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Bing US Search Traffic

What would be the best way for a research firm to get some notice in a market that has two or three dominant players that most turn to? Well, get the first numbers into the market place around how well Bing has performed for Microsoft. Reuters reports that StatCounter, a Dublin based research firm has done just that. The company is based in Dublin and has published results...

Search Traffic

...that are based on 4 billion pageloads per month monitored through a network of websites. Drumroll please?

Bing, launched on June 3 but available to some users a few days earlier, took 8.23 percent of U.S. Web searches in June, up from 7.81 percent for Microsoft search just prior to its rollout and 7.21 percent in April, said Internet data firm StatCounter.
Google lost share slightly, dipping to 78.48 percent from 78.72 percent before Bing. Yahoo Inc, the perennial No. 2 in the market, rose to 11.04 percent from 10.99 percent.

Cymbal crash! In a nice piece of headline sensationalism, Reuters titled the article Microsofts Bing Search Wins Share from Google. Good stuff to make you read further but the numbers, at least from StatCounter, dont really bear out the win.

In fact, one might say that even though there was an uptick in Microsoft search traffic (as well as a slight one for Yahoo) the change of a percent is negligible at best and could be accounted for in normal error ranges as nothing positive at all. Now factor in the $100 or so million that Microsoft has assigned to the rollout of Bing and the frequency of the ads seen for the new decision engine it may be fair to say these numbers are a huge disappointment rather than any form of hope. If Bing doesnt get traction early it may just be a true blip and a non-issue for Google moving forward.

StatCounter though, really wants to create some sort of competition here.

At first sight, a 1 percent increase in market share does not appear to be a huge return on the investment Microsoft has made in Bing but the underlying trend appears positive, StatCounter Chief Executive Adohan Cullen said in a statement.

Underlying trend? After one month? Thats almost as bad as basing company performance on short term (quarterly) results and we all know where that leads. Look, I think Google could really use a strong competitor. It would help the consumer and it would be likely to make Google even stronger by being pushed a bit. These numbers, however, will not make anyone at Google even hiccup. In fact, the re-branding efforts of Yahoo are likely to cause more consternation for the Google because at least Yahoo is realistic about its search prospects. Oh and by the way, Yahoo is still #2 despite the Bing rollout.

If Bing can overtake Yahoo for 2nd place then that might be news. Nearly one month into this race, though, this kind of result is hard to get excited about and certainly not worthy of the proclamation that Google is losing ground.

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Bing and Twitter to Integrate?

All of us that have called for more real-time search results or better Twitter integration, should have done a better job of spelling out our needs. Apparently Bing misread the memo. In a move that appears to have more bark than bite, Bing has announced the integration of Twitter with its search results. Before you leap for joy, the announcement is a non-starter. What we get is a few thousand...

But Don't Get Too Excited

...Twitter profiles added to the Bing index. Search for Andy Beal Twitter or @andybeal and youll get a box at the top of your results that looks like this:

What you dont get is Bing tapping into those tweets for its actual search results. Lets take the text from the second tweet listed above and Bing it:

Meh.

With just a few thousand high profile Twitter users included, and no honest-to-goodness real-time search, I feel kind of robbed. The next time Bing declares its Bringing a Bit of Twitter to Bing, I hope it bites off a larger chunk!

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Google Chief Technology Officer Reassigned

What do you do if you no longer need your Chief Technology Officer, but dont want your rivals to get their grubby mitts on him either? Well, if youre Google you quietly move him out of that role, give him some other projects to work on, and hope that no one notices. Unfortunately, All Things Digital noticed: "-YouTube co-founder Steve- Chen left his spot as chief technology officer..."

Google Preventing Talent Defecting

..." last fall, though he remains employed at Google, which bought his company for $1.65 billion in 2006. Steve shifted his focus to help with some Google engineering projects. Hes still involved with YouTube and invested in its success, says YouTube spokesman Ricardo Reyes via email."

Still involved with YouTube"except his role of CTO doesnt actually exist anymore!

