Search Engine Optimization Help

The Six Revisions blog complied an excellent list of the classic search engines, some dating back to the 1990s. His list includes screen shots of both the old and current (if available) versions of HotBot, Excite, WebCrawler, Ask Jeeves, Ask.com, Yahoo, Google, Dogpile, AltaVista, Lycos, MSN Search, Bing, AOL Search, Infoseek, Go.com, Netscape, MetaCrawler, [...]

….

We’ve already seen comScore and StatCounter report an auspicious start for Microsoft’s newly launched Bing search engine. Now, Hitwise shares Initial Bing Stats for US and Canada.

According to Heather Dougherty, Hitwise’s director of research:

In the US, Bing ranked 17th among all websites out of over 450,000 websites, up from 5120 the week before the official launch when the website was merely a placeholder. Within the Search Engines category, Bing ranked 4th out of the search engines tracked by Hitwise and Bing Image Search ranked 15th for the week ending June 6, 2009.

In Canada, Bing hit the top 10 among all websites during the first week of launch and captured 1% of all Canadian Internet visits last week. Bing also ranked 3rd last week in terms of the market share of visits within the Search Engines category behind Google Canada and Google.

That’s quite a hot start, though it remains to be seen how long that traffic level can be sustained. It’s driving awareness with its TV ad campaigns, media coverage, and curiosity, but those things won’t keep Bing going at these levels for long. Microsoft needs to offer searchers something that exceeds what they can get from their current search engine — most likely Google — to make them change their behavior.

The surge in traffic is at least worth a short-term look from advertisers. Melissa Mackey took a look at Bing from an advertiser perspective today in “Can Bing Really Bring It for PPC Advertisers?” She says it’s more than just rebranded Live Search, and Microsoft has promised more advertising innovations coming down the line soon.

According to Net Applications Bing saw lots of testing and trial usage in its first full day:

According to the company, the usage is coming from Live Search users as well as Google, Yahoo and others. Early buzz for Bing has been mixed but positive. The question now is whether Microsoft and Bing can retain a [...]

….

Mike Arrington thinks that Google engaged in “a little stealth black ops mission” and blunted the full impact of the Ballmer Bing announcement yesterday by announcing Wave. Whether Wave represents a huge new development in digital communications remains to be seen, but almost every major news outlet had to cover it and divide its attention [...]

….

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer today drew back the curtain on the new incarnation of Live Search: Bing.

Speaking at the D7 Conference in San Diego, Ballmer launched Microsoft’s new Search brand, formerly code-named “Kumo.” Bing will begin rolling out in the coming days and will be fully available on 6/3.

More than just a rebranding of Live Search, Microsoft is repositioning Bing as a “decision engine,” with a goal “to provide customers with intelligent search tools to help them simplify tasks and make more informed decisions,” according to a Microsoft spokesperson.

Bing’s “decision engine” will begin by focusing on four key vertical areas: making a purchase decision, planning a trip, researching a health condition or finding a local business.

“Today, search engines do a decent job of helping people navigate the Web and find information, but they don’t do a very good job of enabling people to use the information they find,” Ballmer said in a statement. “When we set out to build Bing, we grounded ourselves in a deep understanding of how people really want to use the Web. Bing is an important first step forward in our long-term effort to deliver innovations in search that enable people to find information quickly and use the information they’ve found to accomplish tasks and make smart decisions.”

Bing includes some advancements to Live Search’s core search, such as entity extraction and expansion, query intent recognition and document summarization technology. It also offers a new user experience model, which changes based on the query to offer more relevant decision-making tools.

The Bing brand will extend across other Microsoft search products. Microsoft’s mapping platform, Virtual Earth, will now be branded as Bing Maps for Enterprise. Technology from Microsoft’s April 2008 acquisition of Farecast is now a central part of Bing Travel. Microsoft’s popular cashback program is now dubbed Bing cashback, and will be fully integrated into the Bing Shopping experience.

Microsoft has created a new site describing Bing, DiscoverBing.com, and the brand has a new Twitter account, @bing.

Earlier this week, AdAge reported that Microsoft will launch an $80 million to $100 million campaign for Bing, which will include online, TV, print and radio.

According to AdAge:

People with knowledge of the planned push said the ads won’t go after Google, or Yahoo for that matter, by name. Instead, they’ll focus on planting the idea that today’s search engines don’t work as well as consumers previously thought by asking them whether search (aka Google) really solves their problems. That, Microsoft is hoping, will give consumers a reason to consider switching search engines, which, of course, is one of Bing’s biggest challenges.

The Bing situation is a lot like Ask.com’s situation two years ago, and again last year. In 2007, Ask.com launched a $57 million campaign aimed at winning new searchers with quirky messaging, taking on Google and others head-on. In 2008, it spent another $22 million, but shifted gears to focus on certain niches it was already doing well in.

