But for many US companies it is difficult to find these cultural differences. Where do you look for them? Wikipedia? Or should we turn to history teachers who can tell us what we should be looking out for?

Of course, the best answer in these is to indeed get in touch with locals.

Find out what makes their country or even region different than others. Find out what makes them tick. But of course you can do a lot of research before that. Here are some takeaways on how and where to find those cultural differences in Europe.

Cultural differences can best be divided in three kinds: Norms and beliefs, Values and Traditions. We’ll take a look at all three of these.

Norms & Beliefs

Norms and beliefs can differ from region to region. In this case we are talking about for example habits, attitudes towards certain topics and etiquette. It’s about beliefs, attitudes and behavior within different groups within the society.

It is more than just language. It is also about what is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. In the US you can buy alcohol when you are 21, in many European countries that age lies at 18. But then again, where in the UK it is very common to buy and sell pills online, in the Netherlands you will find that people are more reluctant on doing that.

Another example is privacy matters. Where in Germany they are very careful with privacy issues, in Russia they care a lot less.

These are cultural differences in the category of “norms and beliefs” you will have to find out before you target a specific region. Otherwise, you might be selling something which nobody wants to buy.

Values

Part of the “values” is the respect which people have for each other, how people interact. One aspect here lies in language differences.

A simple example here is the word “You”. In English, that can be used for both someone who is on the same ‘level’ or age as you are. You would say “how are you buddy” but also “how are you Mr President”. In most European countries, however, there is a difference in words between those you address with some more respect (like elderly people for example) than others.

In France, you will then use the word “vous” instead of “toi”, in Spain “usted” instead of “tu”, in Germany “Sie” instead of “Du” and in Holland, “U” instead of “jij”.

Another aspect is for example perception of time. When you are targeting the Netherlands you need to take into account that most Dutch try to have their dinner at about six o’clock. You won’t find many Dutch online at that moment, at least not when they have a family.

But when you go further south in Europe, ‘times change’. In France, dinner time is at about 8pm,while in Spain they can start their meals sometimes at 9pm or even 10pm, but then again, they will take a ‘siesta’ which will keep them offline during lunch time.

Especially with Social Media, but also in search, you therefore have to take into account at what time your audience will be online. Do not organize a webinar at 6PM in Holland or during lunch in Spain for example.

Traditions

Finally, a very important cultural aspect is “traditions”. The word says it already: it is about how a region has ‘grown up’ to be what they are now.

In this cultural aspect, things like stereotyping, religious aspects and corporate culture play a huge role. The reason why many US companies have difficulties in Europe is because they forget to adapt to the cultures which are specifically European.

A good example of differences in traditions you should be aware of is color. Let’s take for example the color orange. If you think you can build a website with lots of orange elements, be aware of the following.

In the Netherlands, the color Orange stands for the Royal Family and the Dutch National Soccer team. For the Dutch that means: partying, both on Queensday, a national holiday, as with many soccer matches. The orange color will make them think about that.

However, if you go East towards the Ukraine, the color Orange has a totally different meaning. There, the color Orange stands for ‘revolution’ against the government. A completely different kind of feeling.

What Should You Do?

The bottomline, when optimizing in Europe and trying to figure out what kind of different cultural elements you should take into account, be sure to look at these three different kind of cultural differences. Divide them in these aspects and have a local check if those are cultural aspects which could influence your strategy.

In these countries, Google isn’t the most dominant force in search. Instead, local search engines take the leading positions there.

The shift in dominance from Seznam to Google was disputed by Seznam, and it seems they have a valid point in their criticism. The numbers provided by web measurement service Toplist are based on traffic coming to Toplist sites, which is not the ‘regular’ way of calculating market share.

But the smartly placed post and press release, which gave Toplist some nice attention (and links for that matter) did raise another interesting question: what makes Seznam and Yandex amongst the few who are capable of challenging Google in their regions?

Let’s take a look at both search engines.

Seznam

First let’s look at the Czech giant. What makes them so special?

The reasons for the position of Seznam in Czech are several. The first and very important one is that Seznam is a local search engine and many Czechs are really fond of their local products compared to foreign products. It’s not just that they prefer Seznam over Google, but that they would rather drink the local Kofola cola instead of Coca-Cola or Pepsi.