The online video space is a tough market these days. While some companies are thriving, others arent fairing so well. Reading between the lines, it seems as though Chens not as important to YouTube"now that a whole army of engineers are at its disposal"but he could play a vital role at one of its competitors.

Were seeing execs playing a lot of musical chairs these days, so it would make sense that Google would want to try and keep their top talent from defecting to a rival.

What do you think?

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More Money, Fewer Answers

Everyone is staring hard at Bing, Microsoft's new search engine, and I mostly like what I see, with one exception. I've written before about the search engine conflict of interest between highlighting their own properties and providing the truly best answer. In the quest for ever more cash, search engines are presenting results that point to their own pages. What does that mean?

Searching For Profit

If you don't know what I am talking about, take a look at search results from any major search engine today. They often highlight Web properties owned by their parent company. Google shows its YouTube videos, Yahoo shows its Flickr photos, Ask.com shows its CitySearch results, each of which shows more of their own advertising. Yahoo's Tim Mayer has been refreshingly open about their goal: to keep searchers on their results pages for as long as possible.

Microsoft didn't start this trend, but Bing is certainly part of it. From the few searches that I did in health care, it seems like Bing is being a bit more aggressive in highlighting its own properties. Search for "arthritis" and see what you get. Here's the top result as of today:

If you look closely, you can see that this is not the average search result--it's not the #1 result on merit. It's the top result because Microsoft has a deal with the Mayo Clinic to provide information on health conditions. I don't know which way the money flows, if at all, but this is a different way to get the top result than we've seen in the past. The other search engines favor their own properties but don't automatically slam them to the top of the list.

I'm not sure whether this is worse than what the other search engines do or not. Bing makes this search result look different than regular organic results, much the way Google pioneered distinguishing paid search results when the industry went through another major ethical dilemma. The other search engines often make their own properties blend in with the ones that really got their on merit.

This is not to say that those results are never there based on merit. Nor does it say that this is necessarily a bad experience for the searcher. Obviously, if searchers didn't click on these results, the technique would not work. And, taken to an extreme, if searchers begin to doubt the honesty of the results, a search engine is toast.

But the truth is that for many searches, such as "arthritis," the Mayo Clinic information doesn't seem any better or worse than say, the information from WebMD. But the WebMD information is far down the page for Bing, while it is near the top in Google.

Some of this is just the difference between how search rankings work across engines, but there's a larger point here. The truth is that if the Mayo Clinic information is featured, searchers are less likely to need the WebMD version, which is bad news for WebMD, but also for anyone whose search marketing strategy is based on content. Ask yourself what you'd do if you were WebMD. Wouldn't you be on the phone with Google, Yahoo!, and dozens of other search engines around the world to get your own deal like the one May has with Bing? It becomes an arms race where only the big and the connected get the special treatment.

If you think this affects only large businesses, think again. The more obscure the search keyword, the more likely that a small business, such as a local medical clinic, has prepared string helpful content that can win the battle of the search results. I searched for "osteomyelitis," a rare bone disease, and found the Cleveland Clinic rated highly by both Google and Bing. Because it is such a rare disease, there was no Mayo Clinic link for that keyword in Bing. But does anyone think that day won't be coming?

And don't breathe a sigh of relief if you're in a business other than health care. You can already see signs of this stuff in travel and shopping searches. It's likely that search engines are just working their way down the long tail, doing the most lucrative keywords first.

The simple fact is that all the search engines are looking to improve revenue and they are no longer going to be satisfied with merely selling ads for the searches. Now they want to sell ads for the results pages you click on, too. And that strategy favors large information providers, not small businesses. Where search was once one of the few forms of marketing where small businesses had a level playing field against large ones, I think that each day the field is tilting a bit more.

Be afraid. Be very afraid. There's only more to come.

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Twitter Search a Challenge for Google Search?

The other day, June 25, 2009, when the news broke that Michael Jackson had died, many people went online and went over to Twitter. We searched. And we searched for news about Michael Jackson. Soon, we began to see everyone talking about Michael Jacksons untimely death on Twitter. But we also continue to see people gaming the Twitter search engine.

