September 6, 2007

Windows Live Offering Services Pack

In a move similar to Google Pack, Microsoft is now offering a package of its services and apps through the newly announced Windows Live Services.

These are always handy to find everything in one spot where you can opt in and out of what you want to have.

Posted by Frank Watson at 2:30 PM | Permalink

March 14, 2007

Get Your Sponsors First?

"If you want to put a film festival a long way from the highway, good luck. But if you have an exit and a lot of signage around it, you're going to do better," says Eric Bader, in a recent Ad Age article (subscription required).

Eric's part of a new wave of media buyers who represent the major brands, and his film festival describes Microsoft. As SVP of MediaVest, he committed Kraft marketing dollars to sponsor a new video food show appearing on MSN.com. Both Kraft and Microsoft collaborated, and their "Chef to the Rescue” show will be aimed at busy mothers.

Microsoft welcomes Kraft and other sponsors just like the old-time TV shows used to do. This seems like online sponsorship with added punch. Here Kraft gains heavier exposure, for a video program that Microsoft wants to promote anyway. We'd like to know how Kraft will ultimately value the sponsorship, weighing audience size versus frequency.

Meanwhile, Microsoft continues to search for ways to improve visitor stickiness and currently plans ten pilots with an external production company. These pilots will proceed with or without major sponsors. MSN certainly reverses course from its portal competitors, who are quickly abandoning original production.

Posted by at 12:54 PM | Permalink

November 8, 2006

Google's SearchMash Gets Features & Microsoft's Sexy, Experimental Ms. Dewey Search

Google's experimental search engine SearchMash has gained some new features while the sexy Ms. Dewey search engine is now outed as Microsoft's experimental search engine.

Ms. Dewey came to light last month. I spotted it via the Google Operating System blog, checked it out and promptly dissed it as a waste of time at the end of a Daily SearchCast episode on Oct. 16.

The site features an attractive woman who stands above a search box:

She makes funny jokes from a set repertoire. My favorite is when she raps on the glass of monitor to get your attention, if you don't do something after awhile:

If you don't do anything, you eventually find her telling you:

Hello. Type Something Here

If you don't get a move on, another chuckle. But how about the search features? OK. I entered:

who won the elections today

I got told (in words on the screen, not by her):

Ms. Dewey is thinking

Then after literally a minute, I finally got my answers:

The answers come from Windows Live Search. Over there, they come up in three seconds. For the minute Ms. Dewey took, I got nothing special in return. She doesn't read the results to you, nor make them better. She's kind of funny, but not funny enough for me to spend more than a search or two with her. Then the novelty is gone. So go have fun, but I doubt you or anyone will be spending tons of quality time with her.

When I first saw the site, I had no idea who was behind it. Then yesterday, AP had a story, On the Net: Searching With Ms. Dewey, explaining that Microsoft was behind the site and put it out there hoping it gets "discovered."

Discovered, yes. Bemused, yes. Routinely used, I doubt it.

Less sexy but more functional, Google's experimental SearchMash site that we covered last month has gained some new features. Again, a nice catch via Google Operating System.

In Ionut Alex's example over there for a search for magic, a new refinement area shows up at the top of the page suggesting another query (and some related results) to try:

Using the "show details" option, this box can be made bigger. For most queries, I found it doesn't appear at all.

Meanwhile, the main box with search results can be made smaller, condensing the results by using "hide details" option:

Image results now move to the bottom of the page, while two new boxes show up where images used to be on the right hand side. One of these can be expanded to show Wikipedia results:

The other is already open and asks for feedback.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:23 AM | Permalink

November 1, 2006

Live Search Box Allows You To Add Live Search To Your Site

Microsoft's Live Search Blog informed us of a new feature where you can add the Windows Live Search box to your site. I have implemented the "Basic Search Box" on the Search Engine Roundtable, which means the box will display results on the Windows Live Search page. Below I will implement the "Advanced Search Box," which means the box displays results on this site. More details at http://search.live.com/siteowner.