This kind of behavior mainly consists within the older generations. The youngsters are slowly switching to more foreign products, which partly explains the growth Google is seeing.

Another reason why Seznam has outrun Google for a long time is that Google was kind of ‘sloppy’ when it came to their efforts to gain more market share in Czech. The US giant didn’t have an office in Prague and with the Czechs being fond of their local stuff, that was a mistake.

To really get a grip on the market you have to be there, connect with the local industries and get known. Google didn’t do that.

The third major reason for Seznam’s dominance is the fact that the Czech language is a specific language, one which Google hasn’t quite been able to get a grip on. The data which Google provided simply wasn’t good enough. That is a problem which Google has in other countries, and which has partly led to Yandex’s dominance too.

Yandex

The Russian search engine Yandex is the other search engine in Europe which is capable of competing with Google. As with Seznam, there are many different ways in which market share is calculated. Yandex itself looks at FOM’s (Public opinion foundation) data. According to FOM, 40% of the Russian Internet users are using Yandex. This means an overall daily audience of 32 million users.

One of the issues with the calculation of numbers regarding Seznam and Google in Czech, is due to the fact there were also many searches conducted in other languages from inhabitants within the Czech Republic who have a different native language; Yandex acknowledges the difficulties with detecting a language that used in a search query.

With Yandex, you’ll have to look at the difference between alphabetical text, which “we” use and Cyrillic, which is used in the Russian language. That last part is 73% of all queries, so you could safely say that the majority using Yandex comes from within Russia.

But Yandex is in one way very different from our example of Seznam. Even though Russia is their native country, users are also in Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan. That makes that the reasons for popularity are different than from Seznam.

Yandex itself believes their popularity in these countries comes from taking local specifics seriously. This is a hint again towards Google, which in many cases simply ‘drops’ their US way of working in the specific countries. That might sometimes work in Western European countries, but in the Eastern European countries it is a lot less successful.

Yandex believes therein lies their big advantage over Google. They how to adapt techs to local markets. This means they also think they can adapt in new countries quickly, which might be an indication that Yandex is not stopping at where they are, but that they are thinking of expanding even more.

Yandex chief editor Elena Kolmanovskaya told a Finnish publication last year:

“We believe that the borders for each service are defined by the language. We used to believe that we were making yandex.ru for the Russians and the Russian-speaking users worldwide, whose numbers tally up quite considerably, especially across the former Soviet Union bloc. But then, we launched yandex.ua, yandex.kz and yandex.by, that is, we learned how to use languages other than Russian and, what is much more difficult, learned how to build different ranking algorithms (relevancy) not only for specific countries, but also for specific regions and even cities. And we’ll keep developing our skills.”

The capability to adapt to a “new” country is what made Yandex successful against Google in the East of Europe. It’s the same conclusion we can pull from looking at Seznam: the local powers can adapt better to what the local audience wants.

But at the same time, that can be the danger for the local search engines. Google is going local more and more, and if they really put their minds to it, the Silicon Valley residents might “get” that Eastern European feeling and get closer to what Yandex and Seznam can do in Europe.

Alexander Amzin, Media relations manager at Yandex, acknowledges that:

“Local search engines do have the same challenge as global ones: to find good answers to difficult questions. As time passes level of expertise needed for successful development of search engine increases. “Global” results are losing their importance because a user awaits personalized, localized search results. To provide each user with such results – is a great challenge for any search engine.”

So with the local search engines, the battle is also about local results.

What can we learn from this? We can first learn that local search engines still matter. But more importantly, we can learn from these engines that it’s very important to look into the local aspects. Get close to the locals and learn what they want if you want to be successful in Europe. Go the European way.

For 2011, I would like to give you some resolutions. I’ve written a lot about optimizing and working for better search rankings in Europe in 2010. Based on these articles, I’d like to give you some new years resolutions to keep when you really want to be successful in Europe.

Resolution #1: Study The Different Cultures & Politics

To be successful in Europe, you need to do more than simply translate your website. Cultural differences are a very important part of finding out what the best strategy for optimizing in Europe. Every European is different and has different reasons for being on the web and therefore different reasons for searching also. You’ll need to know what the culture of a country is like if you want to go and optimize there.

