in which their lawyers are happy.

This month we have seen sites like Slashdot and even the New York Times using phrases like 'Googling Oneself' in the way that might start Google twitching.

A look at Google's own archive of news stories reveals that the phrase 'googled' was used more in 2007 by mainstream media than 2006. In 2007 news sites indexed by Google's own news engine used 'googled' some 2,300 times which compares to only 1,540 in 2006 or only 919 in 2005.

Google's news archives even suggest that the phrase was used as far back at the 11th century. That would pre-date Cricket, a sport which uses the term 'google', and which traces its origin back to the 16th century.

Popular information site Wikipedia even hosts a page describing the use of Google as a verb. It is unlikely that Google's new Knol product and rival to Wikipedia will publish a similar article. Both the Oxford English Dictionary and Merriam-Webster include 'Google' but it should be noted that the Merriam-Webster's definition of 'Google' explicitly includes Google; "to use the Google search engine to obtain information about (as a person) on the World Wide Web".

It seems more than likely that Google's trademark lawyers will be busy in 2008 as the search engine fights to protect one of the world's most famous brands.

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Google blocks Yahoo's Pipes

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 12:00:00 GMT

The two leading search engines have reached a technical impasse over Google's news service and Yahoo's pipes product.

Pipes is a highly regarded product from Yahoo's Brickhouse team. Users are able to collect data from various sources around the internet, manipulate it, filter it, sort it and then deliver it in another format. For example, with Yahoo Pipes a brand team could monitor news aggregators and blog search engines around the web for mentions of their brand and then deliver this research in one single RSS feed. That's easy to read and easy to monitor.

In the past Google has been used by viruses to query the web looking for forum sites with known vulnerabilities or email addresses. Google's defence to this sort of virus attack is to block automated queries to the search engine and also to Google News.

Google's anti-automated query defense is now blocking the automated queries from Yahoo Pipes. Many of the published pipes in Yahoo's system are now showing as empty and blocked as Google News was an incredibly popular source of information.

Yahoo's Pipes requests for Google News URLs are being forwarded to Google's blocking page. Google is treating Pipes as a virus or other unwanted computer request.

Yahoo Pipes fail gracefully. Pipes constructed from various information sources continue to work and simply exclude the feeds taken from Google. One of the features that sets Yahoo Pipes aside is their unique visualisation of the information stream. Pipes sending data are highlighted in light blue whereas empty pipes, such as those now being blocked by Google, appear in dull grey.

Tim O'Reilly described Yahoo Pipes as a "milestone in the history of the internet" when it launched and Nic Cubrilovic of TechCrunch said, "...my mind is still buzzing thinking about all that can be done with Pipes."

It is within Google's ability to 'whitelist' Yahoo Pipes and allow the internet application to successfully auto-query the search engine, news and blog search. Until the impasse is resolved, however, Pipes may struggle to remain useful.

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Ask set to splash $100m to secure new users

Wed, 16 May 2007 12:00:00 GMT

InterActiveCorp (IAC) is set to splash out around $100 million this year on trying to boost its internet search engine brand Ask.com.

The huge sum will be spent on marketing purposes, in order to try and secure new users that haven't experienced its revised search services.

Ask.com is the US's fourth biggest search provider and, after shelling out $2 million to buy the brand, IAC will be spending much more to try and bridge the gap between themselves and Google, Microsoft and Yahoo!.

Speaking at the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit, IAC chairman Barry Diller said: "We have a number of ways to tell people about Ask, its tools, and why it should be used (and) why you should make a change from Google.

"We'll spend this year probably, on media, close to $100 million to promote Ask."

Ask is embarking on a major advertising campaign, which includes TV promotions in the US and shock billboard plans for the UK.

According to data from audience measurement company comScore, Ask.com secured just 5.2 per cent of the web search market in the US last month.

Google led the way with a 48.3 per cent majority share, Yahoo! came second with 27.5 per cent and Microsoft ranked third with 10.9 per cent of the US audience.

Ask.com recently announced it will offer a GPS enabled mobile search application, as it continues to try and compete with market leaders Google and Yahoo!

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Google still most popular UK site as BSkyB surges 36%

Wed, 02 May 2007 12:00:00 GMT

Figures released by the internet marketing research firm comScore for the month of March have shown Google is still the most popular UK site, while BSkyB is the fastest growing.

Helped by a strong marketing campaign, the number of UK visitors to the BSkyB sites grew by 36 per cent to 9.7 million, making BSkyB the biggest gainer among the top-20 sites.