var WLSearchBoxConfiguration= { "global":{ "serverDNS":"search.live.com" }, "appearance":{ "autoHideTopControl":false, "width":600, "height":400 }, "scopes":[ { "type":"web", "caption":"SEW & SER Test", "searchParam":"site:searchenginewatch.com OR site:seroundtable.com" } , { "type":"web", "caption":"Web", "searchParam":"" } ] }

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:38 AM | Permalink

August 16, 2006

The Inside Scoop from Search Bloggers

The major search engines all have unofficial bloggers talking about what's going on in their respective companies. At a recent SES session, search-blog stars Jeremy Zawodny, Gary Price, Matt Cutts and Niall Kennedy all revealed their modus operandi, and guest writer Sara Holoubek was there to capture their insights for today's SearchDay article, Expose: Search Engine Bloggers Tell All.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 7:44 PM | Permalink

July 31, 2006

Microsoft, Google & Yahoo Make Business Week's Top 100 Best Global Brands

ResourceShelf reports on the Business Week Top 100 Global Brands release from this week. You can see from the interactive table that Microsoft remained in the number two slot, Google moved up to number 24 from the 38th position in 2005, and Yahoo also moved up to 55 from the 58th position in 2005.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:42 AM | Permalink

July 6, 2006

Google Ombudsman? Search Ombudsman? Great Idea -- Bring Them On!

Back in 2004, Gary Stein suggested that Yahoo hire an ombudsman, a sort of impartial referee to handle disputes involving advertising programs. I thought it was a great idea. Today, Steve Bryant over at eWeek's Google Watch calls for Google to do the same thing. Again, great idea -- let's see the search engines all start hiring ombudsmen, in the way that many newspapers and others have done.

At a newspaper, the ombudsman is someone who the readers can appeal to if they feel a paper has been unfair or had a problem with coverage. The ombudsman investigates the complaint and reports back to the readers. As an insider, they have more access than an external investigator. But as the ombudsman, their responsibility is to represent the readers, not the organization.

Google's had a series of problems recently, as Bryant points out. Was Amazon accidentally knocked out on a search for its own domain name, or was it a glitch? Is Wikipedia Watch being deliberately downranked for a search on its own name, as founder Daniel Brandt feels, or is it another glitch?

An ombudsman is the sort of person who could investigate these things and report back. In fact, Google probably would need to employ a team of ombudsmen, given the many charges people point at it, often unfounded but still which need to be addressed.

Nor is Google the only one that should consider this. I don't agree with Bryant that Google is the closest thing we have to a Pope on the internet. But the idea of it being a paper of record is more true. But Google's not the only paper of record. Yahoo, MSN and Ask are all important papers, as well. I'd like to see them all establish ombudsmen.

At the very least, it will help take the pressure off the informal ombudsmen we already have -- Matt Cutts, Jeremy Zawodny and other search employees that often step up to do informal public relations and examinations of concerns. I don't want those bloggers to go away, but it would be nice to have an official person that searchers and publishers could feel are supposed to be looking into concerns.

Postscript: Google must temper its power or law makers will over at The Guardian has Jack Schofield talking about the idea of an ombudsman, as well.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:52 AM | Permalink

June 26, 2006

Microsoft Promotes adCenter In Full Page New York Times Ad

ClickZ reports that Microsoft has a full-page color ad in this morning's New York Times that promotes Microsoft adCenter, Microsoft's PPC engine. The ad has a link to msftadcenter.com/nyt that notably prompts you with a few security warnings on the redirects to the final landing page. The ad headline reportedly reads "She found your furniture ad on Google." Then there is an "image is a little girl and her dollhouse." The ad continues by explaining the difference between a customer and a click. The ad also touts a "2006 study by WebSideStory shows that Microsoft adCenter converts customers at a rate that is 48% higher than Yahoo and a full 57% higher than Google."

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:28 AM | Permalink

June 12, 2006

Robert Scoble Departs Microsoft To Startup Podtech

Blogvangelist Robert Scoble is leaving Microsoft to work for start-up Podtech.net. Robert's not been tied into the Microsoft search efforts, but he has commented publicly on them on many occasions, providing an unofficial voice in the way he's done on many things Microsoft. His departure certainly is a PR blow to Microsoft.