Twitter Vs Google

Mark Jackson (no, hes not related to Michael Jackson) was recently interviewed about Twitter search.

Lately, there has been a lot of hype about Twitter search being a rival for Google search. Twitter still has a lot of ways to go, and its very gameable. Twitters search is based on how fresh your tweet is. In there future, we expect that there will be more algorithmic changes to Twitter search. Twitter needs to address the holes in their search results if theyre ever going to be a rival for Google search and able to index the real time web.

When it comes to Twitter Search, for example, there are some indications lately that they are making some changes. For example, when it comes to profile searches, and you have a keyword in your profile,Twitter may be ranking your profile based on the number of followers you have. If someone else comes along later and establishes their account on Twitter and adds that same keyword to their profile, Twitter Search will show the profile that has more followers.

Twitter Search still has a long way to go until they can even think about being a rival for Google. But, certainly, if you want to know what people are talking about on Twitter right now, take a look at Twitters trending topics.

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Yahoo Rebranding by Bartz

Since taking the helm at Yahoo in January, CEO Carol Bartz has consistently emphasized one of Yahoos greatest strengths: its brand. But now they may be changing all that"literally. According to BoomTown, Yahoo is looking to revamp its worldwide fortunes with a major rebranding. But for once the companys strength might be working against it. Says BoomTown:

Rebranding Yahoo

Yahoos branding campaign will certainly have to be a big deal, given that it is one of the top Internet sites in the world and has massive name recognition.
And Bartz has been vocal about the importance of touting Yahoo as a well-known brand, even as she has said a lot internally and externally that she detests purple.

While Yahoos main color (as seen in the logo above) has been purple for some time, and its mantra has been bleed purple, I wonder how many of its users would really miss the purple. Sure, there would be a few diehards who would mourn the extermination of the eggplant, the majority of users probably are only vaguely aware theres some sort of purple-Yahoo association. I mean, this is what you see on Yahoo:

Speaking with BoomTowns Kara Swisher at the D7 conference, Carol Bartz made a statement that could easily sum up the goal of this rebrand:

The best way to change the perception is to do a good job and then talk about it. We just have to get our story out there; we have to continue to appeal to the people that come to us, and frankly, at some point people get sick of having us as the underdog and say, Thank God, Yahoos back.

Possibilities for the new brand include your home on the Web. The rebranding might coincide with the planned homepage redesign, which was pushed back to this fall.

Given the CEOs penchant for four-letter words, however, I suppose we should just be grateful none of those figure into the brands future. Bartz is expected to address the subject at the companys annual meeting today.

What do you think? Is a rebranding enough to reverse Yahoos fortunes, or will it take far more to get the #2 search engine going again?

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Google Search Results Shortcut: Local Search

Its no secret that everyone wants to be on the first page of Google, but with many different ways to achieve this - whats the best solution for your business? If you deal with locally based customers from your town or city, there is a quick and easy shortcut to get listed on the first page of Google! This shortcut has to do with Googles local business listings, which are often shown...

Shortcut to the First Page of Google

...as the first result when customers search for your business category.

For example, if somebody from New York searches for florist, florists, or something more targeted like florist new york Google can show a 10-pack of local business results deemed most relevant to the query.

Just take a look at the search results below:

Youll notice that these local business results are listed as the number 1 Google result above even the regular organic listings!

In many ways, these listings are even better than regular listings because users get more than just a link to your website. They also get your phone number, a map of your location and an additional link to find out more about your business.

Many people consider this to be a shortcut to the first page of Google because achieving a first page local listing can be a lot quicker and cheaper than other traditional methods.

Creating and optimizing your local listing is tricky to begin with, but considering it can get your business on the first page of Google, its a small price to pay!

If youre not familiar with all the local ranking factors and want to secure a top 10 local listing for yourself, check out our Guaranteed Top 10 Google Listing program. Our experts will create and optimize your local listing to ensure youre on the first page of Google when people are searching for you!