But there is even more to it than culture. Politics play a major role in how a country acts online. Is there a left wing or right wing government? Are people looking for jobs or looking for ways to spend their money?

One of the things you should do is read European newspapers. The easiest way off course is grabbing a couple of UK newspapers like the Guardian, which are all in English, but keeping an eye on local news is also very important. And yes, even Google Translate may help there a little.

You’ll need to do your research in order to find out how people are behaving on the web to give them the exact answers they are looking for.

Resolution #2: Take A Trip To Europe

In order to find out how the different cultures behave in Europe the best thing you can do is actually go there. Visit Europe and find out how the different countries are behaving offline to get a view of what they do online. And be sure to not just do the touristic stuff. You’ll get the wrong impression if you do that, after all, not all Italians drink coffee all the time and not all Dutch people end up in the red light district every day…

When you are making the trip to Europe I urge you to visit one or two European search conferences. There, you will be able to really get a grip on the online market in Europe. The European Search Market gathers at those events, which is the excellent way to get experiences and information from your colleagues in Europe.

Resolution #3: Get To Know European People

In 2011, do try to get to know European people. You can do that on the conferences mentioned before, but there are more opportunities. Europeans tend to travel a lot themselves so you might be able to catch them at a US conference, but with modern communication and social media at your service it is very easy to get in touch with the Europeans.

But you may ask: Why? What’s the use of knowing a Dutchman, an Englishman or a German? Reasons are many. Next to that these people are possibly very nice and interesting, they know the European market places like no others. It is a genuine source of information.

Next to that, when optimizing in Europe the best thing you can do is have a native looking at your website and thinking with you. He or she will be able to tell you what will and what will not work in the specific country. Priceless information!

Resolution #4: Engage In European Social Networks

One good way of getting to know the Europeans is Social Media. With Twitter, getting in touch with Europeans has never been easier. You can also find them on specific European Social Networks, mostly in their own countries. But that is not the main reason why one of your new years resolutions should be to engage in European Social Networks.

Being part of one or more of the European Social Networks will give you valuable insight information into what is going on in the specific countries. Get to know the European behavior and start spreading your content that way. One way or another, that will help you spread your content and it might even get you some links.

Resolution #5: Learn Some Languages

Finally the last resolution should be to try and learn some languages. Well, not literally off course. But you have to keep in mind that Europe has a lot of languages. And all of these languages have dialects. And all languages and dialects have their own rules. Google translate may be a nice tool, but for optimizing your websites, it is useless.

If you are building a website targeted for Europe you will need to do that in the native languages of your target audiences. And you cannot simply translate a website and think it will work.

Use the Europeans you have gotten to know and let natives look at the websites. Use locals to help you optimize and make sure the language you are using is correct.

To Conclude

Finally, I know that New Years resolutions are hard and that you shouldn’t have too many. But think of this: if you are only able to get one resolution, be sure to choose for getting to know the Europeans, after all, they can help you with the other ones;).

Happy New Year!

The e-mail got me thinking, however, about the differences between Europe and the US and what I have been writing about here during the past one and a half years. There are more of these differences in language which make it hard for Europeans and US-based SEOs to work in each others areas.

Let’s take a closer look at three languages which you have to be careful with.

English: UK English Vs. US English

The first and most obvious one is the difference between UK English and US English. When you take a good look at both of them in some cases they can seem like two completely different languages.

The simplest examples of the differences you need to keep in mind in the two languages is that some words are written with different letters. In the UK for example it is “optimising” while in the US its called “optimizing.” There are other textual differences to keep in mind that go beyond using different letters in the same words. Did you know that what you call a “bathroom” in the US is mostly called a “loo” or “toilet” in the UK? Or an ATM is a “cashpoint?” It can even get complicated. A “bandaid” in the US is a “plaster” in the UK, where plaster in the US is what you use to patch walls with (or in slang, “plastered” means really, really drunk).

In general you can say that UK English usually is a bit more “formal” and feels more like a “written” language where US English is more of a “speaking” language. You can actually hear people saying it when you read it.