Robert Scoble leaving Microsoft for a Silicon Valley startup from Niall Kennedy is a nice, short rundown on the news. Niall was a recent PR win for Microsoft in terms of bloggers, so perhaps he'll benefit from Robert's departure.

Microsoft's top blogger Robert Scoble is leaving from Silicon Valley Watcher has the first news on Robert leaving. Robert himself has thoughts up in Correcting the Record about Microsoft.

Podtech, FYI, is down both for me and Barry, probably under the traffic for everyone checking it out. That's not a good sign, though I'm sure they'll recover.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:59 AM | Permalink

May 31, 2006

Microsoft Patiently Waiting To Advertise

Marketwatch, reporting from the D4 conference, quotes Bill Gates discussing Google as "very much the leader" contrary to Microsoft having made previous grand statements about matching Google within 6-months far longer ago. Bill Gates announced "it's a five year battle." The plan is to get users to navigate to Microsoft search rather than Google.

Microsoft has invested heavily in search, and search (among other Web services) will see an increase of $2 billion more in investment over the next year than what was initially planned. And when it all comes together, the plan is to spend on advertising to let people know. Their investment in advertising to date hasn't led to much of a market shift yet.

Postscript From Danny: Microsoft, of course, has indeed already spent heavily to promote its search service, such after MSN Search launched with Microsoft's own technology or with a recent online game promotion. But perhaps Gates means that Windows Live Search won't get the same treatment until they feel the quality has improved.

Posted by Detlev Johnson at 9:49 AM | Permalink

May 24, 2006

Search Engines Using Search Ads To Promote Themselves

In the past week or so, I have been reporting on the different ways search engines use search ads to promote their own search engine. I have spotted Ask.com bidding on Google for "pimped out search engine," which is part of their marketing speak of the TV commercials. I have also spotted Yahoo using Google AdSense to promote Yahoo Search products.

Search engines like MSN come up in Google AdWords for a search on search engine, MSN and Google come up in Yahoo Search for a query on search engine also. But at this time, none of the search engines are paying MSN or Ask.com for ads on their networks for the keyword phrase "search engine." It is also interesting to note that Google and MSN do not rank themselves in the number one position organically for the keyword phrase "search engine," only Ask.com and Yahoo do that.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:20 AM | Permalink

May 8, 2006

Windows Live QnA In Action

The MSN Search Blog mentions the new Windows Live QnA service and also has a link to the MSN Spaces QnA blog that has details with screen shots of the new offering. So if you are interesting in taking a look at Microsoft's answer to Google Answers and Yahoo Answers, visit the QnA blog. We had a short brief on this new service on Friday.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:13 AM | Permalink

May 5, 2006

Microsoft's Windows Live Local Launches CelebFavorites.com

Microsoft announced the launch of CelebFavorites.com, a site that uses Windows Live Local maps to plot eight famous American stars. Each of the participating celebrities has listed their favorite restaurants, hotels, clubs, shops, museums or places to hang out. You can click on a celebrities name and then travel the maps to find out more information about them. The site will be live until June 30, 2006.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:01 AM | Permalink

May 3, 2006

Yahoo & Microsoft Have Talked Partnering, Merging

I was talking with Kevin Delaney of the Wall Street Journal on Monday about search things in general and mentioned the sense it makes for Microsoft and Yahoo to get together. Microsoft is behind with the core search technology. Yahoo's been struggling to upgrade its paid search service. Let's get these two kids together! And today in the Wall Street Journal, it turns out that there's apparently a faction at Microsoft that wants to do just that.

Via Paid Content, A Microsoft, Yahoo Tie-Up? from the Wall Street Journal has the details. Kevin and colleague Robert Guth write of there being two factions within Microsoft -- the "let's built it ourselves" group that has been in control so far and the "let's acquire" group apparently led by Microsoft senior vice president Hank Vigil.

Vigil is said to have led the failed negotiations to combine MSN with AOL. Frankly, a Yahoo deal makes more sense than that. AOL would have provided existing traffic but not solid search technology. Yahoo provides plenty of traffic, along with core search technology and a healthy, first-hand advertiser base.