The campaign was designed to rival the interest that Virgin group sites attract. According to comScore, Virgin sites draw just over 11 million users, a growth of four per cent from February.

Google's sites continued to retain the top spot, with 27.3 million visitors. Second and third place went to Microsoft sites and eBay, with 26.8 and 22 million visitors respectively.

The survey also showed the increasing popularity of social networking sites, which made important gains in March and continues to be a marked trend in the internet world.

Tagged.com made a 226 per cent surge to more than three million visitors, Six Apart gained 30 per cent more visitors to 3.5 million and Facebook rose by 38 per cent to 2.7 million visitors.

The UK Top Gaining Properties list was mainly made up of consumer sites, the biggest draws being supermarkets such as Tesco, seven million visitors for a ten per cent gain, and Wal-Mart (Asda) with a 15 per cent gain for a total of 2.6 million visitors.

The biggest jump was by mobile phone company Vodafone, which boosted 47 per cent to four million visitors.

ComScore uses a "panel" of two million users which agree to have their internet habits and visits tracked, in order to create a sample size for its data.

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Google is world's leading brand

Mon, 23 Apr 2007 12:00:00 GMT

Web search giant Google is now the world's most valuable brand, according to annual statistics published today.

The Brandz list of the Top 100 Most Powerful Brands, compiled by Milward Brown, shows that Google has overtaken Coca-Cola, Wal-Mart, General Electric and Microsoft - jumping from last year's seventh place to first.

The list's top ten is dominated by American firms, but also shows China Mobile and Toyota retaining their positions of strength in fifth and tenth place respectively.

Eileen Campbell, global CEO of Millward Brown, described it as "a huge achievement" for any brand to make the list.

Ms Campbell also suggested that the success of the list's leaders demonstrates "the real financial value that successful business and brand management can deliver".

She claimed that "responsible financial management and powerful marketing are an unbeatable combination that can be leveraged to create and grow corporate wealth".

Google's value has been a hot news topic of late.

This weekend, the company announced a 69 per cent leap in quarterly revenues - to $3.66 billion.

The figure shows that advertisers are keen to hitch their trailers to the branding success of Google.

There have, however, also been rumours of possible legal action by Microsoft and AT&T to prevent Google's takeover of marketing experts DoubleClick.

AT&T and Microsoft are said to fear that the Google brand is on the verge of an internet marketing monopoly.

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Froogle is now Google Product Search

Thu, 19 Apr 2007 12:00:00 GMT

Google's shopping search engine, Froogle, has changed its brand name to become Google Product Search.

When Froogle emerged in 2002, Google established that while many users were gaining exposure to the product name, most were unaware of what it actually did. Furthermore, copyright, trademark and internalisation issues resulted in Froogle not performing as well as Google had hoped and expected.

Consequently, Froogle has been rebranded Google Product Search and has been moved to "www.google.com / products" and "www.google.co.uk / products". Several changes have been made to the search interface in order to enhance and improve the user search experience, making it easier to find relevant products. The overall page layout has been changed to the traditional Google web search interface to foster familiarity with the user across the various Google search products.

The new, clear layout combined with Google Checkout will make it easier for users to buy products from Google Product Search. Previously, a set of refinement options - such as price, category and seller rating - could be located at the top of the page; however, this has now been moved to the bottom.

The Google Checkout refinement option remains at the top of the page, in order to encourage users to buy products through this feature. Merchants will now need to seriously consider offering Google Checkout as a payment option for their products - and other major search engines are likely to follow in Google's steps.

Rather than sending users to another site for specialised searches, Google is encouraging its users to go to the Google Product Search page first, find the best result for their specialised search and then buy through Google Checkout. At the moment, the majority of internet users will begin their product search by searching through a search engine, and Google is aiming to cater to a more complete consumer buying process.

While this may be achievable for the world's leading search engine, at the moment, Google Product Search will not regain homepage positioning. This may hinder the potential success of the brand change. Google are currently trialling various positions on its homepage to provide a link to Google Product Search. Previously, Froogle was included in the 'more' section at the top of the page, along with links to Google News and Google Images.

Google will continue to provide the top Google Product Search listings ahead of the first organic result in traditional web search within their OneBox search results (which sits directly under the top paid search ads). This potential opportunity to get ahead of the first organic result on web search remains one of the real USPs of setting up feeds.

On a similar note, Yahoo! have recently announced a new partnership with PayPal, whereby Yahoo! sponsored search results will feature a blue shopping cart linking to merchants that accept PayPal Express Checkout as a method of payment. It is therefore very possible that Yahoo! will begin to offer a 'filter by PayPal merchants' option in their own shopping search to match Google's Checkout option.