Keep in mind that if you are optimizing (or optimising?) for Europeans and you are still using the English language that most Europeans are taught the “standard English” version, which means the British one.

Spanish: Castellano Vs. Mexican Spanish

In Spain they speak Spanish. Well, actually, what they speak is “Castellano,” which in English (both versions) is “Castilian.” The language is as old as Spain itself but has recently gotten its first “big” changes. Where the Spanish alphabet used to have letters like “ch” and “ñ” those letters have now been removed.

The Spanish conquered the world in the 16th and 17th centuries, taking their language everywhere, but especially to South and Latin America. There they still speak Spanish in many countries like Argentina, Peru and Mexico. And even within other countries Spanish is spoken as a primary language by a large number of people—in the US alone there are over 35 million native Spanish speakers.

Wikipedia even states that global internet usage statistics for 2007 show Spanish as the third most commonly used language on the Internet. But not the entire world speaks the same kind of Spanish.

Again, there is the difference in “sound.” The accents are different, which you won’t notice that quickly online (unless you are watching video of course). Sometimes the differences are grammatical; sometimes they’re more in the words themselves. In Latin America for example they use “tuteo” when addressing someone, while in Spain that will be “tuyo.” You even have to be careful to watch your language. “Coger” in Spain simply means “to take,” where in Latin America it means “to have sex.”

The second-person plural pronouns can also differ. In Latin America there is one form of the second-person plural for daily use: “ustedes.” In Spain there are two: “ustedes” and “vosotros,” which is more familiar.

So as you can see, Spanish is popular all over the world, but there are still many differences depending on the region.

Dutch: Dutch Vs. Flemish

In the northwest of Europe there are two countries, the Netherlands and Belgium, which several hundreds of years ago were one country. In that country they spoke one language: Dutch. In Holland they still do (except for the dialects of course). In Belgium they speak several languages: French, German and Dutch. And here’s where the issues come in: Belgian Dutch is in many cases completely different than Dutch Dutch. The language even has a different name: Flemish.

Both languages are similar, and without a doubt speakers of the two will understand each other, but there are many differences. There is the difference in how it sounds (Flemish is a lot “softer”) but that is not something which will bother you if you are building websites.

More important are the differences in expressions. There are typical Dutch expressions and typical Flemish expressions. They may mean the same thing, but in written text they mean something completely different. Its much like the “circus” example in English: an expression in one country might mean something completely different in another.

There are also textual differences between the two. Some Dutch even say that Flemish is the “bad spelling” of Dutch. It’s not, its just different.

Key takeaways for SEO

• Be sure to watch out for different meanings of sayings.
• Always check with a resident of a country if you are using the right “version” of a word or phrase.
• Remember who you are targeting—they want their native language, not a copy.
• Don’t try to copy and paste a site to a different language—have a professional translator do the job.

In Europe, search marketers are eager to learn from one another. They want to move forward. Its not without reason that the British Prime Minister Cameron wants the next Silicon Valley to be in London.

When you visit US conferences, most speakers will be US natives or at least working in the US. Of course there are some speakers who fly across the ocean to speak at US conferences, but most European speakers stay in Europe. That means that in the US you are missing out on some great content and great speakers. So here’s the invitation: come and see a conference in Europe.

But with the many conferences here, which one would you choose? Here are a few suggestions for a trip around Europe attending several search events.

SMX: London, Munich, Paris and Stockholm. If you are a regular Search Engine Land reader you will be aware of the SMX conferences. Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman have done a great job building these conferences all around the world. And they haven’t forgotten about Europe. In no less than four different European cities you can attend an SMX conference: London, Munich, Paris and Stockholm.

The conferences are smaller than the US shows, but that gives you the opportunity to really get into the details. That is why the London one, which has the label “advanced” is especially interesting. The shows in Munich, Paris and Stockholm are very local with some sessions even being in the native languages of the countries in which they are held.

SES: London, Amsterdam, Berlin. The SES circus opens its tents in London, Amsterdam and Berlin. As with SMX, the London show is the biggest one. Amsterdam and Berlin are very locally driven events where most speakers are speaking German (in Berlin) or Dutch (in Amsterdam).

