I know, tricky title, but the thought of the Search wars this year really gets me excited. This is a long one, so get your cheetos before venturing inside. Google pwned for so long that seeing Yahoo and MSN take some of their market share is really appealing. Sure it would make it difficult for SEOs if we had to spend just as much time optimizing for MSN and Yahoo as we do for Google (truth is, they make it easy, so we don't have to do much for now). Imagine if A9 cuts loose, and maybe some small engines started gaining ground or old names started making comebacks. I can imagine the future breakroom brawls if my company had to hire ten different specialists, one for each of 10 search engines. ("More internal links!", "No. More external links!", "Alt tags, Alt tags, Alt tags!", "More text!", "Less text!" "We've been banned on Snap.com, OH NO! There goes 10% of our traffic"). It's nice to see Google picking up properties or developing product that compliments their search well. All these added products, mail, keyhole, video search, picassa, orkut, blogger, etc. will continue to bring new users to the table (yes, there are still people who rely on their ISP to search, even though most ISPs use Google feeds). Google realizes that they need to keep bringing in fresh customers or the bills won't get paid. These properties are the key to keeping Google from becoming the next AltaVista. MSN and Yahoo had properties to start with, along with the users. Now they just have to convince their user base that their search results are better than Google's. A9 is doing some interesting things too, only a matter of time until Amazon cuts its strings from Google and uses their Alexa engine as a full search engine to power all three of their domains. Wow, talk about potential. It will be very interesting indeed. Google will not stay dormant in their search traffic. They'll either gain more users or they lose ground to the combined efforts of MSN, Yahoo, and perhaps A9. I can't deny the braintrust of all the Google phd's and engineers. But, I have to give the edge to the marketing geniuses at Yahoo and A9, along with the venture backing of MSN on this one. So, it's 2005: The Year of Google? Or the Year that Google Slipped? (not saying they'll lose the market majority completely, just some of it).
Hmm. Too bad Firefox doesnt use some sort of open source SE or that would have been a bloody war I am into local engines, and only with 2 websites into international engines and those have quite their USP so they get many backlinks by themself. I optimised them, and they rank on MSN, Altavista, Yahoo, Mamma and IXQuick so they do fine. Still even in the local market, I noticed that I look at 2 more engines since december. MSN is very interesting, as they show better results to me personally. Less link pages, and more pages with the texts actually on the pages itself. So I like MSN a lot and hope it will get at least 20% of the market. For us SEO companies, yeah we might scream because of the work, but its also a big advantage. Lately it was just Google, people could dig into the internet to find out what Google likes, and to me personally, its not so hard to hit the top 10 results in Google as long as you were not too demanding. (Dont try to get a million keywords per page, just 1-2 per page, and make a million pages!) with MSN, things change and I found it to be more of a challenge. I think Google will keep their amount of searchers. Most of the people are happy with it so they dont switch. Google got so fast marketshare because at that time people rarely found something. Lately they actually do. Only people will take a second engine as second opinion in 2005. To new people however, MSN has a good chance of getting them. Having MSN as startpage into windows, messenger, hotmail, and perhaps more in the future, new people will definately use MSN. Internationally, I think ASK.com has a chance of getting a bit of marketshare back. I think this because they were fast with their desktop thing, and like everything on search engines, they make my big toe itchy! Hey they are probably working on a new update! Perhaps not that interesting post for you, as I aim mostly for the Netherlands, but still.. Even here things change
Very interesting and very true point. People started using Google because it didn't have humans intercepting results and people could find things based on a search algo. Now, once again, people are having difficulty finding things (probably because all us SEOs muck everything up), and are trying out other alternatives. This may just be the tip of the iceberg. It was a VERY interesting post. Thanks for the comments!
Google is just the personal favourite. It doesn't mean that it's the best. Just like the people who run around claiming that Intel is the best. AMD what? They don't even know that AMD machines are cheaper and quicker.. ohh well. Nonethless, the day that MSN brings out a non-cluttered, simple, and clean search engine page, I'll switch. But I don't want all that crap in my face each time I want to do a search. I like Google because it's easy on the eyes, but that's as far as it goes.
My sites rank higher in MSN and Yahoo! but I personally think Google is still the best search engine out there. It's why I use them for all of my searches. If I wasn't an Adwords customer, I don't think I would receive many referrals from Google. With that said, I hope the other two continue their inroads onto Google's turf. Why? Because I rank better with them. I only hope MSN and Yahoo! don't implement "sandbox" measures as Google did. Even though my sites don't rank as well on Google, even for highly targeted terms, I have to say they are the best overall search engine.