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Cuil Hype Halts

Proving that hype will only get you so far"without substance"Cuil is going from Google killer to Google beggar. According to IBD, the start-up is turning to the search engine that it vowed to topple"asking Google to provide ads on Cuils pages. That is what we are going to do, said Tom Costello, Cuils chief executive. We are negotiating with the obvious people, Google...

From Killer to Beggar

...and Yahoo, and we are going to decide which is going to be the better fit.

I understand the need to make money. After all, at some point Cuil will burn through the $33 million funding it raised, but publicly admitting youre going cap in hand to Google? Werent you supposed to have decapitated them and left them for dead by now?

To be fair, Cuil has stated that its strategy was to not place ads on its search results until such time as it had built enough traffic.

We have had no ads until now because we are building traffic, Costello said. You dont want to put up ads unless you have enough traffic.

Smart move. Lets see how thats working out for ya:

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Bing Market Share Continues to Grow

The latest data from comScore is out " and its looking very positive for Bing. According to a recent press release, Microsoft has seen gains in U.S. search share during the second week of Bings debut. From the press release: The results show that Microsoft has continued to increase its position in the search market following the initial week of Bings debut. Microsoft Sites saw its...

Bing Gains in Market Share

...average daily searcher penetration and share of search result pages in the U.S. continue to climb during the second week of Bings introduction.

According to the raw data, Microsofts average daily penetration among U.S. searchers reached 16.7% during the second week since launch which is an increase of 3 percentage points prior to Bings launch. Microsofts share of search results pages also grew as well:

And its not only comScore thats showing positive news for Bing.

Last week in our blind search test, you (our readers) voted that Bing (47%) provided better results that both Google (38%) and Yahoo (14%). While its all good news for Bing, how has this impacted your search habits or traffic?

Have you switched default search providers from Google to Bing?
Have you seen an increase in Microsoft traffic to your site?

Let us know via our blog comments below!

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To Follow or to NoFollow

At SMX Advanced in Seattle last month, Matt Cutts made his intentions clear when he advised SEOs not to waste too much time on internal page rank sculpting using the nofollow tag and instead concentrate on spending that time on creating useful content. This threw the SEO world into a tizzy with lot of power SEOs blogging about their concerns. Danny Sullivans post on...

A NoFollow Debate

... Google Loses Backward Compatibility was an interesting one.

Matt Cutts cleared the air in his post on PR sculpting on his blog. Rand Fishkin has posted a video on PR leak at SEOmoz. Bruce Clay has recorded Matts comments on PR sculpting on his post.

All this information notwithstanding, at this stage, it is not very prudent to read too much into the new meaning that the nofollow link has assumed with respect to pagerank. A year ago, if a page had 10 points of page rank, with 10 links (external or internal is not important) on the page out of which 5 are nofollowed, the 5 followed links got 2 points of page rank flowing through them.

But in the new scheme of things, in the above scenario, the 5 followed links get only 1 point each and the remaining 5 points of pagerank evaporate. The term evaporate as it stands today is very ambiguous and does not really explain many things.

My understanding is that there is not infinite pagerank to flow across the web. It is proportional to the number of pages in Googles index. If we look at Pagerank as a pie, the sites with PR10, PR9 and PR8 constitute huge slices of the Pagerank pie. The remaining portion of this pie is distributed across the millions of other sites on the web.

If a PR3 site wants to increase its pagerank to the next level, then it has to create lot more pages of content and therefore own more virtual real estate than its competitor who is sitting on a PR4. Apart from this, other factors like the authority and trust of the domain, quality of backlinks etc also come into play. All these factors are clubbed together into the toolbar page rank of a site.

SEOmozs Mozbar tends to give a more accurate picture by breaking up the TBPR (toolbar pagerank) into its constituents namely pagerank at the page level, trust at the page level, page rank at the domain level, trust at the domain level and the number of extrernal links from unique domains.

Going by the theory that pagerank is not an infinite quantity, the law of conservation of energy in science states that energy disappearing in one form reappears in an exactly equivalent form. In the same vein, the page rank evaporating from the nofollowed links on a page must be compensated by distribution of the evaporated pagerank elsewhere on the page instead of disappearing into thin air.

