The finance comparison market has been a very lucrative and successful one over the past 5 years and it seems that Google has finally decided that it wants a piece of the pie! The screenshot below is taken from a Google UK search for secured loan (interestingly it only worked in IE and not in Firefox) and shows the Google Merchant Search function appearing above all PPC listings with drop down functionality allowing the user to select their desired loan amount before they even leave the SERP. Once an option is selected the user is taken to the Google Merchant page with their options shown based on the original selection, much like with all the other comparison sites in the market.

At the moment it appears this is just in Beta on the secured loan keyword but surely if successful this will be rolled out onto all other financial products. I couldn’t see where Google was getting these results from, and so I am not even sure if the providers know they are being compared (although I assume they are aware) and there is not indication of how a company would get its products listed, although this could just be a closed beta for now.

This could have massive implications for the comparison market, above and beyond the fact that there is another competitor in the market. In the first instance they have knocked moneysupermarket off the top PPC listing which will impact their volume, I am assuming they are not paying themselves a premium CPC for this position! They are also allowing themselves much more prominence on the page than a standard listing. 49 characters for a title and drop down functionality make it stand out on the page. Users could also see this as an easier option than clicking through a link and going through the whole process on a separate engine.

On top of this, if the beta is successful, what is to stop them adding in a variable to quality score which penalises other comparison sites? In one fell swoop generating themselves both more revenue from the sites willing to pay more and reducing the prominence of these sites and so driving more volume through their own tool. I may be a cynic but I can see it happening. Moneysupermarket spend a lot of money with Google but if they see a bigger opportunity in doing it themselves then they will surely pursue this avenue instead.

Is this the end of independent comparison sites? No, I doubt it, but if/when the beta is expanded it could be a big dent in their revenues and they will have to think of other ways to differentiate themselves. Some insurers (direct line to name one) are already boycotting the comparison sites and if Google is to offer this service for free, which they may well do in the name of stickiness and keeping people within the Google realm, more could follow suit.

I spotted something on Google today which I hadn’t seen before and is a new development in universal search.  On a search for “times” I was presented with the standard search results you get for a brand term but then in addition to this there was a search box contained with the results! On entering a search phrase into this box I was presented with the site search results but still with the Google SERP.  This functionality is well known and nothing new but the inclusion of the search box in the results is not something I have seen before. 

It is obviously just another element of Universal Search in action but is alos a good tool for Google to make their results as accurate as possible and keep people within their pages.  By allowing them to search within Google for keywords contained within a site you are not only enhancing the user experience but promoting loyalty and boosting query numbers at the same time, win all round.  On top of this they are also able to produce additional Adwords results on the secondary search and potentially boosting revenues as well.

I have just come across the Yahoo! Buzzapplication which is currently in beta testing.  From what I can see this is very much like Digg and Sphinn in that users provide articles of interest which are then voted on by the users to push them up the listings. 

Stories are given a “buzz score” which is ”derived from search term popularity, the number of times a story is emailed from Buzz, and the number of votes a story receives.”  Which could add a slight element of mystery if it is more than simply a case of adding the sum of all these parts together.  If it is going to work much like the quality score system in PPC then it may change the game a little and avoid all the spamming which takes place in Digg.  There will apparently be a manual editorial team in place to prevent spamming from taking place but how many and how effective they will be remains to be seen.

The other major twist in the tale is the statement from the site “stories with the highest Buzz Scores may be published on the Yahoo! home page.”  this would make the reach of top performing articles massive and the potential of this new application greater than that of Digg and Sphinn as it goes beyond the user base of the programme itself.  Apparently the same editorial team which will monitor the spam will also be responsible for deciding which stories are worthy of the Yahoo homepage exposure.  It will be interested to see what prominence these articles are given as they are free content and so Yahoo! would potentially be losing out on revenue if they replaced any of the paid placements.

It will be interesting to see how this progresses and whether the exposure on the Yahoo! homepage can make it a bigger property than the more established players in social bookmarking.

