LBi Search: LBi Search Newsletter: February 2009

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LBi Search Newsletter: February 2009

The major search engines unite to create the "canonical" tag, a new tool to combat duplicate content. Also this month: Google plays antitrust games with Microsoft, Vodafone unveils the next generation "G2" Android phone, Google loses market share in the US to Yahoo! and Google Japan gets penalised by ... Google!

Search News and Research

Search engines unite on new tag to combat duplicate content

Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft have teamed up to create a new method of combating duplicate content. The new canonical tag allows webmasters to specify that some pages on their site are duplicates of other pages, and should thus be considered as a single page. Although there are limitations and drawbacks to this tag (see our in-depth blog post on it for a detailed analysis) this new development is a hugely useful addition to the SEO toolbox.

Although it was not part of the initial announcement, a few days later Ask.com announced that it will also support it. This is great news for webmasters, as it means that the same search standard can be used on all of the "Big Four" search engines.

Google joins EU antitrust proceedings against Microsoft

In a move sure to raise a few eyebrows, Google has announced that it is applying to become a third party in the European Commission's antitrust proceedings surrounding the bundling of Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser with Windows.

The EC recently sent a statement of objections to Microsoft regarding its bundling of its own web browser with its Windows operating system. Amongst the suggestions that the EC has made is the possibility of forcing Microsoft to include rival browsers with Windows and to let users choose which one they wish to use. Google may be hoping to get its new web browser, Google Chrome, on the list.

Plans for Generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs) delayed

ICANN's plans for creating Generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs) are running behind schedule. gTLDs will allow organisations to create new TLDs (for example, .bbc) in addition to the existing TLDs (for example .com or .co.uk). The introduction of gTLDs was originally scheduled for 30 September 2009 - however, ICANN has said that, despite the delay, it still hopes to introduce them before the end of 2009.

Google Japan punished for breaking Google's rules

After Google Japan was caught violating its own webmaster guidelines, by paying bloggers to review a new Google widget using a paid blogging service called "CyberBuzz", Google took the highly unusual move of penalising its own site. Google Japan has had its Google PageRank score reduced from 9 to 5 as a result of engaging in this paid linking. Google employee Matt Cutts also apologised for the affair.

Google's market share in Japan is some way behind that of the Japanese search market leader, Yahoo!

Long Tail getting longer

According to a recent report by Hitwise, the use of one-word and two-word search queries is on the decrease, and longer queries are becoming the norm. Between January 2008 and January 2009, the year-over-year change for single-word searches was -3% and the change for searches which contained two words was -5%. Three-word searches saw no change, whilst searches with eight or more words saw an increase of 22%.

Yahoo! Update

Yahoo! has announced another update to its search engine. As with all search engine updates, search positions will fluctuate as sites are shuffled up and down.

Of particular note this month, Yahoo!'s search engine "Weather Report" mentions that there were, in fact, updates in both December and January, but that they had not issued Weather Reports for these. After feedback from webmasters, Yahoo! has decided to resume announcements of search index updates.

Forrester Study reminds advertisers that Google is not the only search engine.

The Forrester study gained widespread attention after it was misinterpreted by Adweek, who used the study as the basis of an article entitled "There's Still Room for Google Killers, Study Says". What the study was actually trying to show is that marketers should be advertising on more than just Google, and that they can target specific types of users on different search engines.

Ask.com near to finishing moving its data centres, looks to the future

Search engine Ask.com has announced that it is near the end of moving its data centres to new locations. During the move, which has taken several months, the Ask.com spider's visits to and indexing of websites has been reduced. Ask.com also reduced the size and freshness of its search index during this time. With the move complete, Ask.com hopes to improve the search experience for its users and pave the way for future expansion.

Acquisitions and Partnerships

Google to sell its stake in AOL

Google invested $1 billion AOL in 2005, giving it a 5% stake in the company. The deal included advertising, instant messaging and online video collaboration between the two companies, making AOL content available to Google users, and was widely seen at the time as blocking Microsoft from replacing Google as AOL's search provider.

Google now wishes to sell its stake, and the value of the initial $1 billion stake has reportedly been written down by $726 million, a fraction of its initial value. This would value AOL at only $5.5 billion today, a huge drop from the $20 billion valuation when Google bought its stake in 2005.

