LBi Search: LBi Search Newsletter: March 2009

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LBi Search Newsletter: March 2009

Google "Vince" update confirmed. Also this month we have news of multiple forthcoming search engines, and Google yet again get attacked by privacy groups, this time for the release of their targeted Interest-Based Advertising and over the launch Streetview in the UK & The Netherlands.

Search News and Research

Google "Vince" update

The end of February and beginning of March saw widespread discussion in the SEO world about a major update to Google's algorithms. It was originally nicknamed the "brand update" due to the fact that the effect of the change seemed to many to be providing high rankings to the web sites of companies which are major brands.

The update was later confirmed in a video by well known Google Engineer Matt Cutts, although he tried to play down the scale of the update, calling it a "simple change". After mentioning that the update was the effect of a change written by an engineer called Vince, the update has since become known as "Update Vince".

Increase in SEO budgets predicted for US market

A report from eMarketer which forecasts spending on internet advertising and SEO for the period 2009-2013 predicts that both will see an increase in budgets in each year. However, the growth in paid search is predicted to drop from 15.9% in 2009 to 11.3% in 2013, whilst the growth in SEO spending will increase from 17.7% to 20.3% over the same period. This relative growth in SEO is predicted to result in SEO spending exceeding that of contextual advertising by 2013.

China blocks access to YouTube

Chinese internet users have recently been denied access to YouTube. YouTube is one of many sites that are unavailable in China. According to the BBC the Chinese government would not confirm that YouTube has been blocked.

Yahoo! lets websites embed video, Games & Documents in its search results

Yahoo! has extended its SearchMonkey platform with a new feature which lets website owners embed content such as videos, games and documents directly into Yahoo!'s search results without needing to create a full SearchMonkey application. By simply including some HTML tags in a web page, Yahoo! will provide enhanced results. For example, for video, a thumbnail is shown, and clicking on it opens the video player directly in the Yahoo! search results.

Yahoo! is reviewing sites which are using this new feature prior to enabling it for each site.

New Product Launches

International Google Search Suggest

Google has introduced localised Search Suggest. Now the suggestions which Google provides for different countries will vary depending on the local market. For example, typing "liver" in Google UK will show Liverpool-related suggestions, whereas in the US the suggestions include more about liver diseases. Google Suggest is now available on 155 domains in 51 languages.

This is great news not just for searchers, who should see more relevant suggestions, but also for companies which have a good international SEO strategy and local companies which optimise well for their own country. If sites are optimised correctly for a local market, they may start receiving more traffic from these local suggestions. Sites that apply a one size fits all approach, rather than a truly international approach, may lose out.

Changes to Google Search results

Google has announced that it has recently made two changes to its search results pages. These changes are rolling out across 37 languages worldwide.

The first change that has been made is with Google's search refinements. Google is now providing an increased number of suggestions for refining your search query. This is likely to affect searcher behaviour, for example potentially shrinking the short tail and 'fattening' the medium tail. We have taken a detailed look at this change in our blog.

The second change introduces larger snippets for some queries. Where a query contains more than three words, Google will potentially increase the amount of words in the snippet which it displays. This could potentially lead to a drop in click-through-rates if searchers find the information they need without leaving the Google search page.

Microsoft testing new search engine

Microsoft announced in its Live Search Blog that it has been testing a new search engine internally, code-named Kumo. The new search engine is intended to use semantic technology, allowing it to understand natural language sentences. Microsoft also stated that re-branding Live Search as Kumo is something that it is considering.

Google rolling out behavioural targeting ads

Google announced that it would be targeting ads based on users' search behaviour. An example provided by Google is where a user often visits adventure travel web sites, Google may show more ads for hiking trips to Patagonia or African safaris. Google has called this new release "Interest-Based Advertising".

Google has included several features to try to allay privacy fears. For example, users are able to see the interest categories which have been automatically selected for them, select which are their favourite categories and remove categories which they are not interested in. Google has also provided a method of opting out.

FT business news search engine

The Financial Times has produced a business news search engine called Newssift. The search engine, currently in public beta, allows the user to enter a search term and lets them refine their search by filtering by business topic, organization, place, person or theme. It also provides a visual breakdown of sentiment (positive, neutral and negative articles) of stories and shows the breakdown of article sources, allowing a searcher to filter by these aspects as well.

British search engine announced

A new "British search engine" is due to launch in May called the Wolfram Alpha. Brain child of renowned British physicist Stephen Wolfram (creator of the Mathematica program), the Wolfram Alpha will use Natural Language Processing.

As with many new search engines there is speculation as to whether it will be a "Google killer" - we've explored this possibility in in our blog.