International Search Summit: London, Berlin. A rapidly growing show organized by Searchengineland Multinational Search columnist Andy Atkins Kruger. He started the conference in London feeling there was a need to really have a conference about international search. The show has now expanded both in and outside Europe. In Europe, London and Munich (last year Berlin) are the places to be. There you will find many international speakers from around the globe. If you want to learn about multinational search (after thats what this column is all about) this is the place to be.

A4UExpo. Although A4UExpo actually is a conference which focuses on affiliate marketing, it is one of the best conferences to attend in Europe if you want to learn about search. The organizers tend to find the best European search speakers to fill the most important places in the agenda. The conference is held both in Munich and in London and is a must-visit for conference-junkies in Europe.

Sascon. A relatively new conference taking place in the north of England—Manchester, because the search people there believed there was more to search in Europe than London. And they managed to build a brand really fast. The next one, in May, is going to be two days of European search.

Think Visibility. Also in the north of England, Thinkvisibility is a conference which is mainly interesting if you are already into search. The conference has very high quality of speakers who all are giving very advanced talks. The show is held twice a year in Leeds and has a limited amount of visitors, which makes it even more interesting to go to if you are looking to exchange thoughts with other experts.

ProSEO. Back to London, the ProSEO conference also lives up to its high expectations. As with Thinkvisibility there are a lot of high quality, mostly English and US, speakers. The conference is organized by Distilled in close cooperation with SEOMoz which must give you an idea of what it is like.

SEOktoberFest. Finally, fly over to Munich just before the end of September. That is when Marcus Tandler organizes SEOktoberFest. A conference which is combined with the famous Oktoberfest parties in Munich. The partying of course is a lot of fun, but Marcus always manages to get the absolute best of the best together. There are no bad speakers at this conference and even every speaker is learning from what he is hearing from other speakers. One of the reasons of the success of this conferences lies in the high prices you have to pay to get in, but then again, you are sure of some absolutely fantastic content.

These are just a few of the conferences in Europe which are a huge success. If you plan a trip to Europe don’t forget to visit at least one of these and learn about international search from the experts.

“Domaining” is related to search, but somehow the two worlds rarely intersect. Yet they do need each other. In this post, I’d like to show you around the European world of domains. This because it differs from the US and because there are some opportunities there.

The European Domain Market: A Quick Overview

There is one huge difference between the American and the European domain market. Where in the US domains usually end with “.com” in Europe every country has its own top level domain (TLD). That makes the choice of a website-url a very different one than in the US. Where in the US you typically need only register a .com domain, in Europe you’ll need to register and create a website for every country you are targeting.

This means that there is a huge market for TLD’s in Europe. Just a few figures:

The biggest number of local European TLDs can be found in Germany. The .de domain consists of over 13 million country-code TLDs, making it the biggest in the world.

Six of the top ten most numerous domains in the world are in European countries. Next to Germany, the UK (.uk, with 7.8 million) and Holland (.nl, with 3.5 million) are very big domain markets. Though the Netherlands is a very small country, there is no other country with so many domains per actual number of internet users.

Be Aware Of Future Changes

The domain field is subject to a lot of changes at the moment, which will affect the European market heavily, but will also mean changes for the rest of the world.

ICANN, the organization that oversees internet names and numbers, is planning changes which will affect everyone. If all of ICANN’s proposed changes go through, we will not only be seeing domains based on a country level, but also on a city level. This means we could well be seeing .berlin or .paris showing up soon.

Next, Twitter has spawned a whole new business: that of the shortened urls. Twitter itself recently chose t.co (Colombia) as their short url and without a doubt many other companies will follow shortly. That makes country urls even more interesting. Inside Europe, domainers are buying up addressed with TLDs which not only “feel nice in the mouth” but are also useful. The Polish .pl TLD than suddenly becomes interesting. Anyone can be owner of .pl domain. You don’t need to have address or live in Poland to own a Polish domain name and there is also no limit of number of domains you can have. The Polish market, now dominated by three big companies buying and selling domain names, is likely to see explosive growth because companies will be looking for a short url domain (for example, Apple Computer might want to acquire a.pl).

