Posted February 29th, 2008
by admin
Search engine Baidu has launched instant messaging (IM) in beta, the first formal foray into the Chinese IM market. The “Baidu Hi” service won’t be expected to generate revenue in the short term. But the Chinese search titan must find a way to diversify its revenue base.
The Chinese language search engine recently launched a Japanese portal.
Baidu, China’s most popular search engine, has more than 60 percent of the search engine industry revenues, according to Analysys International, a Beijing-based research firm.
Google China holds second place with about 26 percent share.
Yahoo China site remains in third with a little less than 10 percent share.
Baidu considers the service a strategic product, according to the Chinese search engine’s press release issued tonight.
As with Google, search drives revenue for the fast-growing Baidu. For the past three years Baidu has doubled in size every year. The growth rate may drop to 30 percent in the next five years as Baidu’s revenue base grows.
The beta is restricted to Baidu employees only. No word on how long the beta will last or when the product will officially launch.
One company, Tencent, based in Shenzhen has about 80 percent of the IM market share in China with its QQ service. How large is Tencent’s customer base? QQ has 580 million users. The company earned 1 billion yuan in the Q3 last year through Internet services.
In second place, Microsoft’s MSN Instant Messaging runs far behind Tencent’s QQ platform.
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Posted February 29th, 2008
by admin
If Ask dismantled its Teoma engine, would Ask still be Ask? The simple answer to this existential question is no.
The Ask search is based on the concept of expert opinion, and there are many refinement options shown in the interface based on clustered or categorized results.
So it Teoma were shut down, we think the ability to narrow or expand searches would likely disappear — as shown in the chocolate options here.
On the other hand, it’s possible to port these algorithms elsewhere if there were time for the engineers to prepare for transitions. That means these refinements could be layered on top of a different engine, albeit slowing down the response time.
According to PaidContent, the ad deal between Google and Ask includes “a clause allowing Google to engage more deeply with Ask’s algorithmic search.” If the algorithms from Joisy were connected inside of Google, then these functionalities live on.
Not sure what’s planned here, but we can’t take the user-interface for granted with a simple plug-in.
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Posted February 29th, 2008
by admin
Seems Yahoo has really been falling behind in updating their databases, according to Aaron Wall’s article today.
This is something all people who work in the SEO area should be taking notice of since Yahoo has had good conversion numbers for many of us and if the efforts to add more content are not being recognized by Yahoo then efforts may be better spent improving existing pages - though even this may not be possible.
Yahoo has gone through a number of changes both to its system and its personnel lately so hopefully this will soon be remedied.
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Posted February 29th, 2008
by admin
ComScore did what Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook, and Digg only dreamed of.
ComScore killed the search engine star.
ComScore data on Google paid clicks rocked the world this week. The proprietary comScore qSearch report was analyzed to death by Wall St. analysts and media pundits. Data: summarized and judged; Google, convicted, flogged and sentenced to an early demise.
It wasn’t hit and run, though: comScore’s SVP of Media and Search, James Lamberti, and CEO and Co-Founder Dr. Magid Abraham delve deep into the data to correct the rush to judgment in the marketplace. It’s a must-read. Great analysis; surprisingly lifeless title: “Why Google’s surprising paid click data are less surprising.”
It should’ve been “Data doesn’t kill Google, people do.”
QSearch showed a 7 percent decline in January ‘08 vs. December ‘07. Paid click annual growth? Flat for Google.
Month-over-month the number of paid clicks per search on Google dropped by 8 percent (December ‘07 to January ‘08). Consumers clicking less on search ads? Maybe. A weaker buying appetite?
Google’s share price took a hit and rebounded. Reports of Google’s early demise? Greatly exaggerated. That doesn’t mean the momentum-driven Google shares won’t take a hit if Google fails to impress the Street this quarter.
Wall St. analysts - looking for clues where Google gives no guidance - had accomplices: mainstream media and bloggers hoping for a Google stumble.
No one wants to miss the Hindenburg. The only problem? The Hindenburg Crashes Nightly when Google news goes viral.