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Changing trends in the retail sector for Valentine's gifts

Tue, 20 Feb 2007 12:00:00 GMT

It only took two days for the people at Hitwise UK to release the industry stats showcasing the big winners in the crucial week leading up to Valentines Day 2007. Following on from the peaks in November and December with the Christmas ecommerce spend, Valentine's Day is the first major event in the 2007 calendar to which marketers build up, with businesses in the flowers and gifts sector spending heavily to gain crucial market share.

The data this year in the run up to Valentine's Day is especially insightful, as it reveals three key trends in the retail market that all search engine optimisation specialists will be considering as they plan future ecommerce strategies.

1. Big brands still have the advantage

Firstly, the results show that it's still the big brands who are leading the way. Tesco Flowers were at the top of the Hitwise table for market share of UK internet visits in the week prior to Valentines Day for the second year in a row, with 4.45% of the overall visits to the Flowers and Gifts sector. In second place were Tesco's major rivals in this space, Interflora UK, with 3.94% of the market share.

Both Tesco and Interflora rank very well for the generic term 'flowers' on Google UK. Tesco have the slight edge on this keyword but Interflora rank ahead on the other popular term 'Valentines Flowers', so both brands are evenly matched on the organic SEO front. The other brand which performs very well in the organic search space on Google UK is Serenata Flowers but, crucially, this site does not appear in the Hitwise table. The difference here is that Interflora and Tesco both possess the brand trust factor and the mass appeal that attracts consumers, giving them a big advantage over pure play competitors who don't have the same offline presence.

Nielsen NetRatings recently released figures which highlighted that as many as 45% of online shoppers still have concerns about the handling of credit card and personal details when buying from ecommerce sites. This backs up the fact that shoppers are more likely to trust the brands they shop from regularly as opposed to the ones who might have the best deal. Evidently, the brand and brand reputation is still a crucial component to winning the battle for online spending.

2. The Top 10 are having their market share squeezed

By analysing Hitwise statistics from 2005 and 2006, it can be seen that this year's results indicate the changing market share of the top ten sites in comparison to previous years. If we analyse the chart below we can see how the landscape has changed in just two years.

The chart indicates that a greater number of competitors are taking a piece of the pie at the expense of the top ten (who remain largely similar), squeezing the amount of traffic by nearly 15% in two years. The big players will be glad to see their names remain at the top of the list, but at the same time they will want to reverse this trend and grab a greater share of the market.

3. Key Influence Forums can have a significant impact

Hitwise analyst Heather Hopkins picked out Moonpig in her recent blog post as the real winners this Valentines Day. Moonpig, a company behind personalised cards certainly had a bumper year, rising from 31st place in the chart in 2006 to 3rd this time around. Hopkins' picks out huge traffic increases to Moonpig from two community sites, Hot UK Deals and Martin Lewis's MoneySavingExpert.com, as a key reason behind the surge in traffic prior to February 14th, and also suggests that the site went viral as referrals from MSN hotmail had increased significantly.

It is no doubt that these two Key Influence Forums can be a major factor in whether a site experiences a huge traffic spike. However it's likely that Moonpig were not major benefactors, since a leaked promotional code allowed thousands of users to obtain free (or close to free) Valentine's Day cards.

A post in a forum of Hot UK Deals (viewed over 17,000 times) explaining how to get free cards again and again looks to be the real reason Moonpig jumped up in the Hitwise table, and although we can't be certain, it is likely Moonpig found out too late to change the offer before thousands of web users had taken advantage of it.

So the lesson here is that these forums can make an offer go viral (and drive significant uplifts in sales), but it's still important that retailers are aware that promotional and discount codes are likely to be shared on a mass scale if the offer is exceptional.

In summary, as the numbers of online shoppers continues to rise, so do the challenges facing the major ecommerce players fighting for the spend around big events like Valentine's Day. Big brands look set to continue to lead the market on the back of their brand trust and reputation, but the growing competition from all angles will be a concern.

Elsewhere it's important all retailers are aware of the influence of community sites and how promotional codes can go viral so quickly that retailers have to react fast to make sure an offer isn't running at a significant loss. It seems the majority of UK online shoppers love a free bargain - and will be keen to share a freebie to all their friends, family and work colleagues if an offer is too good to turn down.

Thanks to all at Hitwise for providing the data used in this article.

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Google uncovers missing links with new webmaster tool

Mon, 12 Feb 2007 12:00:00 GMT

Webmasters have welcomed Google's new addition to its Webmaster Central panel: a link tool that allows website owners to view a much larger sample of backlinks than ever before.

