September Search Share: Google Up, Yahoo! Down and Bing Flat
ComScore has released the search engine market share reports for September of 2011 and here’s the rundown….
Yahoo’s share is at a record low, Microsoft’s is lying flat and Google continues to edge ahead of all its competitors.
Surprised?
In August, Google actually lost market share while Yahoo! gained, so the tides have turned in September.
Here are the numbers:
- Google: 65.3 % (vs. 64.8 % in August 2011)
- Yahoo: 15.5 % (vs. 16.3 % in August)
- Bing: 14.7 % (flat vs. August)
- Ask: 3.0% (flat vs. August)
- AOL: 1.5 % (vs. 1.3% in August)
According to Macquarie Equities Research, Yahoo’s 15.5% share “was its lowest level ever according to our dataset.” Perhaps this statistic is an even stronger reason to believe the recent rumors that the Yahoo! board is willing to sell the company to the highest bidder.
Since it’s inception a couple of year back, Microsoft’s Bing search engine has struggle to make any gain on Google and experts believe this trend will continue. Here is how Zeus Kerravala, principal analyst with ZK Research, sees the situation between Google and Bing:
I see Bing doing a lot of advertising now and that has raised the awareness of it. People do like to try something new. But Google is flat out the fastest and most accurate search engine today. Bing will need to do something completely new with search to gain ground. And Google will need to slip up. Both of those seem unlikely.
Americans conducted 19.3 billion searcher in September and you can expect this figure to rise even higher in October, November and December as the holiday season begins.
Despite joining forces last year, Microsoft and Yahoo have struggled to erode Google’s dominance in search. I wonder if we will ever see this take a turn? Will we ever see the partnership between Yahoo! and Microsoft cause some serious headaches for Google? At this stage, it certainly doesn’t look like it.
Leaked Google Search Guidelines Give an Insight into Ranking Criteria
SEO blogs have been buzzing over the past couple of days with news that a new version of Google’s Quality Rating Guidelines was leaked online.
The Google Quality Rating Guidelines is a handbook used by Google Search Quality Raters from around the world to rate the quality of results from specific searches. URL Raters are given a URL and a search query and instructed to visit the landing page and assign a rating based on guidelines from the handbook.
According to Google, queries are broken up in to three categories,
After understanding the intent of the query, users then rate web pages on the following scale,
Google’s Criteria for a “Useful” Webpage is rather broad and states that a single query can have many useful webpages. As with any manual rating system the answers will be subjective, however raters are asked to decide if the webpage is a “good fit” for the query. Some examples state that the page may be “highly satisfying, authoritative, entertaining, and/or recent (such as breaking news on a topic).”
Pages earning the “relevant” rating will still need to fit the query but will have less helpful information compared to useful pages. This may include information that is older or only addresses one part of the query.
The “slightly relevant” or “off topic” ratings are saved for web pages which Google wants to avoid. In these sections Google asks raters to look past tricks tricks like including search terms in the URL, page title and copied or repeated keywords when assigning a rating to the page.
Finally, the document also discusses what makes a page bad enough to be marked as “spam”. Here are some tactics you may want to avoid,
- Hidden text or links – may be exposed by selecting all page text and scrolling to the bottom (all text is highlighted), disabling CSS/Javascript, or viewing source code
- Sneaky redirects – redirecting through several URLs, rotating destination domains cloaking with JavaScript redirects and 100% frame
- Keyword stuffing – no percentage or keyword density given; this is up to the rater
- PPC ads that only serve to make money, not help users
- Copied/scraped content and PPC ads
- Feeds with PPC ads
- Doorway pages – multiple landing pages that all direct user to the same destination
- Templates and other computer-generated pages mass-produced, marked by copied content and/or slight keyword variations
- Copied message boards with no other page content
- Fake search pages with PPC ads
- Fake blogs with PPC ads, identified by copied/scraped or nonsensical spun content
- Thin affiliate sites that only exist to make money, identified by checkout on a different domain, image properties showing origination at another URL, lack of original content, different WhoIs registrants of the two domains in question
- Pure PPC pages with little to no content
- Parked domains
Unfortunately the full 125 page document has been taken down by Google, so if you managed to grab a copy while it was online consider yourself lucky.
As always, feel free to leave a comment below if you have any questions or other information to share.
Farewell Google Buzz
According to reports, it’s time to go… Google Buzz.
The official announcement came just a day after Google’s Q3 earnings report was released and most experts aren’t surprised that Google Buzz has been given the flick. With the arrival of Google+, Google Buzz has become irrelevant. Additionally, Google Labs too will be vanishing from today as well. The main reason for Google Labs closure is new CEO Larry Page’s efforts to streamline Google’s product portfolio.
Bradley Horowitz, Google’s VP of Products made the announcement in a blog post, stating:
Changing the world takes focus on the future, and honesty about the past. We learned a lot from products like Buzz, and are putting that learning to work every day in our vision for products like Google+. Our users expect great things from us; today’s announcements let us focus even more on giving them something truly awesome.
Google Buzz has seen its fare share of controversy and copped quite a lot of criticism which is said to be the main cause of its downfall. Google+ seems to have been adopted more by users than Google Buzz because of its privacy settings which Buzz lacked. Posts and profiles on Google Buzz were public which was a concern to many. Then there’s the lack of APIs released for Google Buzz which meant developers were restricted when developing new applications/software around Buzz.