What's not to love? Probably the high price of the acquisition, plus whether Yahoo -- especially cofounder Jerry Yang -- would go for it. But apparently it's plausible enough that both companies have talked informally over the past year.

The Wall Street Journal cites the hiring of Steve Berkowitz by Microsoft as perhaps being a tipping point. I'd certainly agree. Steve is the first serious outside person Microsoft has brought in for its battle in the search wars. Bringing him on was a big sign that what Microsoft has been trying to do internally hasn't been working -- and so something radical such as an Ask or Yahoo acquisition might be in order.

The big downside is that such an acquisition would give Microsoft yet another brand to confuse consumers with. After spending hundreds of millions of dollars over the years to push MSN, they've now shifted things behind making the stupid Windows Live brand their flagship. It's stupid for so many reasons. Let me bullet point two major ones:

Most people I know don't really like the Windows brand. Heck, I'm a Windows person, fairly anti-Mac, but Windows still represents crashes and glitches to me. And this is the label you want to attach to your online services?
We're moving into a world where the operating system and my web-based services aren't necessarily connected. I love Outlook. I live in Outlook. But online, I might want to sync Outlook with Yahoo or Google's calendar. Forcing me to think -- overtly or indirectly through branding -- that I have to use all your products makes me want to use none of them. Let MSN operate as if it wasn't linked to your operating system or your browser and it will be a stronger service in the long run, not weaker.

So Microsoft's already coping with the confusion of two major brands. Adding in Yahoo further confuses matters, unless they perhaps make a brave, bold move and put everything behind the brand leader in the space, Yahoo.

Meanwhile, via Valleywag, Ballmer defends Microsoft's spending increase from the Seattle Times covers a likely leaked memo from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer naming Google as one of the company's chief competitors and requiring further "heavy investments" in search. The goal, which we've heard before, is to create "the web's largest advertising network, giving us an engine that twill enable us to monetize our services and compete against Google."

Ah -- but to compete against Google, you don't need an advertising network. You first need a quality core web search engine, which your heavy investment to date has failed to create. And so back to Yahoo, which has exactly what Microsoft needs, that core technology.

Microsoft's AdCenter May Fail to Topple Google From Dominance from Bloomberg covers how advertisers are getting a more formal look at the MSN adCenter service that Microsoft has rolled out over the past few months. Unlike Microsoft's failure in web search, I'd say adCenter is a big success. The service already has plenty of advertisers using it -- and anecdotally continues to draw lots of praise for its features.

Features ultimately mean little, of course. As the story cites, it's about volume. MSN could have rolled out a terrible product that advertisers would have coped with simply because it was the only way to reach MSN's substantial traffic. But to the company's credit, they did not do that. Instead, they've continued to refine and tweak and take advertiser feedback in a way that has earned them raves I rarely hear recently about the systems at Google or Yahoo. Volume remains key, but the features and wooing still certainly help.

And that brings us back to Yahoo, which has been struggling with an antiquated paid listings toolset. The Counterattack On Google from BusinessWeek covers how Yahoo's "Panama" update to its paid listings system has been progressing over the past two years and is nearing completion. But BusinessWeek correctly summarizes, in my view, the changes are more about bringing Yahoo up to Google's level of features rather than leapfrogging past Google and into features like MSN offers.

It's another argument that makes the idea of Yahoo and Microsoft getting together not wacky at all.

Want to comment or discuss? Visit our Search Engine Watch Forums thread, Yahoo & Microsoft To Combine.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:00 AM | Permalink

April 7, 2006

MSN, Yahoo Seek SEO People To Help Them Rank Better

There's still the occasional person who I encounter who thinks that SEO overall is somehow wrong to do or something the search engines frown upon. Yahoo!, MSN & Ebay recruiting - SEO hits the big time is an example of why this isn't so. It covers how Yahoo, MSN and eBay in the UK are all recruiting internal SEO people to help promote their own sites.

