1. High level site previews in search results
2. A multimedia search within a site function
3. A social layer which, among other things, allows Volunia users to share information and connect to one another

My sense is that it is the social layer which will be most appreciated by Volunia users. Let’s look at each.

Volunia Search Result Previews Offer A “Fly-Over” Site View

During his launch presentation, (in Italian, starts at 40 minute mark) Volunia founder Massimo Marchiori described search users as similar to chickens, trapped in cages and incapable of flying.

Users have been forced to choose search results by consulting one of those classic 10 item title, summary and link lists for too long. Wouldn’t it be nice if users were freed from their cages, and not only, were actually able to fly over a site, viewing a visual or a grid map, before committing to visit it?

Volunia, perhaps from volare, to fly, offers two types of high level site map previews, potentially freeing users from commitment tyranny. The first type, a visual map, aims to group areas of a site together in neighborhoods.

Figure 1: Volunia search result site fly-over: visual map

The second site preview map is in the form of a grid, reminiscent of computer folders. The expectation is that this format will be more useful to people searching from devices with small displays, like smartphones.

Figure 2: Volunia search result site fly-over: grid map

Interactive drill-down versions of the maps are also available from a Volunia menu bar which is visible while navigating a site. Site owners can improve the maps using a Volunia provided sitemap editor.

Figure 3: Volunia sitemap editor

Result previews aren’t exactly a new concept – Ask.com introduced their binoculars feature in 2004.

Where Volunia differs is in their choice to show a site map preview instead of a page preview. Many searches are indeed navigational in nature, one reason Google provides their sitelinks for some queries.

Volunia may be on to something.

Volunia Wants To Surface Multimedia Otherwise Hidden In A Site

Initially the primary focus in Web search was on textual documents, particularly the html kind, rich in semantic structure with their glorious title, heading and paragraph tags.

Oh, I didn’t mention the links between documents, did I? Other Web content formats, from PDF files to images and then video posed much greater obstacles to search engine indexing for a number of reasons.

Today, major search engines like Google offer navigation links to enable a user to search just images or video.

Ambitious searchers can usually find an advanced search syntax page which allows them to limit their searches to specific sites and file types, but for the most part major search engines have taken the “don’t make me think” approach, providing searchers with a blend of media types in search results, what Google calls universal search.

Volunia on the other hand wants to make it easy for a user to discover the multimedia richness hidden in sites like NASA by providing a very visible multimedia site search filter.

Figure 4: Volunia's multimedia search filter

The Web Has Come Alive, Says Volunia: Volunia’s Social Layer

It isn’t immediately clear how useful this feature will prove to be: after all, even if we want to follow the “wisdom of the crowd”, there’s no way to know if the site’s current visitors from Volunia are actually happy with their choice, nor would it be clear to what extent one searcher’s expectations for a page align with those already visiting that page.

The same visitor counts are also available as layers on the site navigation maps.

Seek & Meet: Interact With Other Volunia Users

What might arguably be Volunia’s greatest innovation is in letting fellow search travelers to a page interact with each other, what Volunia calls seek and meet, a feature which feels very reminiscent of Google’s now closed Sidewiki, albeit with two key differences. The first is that users can interact in realtime.

Figure 6: Volunia seek and meet interactive site chat

This birds of a feather real time information sharing might prove useful in a number of situations where people are looking for pre- and post- purchase information.

In the pre-purchase phase, a searcher might want to interact with other users to better understand the product or service they’re considering, not to mention to discover what alternatives others are considering.

Sometimes, it’s nice just to have confirmation that we’re making the right choice. In the post-purchase phase, searchers might be able to resolve support issues by consulting with other searchers – potentially reducing a company’s support costs while providing interactive peer to peer support 24 hours a day.

Each Volunia user is able to fill in a personal profile, much like any social network. The matchmaking possibilities are clearly endless, but I suspect it would be best if I don’t go there….

It isn’t rare to see glowing online reviews written by someone with a connection to a product or service, and equally harsh reviews from competitors or ex-employees with an ax to grind. It doesn’t take much to imagine people attempting to scam the system by introducing fake search users to interact with other searchers.

It remains to be seen if “seek and meet” really is something people will take to. Real time search collaboration will well depend on a critical mass of socially oriented searchers congregating on the same sites at the same time, no easy feat for a niche search engine.

Site owners will undoubtedly be pleased with the second apparent difference to Google’s Sidewiki: commenting can be disabled if desired, something Google didn’t allow.