For nostalgia purposes, Google will allow Buzz users to preserve the memory of the network by download your Google Buzz profile through Google Takeout.
Google Buzz isn’t the only Google service to have been given the chop. You can also say farewell to Code Search, Jaiku and the University Research Program for Google Search.
Will you miss Google Buzz? Did you ever use it in the first place? Feel free to share your thoughts below.
Landing Page Quality Given More Weight in Google AdWords
Google recently announced the global release of updates on how AdWords quality score is determined and how much impact these scores have on the ad’s ranking.
In simple terms, ads with landing pages that Google thinks to be most relevant to the query will be able to rank higher for lower cost-per-click bids.
This release comes after a limited scale trial held in Brazil, Spain and Portugal earlier this year where Google increased the weightage given to relevance and landing page quality in determining the Quality Score and how ads are ranked on Google. The aim of conducting these tests was first to see how these two factors impacted ad rankings on the Google SERP and secondly to improve the user experience with search ads because at the end of the day users appreciate.
The roll out process will extend over a few weeks during which many AdWords users will see variations in keyword Quality Scores and typical ad positions for their campaign. Eventually though things will stabilize and there shouldn’t be any significant changes in the overall performance of ad campaigns. Once the entire implementations process is completed Google will crawl the landing pages associated with every ad and determine its quality score.
Google’s Jonathan Alferness says the reason behind giving more weightage to landing page quality is:
What we’ve seen is that there are ads available in the auction that is as good a quality as the top ads. But the landing pages — the merchant sites, the advertiser landing pages — are of much higher quality than the ads that we see at the top of our auction and this means the user experience isn’t what it could be. In the end, we believe that this will result in better quality experience for the users.
What we always ask our advertisers to focus on is relevance — choose a landing page or site experience that is both relevant to the keywords that you’re targeting and also a good experience for end users. This is just continuing to sort of push on those best practices. It gives us the ability to really reward those advertisers that have been doing this, whose landing pages really are some of the best in our systems.
Landing page quality has long been a factor in Google AdWords, but more as a negative signal. The new change will assign landing page quality a positive value, so advertisers should make sure the landing page’s keywords and content are closely aligned with the keywords they’re bidding on for their ad.
There are more details on this change in Google’s announcement post here.
Google Launches Trusted Stores Program to Reward Online Retailers
With the festive season knocking at your door, searchers are busy looking for the best deals online. However, at the same time they are not willing to buy from unreliable or unfamiliar online stores. Addressing this concern, Google recently launched Google Trusted Stores that will help online shoppers to identify and locate trusted online stores that provide excellent customer service.
Google Trusted Stores is a certification program that Google will award to certain online merchants in the form of a ‘Trusted Stores Badge’. However the participating sites must meet a number of shipping and customer service standards/metrics in order to receive the badge which they can display across their website to attract more sales.
These metrics include:
Shipping
- High percentage of orders with on-time shipping
- Low average days for product to ship
Service
- High percentage of issues resolved quickly
- Low number of customers needing assistance with an issue
Tom Fallows, Google Commerce Team Product Manager anticipates that the program will help reduce the risks associated with online shopping.
The Google Trusted Store badge is awarded to e-commerce sites that demonstrate a track record of on-time shipping and excellent customer service. When visiting a qualifying store, shoppers can hover over the Google Trusted Store badge and see metrics on the store’s shipping and customer service performance.
The program is still in closed beta testing with online stores like O.co, Wayfair, BabyAge.com, and Beach Audio signing up for the trials. It is reported that over the next several months, Google will do extensive testing of the badges and other aspects of the program to determine the overall impact of the new program on the test sites. All of the merchants included in the program are required to share information with Google related to customer service and shipping.
To receive the Google Trusted Store program, merchants must voluntarily share data about their shipments to Google and also let Google collect customer service metrics when shoppers seek Google’s help with a problem related to purchases on that site. Once accepted to the Trusted Stores program, Google will provide the merchant with an official badge to display and offer the customers up to $1,000 of protection post purchase. To apply, click here.
There are more details on this program in the video below.
Google Plans to Take on Newspapers With New Circulars Ads
Bloomberg reports that search giant Google is collaborating with Best Buy, Macy’s, and other retailers to develop “web-based circular ads” similar to the ad inserts you see in the major newspapers.
This news comes just as Google’s Nick Foxx said during the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Mixx conference that circular ads are a billion dollar market and Google’s circular ads are the answer to those who want a smooth transition from a paper-based ads to digital ads.
Foxx also said that Google will soon be rolling out a marketing campaign that will include both internet and print advertising.
Since most of the searches these days are mobile and location based, location-based search ads can help searchers find what they are looking for and Google hopes the circular ads will help even further as they can be personalized by location and query. As soon as the users click on the search or display ads they will see large, multiple pictures in a pop-up screen.
For example, if you’re in New York looking for a camera on sale, a search of Google will provide an ad which when clicked will link through to Best Buy’s weekly ad and you will see an ad designed especially for you. Since your location is known and search query is known, the most relevant products are displayed front and center in response to your search.
Noticing that search advertising is rapidly evolving with the aid of videos, images and visually appealing text, Google has been using newer ad formats from the beginning of the year, so this leap into circular ads is a natural progression.
One feature of the circular ads that is sure to attract offline and online advertisers is that it will supports desktop, mobile and tablet devices. However the big question that remains is will this modern, full-page online advertising strategy work wonders for the traditional offline retailers? I guess we will wait and see.
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