This is true... I like being a Google naysayer, but only because of some recent decisions they have made (florida update, affiliate adwords, and nofollow tags...seriously, what the hell Google? Just my opinion though.) The search engine I will continually keep an eye on is Snap. Fast, clean, gives the user all the information (could be a bad thing) and responds to users suggestions (see Bill's blog). Reminds me of the early days of Google! It's all a vicious cycle in the end.
It will be interesting to see what kind of an ad campaign MSN runs to try and attract new users to their search engine. Not only does Bill have deep pockets, but he also hates to lose. I anticipate millions and millions of dollars in TV advertising coming up for MSN. All that they need is a trendy commercial, a catchy tune, and people will be giving MSN a try without even thinking about it. The real question is, "How many of these new MSN search users will stick around after the initial marketing campaign?" Most likely MSN will get a big surge, then drop off. But they will almost certainly take and keep some of G's market share.
Hmm... if the browser wars were any indicator, MSN will be in it for the long run. If they can keep "some of G's market share" from each of its small battles, they will eventually win the war. It will be intersting to see their marketing efforts. Even Google started out as a "hey check this site out" site.
Err, isn't Alexa also just another Google powered engine as well?? Or are they indexing their own stuff now? These discussions happen so often right now. I don't see Google going anywhere - for all I can tell, the competition have some decent algorithms, but lack the processing power needed to compare as many pages as Google does.. Google has the reputation, the brand and the cash needed to beat any of the other options out there. Someone needs to come out with something truly new to tackle Google's massive lead. Something that people really have to move away from Google to be able to use - not just 'different' results. And they need to not be able to live without that 'something' ; whatever it is.
The bottom line is always, do people use these "so called search engines" and do they deliver referrals????? Next will M$ drive a lot of the small engines out of business with browserless search?????
Alexa is just a database. It's results are "enhanced by Google". I was excited, thinking the A9 team was hard at work acquiring engineers and building a true crawling, spidering, indexing engine, but then they came out with A9 local. Who knows what their future is, they may stick with Google while they're the leader, they may build their own, they may buy a company (they don't do much acquiring of other businesses though), they may partner with MSN or Yahoo. Who knows, but they do seem to be holding some cards close to their chest.
Alexa does have their own spider and has been crawling the net for a hell of a long time, they own the "way back machine" and are going to innovate in the search business, they are investing millions in new programs. They are owned by Amazon, who also owns A9 and Amazon is a large shareholder of Google also, Jeff Bezos their founder was an original investor in Google and got his shares for like .25 cents each.
It actually says 'Powered by Google' under the Alexa search box. I think it's more like 'Enhanced by Alexa' than the other way around. The database of site is ODP - their related site suggestions are based on those categories. I hadn't considered the Way Back Machine, but I tell you what, they really don't visit very often - they have a screenshot of our site from at least a year ago. I doubt Alexa will be of much concern to anyone...
Some background on Amazon/A9/Alexa is in the following article. http://www.clickz.com/news/print.php/3408291
Interesting...and here I thought all this time that Alexa gathered it's ranking results from unsuspecting computers containing their data-mining spyware which sends results back about a users surfing habits. I believe they're calling it a "toolbar" these days, although the toolbar isn't necessary. I would love to see A9 and MSN team up.
To learn more of what A9 is doing see the links in the following search. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=Udi+Manber%2C+president+of+A9.com&btnG=Search MSN and A9 will not ever do anything together, Jeff Bezos the founder of Amazon is one of the original Google shareholders and is a Google friend. So is the founder of E-bay a large shareholder of Google. A9 works with Google now and serves their results and ads, but they are going to develop their own index in the end and drop Google just like Yahoo did and just like MSN did with Yahoo.
Alexa is getting Google enhanced results but it's still an Amazon.com company which is surely not owned by Google. For me personally the times of Google are over. Yahoo sucks at least as much as Google but MSN is giving me great results since their "restart". Just an example: Recently I inteded to buy a new Samsung notebook and I tried to find some reviews, the first 20-30 results from Google and Yahoo for sponsored results from ebay and other buy this buy that links. MSN gave me 6 review sites that fit my search terms and only two!! sponsored links to ebay. Google and Yahoo gets too much attention, they think they don't need to offer good results anymore because of their big name so what out guys and welcome MSN to the race. Also regarding listings of my own websites MSN is way more up to date than Yahoo and Google is.