Volunia, The Company, And A Few Volunia Tidbits

According to data published by Italian business paper Il Sole 24 Ore, Volunia was founded in 2008 by Massimo Marchiori and entrepreneur Mariano Pireddu, with Pireddu providing €2 million in funding to date. You might not immediately recognize Massimo Marchiori’s name, yet as an academic Massimo has been working on the theoretical issues of Web search for years.

His seminal 1997 paper, The Quest for Correct Information on the Web: Hyper Search Engines, would serve as one of the sources of inspiration for two Stanford students, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who would acknowledge Marchiori’s contribution to their own work, Google.

During Volunia’s beta phase, over 100,000 people are being invited to become “power user” beta testers. The Volunia user interface is in 12 languages but Marchiori said during the launch presentation that the actual index coverage isn’t limited to those languages.

The Volunia team has ideas for Volunia “extensions”, i.e. new functionality, which will be added to the core, the hard part which has already been done. Advertising will be added to the service.

Marchiori Says Social Needs To Emerge In Search

In an introductory video, Massimo notes that Volunia stems from an idea he’s harbored for several years, an idea for a “different perspective of what the search engine of the future should be”. In the Il Sole 24 Ore report Massimo said “The Web is a living place, there’s information, but there’s also people. The social dimension, already present, just needs to emerge”.

Bing, which started incorporating social signals from Facebook in 2010, and Google, which launched its social search in 2009, would probably both argue that the social dimension to search has already emerged. So would upstart blekko and to a lessor degree, the Russian Yandex.

Armani, Chianti, Ferrari… And Volunia

Volunia is based in Italy, not in Silicon Valley as one might have guessed. Italy actually has a history of search engine excellence. Google may well power most Italian portals today, but the talent behind a now defunct Italian search engine, Arianna, led Ask.com to locate its European R&D headquarters in Pisa.

The Reality Check: Search Isn’t Easy: Volunia Faces Many Challenges

The basic task of a search engine, finding, indexing and retrieving the world’s information, is a complex one. The size of the Web is immense. There’s the problem of searcher intent: we know what we’re looking for when we type a brief search query, but those few words are often open to multiple interpretations.

Google has conditioned searchers to expect lightning speed and mostly fresh and relevant results. Volunia will have to perform well on all these fronts and navigate thorny issues of privacy.

Many start-ups have nonetheless tried to compete with Google and Bing. Some, like Cuil, ran out of funding before gathering significant market share; others like blekko, with far greater funding, are still working hard to win over hearts and minds. Whether Volunia will be able to pull this off remains to be seen.

Kick The Volunia Tires Yourself!

Volunia has a sign-up form for those who want to try it out. Go kick the tires and support the underdog! From messages that I’ve seen on Friendfeed, Twitter and Facebook, very few have actually had a chance to actually use Volunia, credentials are only dribbling out, most likely in an attempt to avoid problems similar to what Google faced when they first opened Google Analytics to too many people at once. I based the considerations made (and images) in this article on demo videos released by Volunia in order to give you a preview of what to expect.

Yandex . . . has purchased a license for digital maps supplied by the leading global location content provider, NAVTEQ. These digital maps will be used in the development of a detailed world map for the Yandex.Maps service.

NAVTEQ has provided Yandex with maps from all over the world, including highly detailed maps of Europe, North America, Australia and developed countries in Asia. These maps show intercity motorways, urban traffic networks, streets and buildings. Yandex.Maps will gradually add new content both to its desktop version and to its mobile application that supports all major platforms. Using the Yandex.Maps API, website owners can embed maps of various countries into their resources.

The company has been running a test with Navteq data in Turkey. Above is an image from Yandex Maps (pre-Navteq) of the San Francisco Bay Area. Yandex now joins Bing and Yahoo in heavily or totally relying on map data from the Nokia subsidiary.

The reliance of major search engines like Bing, Yahoo and Yandex on Navteq for mapping data sets up a kind of global divide of sorts among mapping sites “powered by” Navteq and Google Maps (and those in its network). There are other, independent mapping providers out there like deCarta as well.

Yandex recently lead a $30 million round in independent search engine Blekko. Yandex operates in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Turkey and has a presence in Palo Alto, where its Yandex Labs is based.

