Is the Search Industry Heating Up? -
A lot has been happening in the search industry over the last year. Google is still the dominant player, but Yahoo and Microsoft are continuing to fight. Is there hope for the other engines?
After Yahoo rejected Microsoft’s offer to buy the company last year, many people seemed to give up on the search engine. Since Carol Bartz took over the reigns at Yahoo, expectations of the company’s future have been mixed. Some view it as an impossible battle, while others view it with optimism. Is the optimism because they think Carol will seal a deal with Microsoft or because they think she will turn the company around? Carol is initiating many changes to the company including an upcoming re-branding effort.
Next is Microsoft who recently rolled out its latest search effort: Bing. Microsoft has long wanted to compete in the search arena and hopes that Bing will allow it to do so. Although it is still too early to tell, initial data reports have been promising. Nielsen Online found that on Bing’s first day, it came close to surpassing Yahoo Search for the second spot. WebProNews spoke with Hadley Reynolds, an analyst with International Data Corporation, who said Microsoft’s biggest challenge would be getting users to switch from Google. He went on to suggest that Microsoft needed to continue to innovate the user experience if they want to grow Bing’s audience.
What does all this mean for Google? The other engines have a long way to go to catch up with Google, but does that insinuate that Google is untouchable? There have been some reports that indicate that Google and even its co-founder are slightly unnerved by Bing. Despite its vast success, Google has also been feeling heat from the government over antitrust concerns.
There are many questions regarding the future of the search engines. Although it appears that Google is not going anywhere for some time, I think we can all agree that the war among the search engines is definitely heating up.
What Comes Next in Social Media? -
The coming of Oprah and Ashton Kutcher to Twitter brought a whole new meaning to the way the social site is perceived today and will be perceived in the future, according to social media expert Chris Brogan. He relates the situation to when the telephone came about saying that with Twitter, some will reject the service after a time, but there will still be newcomers anxious to get involved.
Chris hopes that in the future there will be more “velvet rope” social networks, but definitely sees mobile applications playing a large role in social. Technology has enabled us to be connected with others who possess the same interests as we do, regardless of location. Chris says mobile apps will continue to be instrumental in furthering this type of technology.
There are however, challenges that will come as social media evolves. The “spaceless Web” has been figured out, but the real challenge now is to connect the “spaceless Web” with the “local Web.”
What do you think the social future holds in store? How can both users and marketers prepare themselves?
How Can I Compete with Oprah on Twitter? -
Twitter is undoubtedly one of the hottest spots on the Web. As the site and its user base continue to grow and more celebrities and politicians jump on board, what impact does it have on the little guys? How can the average users and even the above average users compete with the famous ones?
Social media expert Chris Brogan says, “To hear, you listen better.”
Chris also suggests creating groups in Tweetdeck to stay informed on topics and people you truly care about. He personally created a secret Twitter account for the mere purpose of listening. He also recommends Twitter Search and other tools.
Are you finding that, as Twitter grows, your account seems to diminish in value? What suggestions do you have for standing out?
Using StumbleUpon to Drive More Traffic -
If a social media expert devotes an entire presentation to one social website, he must truly believe in its benefits. That is exactly the case with Brent Csutoras and StumbleUpon. Brent has been talking about StumbleUpon lately and why he thinks people should invest their time in the service. StumbleUpon has received some criticism in the past couple of years, but Brent says the service is on the right path now and has a bright future.
Over the past year, StumbleUpon has made several positive changes to its services. It has “caught up” with the other social sites by launching a Web-based toolbar, including related content into review pages, and adding StumbleUpon buttons for webmasters to incorporate into their sites, among other things. In addition, StumbleUpon recently released a url shortener that allows for further content exposure and more.
According to Brent, these features allow SU to interact more with their users and allow users to receive better results from the service. He says these changes let users draw anywhere from 30,000-200,000 unique visitors to a site in a week’s time. That’s a lot of traffic!
Have you noticed how StumbleUpon has changed over the past year? Is it providing its users with more effective services? How has StumbleUpon improved your website?
Google Voice Open to More Users -
The much-anticipated Google Voice service is now available to more people. Yesterday, Google began sending out invites to those who have been requesting access to the free service. In May, Google reportedly reserved 1 million phone numbers through Level 3 Communications, which caused many people to speculate that a public launch was imminent. While the announcement does not signify a completely open, public launch, it does allow more users to enjoy the service.
Google Voice, formerly known as Grand Central, lets users to unify all their phone numbers under one single number. All calls can be routed through that single number and can simultaneously ring home, work, or mobile phones. Voice also contains advanced voicemail features that include message transcripts. You can sign up for your invite here.
In the short amount of time since Google’s announcement, Google Voice has already received criticism. Some oppose the new number that is created since outbound calls may not be recognized by friends and colleagues. Privacy concerns have also been raised since Google has the ability to access all voice conversations and voicemail. For Gmail users however, this is nothing new since Google can already access similar information.
What about you? Do these concerns worry you? Or do the concerns seem small when you calculate the convenience of Google Voice into the equation?
Understanding the Scope of Twitter’s Reach -
Although recent data shows that Twitter’s growth numbers for the month of May were flat, the microblogging service does not appear to be losing any popularity. Twitter has gone beyond being a reputation management tool and has now even been categorized as mainstream. Additionally, Brett Tabke believes Twitter is still evolving.
