LBi Netrank: LBi Netrank Newsletter: August 2008

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New Product Launches

Google launches Insights for Search

Google has launched Insights for Search, an expanded version of Google Trends which features geographical heat maps and has improved filtering capabilities. Google Insights for Search was formerly available in closed beta as Google Trends Beta.

First Google Android phone to launch this year

The first smartphone based on Google's Android platform will be launched in the US in time for Christmas, and possibly as early as October.

Ask.com launches Ask Kids search engine

An upgrade to its existing search engine for children, Ask Kids presents a highly visual interface that hopes to deliver more relevant, child-friendly search results.

Google Suggest comes to Google's home page

Google has finally launched Google Suggest on the homepage of Google.com, after many years in Google Labs. This is likely to have quite an impact on how people search - for example, searchers for a particular keyword may be more likely to pick one of the suggestions instead, leading to a drop in traffic for the former term and an increase in traffic for the latter term. There will also probably be more long tail searches made as users can simply click on longer detailed versions of their search query, and there will be less advantage in including spelling errors as Google Suggest corrects spelling on the fly.

Yahoo! puts first third-party SearchMonkey apps live and enables SearchMonkey for site search

Yahoo! has put a number of new SearchMonkey applications live in their search results by default. Significantly, for the first time this now includes the first third-party SearchMonkey applications. These third-party applications have been selected by Yahoo! and it is not yet possible for everyone to create a SearchMonkey application which all Yahoo! users can see by default, but this signals the willingness of Yahoo! to let SearchMonkey applications enter their search results for all users.

Although Yahoo! still has control over who can create SearchMonkey applications which will appear for general web searches, webmasters can now use it by default for site searches. All that is needed is to authenticate the SearchMonkey application via Yahoo! SiteExplorer.

Google upgrades the content network

New features include "Frequency Capping", which makes it possible to prevent a user from being shown the same ad over and over, improved ad quality, and more information on ad viewers and conversions. Google says that these latest updates are as a result of its integration of DoubleClick. It is implementing these new features by using the DoubleClick ad-serving cookie.

Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 released

Microsoft has released the second beta of Internet Explorer 8. IE8 Beta 2 includes many changes in terms of how it renders web pages (although lack of SVG support continues to be a sore point for web developers). We strongly recommend that everyone begins testing their web sites in IE8 in preparation for its final release.

Google Website Optimizer now available outside of AdWords

Google's free Website Optimizer tool allows you to do multivariate testing on web pages. Previously only accessible by AdWords users, the tool has now been made available to anyone with a Google account.

Search News and Research

Google ad earnings dip in the UK

Google UK revenues have declined for two quarters in a row for the first time ever. This was a major factor in Google's international growth dipping from 55% in the first quarter to 52%. Google shares fell heavily after it failed to meet Wall Street's profit targets.

Microsoft Live Search Webmaster Center adds new features

Microsoft has added a number of new features to its Live Search Webmaster Center service. Webmasters can now use this service to get lists of certain types of problematic URLs which the Microsoft search spiders have encountered, and get a much more comprehensive list of backlinks to their site than Microsoft previously provided.

Google Webmaster Tools adds reporting of "infinite space"

Google Webmaster Tools has added support for detecting some forms of redundant auto-generated web pages on your website, a phenomenon that Google dubs "infinite space". An example of "infinite space" is an auto-generated calendar which always provides 'next month' links, which effectively leads to an infinite number of possible pages being shown to the search engines.

Yahoo! Update

Yahoo! has had another of its regular updates in early August.

Search Industry Market Share Updates

Google UK market share hits 75%, AOL beats FaceBook searches after acquisition of Bebo [comScore]

Google has now hit 75% UK search market share. AOL has also edged out FaceBook following its $850 million acquisition of competing social network, Bebo. The biggest loser was Yahoo!, down 0.4% to 4.3% of searches. There were around 3.9 billion searches made in the UK last month, which gives Google around 3 billion searches with its 75% market share and all other web search companies sharing the last billion.

Google US search market share hits record numbers in July

According to Hitwise, Google has broken 70% market share in the US in July. This is a rise of 10% since last year, and up 2% from the previous month, breaking the 70% figure for the first time.

Nielsen//NetRatings has also reported its market share findings for July, with Google breaking the 60% barrier for the first time. Yahoo! was second with 17.4% (up from 16.6% in June), and Microsoft was third with 11.9% (a massive drop since July's figure of 14.1%). Looking at it year-on-year, Yahoo! has lost the most (-11%), with Microsoft (-10%) and AOL (-9%) also losing. Ask is up 13%, but Ask-owned My Web Search is down 38%.

Note: Differences in statistics will inevitably arise due to different samples, sample sizes and methodology. However, the trend in Google's favour is clear.

Social media site usage exploding worldwide [comScore]

Both Facebook and Hi5 have more than doubled their user bases in the last year. US usage is levelling off (up only 9% from last year), but elsewhere it is increasing quickly (25% for the rest of the world). Large rises have been seen in the Middle East and Africa (up 66%), Europe (up 35%) and Latin America (up 33%). Facebook has had a huge 213% growth in Japan in the last year. Source: comScore.

Daily usage of search increasing, nearing levels of email usage in the US [Pew]

Web search is now used by 49% of US adults every day, with email used by 60%. Web search usage has been rising since 2002, when it was measured as being used by around one third of US users. Source: Pew.

Google gets 1 billion searches in India in June, has 81% market share [comScore]

Google has 81% market share in India, seeing a billion searches in June. Yahoo! was second with 117 million searches, giving it 9.4% market share. Third was Ask, with 24 million searches (1.9% market share), narrowly pushing Microsoft into 4th place (22 million searches / 1.7% market share). Source: comScore.