Related Entries

• Nokia Now “Powering” Bing Maps
• Bing Maps To Be Powered (Replaced) By Nokia?
• Powered By Nokia, The New Yahoo Maps Goes Live
• Microsoft vs. Google: Street Photography Rigs Compared
• Bing To Become Default Search (And Maps) On RIM BlackBerry Devices
• Bing Maps Overhauls Interface, Exposes Map Apps To All
• Yandex Expands To Turkey, First Shots Fired In New Google, Baidu & Yandex Stand Off
• Yandex, Facebook Strike A Deal For Status Updates
• Yandex Launches English-Language Version Its Webmaster Tools

We do not have to speculate as to whether there are new entrants in vertical search services such as comparison shopping and local search and review sites. There are new entrants in these market segments all the time. A new comparison shopping site, FindTheBest, launched by the co-founder of DoubleClick last year, just raised $6 million in venture funding over the summer.

FindTheBest, call it a “decision engine” or “comparison engine” if you like, allows users to see detailed, side-by-side information about an increasing range of things from financial advisors and colleges to smartphones and ski vacation spots. It’s what Google aspired to create on an automated basis with Google Squared but was unable to do.

Today the site has introduced a much improved redesign and user interface that makes it considerably more usable than it was before. The site had great data in the past but was too cluttered and complex to use. Now the streamlined interface will enable it to attract many more users and much more mainstream attention.

FindTheBest has an algorithm that mashes up user and expert ratings on products, services and institutions. It’s a kind of next-generation consumer reports. Currently the company monetizes with display ads at the margins of its pages. But it’s likely to be acquired before it needs to truly worry about monetization, given all the data and content that it’s compiling.

The company previously raised $6 million in VC funding, as Eric Schmidt mentioned in his Senate testimony.

Related Entries

• DoubleClick Founder Launches Structured “Decision Engine” FindTheBest.com
• “Anti-Search Engine” FindTheBest Adds Buying Guides, Top 10 Slideshows
• Google Squared, News Timeline Get Added To Google’s Chopping Block
• Google Buys Metaweb To Bolster Answers, Google Squared & Rich Snippets
• Google Squared Is Now Live

For example, two weeks ago, Wolfram|Alpha launched a new real-time flight tracking feature that displays information about flights flying close to your own location.

I’m a major Wolfram|Alpha user and supporter. However, since Wolfram is using GeoIP, which approximates location rather than using something more precise like GPS coordinates or ADS-B data (more on that below), accuracy can be a problem.

So here are several additional specialty web sites and mobile tools that provide both near real-time and historical data for tracking flights.

FlightAware

The web version of FlightAware is my all-time favorite resource for air traffic info, primarily for flights in the U.S. and Canada, or flights to and from both nations, though more and more data for flights, airlines and airports around the world are becoming available from FlightAware. Not only can you map many flights in the air (data is anywhere from real-time to delayed five minutes), but you can also slice and dice the data in a number of ways. The company has been around for more than five years.

For example:

• Flights headed to and from a specific airport
• Minute by minute air speed and lat/long
• Real time flight cancellations
• Flights in the air by type of aircraft
• Flights in the air by carrier

FlightAware provides some historical info for free. You can access even more if you’re a registered user (free) and, as you might expect, even more for a fee. They also offer a number of business services and open source software.

Also, I encourage you to take a look at the lengthy FAQ. It answers a lot of questions including where the data comes from.

Flight Aware Mobile

Apps are available for five different mobile device platforms as well as a mobile optimized site.

Since many mobile devices have GPS built in, FlightAware (and other apps) offer a “nearby” feature that provides much more precise info about planes nearby compared to what’s available using GeoIP (what Wolfram|Alpha uses).

Plane Finder

This service from pinkfroot provides air traffic info for flights globally, and the service is especially useful for flights outside of the U.S.

Plane Finder uses data sent directly from planes equipped with ADS-B technology monitored by ground stations. For more on how ADS-B works see Plane Finder FAQ and this extensive Wikipedia entry.

Plane Finder offers a free, near-real-time map at Planefinder.net. If nothing else, this free resource is great eye candy and will likely wow them in your office or at family events. The plane icons representing flight paths move as planes move.

Also, with two clicks you can begin tracking a flight using Google Earth.

One note: Plane Finder does not provide departure and arrival times.

Pinkfroot offers Plane Finder apps (fee-based) for iPhone, iPad, Android, and Windows Phone.

Finally, pinkfroot offers Plane Finder AR for iPad.

This is one super cool app. You can point iPad camera-phone at a plane in the sky or on the ground at an airport. If it’s transmitting the ADS-B, you’ll get details about the plane and flight. In other words, flight tracking plus augmented reality.

More Apps To Track Flights

Two additional aviation apps to mention.