As the service continues to develop, Brett says tools are and will continue to emerge that help define what type of Twitterer each user is. One such tool is Klout, which conducts a Twitter analysis on each user to measure his or her influence across the Web.
Another result of Twitter’s extreme popularity is a new type of search engine that has risen up. These search engines are real-time and instead of indexing pages across the Web, they index conversations taking place in the social Web. A couple of examples of these search engines are Topsy and Scoopler.
How do you see Twitter evolving in the future?
Making Social Media Worth Your While -
Is social media really worth all the effort? That’s the question that many CEOs ask their marketing teams. It’s hard for the C-level executives to understand where the true value of social lies since the results take time and are not always in dollar amounts. Based upon research from his company Meteor Solutions, Ben Straley says they have found that social media actually plays a large role in the success of online marketing campaigns.
When you set goals for your social media campaign, you need to ask yourself what you want to accomplish and then measure your efforts. The type of business you operate actually determines what you should measure.
For instance, if you’re a brand advertiser, you should measure the online buzz that’s created about your brand and look at conversations and mentions. If you’re an online retailer, you should measure social media like a direct response campaign and look at the number of visitors to your site and the number of sales generated.
Ultimately, the value of social media is not determined by how much money you make. Instead, it is determined by how your business receives value from it.
Google PR Sculpting and Nofollow Debate Revisited -
SMX Advanced 2009 turned out to be a great show, and as always, it held some excitement. The two most exciting occurrences at the show were Microsoft’s new search brand Bing and the debate that broke out over Google’s PageRank Sculpting and nofollow practices. WebProNews spoke with Jeremiah Andrick to get his perspective on both issues.
As a former employee of Microsoft, Jeremiah said the search team is constantly working to improve the “depth and abilities to recognize new content” and believes they are making the “right” changes with Bing. Although time holds the only answer to whether people will truly accept Bing, people within the search industry are encouraged by Microsoft’s effort. So many businesses depend on Google to make money, and therefore the industry would like to see diversity brought to the table.
The second most popular topic at SMX Advanced was the issue regarding PR Sculpting and nofollow with Google. We first told you about the debate in our interview with Stephan Spencer. In a nutshell, it appears that the risky practice of PR sculpting is not as valuable as it once could be and the way Google views nofollow is also evolving. Matt Cutts did try to clarify Google’s position in a blog post here.
According to Jeremiah, he doesn’t see this impacting SEO in the short term. He also stresses the importance of testing and looking at analytics. How do you feel about this situation? Do you believe this will heavily impact your SEO efforts?
How Effective Is Twitter Search? -
Twitter has quickly become a prominent fixture on the Internet. More recently, Twitter has been called a search engine in itself with the rise of its Twitter Search. There are however, some problems with Twitter Search as Michael Gray explained to us.
Backing up just a bit, Twitter purchased Surmize last year and brought it in-house and developed it into Twitter Search. Within Twitter Search, Twitter displays popular hashtags and terms as trending topics in case others want to look at them also. Twitter claims that the search is in real-time, but unfortunately it isn’t always, which is one of the biggest problems with Twitter Search.
What does this mean for the search engines? Michael Gray doesn’t believe that Twitter Search will replace the search engines, but he does believe the engines are looking for ways to utilize it. Google is reportedly talking with Twitter and working on a method to effectively crawl through a user’s tweets.
What do you think about Twitter Search? Do you find it effective? How do you think it will impact the standard search engines?
Up Close and Personal with Bing Team -
The buzz around the announcement of Microsoft’s new search brand Bing is still going strong. Users are commenting on everything from Bing’s interface to the quality of the results. WebProNews caught up with Bing team members Nathan Buggia and Ramez Naam to get some first-hand information on the engine.
The three main areas of focus for the new search product were:
1. Best possible results
2. Organized experience
3. Key tools to help users decide
Ramez says the quality of the search results have changed and the speed of the engine is better. Bing is continuing to work to cut down on the user’s time searching by simplifying tasks. To organize the search experience, Bing has a 3-column layout and a “table of contents” in the upper left-hand corner.
With the table of contents, Bing looked at how searchers view results and refine their queries and created categories accordingly. For example, if you search for a Honda Accord, the categories could be reviews, recalls, repair, videos, and images. Bing also provides key tools to help users make decisions regarding specific tasks such as travel and product purchases.
One of Nathan’s favorite features about Bing is the Best Match capability. With this feature, if it’s positive that a query is a navigational query, Bing will hide the regular algorithm results and showcase the “best match.” For example, for a query for www.ups.com, Bing will highlight the UPS site and even include a search box directly on the results page to track packages. Bing is also doing Entity Extraction on pages to pull out user reviews and obtain a deeper knowledge of the content on the page. The purpose of this is to include more valuable content in the search result captions to better serve the users.
What about Bing’s impact on SEO? Nathan says because the content publisher’s goals and Bing’s goals are the same, it leads to more targeted traffic. The categorized results show up to 20 results per page, which means everyone isn’t fighting over the top 10 blue links and the small businesses have a better chance of being seen.
Bing is doing some pretty cool things, and it has already been given some good reviews. But as users continue to test Bing out and see all that it can do, the big question remains: “Does Bing pose a threat to Google?”