Ive finally gotten round to having a little think about the big news story of the week, Microsoft tabling a bid of $44.6 Billion in cash and stock to buy its rival Yahoo.  There has been no official comment from Yahoo on the reports but I thought Id document my thoughts on the impace this could have.

The portal market

Yahoo and MSN are the two big players in the portal market, the one stop shop for all you web needs, search engine, web mail, news feed, weather reports, all in one place.  This is where Microsoft will gain a massive advantage and pretty much gain complete dominance.  Aside from the ISP sites, which gain their visitors through having a default homepage setting in the ISP setup process, Microsoft will have a dominance in this field comparable to Google’s in the search market (more of that in a minute!).  So what does this mean to MSN? Well instantly they will take on board the lions share of the portal advertising revenues around the world.  Yahoo has built an advertising model which is highly lucrative and brings in a huge amount of revenue each year, utilising the latest behavioural targeting technology to keep online advertising moving forward.  MSN obviously has its own advertising model and ideas on how the market is going to advance but they will automatically boost their ad revenues with the purchase.  It also sets them up well for the predicted rise in online ad spend over the next few years, from $40 billion to $80 billion if you believe the predictions, dominance in a market this size is a mouth watering prospect.

The search market

This is where it gets really interesting.  Microsft has struggled to gain a foothold in the search market since it launched its own PPC model in 2006 and I forecasted in a previous post (Microsoft sets its sights on 40% market share) that a purchase may be on the cards if they were to achieve their targets.  The purchase of Yahoo Search Marketing (YSM), if part of the deal, would possibly take their market share into the double figures in the paid search arena.  Their system is good at present, the quality of their traffic is good, its just the volume they have been missing.  YSM would help boost this and make them a legitimate number 2 in this arena and they undoubtedly have the fire power to make dents in Google’s dominance (see their response here).  It does raise the question, what does this mean to search agencies?  the market which was due to fragment with the launch of wikia search, AOL breaking out in the US, Ask hinting at the same, is now significantly consolidated if this deal does actually go through.  Does this make SEM simpler? Not really but it could be perceived that way, a post for another time I think.

How do they manage it?

This will be interesting, does Yahoo become Microsoft branded?  or is it just another property of the technology giant?  Does it become Microhoo? Yasoft? Mahoo? or does it become Yahoo - a Microsoft company? and more importantly for internet marketers do they keep the two infrastructures separate, the advertising interfaces, the search algorithms, the display advertising models.  This is what will be the key determinant of what this means to the industry and what it means to digital agencies.

Whether the deal goes through remains to be seen, when it goes through is another question yet to be answered. What is undeniable is that it is going to influence the online advertising market significantly, in what way, remains to be seen.

Search engine land reported today the release of some new functional by ask which allows a user to upload their own personal background image for the search engine.  The functionality to add a skin to the background has been available since last year but this was only for predetermined images and wasn’t customisable.  I like the idea of customising the results page and this is a much simpler solution than Google’s which involves xml information rather than a simple image upload.  It is also much more flexible and interesting than msn and yahoo’s offerings which only allow the selection of different colour palletes for the page.

This functionality is just another stage in the battle for search engine supremacy but also for loyalty within internet users through added value.  Yahoo had this a long time ago through positioning itself as an information portal and one stop shop for your internet needs (email, news, sport, search…) a similar position taken by MSN.  Then Google smashed this with its simplicity and accuracy of results.  But even the big G has recognised the need to give people more and through iGoogle struck a balance between information on the page and usability by allowing the user to choose which information feeds they received.  The issue at the bottom of all of this is keeping people using your page/engine, setting it as their homepage, and a base for all their online activities.  If they can use your site for everything they need online whey would they go elsewhere?  The longer a user in on your site, the more searches they do, the more ads they view, the more ads they click, the more money you make! Simple.  Expect a lot more releases like in this in the next 12 months as the battle continues.