First, Flightwise Tracker Pro (iOS). This free app does not provide arrival and departure times but does near real-time info using several types of maps, weather, a limited amount of historical data, nearby flight info, pictures of the aircraft, and aircraft registration information for some planes (although this feature will hopefully improve).

Second, FlightTrack, FlightTrack Pro, and FlightBoard.

These apps are available for several platforms from Mobiata, a company that was acquired by Expedia in 2010. They’re all excellent resources that look great and are worth the price. I love the many ways you can receive flight alerts from FlightTrack (and the company has a sense of humor—many alerts are accompanied by the familiar “ding” sound that you hear when you press a flight attendant call button on a commercial flight).

My favorite Mobiata app is FlightBoard. This app provides arrival and departure information (real-time) for flights at more than 1,400 airports around the world. It also looks great. In fact, its design is based in part on the flight information boards at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris.

Listening Live To Pilots & Air Traffic Controllers

A visit to LiveATC.net (they also have iOS and Android apps and mobile-optimized site) provides links to aviation radios in locations around world. An online archive of all recordings is available for 50 days after a flight.

One final thought: These resources are fantastic for educators wanting to enhance geography, social studies, and math lesson plans—kids of all ages will love tracking flights in real time.

With that statement, MC Hammer — yes, that MC Hammer — announced his new search engine, Wiredoo, during the Web 2.0 Summit today. The website says that Wiredoo is in pre-Beta right now, but there’s a sign-up form for anyone interested in trying it out when the search engine is ready for real testing.

Hammer explained that Wiredoo’s focus will be on “deep search” and described that as another word for “relational search.” He used simple query examples like “cars” and “homes” and showed how a search for the latter would produce information about neighborhoods, local schools, mortgages, insurance and so forth.

With search heavyweights in the audience, including Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Hammer chose his words carefully in the short presentation.

“It’s not a competitive attempt to recreate search,” he said, before adding, “[but] you can always make things better. There’s always a next version. Do we really need another search engine? Of course not. But if something can be an added value, then we’ll find a definite use for it.”

Chances are that you know Hammer best for his hit “U Can’t Touch This” way back in 1990. But he’s been fairly visible around Silicon Valley for years now, even visiting Google HQ back in 2005 — see these Flickr photos for proof. You could say that, even after his music career faded, Hammer is too legit to quit. (Hehe.)

Here’s the video of Hammer’s appearance introducing Wiredoo. Or maybe I should introduce the video like this:

Stop! Hammer time!

There’s more discussion on Techmeme.

Google (and other search engines) does pretty well with some data-based searches, especially since many of us have trained ourselves how to phrase a query to get the info we want.

But what about when the data we want isn’t found in text, but is likely to be found in graphs, charts and tables filled with numbers?

Enter Zanran, a search engine built to uncover “semi-structured” data on the web:

This is the numerical data that people have presented as graphs and tables and charts. For example, the data could be a graph in a PDF report, or a table in an Excel spreadsheet, or a barchart shown as an image in an HTML page. This huge amount of information can be difficult to find using conventional search engines, which are focused primarily on finding text rather than graphs, tables and bar charts.

Or, as Zanran’s about us page declares, “Zanran is Google for data.”

That’s a pretty tall claim, especially for what co-founders Jon Goldhill and Yves Dassas describe as an “early beta” product. It begs an obvious question:

Is Zanran Any Good?

Short answer: For some queries, yes, Zanran is quite good. Almost scarily so, actually. But for other queries, it doesn’t yet measure up.

“As a general rule,” Goldhill says, “results are good when the data is likely to be found in graphs and tables rather than in free text, is the subject of a full analysis [and] serves information professionals (analysts, consultants, librarians, etc.).”

Good Results

One great example of Zanran’s capabilities is a search for average commute time.

The results are filled with PDFs that have matching data, and the first result on the page is data from the US Labor Department comparing commute times in 2000 versus 2007. My query didn’t include any geographical preference, and this top result focuses on the state of South Carolina — but it also has a graphic that compares South Caroline commute times to the US as a whole.

And Zanran has a nice feature that makes accessing the data faster: Putting your mouse over the icon at left shows a screenshot of what Zanran found to match your query. Here’s that US Labor Dept. page:

As I said, it’s mostly about South Carolina, but notice that the table at the bottom has US data, too.

