Beanstalk's SEO News Blog

Inspired by a combination of an excellent research paper from Richard Stokes of AdGooroo, Google's Q2 earnings report and the recent happenings in the now getting tiring story of Yahoo! and Microsoft - the most recent article by Beanstalk's Dave Davies is out today. Titled, "The Search Landscape Reflected In Paid Results" it discussed some of the recent changes, how they're affecting the search engines themselves and what we can expect to see in the paid and organic results because of this.

I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Labels: adsense, adwords, google, msn, ppc, seo article, yahoo

Well the fine folks over at Google have come up with a response to Friday's bid by Microsoft for Yahoo! Now, believe me - I understand that business is business and that Google has to respond with a negative spin against their competitors but the blog post and press release they put out made me smirk more than think. The official line, put forth by David Drummond, Senior Vice President, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer for Google, was:

"So Microsoft's hostile bid for Yahoo! raises troubling questions. This is about more than simply a financial transaction, one company taking over another. It's about preserving the underlying principles of the Internet: openness and innovation."

Ummmmm, OK - you've got to be kidding me. Now I mean no offense to Google - love them to bits and use them daily but seriously, the two properties search market share combined still only account for slightly over half of Google's so exactly what is the threat to competition? Google will still have the overwhelming majority of search so really - they can decide how much innovation goes into it. And please - openness !!! When I get my weekly email updating me on the algorithm or when the numbers get put out on searches/day even - THEN that argument might stand. :) He then writes:

"Could Microsoft now attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC? While the Internet rewards competitive innovation, Microsoft has frequently sought to establish proprietary monopolies -- and then leverage its dominance into new, adjacent markets.

Could the acquisition of Yahoo! allow Microsoft -- despite its legacy of serious legal and regulatory offenses -- to extend unfair practices from browsers and operating systems to the Internet? In addition, Microsoft plus Yahoo! equals an overwhelming share of instant messaging and web email accounts. And between them, the two companies operate the two most heavily trafficked portals on the Internet. Could a combination of the two take advantage of a PC software monopoly to unfairly limit the ability of consumers to freely access competitors' email, IM, and web-based services? Policymakers around the world need to ask these questions -- and consumers deserve satisfying answers."

Ouch.

Now, they raise decent points regarding the past practices of Microsoft but again - what competition? If anything the deal will raise the bar on competition in the industry - but Google knows that. Whenever Google's doing something or buying someone everyone makes a big to-do about it. Well now the shoe is on the other foot and Google gets their chance to point the finger.

In the end the likelihood of Google getting their way and the deal being blocked is low. Heck, the fact that Google's against it probably has some FTC people thinking it's a pretty good thing and heck - it might be good for Google as well. Let's consider this - who is the master of search? (hint - it's Google).

People will choose MSN/Live because it's easy (part of their browser, etc.) people will chose Yahoo! because it's part of other services they use or because it's not Google. Well the former will see their services changed dramatically when Microsoft takes over and the later won't like being part of Microsoft any more than Google and so they'll either give up and go to Google or, the company that I view as the true likely winner in this - Ask (come on - give them a chance :)

Of course only time will tell but I'm looking forward to the journey. This is going to be a very VERY interesting story to follow.

Labels: ask, google, market share, microsoft, msn, yahoo

I've gotta admit, I can't confirm whether this is true or not and I found this info at TheInquirer.net so it's worth noting that it's likely true - but not 100% guaranteed (you know - like our SEO services ;).

Microsoft has been subpoenaed by Grisoft, developers of the AVG anti-virus software (great software - I use it at home) for allowing the website www.avg-soft.com to appear in the SERPs.

Well, at least it did. A search as of a few moments ago for the domain by URL produced 0 results - on MSN/Live at least though it can still be found on both Google and Yahoo! engines but not in what any of us would consider to be "prominent positions". :)

And if you decide to visit the site in Firefox you get the friendly warning "Suspected Web Forgery". You can see an image of it above. You know, in case any of you might want to go there to download the AVG anti virus software.

So it appears supoenas work - at least, if the story is true. :) And to give credit where it's due - you can read the full story on the Inquirer website here.