Such hirings aren't new. We've long had search companies themselves trying to rank well in other search engines, to the point of hiring people internally or externally to make it happen. But it's a nice reminder for everyone to keep in mind.

Personally, I got a chuckle out of the breakdown Threadwatch did of the MSN UK recruitment ad. Wanted: Spammer-in-chief for MSN over there highlights some of these key success metrics for MSN UK's SEO person:

Achieve x% of traffic from Search engines within our top channels and homepage
Achieve x% of pages cached/listed within Google and Yahoo
Achieve first page ranking in Google/Yahoo for major channel entry points and other important MSN content areas
Beat Yahoo! on listing results in Google on major events
Demonstrate clear traffic improvement as a result of implementation of SEO techniques
Ensure all new pages are SEO compliant

As for Yahoo, I found these points interesting:

All title / meta data tagging of UK products
URL specifications of UK products
URL redirect mappings
Producing SEO recommendations and documentation for UK products
Fostering development of effective SEO tools / reporting process
Maintaining existing Yahoo! UK product?s search engine rankings
Identifying and flagging potential spam violations on UK products
Identifying and flagging inappropriate Y! content that is accessible via search
Weekly / monthly SEO reporting & statistics for UK products
Keyword / log analysis reports for UK products
Keeping web development, engineering and production up-to-date with developments in the SEO field

Note the part I bolded. Nice to see that Yahoo UK wants to ensure no one suddenly accuses it of spamming itself or another search engine. Nah, such things never happen. Wait a minute: Google Admits To Cloaking; Bans Itself. That was from last year, but to be fair, it was pretty much an accidental thing.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:30 AM | Permalink

February 14, 2006

Hacking The MSN Search & Win Contest

Yesterday, we reported on MSN Search Offers Prizes to Search where you can go to http://www.msnsearchandwin.com/ search on a keyword phrase and potentially win a prize. Todd at oilman.ca implied in his blog post, how to locate the keywords that will trigger the opportunity to get one of the ads, that you can click on to win a prize. By viewing the source code of the MSN Search and Win page, you can copy and paste one of the thousand or so keywords listed. Any of those keywords will give you the chance to win a prize. Example keywords include; money, cash, money, joy stick, technology, tropical destination and others. But when I tried some other keywords, like libraries it did not exactly work. But most keywords that I have tried, listed in the source code, seems to work.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 5:15 PM | Permalink

February 13, 2006

MSN Search Offers Prizes to Search

Today, MSN Search launched MSN Search and Win, an MSN search portal that allows you to search and win money. According to the official rules, the promotion started on February 3rd and ends on February 28, 2006 at 11:59 p.m. (PT). How do you win? Look for a "MSN Search & Win" in the title of one of the sponsored results and then click the link to win instantly. You can view the prize list by clicking here.

It is interesting to note that Yahoo has recently offered incentives to fill out search surveys. Also note that older search engines used to give out prizes to search. View the press release here and make sure to click on the right ad, if you know what I mean.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 4:10 PM | Permalink

January 22, 2006

Both Yahoo and MSN Portals Now Available to Verizon's DSL and FiOS Customers

Access to Yahoo's broadband portal and services are now available to customers of Verizon's FiOS (fiber-to-the-premises network) that offers very fast Internet connections and television services. Access to MSN Premium also remains available. In other words, Verizon gives customers a choice of Verizon Yahoo, Verizon with MSN Premium, or a basic a Verizon portal.

If the consumer doesn't make a selection when the register for FiOS or Verizon DSL services, Yahoo is automatically selected as the default portal provider.

Yahoo spokeswoman Nicole Leverich said that the company was willing to offer the free premium services in order to sign up additional broadband users. "It's very important for us to reach those consumers who demand higher Internet speeds, and are at the forefront of technology," said Yahoo spokeswoman Nicole Leverich.

Verizon's DSL customers also are given a choice of the three portals (Yahoo, MSN, or Verizon's own portal).

Yahoo also provides broadband portal services in a partnership with SBC Communications.

Verizon's FiOS offers web access and other services including television with on-demand options.