It’ll take a lot more functionality for Yahoo, Ask or MSN to catch Google but I do know people who now use the Yahoo homepage as they prefer it to Google so there is some movement going on.   You can check out the Ask function on the US site here, it is not yet available in the UK.

I had my first look at the Wikia Search alpha today and I have to say the results are absolute pants!  To be fair to them the people at Wikia do say the results won’t be great at the moment as the basis of their engine is that of user reviews and not so much algorithmic search, hence results will improve rapidly over time as listings begin to get scored by users.  I have to admit that I like the idea of a user ranked search engine, after all, how many websites do you come across which have absolutely no relevance to your search phrase? (my blog ranks rather highly for “search pornsex” for example!) But not only that, a user can make more judgements on things like usability and site layout than a search engine spider which should further help the best websites rise to the top.  The process appears relatively simple, hover over a result and a five star scale will appear allowing you to score the result, this will then be used along with the algorithmic properties to determine a websites position.  This will be wholly reliant obviously on users picking up on and participating in this ranking process so I will be watching with a lot of interest how the results improve over the coming weeks.Aside from the standard results there is also going to be a section at the top of results reserved for “mini articles” on each subject.  According to Wikia “These will vary in purpose according to the circumstance, but the primary uses will be:

• Short definitions
• Disambiguations
• Photos
• See also “

Generated by the users these will obviously take the same form of the Wikipedia pages and will undoubtedly include some Wikipedia content for sections yet to be populated by the new system.  Wikia Search undoubtedly has the potential to become the most relevant search engine but the worry, as has been the problem with tagging sites such as digg in recent times, is that people begin to play the system, creating alias accounts to boost their own contents ratings and therefore rank, totally devaluing the whole platform.  If Wikia Search really does become the next number one contender to the big G then the temptation to find a “quick win” within its system will grow stronger in line with its visitor stats.  At present I believe Wikia plans to get around the duplicate account problem by basing its user on IP address but that doesn’t sound like to much of a robust system to me and I cant imaging it will be long before the spammers have an easy way of beating it.

I may have sounded negative in this post but I honestly hope Wikia Search succeeds, I hate the dominance Google has on the search market.  I also love the thought of users producing the search results rather than a piece of software.  On this initial offering I think there is a long way to go with the next big pretender.

Google announced on its blog yesterday the launch of a new tool for universal search, the flight status function.  All you have to do is search on the airline and the flight number and Google will tell you whether it is delayed or on time and its departure and arrival times.  its a useful little tool this one as it removes the need to find the airlines web page and with a lot of people having Google as their homepage or using a tool bar it speeds up the process.  I would be interested to see if it cover ALL airlines though and how accurate and frequently updated the information this as this is key.  Without accuracy the tool may as well not exist.

This topic is one which greatly interests me, what is the future of search? Ive posted before at my disappointment with everyone’s desire to be Google and not better than Google. Through innovation comes change and I would like to think one of these categorise below represents the future of search engine evolution. Only problem is Im not sure which yet!!!

According to the metasearch engine GoshMe, there are more than 500,000 search engines. That’s more than one for every resident of Albuquerque, New Mexico. I dare you to search them all. If anyone will accomplish the task, it’s Charles Knight, a search engine optimizer who has made a name for himself publishing monthly lists of the Top 100 Alternative Search Engines.

I’ve attempted a number of grueling feats in my day. In college, I won a challenge to see who could eat the most Deadly Chocolate Sins, a rich, fudgy, warm brownie served at Applebee’s, and I subsequently learned that along with a sugar high, there’s also such thing as a sugar hangover. I am also one of few men who will admit to having endured watching nearly every episode of “The Real Housewives of the O.C.” (the things men do for love). The weekend I spent sorting through all of the Top 100 search engines wasn’t quite so demanding as brownie-eating or “Housewives”-watching, but it was up there.