New Product Launches

Vodafone unveils the "G2" - the next generation Android phone

Vodafone has unveiled what looks to be the world's second Android handset to be widely available to consumers. Officially called the "Magic" it has been nicknamed the "G2" as it is also made by HTC, the same company that created the original "G1" phone. Vodafone will have exclusive access to the HTC Magic, and it will be available in the Spring.

Compared to the G1, the major criticism about which was its relatively large size, the HTC Magic is both smaller and slimmer. This is partly due to its lack of a slide-out keyboard - instead, the phone features an on-screen touch keyboard, similar to the iPhone. The phone will run a new version of the Android firmware, codenamed "Cupcake", which incorporates user suggestions about the original G1.

Yahoo testing video ads in web search

Yahoo! has been testing what it is calling "Rich Ads" with a small group of selected advertisers. The service will allow advertisers to include video adverts, images, deep links to pages and custom search boxes within their Yahoo! search ads.

Yahoo! said that ad click-through-rates rose by 25%, and that there was also improved brand exposure and conversion rates.

Google Latitude

One of the biggest news items this month has undoubtedly been the release of Google Latitude. This new service from Google hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons, as it enables people to track the locations of their friends in real time using their mobile device.

However, once the initial uproar died down and people looked into the details further, it seems that many of the concerns were overblown - Google appears to have spent a lot of time working on the privacy implications of this new tool and has built in a very powerful set of privacy options. Many of the earlier news reports have been criticised for not looking too deeply at how the product worked before publishing their sensationalist stories.

Yahoo testing Search Pad feature

Yahoo! has announced Search Pad, a new feature which helps people keep track of websites and take notes when doing research online. Yahoo! will automatically monitor what people are looking for when they use their search engine and, when it detects that a user is performing research on a topic, will offer to let them take notes.

Yahoo! Search Pad also allows users to save copies of web pages and, because it is a cloud-based service, it is accessible from anywhere. It will be a few months before the official release but there is already a sizable level of buzz surrounding this new feature.

Microsoft increasing number of ads on its UK search engine

Microsoft has announced that it will be adding a fourth ad position to its UK results pages, above the organic search results. This follows the addition of a fourth advert in the Microsoft Live Search results for US users in September. This change results in organic search results being pushed further down the page. It has yet to be seen how users will react to this change.

Google tests allowing users to hide search ads

Google is testing out a new feature which allows its users to hide unwanted search ads. Similar to Google SearchWiki, an "X" icon is included beside the ad which, when clicked, hides the advert from users.

Although this feature is only being tested with a limited number of Google's visitors, if Google decided to introduce this feature for all of its users it could be very unpopular with its AdWords advertisers.

Yahoo! closes MyWeb

Another month, yet another product discontinued by Yahoo! as it attempts to re-focus on more profitable areas and reduce duplication and waste.

On the chopping block this month is bookmarking service Yahoo! MyWeb, one of three different online bookmarking services that Yahoo! is running. Yahoo! is migrating users of MyWeb to its two remaining services, Yahoo! Bookmarks and Delicious.

Search Industry Market Share Updates

US market share for January 2009 - is Google losing market share?

comScore and Compete have both reported on the US search engine market share in January 2009. Although the overall figures are fairly far apart (comScore gives Google a market share of 63% whereas Compete lists it as 70.2%), the trend of Google and Yahoo! market share in both sets of statistics is the same.

The comScore report shows Google losing 0.5% overall search market share compared to the previous month and Compete data shows a 0.3% drop. In both sets of data, Yahoo!'s search market share increased by exactly the same amount that Google dropped.

Beyond this, the data sets disagree - both show different trends for Microsoft, AOL and Ask.com. However, the differences in market share changes for these smaller search engines is less than those recorded for Google and Yahoo!

Note: Differences in statistics will inevitably arise due to different samples, sample sizes and methodology.

AT Internet Institute (XitiMonitor) French market share for January 2009

A report by the AT Internet Institute (XitiMonitor) examines French search engine market share. The study finds that Google is still hugely dominant in France, with a 91.23% overall search market share.

The main item of interest though is not Google - like Yahoo!, AOL and Orange, Google's market share did not change significantly from the previous month. Instead, the report focuses on the market share gains by Microsoft Live Search, which gained 0.12% in market share, increasing its overall share to 2.29%. The report concludes that: “Live Search is the winner of this month, which had already ended 2008 on a positive note.”