LBi Search: LBi Search Newsletter: February 2010

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LBi Search Newsletter: February 2010

EU opens preliminary antitrust enquiries into Google; EU & US approve the Microsoft-Yahoo! deal; Bing & Facebook expand partnership; Google updates its real-time search; Google Buzz launches to mixed reviews; and Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser loses market share in Europe after a security scare.

Acquisitions & Partnerships

EU opens preliminary antitrust enquiries into Google

Following complaints from Foundem, ejustice.fr and Ciao!, the European Commission has opened a preliminary antitrust investigation into Google. Google has responded by pointing out that Ciao! is owned by Microsoft and that Foundem is a member of an organisation funded by Microsoft. Microsoft's response acknowledges that it is at least partly behind the complaints, but claims that such complaints usually come from competitors.

EU & US approve Microsoft-Yahoo! deal

EU and US regulators have approved the search deal between Microsoft and Yahoo! The deal will see Yahoo!'s web search results powered by Microsoft's Bing search engine and its paid search results supplied by Microsoft adCenter.

Bing expands search partnership with Facebook, but loses display ads

Microsoft and Facebook have expanded their search partnership. Bing will be providing a "more complete search experience" by providing access to more of its search features, and the partnership will be expanded outside of the US to include all of Facebook's 400 million global users.

The new partnership may not be all good news for Microsoft, however. As part of the deal, Facebook is taking over responsibility for its own display advertising. Microsoft will continue to provide search advertisements to Facebook, however.

Google acquires Aardvark

Aardvark, an online service which aims to provide expert answers to its users' questions, has been acquired by Google. Google has already made the service available for free through Google Labs.

Yahoo! & Twitter agree partnership

Yahoo! has agreed a partnership with Twitter which will provide it with access to Twitter's full public feed, allowing Yahoo! to integrate Twitter more deeply within its various properties. Yahoo! integrated Twitter into its news shortcut and web search results at the end of 2009.

On2 shareholders approve Google acquisition

Shareholders of On2, a video compression technology company, have approved the company's acquisition by Google. Google's plans for On2 and its products are unclear at present, although there has been speculation that it may intend to make On2's codecs freely available for use in HTML 5.

Yahoo! sells HotJobs

Eight years after buying HotJobs for $436 million, Yahoo! has announced that it is selling the business to Monster Worldwide Inc. for $225 million.

Search News & Research

Google real-time updates

Google has rolled out Russian and Japanese language versions of its real-time search service, and plans to eventually offer real-time functionality globally. Google has also expanded the list of services that it includes in its real-time search to include MySpace content and Facebook Pages status updates.

LBi Research: Can search engines handle Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs)?

Following ICANN's vote to allow the use of non-ASCII characters in domain names last October, and with four Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) passing the initial stage of approval last month, LBi has published a research piece which looks at whether search engines are prepared for the forthcoming launch of Internationalized Domain Names.

See blog posts tagged 'research'.

UK shoppers spend the most online in Europe

The BBC has reported that a study by the Centre for Retail Research (CRR) has shown that UK shoppers spend the most online of any European nation. The study found that UK shoppers accounted for almost a third of all European online sales.

AP content back in Google

After an absence of several weeks, Associated Press articles have started reappearing on Google News. The hiatus was due to prolonged negotiations over the renewal of Google's license to host AP's content.

Google employees convicted over YouTube video in Italy

An Italian court has convicted several Google employees over the contents of a video that was uploaded to YouTube. The video was recorded by students at a school in Italy and showed them bullying an autistic schoolmate. Despite Google taking the video down "within hours" of being notified by the Italian police and helping them to identify the person who uploaded it, charges were brought against four of Google's employees for allowing the user to upload the content in the first place.

Google's response pulled no punches - in a blog post entitled "Serious threat to the web in Italy" it called the situation "outrageous", pointing out that these employees had nothing to do with the video in question and only learnt about it after it was taken down. Google points out that, if upheld, the decision would lead to all owners of web sites being held responsible for vetting every single piece of content that is uploaded to them, which would make it impossible for many websites to continue to exist. Google says that it will appeal.

EC reaches deal with major web sites on privacy

Seventeen leading web companies, including Google, Microsoft and Facebook, have signed up to a European Commission initiative which aims to make Social Networking sites safer for under-18s. The deal includes ensuring that the personal details of under-18s are kept private and providing better privacy options to these users.

