The mercurial Barry Diller, CEO of IAC, decided apparently that he didn’t want to sell Ask. During the Q3 earnings call Reuters reported that Diller said the following: “We’ve been asked a lot whether we’re open to consolidating transactions in the area of search. The answer is yes,” Diller said. “And, it is unlikely that […]
Google is approaching a 72% market share of searches in the U.S. according to the latest release from Experian Hitwise. The November 2009 stats show Google getting 71.57% of all U.S. searches, up almost a full percent from October. Yahoo and Bing both fell month-to-month, while Ask.com gained one percent.
The search engines have been publishing their “Top Searches” lists for 2009, so far I’ve collected lists from Bing , Yahoo!, and Google. Other sites posting “top” searches are ESPN, Snopes, and my favorite, Yahoo’s Top Video’s (warning: time killer!). I set my alerts to catch these lists because they spark ideas for link bait and content development […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Google Suspends Local Listing Ads — For Now Today Google announced that the company was suspending Local Listing Ads, for the time being: “Starting today, we will no longer accept new […]
In what might just be a bit of posturing, Barry Diller told the Reuters Global Media Summit in New York that he’s turned away companies interested in buying Ask.com and thinks consolidation with another search company is the way to go. Diller, the CEO of IAC — Ask.com’s parent company — was clarifying comments made […]
Today is World AIDS Day and Google, Yahoo and Ask.com all have the red bow on their home pages. In addition, Google has a blog post showing how they are supporting the day and asking everyone to either “include #red to turn your tweets the color red or if you like, follow @joinred.” In addition, […]
In true Ask fashion, we’ve got the answers (well…not complete answers) to what the most popular questions were on Ask.com during the year. According to Ask.com, visitors are three times more likely to type search queries in the form of a question. Holding steady at 50 million visits per month (October 2009, ComScore), question based […]
Happy Thanksgiving everyone! In observance of the Thanksgiving holiday, we will likely not be writing much here today. But I did want to share with you, like I did at the Search Engine Roundtable, the various logos we have from Google, Yahoo, Ask, Bing, AOL and others in the search engine industry. Google: Yahoo (Flash): […]
I said from time to time, I’d highlight some bad search results I come across. Here’s a killer — a top ranking for us national anthem on Google that when you click on it brings up random web sites that have nothing to do with the song. Behind the scenes, there’s an Ask.com connection. Let’s […]
In this post I’m combining two search trends reports: early Q4 search spending data from SearchIgnite and excerpts from a terrific Q3 local search spending report from WebVisible. Both show gains by Bing. The WebVisible report also shows significant improvements by Yahoo. Based on “41 million clicks on Google, Yahoo! and Bing during Q3-Q4 of […]
Sometime later today, a small number of Google users will see a new look to Google’s Search Options feature. If all goes well, the cleaner display may be launched across Google after the New Year. And it’s all because Google’s vice president of search product and user experience Marissa Mayer doesn’t like jazz. NOTE: Google’s […]
According to AllThingsD the MicroHoo search deal is nearing completion and “definitive agreement” status. Speculation that the deal was in trouble started happening when the two companies failed to meet their self-imposed October 27 deadline to finalize the complex agreement. However it appears the circumstances were just as reported in the parties’ 8-K filing with […]
If you’re the number four search engine in a market that is looking like it’s going to be about two (maybe three) players in the long run, what do you do? If you’re Barry Diller and running the parent company of Ask, the search engine in question, you’re potentially looking at selling, with Microsoft as […]
Ten years ago today, I had the privilege of organizing the first ever search marketing conference. On this anniversary, a look back at how things were then and have they’ve changed in a decade. In 1999, search marketing itself was about five years old. People had been doing search engine optimization to generate traffic from […]
I’d thought the googlebombs relating to “miserable failure” and “failure” had finally been defused earlier this year. Guess not. Ranking tops in Google right now, the official White House page for US President Barack Obama: I’ve not heard of any active campaign to linkbomb Obama to the top for these words, so I’m guessing this […]
While Bing is happily rolling out new search features, Microsoft can also smile at the latest search engine market share report from Experian Hitwise. Google is still light years ahead of Yahoo, Bing, and Ask … but Experian Hitwise shows Bing with a 7% increase during October, while both Google and Yahoo saw small drops […]
If you visit Google.com today, you will see a special logo for Veterans Day. The logo is less complex when compared to last years, where Google had to fix their Veterans Day logo. Last year, Google placed hats on top of each letter on the Google logo, the hats included Army, Navy, Air Force, and […]
The long-running debate over Google and its impact on newspapers and journalism took another turn today when News Corp founder Rupert Murdoch said his company may makes its sites invisible to Google, and Google fired back by saying, in essence, bring it on. It began with this interview on Australia’s Sky News (which Murdoch owns), […]
There’s a report from Reuters this morning that Microsoft and Yahoo are considering expanding the scope of their search deal “outside the United States”: Microsoft Corp Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said on Thursday the company could look to extend its search engine partnership with Yahoo outside the United States, if it gets regulatory approval. Wasn’t that […]