In the past, anyone wishing to view the incoming links to their website could type "Link: www.example.com" into the Google search box. The result, however, would only produce a small proportion of links that Google actually knew about and used when ranking sites for its search engine result positions. This is thought to be because Google feared that site owners would use the data to try and manipulate rankings.

So why are Google all of a sudden allowing us to see a little more behind the scenes? Well, it seems that webmasters wanted it, so Google gave it. Google Webmaster Central product manager Vanessa Fox explains:

"We take [webmasters] feedback very seriously. We have been looking at ways to provide this data and are ecstatic to make it available."

Google adds that it is happy to release the data knowing that it is only available to the owners of the site, rather than people who might try to misuse the data.

In the world of search engine optimisation, the number and quality of external sites linking back to your site is known to be an important part of the Google algorithm - so having a better idea of who is linking to you is valuable knowledge for webmasters seeking to optimise their websites.

The new tool asks webmasters to first verify their identity by either of two simple methods: uploading a HTML verification file to their domain or adding a META tag to their site's index file. Once Google has verified the genuine owner of the site, it allows access to the number and identity of internal and external links and provides the option to download this data.

Webmasters are already praising the tool, with the general consensus being that it's better than any other free or paid link back tool currently available.

With the traditional Link: operator tool, Google.co.uk reveals around 388 links pointing back to the bigmouthmedia.com site.

But with the new Webmaster Links tool you would be able to see a far more complete number of backlinks once you have verified that you are associated with the website they link to in the webmaster console.

However, it's important to remember that even this is not 100% of the links the Google knows about. As ever, Google keeps some cards close to its chest, stating that it knows of "more links than the total we show". However, the new link reporting tool gives considerably more data than previously available and is a welcome step to webmasters who have been vying to know more about Google's inner workings.

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Pioneering Chinese search engine loses key executive

Wed, 25 Oct 2006 12:00:00 GMT

Market-leading Chinese search engine, Baidu, recently suffered a blow as the Chief Technology Officer, Jerry Liu, announced his resignation from the company. The change, which will go into effect December 19th, has led Baidu shares to fall over the past two days - from $87.37 on Monday, down to $85.99 on early Tuesday, and finishing at $84.26 at close of business yesterday.

In a press release, Baidu's Chief Executive, Robin Li, revealed that Liu had resigned for undisclosed personal reasons. However, he also said that Liu was only willing to leave once he had implemented the latest iteration of Baidu's search software development. Li Stated:

"We'll continue to ensure Baidu's search leadership by hiring the best talent and pursuing our strategy of developing products that users want."

Commenting on his resignation, Liu said, "It has been a great privilege to play a role in making Baidu the leader in Chinese search."

Investor confidence in the company looks to be shaken, as Jerry Liu has been instrumental in developing the search engine algorithms used by Baidu, and has also been responsible for many technological innovations leading to the site's status as China's top search engine. Dubbed "China's Google," Baidu is at the forefront of the market with the second largest population of internet users in the world after the United States; about 123 million people use the internet in China, and Baidu accounts for approximately 62% of all search traffic undertaken, compared to Google's estimated 25%.

Baidu has also recently hit the news for being the first search engine to attempt circumvention of the extremely strict internet restrictions placed upon all media and content on the internet in China - the country is one of a very few websites with a nationwide government-imposed firewall. Viacom has signed an exclusive deal between their MTV brand and the Baidu engine to try and increase their brand awareness and market share in such a tightly regulated environment. Over 15,000 hours of content are being made available to Baidu, with a huge range of material spanning from "Dora The Explorer" to "Pimp My Ride." Baidu has also agreed to provide the company with the first ever branded area on the front page of the search engine, dubbed "MTV Zone." Predictions for the uptake of this service are cautiously optimistic; but there is underlying worry that the Chinese government will ban the content - especially seeing as how arbitrary the selection criteria for banned material seems to be.

Most content will be free to explore and use after viewing some advertisements, but more premium content, such as music videos, will require a small payment.

Some of us might suspect that Google are kicking themselves; after all, Baidu succeeded in wrestling search market shares away from Google in China. Baidu was at 52% while Google stood at 33% in August 2005, but the Chinese search engine's shares then grew to 62% while Google's decreased to 25% in August 2006. Not only that, but Google bought 2.6% of the Baidu shares at the IPO, then sold them a couple of years ago; even though Baidu's current revenue stream is tiny compared to Google's. If the current 100-150% growth in revenue continues, Baidu could be reporting profits of up to $700 million towards the third quarter of 2008. That's not exactly pocket change, even for Google.

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