Browser Ballot Screen

Following its agreement with the European Competition Commission over offering Windows users a choice of web browser, Microsoft's browser ballot screen went live on the 1st of March. It has yet to be seen whether this will lead to a significant decline in market share, or which rival browser will benefit the most from it.

See blog posts tagged 'browsers'.

New Product Launches

Google Buzz launches

February saw the launch of Google Buzz, Google's offering in the Social Networking sphere. Yahoo! and Microsoft were both quick to point out that they've offered similar features for some time, and overall reactions to Buzz have been somewhat mixed. However, Google is clearly hoping that Buzz will allow it to cut into the already crowded social networking arena, and aims for Buzz to be an open platform which can incorporate information from other social networks.

Google expands AdSense cookie tracking

Google has improved its AdSense tracking cookies to allow it to serve more relevant ads. The details of the URL that a visitor arrives from is now associated with the user for "a few hours" using a cookie, which means that Google can now tailor the ads that a user sees based on other sites that they have visited recently.

Bing expands "Spatial Search"

Bing has unveiled a number of improvements to Bing Maps as part of its continued work in what it calls "spatial search". The improvements include: embedding geo-tagged photos from Flickr; integration with WorldWide Telescope, allowing users to see constellations in Streetside mode; indoor panoramas; map apps (which brings data from various sources, including Twitter); live webcam feeds; and improvements to its "Opinion Index" (which integrates reviews for local business listings).

Google launches credit card price comparison adverts in the UK

Google has dipped another toe into the price comparison market with an AdWords Comparison Ads test in the UK. This new test covers credit card-related queries in the UK, and allows searchers to compare a number of different credit cards by various features and benefits.

Improved support for Arabic searches in Google

Google has announced improvements in the way in which its search engine understands queries written in Arabic. These improvements target searches where a spelling mistake is made or where there is more than one grammatically correct way in which to phrase a search. Google claims that these changes improve 10% of Arabic language queries.

Google adds option to search "nearby"

Google has added a new option to its "search options" panel which allows searchers to refine their web search results based on location. Currently available only on Google.com in English, this new option allows the location to be narrowed down to the city, region or state level.

Google adds "Fetch as Googlebot Mobile" to Webmaster Tools Labs

Google has added a new feature to its free Webmaster Tools service which allows a verified site owner to see how their website appears to Google's mobile spider, "Googlebot-mobile". This new tool is designed to help site owners check that their mobile site is working as expected in Google by enabling them to see their website in the same way that Google's mobile spider does.

Search Industry Market Share Updates

Internet Explorer loses market share in Europe in wake of security flaw

Following January's news of a security flaw in Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser which resulted in the French and German governments recommending to switch to another browser, it appears that Internet Explorer has experienced a drop its market share in these two countries. The AT Internet Institute claims that its data shows that Internet Explorer lost an additional 2.7% of share in Germany and 0.7% of share in France, on top of the previously observed trend of declining market share.

Mozilla's Firefox web browser appears to have been the main beneficiary of this drop in Internet Explorer market share, gaining 2.2% market share in Germany and 0.7% market share in France.

Apple gaining market share in Europe [AT Internet Institute]

The AT Internet Institute reports that Apple has been making gains in Europe. Compared with January 2009, the share of users on Apple's platform has increased in the four countries covered by the report (UK, Germany, France and Spain). The largest increase in market share has been in the UK, with Apple's market share increasing from 6.0% in January 2009 to 8.5% in January 2010. Apple's market share in France increased by 2.4% to reach 7.2%, and its German market share has increased by 2.2%, reaching 7.3%. Apple's market share in Spain increased by the least amount, rising from 2.7% to 4.3%.

European search market share [AT Internet Institute]

The AT Internet Institute has published its European search market share data for January, looking at search market share in the UK, Germany, France and Spain. Its data shows that Google has gained market share in all four countries, with a particularly large increase of market share in the UK, where its share rose from 90.1% to 90.8%, whilst the rest of the top five search engines lost market share in the UK this month Bing's market share was unchanged in Germany (0.9%) but Microsoft's search engine lost market share in the three other countries, with its market share dropping from 1.7% to 1.3% in Spain and from 3.4% to 3.1% in the UK.