With all these search engines, and I have no doubt that the 100 Mr. Knight compiled were truly among the best, I was mining them to explore where the real innovation lies. What aspects of all these engines will improve the search experience for users over the years ahead? Even if none of these are the next Google, Yahoo, or Windows Live Search, are there diamonds in the rough that can be polished and adapted into the major engines’ algorithms and results pages?

For the most part, the answer is no.

The engines on the Top 100 list can be segmented into a handful of categories, and those categories can be further divided based on which ones will have a low impact on innovation, and which ones will matter most the rest of the decade. This week, we’ll look at the low-impact categories, and then next week we’ll see which categories are more promising.

Low-Impact Engines

§ Clustering/graphic display: These engines organize search results in some sort of visual field. Quintura’s among the best of these, and it’s potentially useful for academics and brand managers, but I don’t get the benefit for general consumers. Gnod clusters results based on specific subjects, yet Amazon’s recommendations are usually more than sufficient.
§ Filtering based on categories/recommended keywords: This is one feature especially common in vertical search, but it’s also being used by other engines such as Factbites. If that’s the predominant feature, it’s not going to be incredibly useful, as it’s already being used by other engines, notably Ask.com and Windows Live Search.
§ Metasearch/aggregated search: These engines search multiple sites at once or individually. Dogpile, Mamma, and Goshme all are variations on the metasearch theme, while engines like FindForward allow more features for searching select sites one by one. Even if these engines are useful at times, Dogpile and its ilk are icons of the Web’s past, not its future.
§ User-ratings/voting: VMGO lets users rank search results. I’m skeptical of the longevity of this approach, as it’s too easily gamed and too biased toward early adopters. If an algorithm’s that good for natural rankings, voting won’t matter, though the whole idea of a Digg-based search engine might gain some fleeting buzz.
§ Q&A: These engines, like Lexxe, aim to give you direct answers to your questions. For the post part, the innovation here has already happened, as Yahoo Answers emerged as one of the company’s biggest success stories in recent years while Google Answers folded. One of my favorite entrants in the Top 100, Ask Vox, falls into the Q&A category. Built on the Yahoo Answers API, Vox is a talking avatar who answers your questions, and you can add in your own answers when she falls short. For added fun, Vox says on her MySpace page that she’s going out with the retired Ask.com butler Jeeves. If you ask her directly if she’s in a relationship, she’ll confirm the tryst, though the two-timer also says she’s single if you press her.

Even though these categories are low-impact, some of these engines are innovative in their own way. Quintura keeps evolving and grows more useful with each iteration, Goshme is awe-inspiring with its breadth, and Vox was so much fun, I shared her with every visitor to my office last week.

But enough playing around. Next week, we’ll look to the engines and categories that will fuel the future of search innovation.

Interesting thoughs on the future of search engine optimisation. The area which interests me most is that of personalisation as this, to me, is one of the key strengths of the internet. Amazon have done it for years, personalising the products offered to a return user, showing producst which may be of interest. The introduction fo this to the world of search engine marketing could change the way in which we all operate.

The Transformation Of Natural Search Optimization by Rob Garner, Wednesday, February 14, 2007