The third factor which will also affect the domain selling business in Europe, but also worldwide, is the search engines. Features like Google Instant could heavily affect the way people use domains. When you are using Chrome, Instant might already be starting when you start typing in your browser bar. That will change the way that people use domains.

Opportunity Knocking

Does these changes mean the domain business is doomed? Maybe. But it also offers an opportunity, especially for shrewd SEOs. Domain owners used to be interested only in acquiring domains, parking them and selling them for a huge amount of money later on. That still happens, but parking isn’t the holy grail anymore. Domainers want to make something of the sites and therefore need to optimize the websites as best as they can. Here the SEOs can find a whole new market.

When optimizing these domains and especially in Europe, there are a few things to keep in mind though:

• There are lots of different countries in Europe, and that means you need to do local targeting, optimizing for each specific TLD.
• Get your settings right in Webmaster Tools. Using a .nl domain? Target the Netherlands in your settings.
• Make sure you have your languages right. Italian for the Italians, English for the UK and so on.

With all the different domains in Europe there is a whole new world of opportunity for clever SEOs.

Despite its dominance, there are alternative search engines in Europe, and for search marketers they’re worth looking at. With Europe’s more than 800 million people, of whom about 60% spends time online, even a small percentage using alternatives to Google offer attractively large numbers, and targeting users of those search engines could be very profitable. Lets take a look at some of the alternatives.

UK and France: Bing

The UK offers the closest step from the US market to the European market. As in almost every country Google is the dominant force, but here we see that Bing is more popular than anywhere else. Bing now accounts for about 4% of the search market share in the UK. Adding Yahoo’s Bing-powered results can add another 4% making Bing a very good alternative to Google. Bing also is the “runner up” in many other European countries with France leading the way with a 2.8% share.

It therefore makes sense to optimize for Bing in Europe, but be careful: in many countries Bing is nothing more than Live Search with a Bing logo. You should take that in account. Optimizing for one Bing does not mean optimizing for another, at least yet.

Russia: Yandex

Going from western Europe to eastern Europe you can’t overlook Yandex. This search engine is the dominant force in Russia where it even outranks Google with a 64% market share. This is extra special because Yandex is one of the few non-English-language search engines which is able to beat Google at its own game.

If you are targeting Russians, optimizing for Yandex is the best choice, not just because it has the biggest market share but also because it gets closest to how the Russians think. Yandex is able to recognize Russian inflection in search queries, which means that you can really understand the intent of the Russian user. Therefore, take extra care when it comes to keyword research. Get a native speaker to help you out here because Russian really differs from other languages. Also note that Yandex recently launched an English-only search engine.

Czech Republic: Seznam

Its not far from Russia to the Czech Republic, where Seznam is dominant. This search engine was originally a web portal but today is used primarily as a search engine. In the Czech language they beat Google in numbers when it comes to dominance in search. If you want to target the Czech Republic this is one search engine you cannot leave aside. Seznam, which means “list” in English, is the only real force to reckon with in the Czech Republic—perhaps not the biggest audience, but one of the most active ones in Europe.

Germany and Spain: Conduit

In Germany the second biggest search service after Google is T-Online. This really is a portal with Google-powered search engine. Therefore you can see it as an alternative but you will still be using Google. A real alternative is Conduit. This search engine, which also has quite the market share in South America, has a bigger market share in Germany than Bing or Yahoo. In Spain Conduit even has a larger market share: 2.9 percent.

The Netherlands: Vinden.nl

The Netherlands has a huge Google culture. No other engine can even come close to the market share of Google (94%). Vinden.nl still is a well known brand in Holland however. Vinden (“finding”) is said to have a 3% market share but also relies on some Google technology. Vinden.nl, as well as “startpagina” however also do it the old fashioned way: offering browsable lists, the good old directories so to speak.

These search engines are a few examples of alternatives for reaching your target audience in Europe. For each specific country there are of course more alternatives. For example, Onet.pl in Poland, Ask.com in the UK and the Nordic countries, Orange in France and even more local search engines in other regions.