Another notable event this month is that Ask has displaced Yahoo! as the fourth most popular search engine in Spain. Ask is now ranked fourth with a 1.2% market share and Yahoo! fifth with a 1.1% market share. Following Bing's relatively significant drop in market share in Spain, Bing's market share is now only 0.1% greater than Ask's, which may indicate that there will be a further shakeup of the top five search engines in Spain in the future.

US search market share

comScore

comScore's data for January shows that Google's US search market share dipped slightly compared to December, dropping by 0.3% to 65.4%. Second placed Yahoo! also lost 0.3% of market share, and now has a market share of 17.0%. Microsoft's Bing search engine gained the most market share this month, with a 0.6% rise, equivalent to Google and Yahoo!'s combined market share losses. Bing's market share is now 11.3%. Ask and AOL experienced smaller changes in search market share in January, with Ask gaining 0.1% of market share to reach a 3.8% share and AOL losing the same amount of share, dropping to a market share of 2.5%.

Hitwise

Hitwise data for January also shows drops in search market share for Google and Yahoo! and gains for Bing and Ask since December. The data shows that Google's market share dropped from 72.25% to 71.49% and Yahoo!'s dropped from 14.83% to 14.57%, while Bing's rose from 8.92% to 9.37% and Ask's rose from 2.54% to 2.64%.

Nielsen

Nielsen has also published January data for US search market share. When compared to December's market share figures, Google's market share was down by a full 1%, and now stands at 66.3%. Yahoo! experienced a small increase in market share, rising by 0.1% to a 14.5% share, and Bing's market share rose by a full 1%, reaching 10.9%. Nielsen's data also shows that AOL's market share remained static at 2.5%, whilst Ask's rose from 1.7% to 1.9% and Ask-owned MyWebSearch rose from 1.0% to 1.1%.

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

US & UK mobile market share [Opera]

Opera has published its State of the Mobile Web report for January, which includes market share data gathered by users of its Opera Mini web browser. The report states that in the UK, Google is the top search mobile portal with a market share of 74%, with Yahoo! second with a 26% mobile search market share. The report found that 9.7% of all mobile page views in the UK were on mobile search portals. The top 5 UK mobile web sites are Facebook, Google, the BBC, Yahoo! and Wikipedia.

The report also found that Google was the top search portal in the US, with a mobile search market share of 68%. Yahoo! is the second biggest US search portal, with a share of 32%, with Microsoft's Bing search engine having an extremely small mobile search market share of only 0.03%. The report found that 13.5% of all mobile page views in the US were on mobile search portals. The top 5 US mobile web sites are Google, Facebook, Yahoo!, Wikipedia and MySpace.

Smartphone user demographics [AdMob]

AdMob (recently acquired by Google) has published the results of a survey it undertook with its users. Regarding use of mobile apps, the survey found that iPhone and Android users download a similar amount of apps and spend a similar amount of time using them. The survey also found that iPod touch users downloaded the most apps, 37% more than iPhone/Android users. Palm webOS users downloaded fewer apps than users of the other platforms, a factor which AdMob suggests may be due to the relative lack of apps on the webOS platform.

The survey also looked at gender and age distribution on these mobile smartphone platforms. It found that, whilst slightly more than half of iPhone, iPod touch and webOS users were male (ranging from 54% to 58%), users of the Android platform were much more likely to be male (73%). The survey also found that iPod touch users were mostly aged 17 or younger (65%), whereas just 13% of iPhone users and 7% of Android users fell into this age category. webOS users were the least likely to be aged 17 and under (only 2% of respondents).

Smartphone platform US market share [comScore]

comScore has published a report which looks at the US mobile market in December 2009. Compared to September, market leader RIM lost 1.0% of market share in the smartphone sector, dropping to a 41.6% share in December. Second placed Apple gained 1.2% of market share, rising to a market share of 25.3%, while third and fourth placed Microsoft and Palm lost 1.0% and 2.2% of smartphone market share respectively, dropping to market shares of 18.0% and 6.1% respectively. Google's Android platform gained 2.7% points of market share, more than doubling its previous 2.5% market share to reach a market share of 5.2%.