About two week's ago I received a letter from Verizon informing me that FiOS is now available where I live. The way Comcast, my cable company (and Internet provider), has various services priced, I'm very interested in switching. However, even if I do switch to FiOS, I'll probably wait a few months and hope that any problems (-: in in my area have be fixed and the FiOS telelvision service (still not available to me) goes live.

More in the Media Post article: Yahoo Co-Brands Verizon FiOS.

Posted by Gary Price at 2:59 PM | Permalink

December 27, 2005

Sharing The Search Wealth At A9, MSN & The Drawbacks

In my post-Christmas mailbox was a message from A9 reminding me of its A9 Instant Rewards program that effectively pays me a bit to search with them. That was a perfect hook to revisit the entire "pay to search" idea that Microsoft chairman Bill Gates kicked off earlier this month.

Let's dive in on Microsoft first. Microsoft May Give Consumers A Share in Advertising Revenue from the Wall Street Journal covers how Gates suggested the idea that it might share ad revenues with searchers as part of a presentation he gave in India. Said Gates:

The user essentially will get paid, either money or free content or software things that they wouldn't get if they didn't use that search engine.

The story recounts how similar ideas have been tried like this before. iWon gets mentioned for the giveaway model it pioneered, though as a long-term strategy, that hasn't kept the searchers at the service. To date, semi-copycat Blingo also shows that lightning does not strike twice.

Overture -- now part of Yahoo -- was another pioneer in building traffic through payment. In Overture's case, it paid publishers $0.03 cents per query they delivered. Others soon followed, though these programs later died off. They did get a boost when Google jumped in with its Google AdSense For WebSearch program last year.

That brings us to A9. It was also last year, in September, that the service started giving a 1.5 percent discount off Amazon purchases to those using A9. Well, 1.57 percent, which is pi divided by two, a joke on sharing the "pie" with searchers.

Over a year later, the program pretty much seems to have done nil to massively boost A9's popularity. But maybe the email sent out yesterday will reawaken folks. It said:

Dear A9.com user, As a regular user of A9.com, you get many benefits from the advanced search solutions and the personalization features we offer. In addition, you can receive 1.57%* off virtually everything you buy on Amazon.com. To take advantage of this benefit, join the A9 Instant Reward program and search on A9.com a few days per week. It's easy and it's free: go to http://a9.com/-/search/joinInstantReward.jsp and join with one click.

A9.com offers you results from over 300 sources with a single search including Web, images, blogs, and many more categories. You get the results all on one page that you can personalize for your needs. A9.com also shows you which sites you've already visited. With the A9 Toolbar you can access your bookmarks from any computer and even add your personal notes to every site you visit. Your search history is also available on the toolbar together with informative statistics on every Web site.

For more information on the A9 Instant Reward program, go to http://a9.com/-/company/instantRewards.jsp.

Thank you for using A9.com.

The A9.com Team

* Why 1.57%? Remember pi = 3.1415926535... from mathematics? With our pi/2% instant reward, we are sharing with you some of the revenue from the site. We're sharing the pi(e).

The downside to any pay-for-search plan are some of those other programs like this that long-time search marketers will remember, where those being paid to search were doing it for the money, rather than a side benefit. That was a negative to advertisers footing the bill. They want qualified leads, not work-from-home searchers.

Marketing Execs Lukewarm On Plan To Pay Searchers from MediaPost has two of search marketers sounding less than thrilled over any MSN plans to do pay-per-search because of these reasons.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 12:14 PM | Permalink

November 30, 2005

MSN Looking For Search Champs

MSN has had prior rounds of Search Champs, where it has invited people in to give feedback and ideas for directions in search. Now it is stepping back from the invite-only nature of those past events and asking anyone to apply for the next round happening in late January.

Want to throw your name in the hat? Come Visit the MSN Search Team has details on how to apply for the all-expenses paid trip to Redmond. FYI, this is billed as Search Champs 4. I know of Search Champs 1 and 2, but Search Champs 3 seems to have come and gone without much notice.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:17 AM | Permalink

November 11, 2005

Ask Jeeves To Rebrand Tech As ExpertRank Inside?