Labels: firefox, google, microsoft, msn, yahoo

ComScore released it's numbers for October and, oh my goodness, Google is up. In a rare turn of events the folks at Google appear to have won over some users, increasing their marketshare by 1.5%. The number now break down as follows:

• Google showed a 1.5% gain from 57% markshare in September to 58.5%
• Yahoo! realized a 0.8% loss going from 23.7% to 22.9%
• Microsoft took losses (surprise surprise) going from 10.3% to 9.7%
• Ask (YEAH !!!) held steady at 4.7%
• The Time Warner Network lost 0.1% marketshare ending at 4.2%
  

Now, that said - it's not as bad as it looks for the non-Google site. Let's look at the number of searches conducted on each engine in the month of October which, overall, were up by 11.8%:

• Google was up 14.8% with 6.151 billion searches in October over 5.356 billion searches in September
• Yahoo! realized an 8% gain in total searches ending with 2.405 billion searches (up from 2.227 billion in September)
• Microsoft showed gains in search number though more modest with a 5.6% increase in October going from 969 million searches to 1.023 billion
• Like Google, Ask's gains were in the double digits (and since I have a soft spot in my heart for Ask I'm happy to see this) jumping from 444 million searches in September to 491 million with a 10.7% gain in October
• And the Time Warner Network gained 9.4% in search numbers going from 405 million to 443 million

You can read more on the ComScore site at http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=1908.

Labels: ask, comscore, google, market share, microsoft, msn, time warner, yahoo

As if the folks over in Microsoft's search division didn't have enough woes in their lives lately (and by "lately" I mean for all the years after people started using search engines) the data released by ComScore yesterday paints a bleak picture. Until yesterday they were at least able to call themselves one of the big three. It appears that they can no longer claim even that. And who is the engine that overtook them? Could Ask finally be making some moves forward? No, the "newcomer" is likely an engine most of you may not have heard of if you're from North America. The engine is Baidu.com and it's the primary search engine in China (did you think that might have been Google.cn after all the hoopla over their expansion into there and the debates over their censoring search results?)

The current marketshare for August 2007 breaks down as follows:

Search Property Searches
Worldwide 61,033,000,000
Google Sites 37,094,000,000
Yahoo! Sites 8,549,000,000
Baidu.com Inc 3,253,000,000
Microsoft Sites 2,166,000,000
NHN Corporation 2,044,000,000
eBay 1,319,000,000
Time Warner Network 1,212,000,000
Ask Network 743,000,000
Fox Interactive Media 683,000,000
Lycos, Inc. 441,000,000

Another interesting fact is that this does not include access from cyber cafes or cell phones and PDA's. The Asian market is lightyears ahead of us in their us of their portable devices as full-scale Internet devices which could further influence the results in favor of engines such as Baidu.com if they were counted.

Another good question you might want to ask is, who the heck is NHN Corporation? They're a Korean engine and they're right on the heels of Microsoft as well.

Does this reflect a dramatic shift in the engines? In my opinion, not really. We're all used to hearing the data relative to North American or US-based numbers. This is the first comprehensive study of worldwide search behavior that we have been exposed to (that I've heard of at least) and it appears that the Asian market is far more active that many of us may have assumed. In retrospect, if we had really though of it, would we have been surprised? I for one am not shocked by the data but it has reminded me that there are important markets outside of North America and Europe and it's high time we started paying closer attention to them.

To read the full take on the ComScore data you can read the ComScore press release from yesterday here.

Labels: china, comscore, google, market share, microsoft, msn, yahoo

I sat at roughly 8:30PM on a Wednesday night working on a client proposal and I decided to open up Internet Explorer. Now, this is a rarity for me being the Firefox enthusiast than I am and I'm honestly not sure what prompted me to do so this time. So rarely does this event happen that the default homepage is still set to MSN. Upon it's launched I was greeted by the standard page of various news stories, etc. And I'm glad I did.

A headline in the news caught my attention, "He Only Saved A Billion People". I decided to follow the link and see what they were referring to. As it turns out, Jonathan Alter (the reporter) was referring to Norman Borlaug. Norman who? That's exactly the question I asked.