Another strong result comes on a query like Facebook growth europe, which is obviously something that’s quantifiable via charts and graphs. Zanran’s results include a variety of PDFs and web pages with the data I’m looking for:

Not-so-good Results

One of the queries that doesn’t currently do well is the one I used at the beginning of this article. Searching Zanran for average age of us professors returns a lot of graphs and charts related to “professors” and “average,” but only a couple specifically offer age-related data.

Zanran offers a page showing examples of queries that tend to produce better results.

I should also mention that, in my initial testing, I didn’t use any of Zanran’s advanced search options. Those include the ability to search a specific site, for specific file types, over certain time periods (last 6 months, last 12 months, etc.) and for data from specific countries. The latter is available for certain English-language countries only.

Final Thoughts

Goldhill says that Zanran has already received good feedback “from information professionals who spend much of their day looking for serious information,” but he recognizes there’s room for improvement.

Right now, Zanran consists of Goldhill, Dassas, and a team of freelance programmers. They have what Goldhill calls a “friends and family” round of funding that will keep them going for at least another year. And there are plans to eventually monetize the search engine: Goldhill says they’ll place ads for relevant industry reports (think Gartner, Forrester, etc.) next to search results so that searchers can see what data is available for free and what’s available at a cost.

The jury’s still out on whether Zanran actually becomes a “Google for data,” but I’d say it’s off to a good start for now and there’s clearly an opportunity to develop a unique and useful niche search engine here.

Kosmix will now become part of the newly established “@WalmartLabs.”

When it launched in 2006 Kosmix was building a better search engine that organized results by category and added numerous filters allowing users to drill down for more relevance and control.

Below is an early Kosmix search results page (via DailyTech):

When it became clear that Kosmix wasn’t viable as a general purpose search engine the company shifted its model — multiple times. The company evolved into a vertical search engine and then into a collection of structured content pages or homepages for topics.

Behind it all was a massive taxonomy (not unlike Pandora) that made connections between places, things, entities and products. Kosmix used its technology to assemble multimedia rich Wikipedia-like “topic pages”  for different queries or subjects. Below is an example for Las Vegas:

These local pages could have beaten Google Places to the punch but the company didn’t make a promised major push into local. Instead it found great success with a vertical site, RightHealth, which the founders say is “one of the top three health and medical information sites by global reach.”

The company also built personalized news service “MeeHive,” which was a bit ahead of its time and ultimately discontinued. Using the same technology Kosmix later created TweetBeat, “a real-time social media filter.”

Clearly the Kosmix technology is versatile and the founders creative. Walmart will use the technology (and founders) to develop social and mobile applications. Here’s what Walmart said in its release announcing the acquisition:

“We are expanding our capabilities in today’s rapidly growing social commerce environment,” said Eduardo Castro-Wright, Walmart’s vice chairman. “Social networking and mobile applications are increasingly becoming a part of our customers’ day-to-day lives globally, influencing how they think about shopping, both online and in retail stores. We are excited to have the Kosmix team join us to accelerate the development of our social and mobile commerce offerings.”

Here’s Kosmix co-founder Anand Rajaraman discussing how Kosmix will be implemented at Walmart in more detail:

Quite a few of us at Kosmix have backgrounds in ecommerce, having worked at companies such as Amazon.com and eBay. As we worked on the Social Genome platform, it became apparent to us that this platform could transform ecommerce by providing an unprecedented level of understanding about customers and products, going well beyond purchase data. The Social Genome enables us to take search, personalization and recommendations to the next level.

Although Microsoft might have been a more “logical” buyer, in the context of this history and the wide range of capabilities that Kosmix brings to the retailing giant — but e-commerce laggard — it makes a good deal of sense.

It is certainly true that in most of the rest of the world, Google is the leader — but if you’re already using Google for either SEO or paid search campaigns, are there still opportunities to expand the reach of your campaign using “local” search engines?

I actually like the term “alternate search engines” because it clearly describes that you’re going to have to continue to work with the big “G” but at the same time suggests there might be “alternatives” for your campaign. Here are some examples of the kind of site and search approach which already exist to inspire you to go and find more!

Naver

Naver isn’t actually an “alternate” search engine at all. In fact, Naver is number one in South Korea where Google has a very small share. It used to be powered by Yahoo’s Overture system, but following the Yahoo-Microsoft alliance, the engine decided to build and launch its own keyword advertising system, so Naver has now become a leading search engine with its own advertising system. If you’re targeting Korea, put this one first.