Google Operating System noticed Google has added a new search option named “page preview.” If you go to Google, search on something and click on “show options,” you can then look towards the button on the left hand side and click on “page previews.” For example, here is a view of a search for apple […]
Although some GeoCities web sites are still online, all three major search engines have removed the domain from their search indices. As of this morning, a site:geocities.com search on Google, Yahoo, and Bing shows that geocities.com is dead and buried. Yahoo announced earlier this year that GeoCities — a free web hosting service that it […]
Today is Halloween and the search engines have logos up for the special day. Before I post the logos, here are some posts from others in the community on Halloween. Matt Cutts of Google had a holy costume. Google Blogoscoped noticed Google added trick or treat to their robots.txt file. Bing has a special visual […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Fall In Line: Understanding SEO’s Place In Company Ecosystem We’ve all been there. Heck, many of us are still there right now. We come to work every day, game to do […]
Barry Diller, CEO of IAC — the parent company of Ask.com — said today that he’s willing to sell the struggling, fourth-place search engine. His comments came during a conference call with investors after IAC reported its 3rd quarter earnings. “We’ve been asked a lot whether we’re open to consolidating transactions in the area of […]
We received some interesting data from search agency iCrossing yesterday. The data show US search market share percentages and distribution quite different than the major traffic metrics firms. The company says its numbers are “based on a large representative sample of Fortune 1000 companies, across all major verticals,” which use its search tracking tools. Accordingly […]
Too much time is often spent about the new features the various major search engines roll out or the latest deals they cut. Here at Search Engine Land, we can be as guilty of that as anyone. To correct it, I’ll be spending more and more time highlighting poor quality search results that I encounter, […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Yahoo Revenues Down YoY, Flat From Q2, Sees 19 Percent Decline In Search Revenues Yahoo just announced quarterly revenues of $1.575 million, which represents a 12 percent decline from the third […]
Yahoo has announced that their paid inclusion program will cease at the end of this year. Partners were informed yesterday (such as here and here), and a Yahoo representative confirmed the move on a panel discussion moderated by Search Engine Land Editor-in-Chief Danny Sullivan at the iProspect/Range Online Media Client Summit today. We’ve also received […]
I took a lot of notes at SMX Toronto earlier this year and posted them in this column as Golden Nuggets From SMX Search Analytics. Looking back at them now, the evidence undeniably reinforces my memory of how much I learned, and I’m glad to say that three days at SMX East this week was […]
A new and wide ranging report from the UK regulatory agency Ofcom about media literacy finds that 32 percent of UK kids aged 12-15 years old believe that the links/listings shown at the top of search results are the most “truthful.” Here’s how the report summarized this finding: Among children aged 12-15 who use the […]
Online coupons have been around for many years, at least a decade. Despite this no publisher or site has arisen to yet win the space. There’s no Facebook of coupons, no Twitter of coupons and, dare I say it, no Google of coupons. Google itself would seem to have missed or mishandled the opportunity with […]
It may have a search box and look like a video search engine but Clicker is not according to CEO and co-founder Jim Lanzone. In a way this may seem like a strange position to take given that Lanzone was the very partisan CEO of search engine Ask. But while Clicker does index video it […]
Matt Cutts of Google has blogged that Google is willing to hire Yahoo Search engineers. Matt said, “if you’re an excellent Yahoo engineer with solid experience in search, Google is hiring.” Clearly, since the Microsoft & Yahoo deal, engineers at Yahoo might be a bit concerned about their job stability. Ask.com ran a funny poaching […]
As everyone knows, today is the 8th year anniversary of the terrible 9/11 attacks. Many people, companies and organizations are doing things to remember the day. A lot of people are asking why there is no logo from Google for today. The quick answer is that Google does not do Google Doodles (aka logos) for […]
Happy Labor Day Search Engine Land readers! Due to the U.S. holiday, we will likely have limited coverage here today. Go out and enjoy the unofficial last day of summer! If you are stuck at work, like me, here are some logos from the search industry to hopefully brighten your day. Oh, yea – Google […]
The Bing Search blog announced a new test they are running which allows you to share your search results with your friends via Twitter, Facebook, email or other methods. The only way to see this test is to become a fan of the Bing Facebook page and then, if you are lucky, Bing might send […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Google Still No. 1 Search Engine On Earth; Search Activity Way Up, comScore Says Search activity around the world jumped 41 percent between July 2008 and July 2009, and Google remains […]
Search activity around the world jumped 41 percent between July 2008 and July 2009, and Google remains the most popular search engine with 67.5% global market share. Those are some of the stats that comScore shared today about the global search market. According to comScore, Google is not only No. 1 around the world, but […]
Ten days ago, we reported that Antonio Gulli left Ask.com after 4 years heading up their technology team in the European R&D center. Gulli announced his new plans are to continue in search, but switch ships and work for Microsoft Bing. Gulli said he will be “leading all the engineering development for UX and verticals […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Will The TVAnywhere Initiative Miss The Point? The cable industry’s “TV Anywhere” strategy is much in the news this month, as a response to the rapid adoption by consumers of sites […]