Archive for the ‘Search Engine News’ Category
Yahoo-Microsoft-Bid-Update
In the ongoing saga of Microsoft’s continued attempts to buyout Yahoo!, Steve Balmer, CEO of Microsoft has come out publicly saying he still wants to buy Yahoo’s search company.
In a recent interview by AllThingsD with Balmer at this week’s 2009 Media Summit this week in New York, Balmer has said that Microsoft has made a significant investment in Research & Development into Search, which is something Google has clearly led the way in, but he believes Yahoo isn’t in a position to make such an investment.
Balmer believes that by combining Live Search with Yahoo’s search, the company will pool it’s resources, customers and advertisers together to add scale, and he seems to think therein lies the real value of merging the two businesses, with a goal of holding 15-20% of the search market in the next few years.
Balmer declined to comment on the new Kumo Search product, but did go on to say that search was updated at Microsoft every 9 months.
Microsoft Kumo in Testing
Microsoft is currently testing “Kumo“, the internal project name used by Microsoft employees for it’s new search function which is said to not only provide an improved search feature, but also help users “accomplish tasks”.
Microsoft report that around 40% of all search queries go unanswered, and Satya Nadella, VP of Microsoft’s Online Service group claims that 46% of search queries last longer than 20 minutes, suggesting that the user has difficulty finding what it is they’re looking for, and 50% of queries are users returning to previous tasks.
One has to wonder if this is a flaw common amongst all search engines, or if perhaps Microsoft’s existing search engine isn’t delivering qualitative data, or grading it and ranking it in the SERPs accordingly.
In comparison to Google, it is said by most Search Engine Marketers, that you need to be at the top spot in the Search Engine Results Pages, or at least on the first pages. Google seems to present instant gratification, and their strategy is to keep users on the page for as little time as possible and get on with doing or viewing what it is they were searching for.
Perhaps a change in Microsoft’s algorithms delivered by Kumo may present a new way for searching and finding information on the web, and we can only watch and wait to see if they’re able to acheive that goal and re-gain some market share against the leading search giant, Google.
Yahoo! Site Explorer expecting updates?
Yahoo! Site Explorer is currently down for maintenance. We suspect this could be a sign of new features being made available.
Yahoo’s site explorer is a great Search Engine Optimisation Tool to analyse traffic sources such as back-links to your site, and also the pages on your website that Yahoo! indexes.
We suspect this maintenance downtime has been planned by Yahoo! in anticipation of new updates being implemented.
We’ll be excited to see more handy search analytics tools and reporting functions made available from Yahoo, and we’ll keep you posted with any updates.
Former Yahoo Marketer Joins MSN
Scott Moore has Joined Microsoft’s search business as the U.S Executive Producer, responsible for MSNBC.com and Microsoft’s related Search Engine websites.
Scott was previously head of Yahoo!s search marketing business, and has re-joined Microsoft after four years working in Yahoo’s Media Division and begins his new role in March 2009.
Interestingly enough Moore is filling a role at Microsoft which was previously held by Jeff Dossett, and in a switch of roles, Dossett now fills Moore’s old shoes at Yahoo.
The Search Engine Business seems to be a very fluid and incestuous market, and the influences that both Dossett and Moore make in each of their roles have potential to do great things for Yahoo and MSN’s media divisions.
Scott has a background in Search Engine Marketing and will now be responsible for Microsoft’s content and programming strategy. Prior to his four years at Yahoo, Scott was at Microsoft for 10 years between 1995 - 2005, so he is rejoining the Microsoft flock, and is amongst many other key employees within Yahoo who have recently made the move to Microsoft.