As it turns out, Mr. Borlaug - a 93 year old agronomist (they deal with the science of agriculture) was just awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. Well good for him I suppose but that's last week's news (literally). What else has he done?

On top of that he's won the Nobel Peace Prize and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. OK OK, I'm a little bit impressed I suppose but come on, why should this guy get a blog post here when I haven't even bothered to write one about Brad Pitt, or Paris Hilton - I mean, they're famous too. Oh wait, Borlaug isn't famous. Well, Brad and Paris are stars that we all know so Borlaug couldn't have done too much that's for sure. We'll, there's this one little thing - he is credited with saving a billion people.

That's right, this person whom I'm writing about, who I only found out about by accident when I landed on MSN, is credited with saving over one billion people worldwide. Now, I can't get into all the details here however I do know where you can find them, the link will come in a little bit. The point of this blog however is to bring up a very interesting question (albeit unrelated to SEO). What are we doing? I consider myself to be a fairly educated human being (who doesn't?) and I read a lot (in fact, I read all day at my computer) but it hits me now that the more "connected" I become with the world around me, the more I Facebook, the more I MSN, the more I rely on YouTube and SpikedHumor for my entertainment - the less I know about what's actually going on around me. I get caught up in the great importance of SEO and spend countless hours watching rankings move a position or two and studying what made it happen and then, when it's time for a break, I turn to online games, chats, forums and the like to provide my distractions never pausing to consider that there just might be something in this world outside of my computer.

Now, don't get me wrong; each person has their role and that thing they are best at and that is the task they should do. I'm not about to pack up the family in our mini-van and head for the hills to save whatever might be there - I enjoy SEO and my clients far to much to consider that, however today brought forth a great reminder that sometimes it just might be wise to open the window (goodness the light is sure bright - grrrrr, and it reflects on my monitor) and take a peek around and see what's going on in the real world. Are we becoming too preoccupied with the existence of the artificial world we have created out of 1's and 0's? Are we losing touch with what's really important? Why do I know the private lives of celebrities but I don't know the name of an extremely influential scientist who's saved a billion people? Perhaps it is time that we set aside a moment each day to look into what's really going on around us, at who's really making a difference. Or, perhaps I'll just leave the homepage of Internet Explorer set at MSN and use it, once in a while.

For those of you hoping for some SEO insight, my apologies - I promise you'll find some below and in our articles archives. If you're actually interested (and I hope you are) you can read the full story on the MSN site here.

Labels: msn, norman borlaug

Well it's finally happened, the fine folks over at Redmond seem to be making at least some minor gains against Google and Yahoo! After literally years of losing search market share (due in large part to an under appreciation for what search would mean in the early days) MSN is finally making gains against the search giants.

The latest ComScore results are out and they show the following for the major engines:

• Google sites dropped from 50.7% market share in May 2007 to 49.5% in June showing a drop of 1.2%
• Yahoo! sites dropped from 26.4% market share in may to 25.1% in June with an overal drop of 1.3%
• Microsoft sites rose from 10.3% to 13.2% from May to June with an overall gain of 2.9%
• The Ask network held steady at 5.0% market share
• The Time Warner Network dropped from 4.6% to 4.2% between May and June of 2007
  

Some other points from their stats:

• Americans conducted 8.0 billion searches online in June, up 6 percent versus May and up 26 percent versus June 2006.
• Google Sites led the pack with 4.0 billion search queries performed, followed by Yahoo Sites (2.0 billion), Microsoft Sites (1.1 billion), Ask Network (403 million), and Time Warner Network (341 million). Despite declining in search market share in June, both Google Sites and Yahoo! Sites enjoyed increases in search query volume.
• Microsoft Sites experienced a significant increase in search query volume (up 36 percent) and search market share (up 2.9 share points) in June, due in large part to Live Search Club, a program launched by Microsoft in late May to engage and reward users of Live Search.

We of course would once again like to extend our sincere thanks to ComScore for making this information available.

Please note that the variables used to power our free keyword activity tool have been updated to reflect the new marketshare numbers.

Labels: ask, comscore, free seo tools, google, keyword activity tool, market share, msn, time warner, yahoo