Gary Price -- awesome sleuth that is he -- was doing some searching of the US Patent Office & Trademark Office database yesterday and noticed that Ask Jeeves filed for a trademark, a service mark to be accurate, for the term "ExpertRank" about a week ago. Perhaps the sign of a new branding campaign to come?

Ask Jeeves won't comment on what this means, but Gary reminded me that Teoma means "expert" in Gaelic. Teoma is the company Ask Jeeves bought in 2001 and the name of the search technology Ask Jeeves uses for its search results. I even joked earlier about how in the UK, Ask Jeeves has been branding its service as having "new Teoma technology."

So how about some speculation? Many are familiar with the "Intel Inside" branding campaign that Intel has run for years. You never see an Intel chip when you're using a computer, but the company wants you to have the notion that it's a good thing so you'll seek out Intel machines.

The search wars have their own sort of Intel Inside branding that's heating up. Google's long trotted out PageRank as its form of under-the-hood tech that should wow consumers. A few months ago, MSN rolled out its Neural Net technology as both a way to improve its results and to help counter the notion of Google having all the secret search sauce.

Teoma's long been the secret sauce for Ask, and ExpertRank sounds like a rebranding of that (rather than some new tech) to help Ask Jeeves compete with PageRank Inside and Neural Net Inside.

Where's Yahoo in all of this? It did roll out a Web Rank idea almost two years ago, but that never caught on or was seriously promoted by the company. But if Yahoo's going to face PageRank Inside, Neural Net Inside and ExpertRank Inside, it's almost a foregone conclusion it will look for something with a little more oomph than just saying it's Yahoo Search Technology Inside, as they did launching when launching Yahoo's own technology in early 2004.

Hmm -- maybe My Rank? Since's Yahoo's big on the entire My Web concept, I can see it now: "New Yahoo Search with My Web And My Rank Technology."

Postscript from Gary: Let's not forget that Google trademarked/service marked the term "TrustRank" earlier this year. Also, keeping with the "rank" theme, Topix.net registered the service mark "NewsRank" last year. They also have the service mark "National Network for Local News" registered with the USPTO.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:34 AM | Permalink

November 2, 2005

MapStats Wins MS Virtual Earth Contest

I was just was reading the Via Virtual Earth site and noticed that a winner has been announced in Microsoft's Virtual Earth Competition for developers to show their creativity/coding skills and win prizes including some cash.

And the winner is... MapStats What does MapStats do?

The MSN VE site describes the winner this way: MapStats is a counter which visualizes the visitors of a website. The red squares indicate where visitors came from. The less opaque they are, the less visitors came from that location.

From the MapStats site: MapStats, the first website statistics analyzer which visualizes the visitors of your website on a world map, using Microsoft VirtualEarth. With MapStats it only takes a single second to see where your visitors are coming from. For a webmaster, this is very valuable information. MapStats obviously keeps track of the location of your visitors, but there's more! We also provide statistics regarding to referrals, the browsers of your visitors, pageviews, language, and much more.

OK, so where do I get a copy of MapStats to demo? You can check out a beta/demo here. Webmasters who are interested in testing are asked to send along their name and address.

Two other Virtual Earth based mapping sites got an honorable mention on the VE site:

+ CREmaps Real Estate listings plus maps.

+ ZoomtoHotels Nice combo of VE with hotel listings. Hotel data provided by Hotels.com ZoomtoHotels did not work with Firefox when I tested.

Postscript: Nacho points out that Urchin has offered a geo tool for some time. Until we can see what MapStats offers and those of you who use this type of technology (I don't) can get in there and bang on it, we can then understand one service vs. the other. Btw, A closer read of the text on the MapStats site might indicate that this is the first service of this type to incorporate MSN Virtual Earth technology.