If there were outbound links to good quality resources with the same topical focus as the content on the original page, it would help in the distribution of the evaporated pagerank and remain useful to the users. It also leads to better quality authoritative relevant content and reinforces Googles vision - provide good quality relevant results to searchers.

Over the years, webmasters have been reluctant to link to good quality sources from their sites. The use of excessive internal pagerank sculpting to flow link juice to important pages on their sites using the nofollow tag has sidelined the perceived less important pages on their sites. The concept of pagerank revolves around linking. The new measures adopted by Google could be to encourage sites to link more to trusted authoritative sources in their domain of expertise.

The increasing incidence of use of nofollow tags in links to external sites has also contributed to this quandary. The original intention behind nofollow was to use this tag to link to untrusted sources. They could be user generated comments, paid links, signup pages, links to RSS feeds etc. But the sole purpose the nofollow tag has served has been to channel link juice to specific money pages on a site to make them more powerful so that they can rank well in the search results.

Google has also come across cases where inexperienced site owners have done more harm to their site by using nofollow injudiciously that they have blocked off good quality content from the Google index. This is to the detriment of Googles vision in providing quality relevant content to users. This can be disputed as the good quality content can be linked to, from other sites on the web. Google still knows the existence of such pages and can even rank them on the weight of the anchor text of the inbound links.

Matt Cutts admitted that Google started evaporating pagerank over a year ago. There are lots of sites (especially large ones) who have done internal page rank sculpting on their sites to flow link juice to their most important pages. There has been no significant report of sites losing their pagerank in this period en masse.

There are two other important issues that hinge around the value of Pagerank. They are:

The inclusion of pages in the Google index is dependent on a pagerank threshold value the page must accumulate to be worthy of being admitted into the index
The crawling of pages on a site is also dependent on the page rank threshold

Assuming that the pagerank evaporates from a page with a good PR score due to presence of nofollowed links, would the subsequent decrease in the pagerank cause problems for that page to be crawled in future? Would excessive evaporation lead to the page thrown out of the Google index? It is very difficult to analyse such factors and your guess is as good as mine.

Danny Sullivan made a comment on Matts blog wherein he points out that all links are not created the same on a given site. Google uses its own techniques to measure the importance of links and their ability to flow juice. Webmasters in their earnestness to adopt pagerank sculpting use the nofollow on links which, if followed, might still get credit from Googles algorithm. But their manual intervention snuffs it out.

In a subtle way, Google is maybe reminding webmasters and site owners that they should stop being search engineers by trying to channelise pagerank flow and concentrate more on their business, developing quality content and improving traffic and conversions.

Michael Martinez in a post on SEOmoz had an interesting comment to make. He said that the TBPR is not an accurate reliable measure of the pagerank of a site/page. Internal pagerank sculpting has been pursued by SEOs across the board based on the TBPR score. He says that a technique based on faulty measurement will only lead to inaccurate results. It is akin to chasing rainbows. This is offset by Rand who has clearly stated that internal page rank sculpting has worked wonders for his clients.

Matt Cutts weighs in when he says that it is highly desirable to plan a good site architecture right from the inception stage of a website. The architecture should take care of the site hierarchy by providing links to important pages using a natural linking style rather than use nofollow to achieve the same results.

With all these deliberations going on in the SEOsphere, it would be ideal for SEO practitioners to avoid excessive use of nofollow from now onwards in their future assignments. If they have used nofollow in the past on client sites for internal page rank sculpting and there has been no outcry to date, it is best to leave them as is rather than undo all the nofollowing. More importance should be given to the planning of the site/information architecture to link naturally to important pages on the site.

Again, it is early days to fully understand the effects of pagerank evaporation. Many SEO experts have been testing this and their pronouncements should be awaited eagerly.

Ravi Venkatesan is a senior search marketing consultant at Netconcepts, our Auckland pay per click (ppc) marketing company in New Zealand. He also posts regularly to the Online Marketer blog at www.onlinemarketer.co.nz

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