Seznam

In the Czech Republic, Seznam has been in the lead for a long time and still just about competes with Google there. However, Google is rapidly creeping up and knocking at its door. For now, continue considering Seznam as essential in the Czech Republic. Over the border in the the Czech Republic’s sibling state Slovakia (they were once one nation and known as Czechosolvakia), Google has already taken over as a strong lead in first place.

Eniro

Eniro is an interesting example of a search engine in Sweden and for a variety of reasons. Eniro is the orignial publisher of Sweden’s Yellow Pages and, as a result, Eniro still has significant brand traction in the country. However, more recently, Eniro has partnered with Google for some aspects of search and for advertising.

What’s interesting though is that Eniro has developed its own pay per click advertising system and then backfills with Google ads which is a model I think we can expect to see emerge more widely. You don’t have to take much more share of advertising revenues, to justify building such a system and amortizing its costs over a few years.

Onet.pl

A Polish portal with a strong following, Onet.pl has a slightly different version of the Eniro approach with its search coming almost entirely from Google with its advertising including a significant element of its own direct advertising customers.

Orange

The telecoms companies over the years have, in general, gained a larger slice of “eyeballs” and have often overtaken the former search engines for audience. In France, for instance, Orange has a very strong portal which carries a search function. That search function is powered by Voila.fr — probably the number one ,original French search engine. However, the pay per click advertising on Orange.fr comes from Google, so this is an example of the opposite business model to those above.

Bing

Whilst we’re in France, let’s mention Bing has a French language version where AdCenter advertising is possible alongside its Canadian version which is also in French with English. Whilst Bing is an alternate search engine in many countries, through AdCenter, there is still very limited scope to advertise. This has to and must change, but it’s possible to speculate that the Yahoo-Microsoft alliance has delayed this whilst things are sorted out since the Yahoo team will have something to say about it! See next…

Yahoo

Some people think that Yahoo has, in general “gone to sleep”, but it is in fact still offering search advertising solutions with a much bigger global footprint than anyone else other than Google and outside of the US with search offerings in all major continents with the exception of Africa and the Middle East. These are still being fulfilled by Yahoo Search Marketing.

Spiegel.de

Another trend of the moment is of newly prominent search sites that are news portals, generally the online mirrors of offline mega-brands. Der Spiegel (The Mirror) has been the leading and best respected German news magazine since its launch in 1947. Its move to online guaranteed a strong audience and an opportunity for both search and news advertisers.

It has a fascinating approach to search in that any searches query the Spiegel itself plus manager-magazin.de for management issues, merian.de for travel and Wikipedia, clearly giving it a focus on responding to informational queries. Spiegel doesn’t yet have a keyword-specific search facility not yet having discovered the opportunity, but it does enable you to build your own banner ads directly online and is just one step away from a very influential keyword search facility. Watch this space!

Alibaba.com

It is a search engine and it’s not. It is a Yellow Pages and it’s not. Strongest in China and India, Alibaba is difficult to describe apart from saying that in size, it dwarfs some of the better known search engines. Some describe Alibaba.com as a dating site matchmaking manufacturers and their various types of distributors, which is actually pretty fair. And it has its own keyword matching advertising facility as well.

Marktplaats.nl

In the Netherlands, Marktplaats is a prominent Yellow Pages style directory and is in this column to represent the myriad of Yellow Pages style advertising portals which have migrated to the web and offer keyword-based advertising tools.

Still More Alternatives

Meanwhile, if you’re looking for a strong alternative to Google keyword search to boost your results, then there are three other options you should also consider.

Firstly, YouTube.com, which may be from the Google stable, but is also the second most important search site in most global markets. The next natural alternate to Google is Facebook which is not directly a keyword-matched advertising solution, but is the most prominent alternate site where people go to “discover” things.

And finally, you may find the best way to boost your search campaign internationally is to expand its reach to the many thousands of sites which boast banner advertising opportunities which can promote the success of your “pure” search campaign.

In summary, there are “alternates” but more importantly, I predict we have turned the corner and more will emerge in the future from the news world, telecoms and former Yellow Pages stables — and they’ll be mixing and matching Google, not aiming to go up directly against it!

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.

As like in the past years, the search engines have special logos up for the New Years. Below are images of those logos from the 2011 search celebration.

Google’s Logo:

Yahoo’s Logo:

Bing’s Logo:

Ask.com’s Logo:

Baidu’s Logo:

Sogou’s Logo:

Crea8site Forums Logo (a SEO forum):

Search Engine Roundtable’s Logo:

Related Entries:

• Happy New Years 2010 Search Logos & Google’s Surprise
• 2009 New Years Day Logos from Google & Others