What you have to keep in mind for all of these is that you optimize for each and everyone of them. Don’t think you are ready when you’ve optimized for one. You should also be aware of the cultural and linguistic differences between the countries and regions, as I wrote a year ago. For each country find your local experts and let them help you. Only then will those services with smaller market share potentially be more profitable than the big numbers from Google.

And what about Bing and Yahoo? The runners-up who finally are integrating their search results? Bing and Yahoo are very small players in Europe. Except for the UK, Bing nowhere has a market share larger than a few percent. And to be completely honest, at this moment they don’t deserve more market share than they have now.

When you look at Bing in the US you can see all sorts of great stuff. Bing Maps wins it over Google Maps in my view. Bing has much more focus on user behavior and is really trying to be the “decision engine” it claims it is.

Using Bing in Europe offers a very different experience, however. In the UK Bing “kind of” looks like Bing in the US. Some of the features you can enjoy in the US are present, but not all of them. Across the channel in mainland Europe things are worse. In Europe, Bing just is Live Search with a Bing Logo pasted on it. No nice features, no decision engine, nothing.

The fact that Microsoft decided to rebrand Live Search as Bing, even without updated indexes and algorithms for all the different European countries, indicates they have plans for it. But so far nothing happened.

Rebranding a site rises expectations. With the talk of the new Bing, and announcements of new features like Bing Street Slide, people are expecting Bing in Europe to have the same features as the US version. And when they go to Bing, they don’t see it. At least, not enough. And that is hurting Bing’s reputation.

Personally, I like Bing, but maybe thats because I’m using Bing over a proxy as if I was in the US. I’m getting the full experience. Most users in Europe however aren’t, and when asked most of them will say “its not good enough.”

When Bing finally decides it will roll out a fully featured version in Europe, the damage might have already been done. How will people who visited Bing when it wasn’t good be convinced that Bing has changed? Chances are the longer Microsoft waits to get its act together in Europe, the harder its going to be to gain the market share they need.

Does Bing need Europe?

There are a few reasons Microsoft is taking so long to introduce the fully functional Bing decision engines to the different countries in Europe. First of all it takes time to set up the specific country databases, and Microsoft needs to close all sorts of deals with European content providers. But more importantly: Microsoft first wants to get things “perfect” in the US so it won’t be making any mistakes in Europe.

At first sight it looks like Microsoft doesn’t need Europe. It seems happy with gaining the market share in the US. But Bing is missing out on great opportunities in Europe. Even though their market share now is low, with all the privacy issues Google is running into there are chances to gain share.

But do they need it? Yes they do. To actually gain ground, even in the US, they need the European market share. Plus, why shouldn’t they? Europe is big, it would be unwise to ignore an entire continent. As a Dutch blogger pointed out recently, “focusing on one thing doesn’t mean you have to totally neglect the rest.”

Does Europe need Bing?

Yes it does. Europe needs Bing to come through very much. Having only Google as a search engine is bad for quality search results across the board. Having Bing as an alternative will not only improve the search engines, it will improve the “web-savvy-ness” of Europeans.

Competition is good, and there should be more choice. It is very bad for a market to just have one search engine. A business gets vulnerable if it has to rely on just one provider. And that is what is happening now. Businesses are relying more and more on Google. They either make money through AdSense or, more importantly, get their clients by having a well optimized website. If Google decided to pull the plug their business would be ruined.

Those companies need an alternative, and Bing is the only one who can conceivably compete with Google. Microsoft is a big enough company, and they have the knowledge and a proven decision engine which is already working and gaining market share in the US.

For now Bing doesn’t seem to be making any rapid moves towards Europe. If all goes according to plan probably France and Germany will be the next countries to enjoy Bing rather than a cosmetically rebranded Live Search. But even that will take a while. And the UK is still waiting for the “full” Bing experience.

For now if you want to go and optimize for Europe putting much effort into Bing is not worth it, unless you are focusing on the UK. However, when Microsoft does fully enable Bing in Europe, you should be optimizing for a presence there too. So set up your Bing Webmaster tools account and be ready.

Universal search is gradually getting more attention in Europe. Most search marketers are advising their clients to bolster their sites with non-text content to take advantage of the opportunities. However, in many cases Europeans still have a lot to gain when it comes to the use of universal search elements. There are big opportunities if you step in now.