The Google backlash reared its ugly head and this time it wasn’t just Valleywag.
LendingTree whose multimillion dollar paid search campaigns are managed by search marketing firm Efficient Frontier, made public its new online marketing strategy: cutting back on PPC or paid search.
LendingTree spokesperson Allison Vail was quoted in CNET News.com by Stefanie Olsen.
“With the Fed changes in January, we were driving natural traffic. It’s smarter for us,” said Vail.
Our readers know it’s always smart to optimize for natural search. I’m not sure anecdotal evidence from a financial services pure play in the throes of a global subprime mortgage crisis proves paid search revenues are declining.
Statistics from search marketing firms, though, would lend credence to the argument.
For average CPC (Cost Per Click) by industry vertical (Financial Services, Mortgage, Credit, Auto), click here.
Efficient Frontier Chairman Ellen Siminoff, chairman told CNET that paid search advertising spendi in financial services has typically risen between 30 percent and 50 percent annually.
So far this year it’s either flat or down for some companies. credit and mortgage advertisers raised their spending by 24 percent, but this year, their spending has risen only 3 percent year over year, according to Efficient Frontier data.
Coming soon: Efficient Frontier / Search Engine Watch Average CPC data for February.
Be the first investment banker or hedge fund manager on your block to see the stats.
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Posted February 29th, 2008
by admin
Having successfully completed an in-house search marketers’ salary survey in the fall (with results in January), SEMPO, the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization, is conducting an online salary survey of agency-based search marketers.
The survey presents less than 30 questions and can be completed in an estimated 12 minutes. It’s open now and will run through mid March. Results of the survey will be published in connection with ad:tech San Francisco in April.
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Posted February 29th, 2008
by admin
With sitemaps cross-hosting (or cross-submission), Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft cracked open the door for corporations to outsource search engine optimization.
How big a deal is this?
Not enough to make Robert Scoble cry. Or join the circus.
When SEL broke the news at SMX (described in excellent summary by Vanessa Fox of vanessfoxnude fame), I was hoping for a revolutionary change. Then I read the blog posts at the Google Webmaster Central, Yahoo Search and Live Search Webmaster Center blogs so you don’t have to. (I’m just kidding all you search engine PR gals … and guy.)
Robots.txt ruined my night. I felt like I was decepticonned - hoping for the breakthrough that would make outsourcing SEO much easier for major corporations. Or an announcement that might provide guidance for SEOs to improve rankings for their clients.
SEW Experts SEM Crossfire columnist Chris Boggs ended the robots nightmare: “I think it’s a big step forward in making it easier for companies to outsource, but the caveat is having full access to the robots.txt. Some industries such as banking and pharma may still have issues.”
Still, we don’t want to beat up on the search engines (unnecessarily). In the past, search engines required companies with multiple Web sites to have “one set of servers to rule them all.”
In short, search engines required sitemaps to be on the same host and path as the URLs they contained. That meant the same server needed to host both sitemaps and site content.
Google, Yahoo and Live Search put aside their fierce competition for a moment to make life a little easier for Webmasters and SEOs by standardizing sitemaps in November 2006, when the Big Three formed Sitemaps.org.
SEW Experts By The Numbers columnist, Eric Enge, CEO of Stone Temple Consulting, noted, “The announcement affects Web site owners who don’t have the freedom to place a sitemaps file in the root directory of the domain. Historically, site owners without the ability to place a file in the root folder for their domain haven’t been able to make use of sitemaps.”
A cross-hosting sitemaps scenario or two?
“There are many scenarios. Shared hosting environments and people in large corporations who may be running subdomains of a much larger site,” said Enge. “This now allows them to place the sitemaps file in a different location, even on another server or domain. The sitemaps file then needs to be pointed to by the robots.txt file for the original domain. The site owner will still need the ability to make that change.”
Search Engine Watch, for example, has several domains and subdomains. Our main domain, searchenginewatch.com, features a few subdomains: blog.searchenginewatch.com, forums.searchenginewatch.com and jobs.searchenginewatch.com, for example.
