Archive for the ‘General SEM’ Category

Google and Mozilla have renewed an agreement that makes the former the default search service in the Firefox browser.

The original agreement saw the deal continue until 2006, when it was extended to 2008 and now to November 2011.

Mitchell Baker, Mozilla chairperson, claimed on his blog that the new deal will offer continued "stability in income", with TechCrunch noting that the agreement helped to generate 85 per cent of Mozilla’s revenues in 2006.

"We’re very, very happy about our relationship with Google and this makes sure that Mozilla will be sustainable and thrive for quite a long time to come," remarked John Lilly, chief executive of Mozilla, to TechCrunch.

The move could mark another twist in the ongoing browser wars, with Microsoft recently releasing the second test version of Internet Explorer 8 - which has a raft of new features - earlier this week.

Microsoft has added a number of enhanced search features to its forthcoming Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) browser.

Unveiling the launch of IE8 Beta 2, the company said on its IE blog that the new browser offers a new smart address bar, visual search capabilities and search suggestions.

Other features include a private web browsing mode, improved security, enhanced tabbing and a unique Web Slices option that allows users to take parts of web pages to other sites.

The private browsing mode has caused some disquiet in the online community, however, as fears have been raised that the feature - which deletes cookies and other private data during a specified session - could hinder the advertising operations of organisations like Google that depend on cookies to target their ads.

Speaking to the Financial Times, Ovum information technology analyst David Mitchell said: "If the hype around privacy gains more credibility, more people will hit the private button. There is a potential threat here to click-through [display] advertising."

Semantic search will dominate the search engine sector over the next 12 months, a new study has suggested.

StrategyEye Digital Media polled more than 200 decision-makers at a range of companies operating in the digital industry, with almost 80 per cent those working in search pointing to the semantic web as a key area of focus for search companies.

The semantic web has been targeted by companies such as Microsoft - which acquired natural language technology provider Powerset earlier this year - looking to make search results more relevant for users.

However, the medium could come with its challenges in the short-term, StrategyEye warned.

"Over the longer-term, semantic search technologies will become a reality if the trade off between the cost of scaling the platform and the monetisation potential can be balanced," it added.

According to Microsoft, irrelevant search results can occur when there are differences between users’ search queries and the way in which these concepts are expressed on web pages, a problem that could be overcome with semantic technology.

Spending on online video ads on the NBC Olympics website reached $5.75 million (£3.12 million) in total, according to new figures.

Compiled by eMarketer, the statistics showed that video ad expenditure for the event in the US was equivalent to just 1.1 per cent of the $505 million predicted to be spent on the medium overall this year.

The organisation said that the figure was "passable" considering the relatively short duration of the Games and pointed to NBC website visitors being forced to download Microsoft’s Silverlight player to access video content as one possible reason for the fact that most of the site’s traffic was not made up of video viewers.

However, eMarketer senior analyst David Hallerman said that the Olympics showed there is potential in the video ad market.

"As a signifier for future online events, the games set a high bar for the competition - establishing that major sports events, tournaments and professional leagues ought to offer an abundance of video content online, not just snippets," he remarked.

According to comScore, the official Beijing Olympics website saw 16.5 million unique visitors between August 8th and 17th.

Google is to make its search suggestion tool available to more users via Google.com.

Announcing the news on the Official Google blog, product manager Jennifer Liu said that the Suggest tool will help users to save time and find what they are searching for quicker.

The feature makes suggestions for searches in real time, offering possibilities for complete phrases when the user taps in just a few letters and is similar to tools provided by Yahoo! and Cuil.

Ms Liu said this can help users to find pages when they are unsure of what exactly it is they are looking for, as well as correct misspelt terms.

The tool was first developed in 2004 and has since appeared in programs such as Google Toolbar, Google Maps and the Firefox search box.

"We find that by providing suggestions upfront, we can help people search more efficiently and conveniently," Ms Liu explained.

Research company comScore has released its latest statistics for the US search engine market.

According to the figures, a total of 11.8 billion queries were made across the main search engines in the US during July, up two per cent compared with June.

Google continued to account for the majority of the market, taking 7.3 billion or 61.9 per cent of all searches during the month, up 0.4 per cent compared to the previous month.

Yahoo! fell further behind in July when its share fell to 20.5 per cent, as did Microsoft, whose slice of the sector stood at 8.9 per cent.

Ask and AOL managed to increase their share of all US searches, however, rising to 4.3 per cent and 4.1 per cent respectively.

Google was recently ranked as the most satisfactory search engine for US consumers in a study by the University of Michigan.

Those looking to effectively measure their internet marketing performance should look past sales and sign-ups as indicators of conversions.

This is according to Tim Ash of the Search Engine Watch blog, who suggested that conversions could be seen to be behaviour that results in website visitors moving further down the path towards the end point desired by marketers.

Such actions can include spending significant amounts of time on educational resources, downloading files, printing out pages and documents, form-fill rates and multiple actions that combine a variety of behaviours, he explained.

"Measure those smaller events and you’ll know much more about what your visitors are doing than if you only focus on the end results," Mr Ash remarked.

Internet retailers can increase conversions through effective search engine optimisation, tracking both offline and online sales processes and making efforts to cut the rate at which consumers abandon their online shopping baskets, according to Practical eCommerce.

The paid search sector could eventually see marketers make bids based on elements other than keywords, it has been claimed.

CNET News.com reports Scott Provost of Microsoft-owned semantic search engine Powerset as stating at the Search Engine Strategies conference that as search begins to focus more on user intent, so will the associated adverts.

"If people aren’t bidding on keywords and are bidding on concepts, it could completely change the ball game," he explained.

Meanwhile, Satya Nadella, senior vice-president of the search, portal and advertising platform group at Microsoft, also said at the conference that tailored, user-specific search could be one way in which the company will be able to advance in the search market.

He went on to highlight the importance of innovation to the search sector and said that natural language processing will be "critical" to improving search relevance, according to CNET News.com.

Almost eight billion online searches were conducted by American web users in July, new statistics have shown.

According to Nielsen Online, this represented a three per cent increase compared with the same month last year.

Google continued to dominate the sector, accounting for 4.8 billion searches - or 60.2 per cent of the market - and seeing its share increase by more than 16 per cent year-on-year.

The search giants nearest competitors were Yahoo! and Microsoft, which both saw large falls in market share over the course of the month.

These statistics follow recent news of Google gaining the highest consumer satisfaction scores in the US search engines and portals category as part of a study conducted by the University of Michigan.

Meanwhile, new figures from comScore have highlighted Google’s continuing growth in non-US territories.

The research firm said that Google searches represented 81 per cent of the total market in India during June, equating to about one billion online queries overall.

Customer satisfaction with Google has increased by 10.3 per cent since last year, it has been claimed.

According to the University of Michigan’s American Customer Satisfaction Index, Google now has a satisfaction score of 86 out of 100, up from 78 last year.

Yahoo! received a score of 77, down slightly compared with 2007, while Microsoft-owned MSN saw its mark remain unchanged at 75.

Google came top of the search engines and portals category in the index, prompting Larry Freed, ForeSee Results chief executive and author of the report, to comment to the Seattle Times: "It gives [consumers] the expectation coming in that this is the way to search.

"As long as Google meets that expectation, they’re going to do well."

Google accounted for more than seven in ten internet searches in the US during July, according to the latest search engine market report from Hitwise.