The UK probably has the most advanced search results in Europe. This is because they make use of an English index. The rest of Europe has their own indexes, with their own languages. This means all the different indexes need their own universal content. Videos for Dutch results, images for French results and maps for Spanish results, or vice versa. All different elements which have to be optimized for different countries and different languages. These are the elements that offer the best chances for those aiming to get good rankings in European search results.

When you are focusing on Europe be sure to investigate where universal search elements are already appearing in Google result pages. And also look for gaps (for example, in some travel areas). Get in there, make videos, optimize your images and get your local results included. Now is your chance to be the first.

One thing you should keep in mind when trying to get universal search to work for you: European regulations. For example, one regulation is a rule which protects musicians prohibiting streaming music from being included in search results in many European countries (Google in the U.S. features this when relevant). This means that not every universal search element is implemented in Europe.

Here are a couple of things to remember when you start optimizing for universal search in different European countries:

• Start with video: this is “low hanging fruit” for now
• Be descriptive in YouTube on specific languages you want to target
• Take a look at the different Google language sites to see where universal search has already been implemented
• Find the spots where there are many opportunities for getting universal results
• Be sure you check whether or not some universal elements cab be used in Europe or not
• Remember that Europe is not one country, but a continent, therefore there are different regulations in different countries and different search indexes, so optimize for your specific target countries.

Last November the European Union agreed on a new telecom rule which could have a tremendous effect on the way we work online in Europe. The rule was intended to strengthen consumer rights, an open internet, a single European telecoms market and high-speed internet connections for all Europeans. The rule however is also meant for protection of consumers when it comes to personal data breaches and spam.

Part of the rule is that users have to be better-informed about what is going on “behind the scenes,”—in other words, you have to tell visitors to your website when you are placing cookies. But the actual rule is even slightly more onerous if you read it carefully:

“The subscriber or user concerned has given his or her consent, having been provide with clear and comprehensive information, in accordance with Directive 95/46/EC, inter alia about the purposes of the processing.”

So the user actually has to acknowledge that he knows you are placing a cookie on his computer. That caused quite the uproar at first. Having to ask for a consent on each and every cookie placed would have made browsing the web almost impossible. You would have gotten pop ups asking for your permission after every link you click. That probably would have meant a change in structuring of websites.

Luckily the European Union slightly adjusted the rule:

“Where it is technically possible and effective, in accordance with the relevant provisions of Directive 95/46/EC, the user’s consent to processing may be expressed by using the appropriate setting of a browser or other application.”

This means that cookie acceptance can be handled on the browser level, meaning you will only have to “accept” cookies once in your browser settings and you are done.

So, that was close, we were almost caught in a cookie-loophole there. Case closed. Right?

Wrong.

The European Union is not like the United States. The European Union does set the rules for its member countries. In this case member countries must implement the new rule by May 25th 2011.

But here’s where things get complicated: each country can decide for itself how it wants to implement the rule. Which means each country can decide whether to require cookie acceptance on a browser level or on website level.

For example, in the Netherlands the Minister of Economic Affairs was the one deciding on this rule. And she decided to take a step away from the general European direction taken. She wants the “opt-in” to be at a browser level.

This of course caused a lot of uproar amongst Dutch internet marketers. Several organizations have already opposed the Minister’s move. So far she hasn’t decided on whether or not the Dutch government will make changes to the decision. Some of my sources say chances are there are going to be new changes to the ruling in the Netherlands, which will probably make it easier to work with.

So what should you do?

Of course you would like to know how this will affect your business in Europe and how you should act on that. Chances are at first you won’t notice very much about this issue since many countries will most probably opt for the most user friendly way. But you never know how different countries might act on it. And in addition to cookie disclosure rules, Europe will probably be looking into more privacy-related measures over the coming months, so its a smart idea to keep yourself informed if you plan on targeting Europe.

Some things you can do now:

• Take a good look at the rulings in different countries
• Offer users in countries with a “cookie-problem” another option
• Don’t trust your analytics too much
• If you see a decrease in traffic in a specific country be sure to investigate whether or not this country has specific rulings
• Keep an eye on the European regulations