Now we can host all our sitemaps in one location or subdomain: such as “notreally-oursitemaps.searchenginewatch.com.”
So what does cross-hosting mean for the global SEO community?
“Ultimately this opens up the site maps protocol to a large number of site owners who couldn’t make use of it before,” said Enge. “The SEO impact really relates to that fact. SEOs may not have been able to use sitemaps on a site previously, due to the limitations of the prior implementation. Now those SEOs have the capability available to them.”
Cool.
“The impact of offsite hosting for sitemaps? It will make it easier for sitemap management by allowing site owners to manage multiple sitemaps in one location,” explained Lee Odden of TopRank. “It will also make it easier for those with sites that use subdomains.”
So bottom line: will SEOs be able to leverage cross-hosting to improve rankings for targeted keywords?
“As for impact on rankings, it’s no different than the effect of making sitemap data available previously,” said Odden. “Providing a list of URLs to search engines serves as a supplemental source of information to what their spiders would find in the wild.”
Here’s how it works:
“Search engines make no guarantee that providing URLs in a sitemap will increase the number of pages indexed - but they might,” said Odden. “So in that regard, making it easier for sites that previously did not provide sitemaps, especially subdomains, may help them get more pages indexed, but I see no effect on actual rankings.”
For the Google Guy’s take on sitemaps, nofollow and other great tips, read the highest ranked Matt Cutts interview ever done (by Eric Enge).
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Posted February 29th, 2008
by admin
Below is what happened in search today, as reported onSearch Engine Land and from other places across the web.
From Search Engine Land:
- IAC Ready To Drop Ask.com Search Technology & Partner With Google?
IAC: Ready To Bail On Ask? from Silicon Valley Insider reports an insider tip that IAC may sell off or abandon their search technology and outsource it to Google. Here is the tip: There is indeed a big shakeup coming. A new Ask. Some think a reduction in workforce is…
- Are You An Agency SEM Pro? Take SEMPO’s Salary Survey
SEMPO is undertaking a salary survey of agency search engine marketing professionals, similar to its in-house SEM salary survey that we reported on in January. If you’re an agency SEM pro, SEMPO would like to hear from you, whether you’re a SEMPO member or not. To qualify for the survey,…
- Search In Pictures: SMX Bowl, Google Jeans, Bart’s Chalk Board
In this week’s Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have, and more….
- YouTube To Add Live Video This Year
Steve Chen: YouTube to Add Live Video from NewTeeVee reports that YouTube’s founder said they will be adding live video support this year. Videoblogger Sarah Meyers asked Chen about video blogging, in which he said: 2008. We’ll do it this year. Live video is just something that we’ve always wanted…
Search News From Around The Web:
Applications & Portal Features
Business Issues
Local, Maps & Mobile
Microhoo
Paid Search & Contextual
Searching
SEM Industry
SEO & SEM
Social Media
Other Items
Recent Hot Items From Sphinn, Our Social News Sharing Site:
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Posted February 29th, 2008
by admin
An informal poll by Enid Burns at ClickZ News finds that many agencies that advertise on Google’s content network have seen improved results over the past six months.
Some credit the changes Google has made to improve the network, such as placement targeting, performance reports, and new ad units on Google’s search, content, and mobile networks. Google also shrank the clickable area of AdSense ads to to limit accidental clicks.
Incidentally, that shrinkage is attributed by some as the cause for ComScore’s report of flat click growth for Google, among other declining click volume theories.
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Posted February 29th, 2008
by admin
In this week’s Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have, and more.
Click to continue reading…
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Posted February 29th, 2008
by admin
IAC: Ready To Bail On Ask? from Silicon Valley Insider reports an insider tip that IAC may sell off or abandon their search technology and outsource it to Google.
Here is the tip:
There is indeed a big shakeup coming. A new Ask. Some think a reduction in workforce is likely. There are no sacred cows, Teoma may be sold or simply abandoned which is hundreds of engineers who work on the core search engine, in place of just using Google’s search with our special brand of user interface.
Click to continue reading…
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