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Since it’s launch around two years ago, Google Trends has allowed users to graph the trend in the number of searches over time for different keywords and in different locations and languages, etc. Clever people were able to use these graphs in conjunction with other tools and stats to try and estimate search volumes and compare whilst undertaking tasks such as keyword research. However, things are set to become much easier;
Now Google is giving users the ability to search across terms in its database, instantly chart how they compare to other search terms, then export the underlying numerical data into a common spreadsheet format to compare with other data.
The new features require a user to be logged in with a Google account. More info on Yahoo! News.
Microsoft has setup a deal with HP for distribution of Live Search on all HP PCs and laptops in an effort to combat Google’s deals with Mozilla and Dell.
A post by Udi Manber, the VP of engineering at Google in charge of Search Quality on the official Google Blog called “Introduction to Google Search Quality” begins a renewed effort by Google to reveal more about search quality and optimisation of search results.
…being completely secretive isn’t ideal, and this blog post is part of a renewed effort to open up a bit more than we have in the past. We will try to periodically tell you about new things, explain old things, give advice, spread news, and engage in conversations. Let me start with some general pieces of information about our group. More blog posts will follow.
The post is said to be the first of many to come, and whilst it does not delve too deeply or give too much away, it is still a very interesting and valuable read. Udi takes us through an explaination of the different groups involved under the search quality umbrella - ranking, user experience, product testing, usability, and of course the web spam team (headed up by “web-famous” Matt Cutts - who is often mistaken to be the head honcho of the whole Search Quality outfit) amongst others. Well worth a read.
An article on Bloomberg MUSE on the 7th of May discusses a new method of monetisation Google is looking at launching based around display advertising on it’s image search results.
Matching graphical-display ads with image searches “represents a large opportunity, and there’s lot of potential for advertising revenue there,” Marissa Mayer, a Google vice president, told Bloomberg Radio today. At the same time, the company must ensure such ads don’t drive users away, she said.
Mayer says the reason Google has not launched something like this to date is that they have yet to master an effective method of delivering the ads whilst not damaging the user experience of the image search engine. Apparently back in 2006 the figures were around US$200 million in potential lost revenue for Google simply from leaving the sponsored ads off of image search results - they gave up on this revenue stream after finding it drove users away.
The recent purchase of DoubleClick opens the doors to leveraging the company’s existing display advertising management software to serve display ads on image search results pages in an effort to show adverts that fit in much better with what the user expects to see on the page. No launch date has been concreted butthere have already been mock ups of what these pages may look like - the next step being user testing before a quite possible (and most likely) launch.
As reported in MediaWeek, Microsoft has launched a new brand to encompass it’s expanding suite of products and services related to publishing and advertising. The announcement came on the 20th of May at “advance08″, which is Microsoft’s yearly event for executives from partnering brands and agencies.
The Microsoft Advertising brand, which will be pushed by the company’s advertiser and publisher solutions (APS) group, includes the ad serving tool Atlas, the ad exchange AdECN, the ad platform adCenter, and the in game ad firm Massive.
Brian McAndrews, Senior VP from Microsoft’s APS group also announced it has signed on companies including adidas, Coke and Paramount to begin showing display advertising on sites such as Hotmail and applications such as Windows Live Messenger.
As posted by Stephen Shankland, Google are preparing to overhaul the iGoogle interface to integrate ads under iGoogle’s “canvas view”. This opens the window for the canvas view to be monetized with ads. Not everyone will be able to advertise on this new arena, and certain types of ads will not be allowed. Which type of ads are unknown at this time.
“Ads will be limited to the canvas view only and certain types of ads will not be allowed. Developers are free to use any ad provider,” said iGoogle senior product manager Jessica Ewing in a statement. To maintain the best user experience, we plan on surveying users to determine how ads impact user satisfaction. Poor user ratings and reviews may impact a gadget’s viral features, ranking, and directory listing.
Worried about accidentally clicking on an ad? Don’t worry, Google will be taking measures to ensure that ads are not inadvertently clicked on by not allowing ads to appear in the home view (small gadget view) as the space is limited. The possible revenue generate on iGoogle ads will be interesting to see, as the users of iGoogle are much more aware of sponsored ads than a typical Google user.
When we wrote about Microsoft giving up on Yahoo for now we knew, as well as anyone following the saga, that it was merely the end of chapter one. The bell has rung and round two of the saga has now commenced with billionaire investor Carl Icahn announcing in a letter to the chairman of Yahoo, Roy Bostock, that he has purchased 59 million shares in the company and formed a 10 member set of rivals for the Yahoo board of directors. Further to this he has applied for clearance from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to avoid any antitrust issues as he aims to purchase up to $2.5 billion in Yahoo stock.
Back in February, Facebook’s design team went to work on an overhaul to the 70 million user strong layout of the social networking site. The action came at the right time, as the once clean and simple layout that attracted users and helped with the site’s explosive growth has slowly but surely become overrun with viral applications displaying all sorts of information and images in randomised fashion. The open development platform was a blessing in terms of the growth in popularity with users, however - like most things - spammers have begun creeping in and many applications are all but useless clutter.
The revamped design is set to hit user’s screens in the next few weeks and should be all about reverting back to a cleaner and more organised layout. Features such as tabs will be tools implemented in the new design to help achieve this goal. There is also talk of seperating the user-created applications from the core features of facebook - which would be excellent. The clean layout and user-friendliness (that comes from a bit of conformity across all user’s pages) is one of Facebook’s largest points of difference against rivals MySpace who allow users to extensively customise and in most cases “uglify” their profile pages - so these design changes are a good move and not a moment too soon.
Yahoo recently began offering a new type of search engine results pages (SERPs) to it’s users in India known as Glue Pages. Along with the normal search results, Glue Pages also display a heap of other information related to the search. This information includes, features such as recipes, medical information, Wikipedia entries, stock charts, Flickr images, train schedules, restaurant lists, news, and even Google blog search results. As well as leveraging Yahoo’s strengths of being more of a portal than Google, pages like this also present an array of monetisation opportunities for Yahoo, be it sponsored search results, display advertising, product listings and so on.
The pages were developed by Yahoo’s Indian team, as Yahoo encourages each of their teams to develop services that they feel will work well in their own markets. Beta testing is live on the Indian Yahoo pages, however at this stage there are no plans for launching the service on other Yahoo domains unless it really picks up and takes off during testing.
Yahoo has launched a new service called SearchScan that will indicate potentially harmful or risky sites right within the search results. The detection comes from McAfee’s SiteAdvisor technology which scans sites for unruley issues such as spyware or malware downloads in order to help protect user’s computers. If a site is flagged as containing such issues a small red line of text below the title link for the site on the search results page will warn users of the potential problems detected in an effort to deter the user from proceeding to click through. Read the rest of this entry »