Microsoft closes down adCenter analytics

Microsoft has announced that it has closed the beta testing of its adCenter analytics program. Users who have already signed up will be able to continue with the program until December 31, 2009.

Google Street View launches in UK & Netherlands

The Google Maps service now includes imagery for major cities in the UK and the Netherlands. The launch has not gone without controversy with Google having to remove a number of images and a formal complaint being made to the Information Commissioner by the lobby group Privacy International.

Microsoft releases Internet Explorer 8

The latest incarnation of Microsoft's dominant Internet Explorer web browser was released on the 19^th of March. IE8 claims to make web use faster, easier and safer. Included is a "compatibility mode" for sites that may not have been configured for the new browser.

Yahoo! closes travel search engine FareChase

Yahoo! is closing its discount travel search engine FareChase. Yahoo! still has another travel search engine, Yahoo! travel, and visitors to the FareChase site are now being directed to this site instead.

Yahoo! has been taking a number of cost-cutting measures recently, and seem particularly focused on reducing duplication of effort on similar products.

Search Industry Market Share Updates

February US search market shares [comScore/Hitwise]

comScore figures for February show Google and Ask.com has having increased their share of searches, with all others unchanged or down since January. Google is still in a dominant position, with a commanding 63.3% share of US searches, up 0.3% from the previous month. Second and third places are yet again held by Yahoo! and Microsoft, with 20.6% (down from 21%) and 8.2% (down from 8.5%) market shares respectively. Ask.com is up fairly significantly in February, with its share of searches rising from 3.7% to 4.1%, beating AOL this month (AOL is unchanged at 3.9%).

Interestingly, Ask.com was the only major search network which saw a rise in searches performed compared to January - all other search engines (including Google) experienced a fall in total searches. comScore has stated that the decline is mainly because February is a shorter month.

Hitwise has also reported market share updates for the US market. Its statistics show that Google's market share is mostly unchanged, from 72.09% in January to 72.11% in February. Yahoo! is down from 17.81% to 17.04%, a fairly noticeable drop, while number three Microsoft rose from 5.44% to 5.56%. Ask.com also rose quite substantially, from 3.31% to 3.74%. Year-over-year, however, Google is the only search engine to increase its market share, which is up 8% since February 2008 - Yahoo!, Microsoft and Ask.com are all down.

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

Japanese Search Market Share [comScore]

comScore's latest statistics show that Yahoo is still maintaining a lead over Google in the Japanese search market. The number of searches performed on Yahoo sites in January of this year totalled 3.5 billion, a 13% increase on last year. Google trails in second place with 2.6 billion searches (including YouTube.com) an increase of 5%.

Yahoo!'s overall market share is 51.3%, only 0.1% more than in September 2008. Google's share was 38.2%, a drop of 0.8% over the same period. Also since September, number three on the list Rakuten Inc. rose from 2% to 2.2% and number four Microsoft also rose by 0.2% to reach 1.7%.

Use of Mobile web increasing in the US [Bango/comScore]

Mobile web specialists Bango has released statistics which it says shows that the US has unseated the UK as the top user of the mobile web. According to its data, the US now accounts for 29.3% of mobile web usage and the UK 20.3%. Next is India at 11%, Indonesia at 5.5%, and South Africa at 5.4%. The next western countries are further down the list - Spain accounted for 1.4% of mobile web traffic, Portugal 1.2% and Sweden 1.1%. The US is also the biggest spender on mobile web payments, accounting for 57% of mobile web payments worldwide.

It is interesting that mobile-savvy Japan is not included on the list - Bango has added further commentary regarding this, describing Japan as a "closed market" from a browsing point of view.

Another study by comScore compared US mobile internet usage in January 2009 to that in January the previous year. The number of people who accessed news and information on the Internet via their mobile device was 35%, more than double the number which did so in January 2008 (a 107% change). The number of people who used it weekly rose by 87%, and the figure for people who used it at least once in the month was up 71%.

1 in 5 visits to Google from browser search bar (French language web sites)

A recent study from AT Internet Institute shows data for French-speaking web sites during February 2009 and shows that around 1 in 5 visits (20.1%) to Google came from browser search bars. This figure is far higher than for its nearest competitors - 7.0% of Live Search users and only 2.3% of Yahoo! users came via a browser search bar.

The study also looked at search engine market share for the French language market. Its statistics show Google controlling almost the entire market with a 91.27% market share, up from 91.23% since January 2009. Yahoo! market share has risen "for the first time in a year" from 2.43% to 2.50%, and Live Search is up 0.08% to 2.36%.