Those campaigns didn’t help Ask.com win any market share. Will Microsoft’s campaign for Bing fare any better?

Microsoft’s new search engine is no longer a secret, it is named Bing and we already have a few stories up now, including Microsoft’s Bing Vs Google: Head To Head Search Results and State Of Search: Google Will Stay Strong Despite Bing & Yahoo. We thought it would be useful to find quotes from [...]

….

Let’s just get it out of the way: no, Bing is not a “Google Killer.” It’s also safe to say that Microsoft doesn’t see it that way either. My understanding of what Microsoft believes it has in Bing is a much more competitive product than Live Search. I entirely agree.
Over the course of the next [...]

….

I’m a little surprised that Microsoft is rolling out newish functionality on Live Search given that the Kumo launch is immanent. But the Live Search blog announced that sports stats and scores will appear in a “one box” like presentation when events, teams or player names are queried:

What this means, I assume, is that we’ll [...]

….

If your team wasn’t painfully swept in the playoffs last night, you might want to use Live.com to keep up with future playoff games. Typing in the name of a team or player will give you Instant Answers, a feature that Live Search has increasingly been expanding.

Right now the NHL and NBA playoffs are going on. Last night the Pittsburgh Penguins won the Eastern Conference finals, beating my Carolina Hurricanes. The only thing that makes this ok is if they go on to beat the Detroit Red Wings for the Stanley Cup. BUT, Detroit’s Western Conference playoffs are not over yet. They are up against the Chicago Blackhawks 3-1 and need just one more game to move on. Game 5 is tonight and if you’re away from your TV, you can check scores via Live.com and get an instant update on what’s going on.

Maybe you’re not away from your TV, but you’re watching the Denver-Los Angeles game in the NBA playoffs. That series is tied at 2 games each. Perhaps you’re interested in learning the stats of a particular player. Simply type that player’s name into Live.com and get Instant Answers stats.

This feature is a little trickier, however, since players don’t have unique names. For example, the Denver Nuggets Chris Anderson shares a name with a name with the editor-in-chief at Wired Magazine. No Instant Answers stats come up for his name.

Another Denver Nugget, J.R. Smith, shares a name with a plumbing products company. His Instant Answers stats show up after the first organic link for that company.

For the majority of names, the Instant Answers stats works just fine. It’s a great feature for sports junkies who want to look up stats on the fly.

Call it Microsoft Week (or weeks as the case may be). We’ll likely hear the name of the new search engine this week from the AllThingsD conference and next week, to coincide with SMX Advanced, the public will get a chance to actually use it.
While everyone who reads this blog will no doubt test drive [...]

….

Today is Memorial Day, so please expect lighter then normal coverage here. I have

….

It’s not long now. Microsoft’s new search engine has been widely expected to launch soon, and now it appears likely to happen within the next week or two. And might Bing be the new name?
The latest report is that Microsoft will demonstrate its new “Kumo” service during next week’s D: All Things Digital conference. As [...]

….

Ars Technica reports Microsoft’s new possible search brand, Kumo, is testing features in the public space. The features of Kumo are being seen in Live.com by some users.
This can mean that Live Search might remain the brand of Microsoft’s search engine. It can also mean that Microsoft is looking for a [...]

….

When Microsoft launched its Cashback program last year, many in the search and tech community snickered. It seemed laughable that Microsoft had to pay people to search. A year later, the joke is on the doubters.

New data out from Nielsen shows a 615% growth in MSN/Windows Live Shopping Search in the past year. It should be pointed out, however, that shopping search engines account for a small percentage of the overall search market. However, Microsoft’s goal of attacking search niche by niche might just be on the right track.

LiveSide reports Microsoft has decided to close down the Question and Answer portal, MSN QnA as of May 21st. Microsoft said:
At this time, we are closing the QnA site, but the experience of running QnA and gathering all of the great feedback you’ve shared with us will certainly influence future product direction.
QnA initially [...]

….

MSN and Live Search probably don’t get enough attention in the local search field, but the reality is that there’s a solid core of usage thanks to the default experience offered on many PCs — Windows OS and Internet Explorer. (On a purely anecdotal level, an old blog post I wrote about adding a business [...]

….

Next month Microsoft will relaunch its search engine or launch its new search engine (currently dubbed Kumo/Kiev) together with a new marketing campaign to promote it. The question on everyone’s minds is: will it change anything?
Despite a range of efforts so far Redmond has not been able to boost its market share in search. Speaking [...]

….

Softpedia reports that Live Search’s Search and Give program is coming to a close on June 1st. In addition, those that have participated in Microsoft’s SearchPerks program are being notified to cash in on their prizes now or lose them forever.
If you visit searchandgive.com, you will see the notice on the home page, which [...]

….