THERE IS NO DOUBT THAT natural search is coming to a crossroads. My view is that the transformation may not be so radical that everything changes, in so much as having situations where only some things become more challenging. However, the basic tenets of natural search will remain the same, only applied to more sophisticated scenarios on a personalized level, a research level, and a technical level. Here are a few thoughts on some of these key drivers in the changing landscape of natural search optimization:
Personalization. Google recently announced that it was rolling out personalized results, marking the beginning of a change in the way we approach natural search optimization campaigns. Though there is the theoretical potential for every search result page to be different, the impact is not quite as drastic as it sounds.
My basic view of optimizing for personalized results is similar to some points outlined by David Berkowitz in yesterday’s Search Insider column. His primary assertion is that the basic benchmark for optimization is still the editorial results (personalization turned off).
Make it there, and you’ll make it anywhere. Achieving top rankings in the editorial results ensures that your site is trusted, and that you created a natural presence that is best-of-class in its keyword space.
More emphasis should be placed on aggregate traffic metrics such as increased share of natural search traffic, and ultimately, increased ROI and conversions. If personalization meets its primary goal of increased relevancy, then traffic and conversions should increase to properly tuned sites.
The rise of market research in search (going beyond “keyword research”). In recognizing that personalization is a now-major factor in the way that natural search traffic is delivered, the new imperative is optimizing a site to satisfy the target customer’s desires. This is accomplished by thoroughly knowing your customer through market research, and further down the road, testing and validating through analytics and clickstream analysis. The deeper implication is that search-informed market research should be further integrated into the discovery and design phases of Web development.
The future will be in knowing what your target audience wants, knowing the language they speak and knowing how they find what they seek. Provide the content and experience they are seeking, and you will naturally match your offering to the key aspects of the personalization algorithm, such as click-through rate, time-on-site, number of page views (or in a rich app, back to “time-on-site”), internal site clickstreams, repeat visits, bookmarks, etc. Engage your target market, and the search engines will engage your site.
Today, many search firms substitute “keyword research” for true “market research.” Predicting and understanding human search intent is much more complicated than choosing keyword terms based on search frequency, and the guestimated likelihood to click through. Human search intent is as complex as human beings themselves, and market research should be a primary driver in creating exceptional search engine marketing campaigns, for both natural and paid campaigns.
SEOs will be met with increasing technical demands to address the crawlability and indexability off rich Internet applications The trend of enterprise RIA adoption is hitting its stride in 2007. The shift is essentially focused on moving from a “page-based” paradigm to a “pageless” paradigm; one that treats the Web more as an application, rather than a book. Ajax is driving the change.
Senior Google engineer Matt Cutts told Search Insider back in December that RIA-based sites are not a threat to relevancy at this time, mainly because the developers that create them are technical enough to build a second site for search engines. This statement is interesting for a couple of reasons.
The first is that it is not a threat “at this time.” This indicates that widespread adoption of RIA without a secondary technical solution for search engines could be a major threat to relevancy, as well as a threat to a company’s search presence. If the content is hidden, the engines can’t find it, and companies cannot be found.
The second implication is that to have your user-interface cake and eat it too, a progressive tech solution for search is on the menu. This will go beyond the capabilities of many search firms.
Ultimately, I don’t believe that RIA will put any SEO firms out of business, because page-based sites are not going away any time soon (not for the next 10 years, anyway). As long as there are page-based sites and the need to rank those pages, there is room for those who practice current methods. But a new breed of SEO will emerge to address the need to optimize for RIA (there are many in existence now).
The bottom line is that natural search optimization is in a state of transformation at the enterprise level. If anything has changed, it’s not that SEO is dead or dying — it’s that the bar has just been set even higher.
Rob Garner is a senior strategic planner for interactive marketing and search agency iCrossing. He is president-elect of the Dallas/Fort Worth Search Engine Marketing Association, and also serves on the board of the Dallas/Fort Worth Interactive Marketing Association.

Mark Simon reported in Medis Posts Search Insider (12/02/2007) that the search engines would be the death of SEO. The logic behind this arguement being that as the search engines advance even futher in the way they read and index web pages the more the tactis used by SEO companies will become irrelevant. They will eventually be so advance in their algorithm that they will pull the websit ewhich is most useful to the user regardless of the sites tactics, and maybe even content.

Im not sur I agree with this arguement but I do agree to some degree that search engine optimisers will need to become experts in usability and functionality of a website rather than content. Navigation will become increasingly important (even more so than today) as will display and ease of use. Elements such as download speed become more prevelant and the basic rules of SEO as we know today change. This nothing ground breaking but is something to consider when making recommendations for websites. In the future the basic premise will be, make the site user friendly and you will make it search engine friendly.