Want to discuss? Visit this thread in the SEW Forums and share your thoughts.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:33 AM | Permalink

October 5, 2005

New Save Jeeves Blog & Campaign

Barry at Search Engine Roundtable points to the new Save Jeeves blog, started by a former Ask Jeeves employee who wants the butler mascot to stay. Whichever way it goes, one thing is for certain. Controversy over whether the butler should go will only help raise awareness of Ask.com. Look for:

MSN to consider whether the butterfly should be stuffed into a collection jar.
Yahoo to debate whether it should love the exclamation mark from Yahoo! (yes, please. I mean yes, please!)
Google to announce a competition for a better logo (someone blogged about it needing one recently, can't find the link, sorry. But I doubt they were the first to say publicly the Google logo, well, could be a lot better).

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 11:18 AM | Permalink

September 23, 2005

Recapping Official Search Engine Blogs

Search Engine Blogs as Public Relations Tools from Loren Baker over at Search Engine Journal is a nice overview of how the various major search engines are turning more and more to blogs as a communication tool, with continuing unofficial help from employee blogs such as those from Yahoo's Jeremy Zawodny and Google's Matt Cutts (hey, Google, get his blog listed in your Blogs By Googlers section on the Google Blog already!).

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:10 AM | Permalink

August 31, 2005

Google Expanding Consumer Ads With European Campaign; MSN Does Product Placement

Please, no more articles about how Google has relied on word of mouth to promote its brand. Those days have been gone for several months now, and a recent hire of a European ad agency underscores this.

Google hires BBH for first European consumer ads from BrandRepublic looks at Google having hired an ad agency to embark upon an consumer-focused ad campaign in Europe. Google confirms the agency, Bartle Bogle Hegarty, has been hired to help with a "small project."

Google has already been doing consumer-targeted marketing to a limited degree for some time. We've covered how they've launched a newspaper and radio ad campaign in Kansas City back in May (along with foam hands at a baseball game), targeted consumers in Korea also in May and promoted Google News in Japan in April.

Google's also done outdoor ads to recruit staff, and they've for years spent plenty of money to reach potential advertisers.

I asked Google about the recent consumer targeting moves a couple of weeks ago and may come back to do something more formal. But the short answer from the PR department was that Google knows it's not dominant in all areas, and it will do advertising to reach consumers as it deems necessary and relevant.

Meanwhile, Google Blogoscoped reports MSN Search apparently bought product placement in the recent movie, The Island. More from this French-language site that he points at, with stills.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 12:42 PM | Permalink

May 30, 2005

Google Press Releases Now Available Via Feed

Spotted via Steve Rubel, Google is now issuing press release notifications via a feed. Non-feed releases are here; feed is here. Steve noted Microsoft releases were available in RSS in February. I can't recall when Yahoo added them, but they've been out there for several months, as I've long had that as a subscription. You'll find the Yahoo feed here, off the non-feed release page. FYI, the company blogs are often well in front of the formal press releases. Official search blogs from each company are listed in the blogroll on our home page.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:09 AM | Permalink

April 4, 2005

MSN Search Champs: The Sequel

Last year, MSN Search generated some initial good buzz for itself -- plus gained some product feedback -- by inviting a number of bloggers and others to take part in its "Search Champs" program. Search Champs V2 gets going this month.

An announcement from MSN is here: Announcing Search Champs v2. Robin Good, a returning champ, gives a rundown on the 33 people that have been invited plus a nice refresher from his perspective about the program: Search Champs 2 Launches Officially: Here's The List!. The list includes several women this time, a lesson learned from bad publicity after after only one was invited last time: Microsoft's Search Champs A Man's Club?

From a search marketer perspective, Greg Boser and Todd "Oilman" Freisen will ensure that representation of "black hat" SEO is in attendance, while Shari Thurow and Derrick Wheeler will bring "white hat" or content driven search marketing perspective to the table. On the more researchy side of search, the group counts Patzwaldt Klaus and Dr. Elizabeth D. Liddy. Other search marketers include Mauro Lupi of Ad Maiora, Stephanie Leffler of MonsterCommerce, Matt Paines of XSEO and Jennifer Slegg of JenSense.

For further background on the program, see also from us Robin Good's Search Champs Experience and More From The Microsoft Search Champs.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 1:43 PM | Permalink

February 24, 2005

MSN Search's Viral "MSN Found" Campaign

MSN Search has a new "viral" ad campaign called MSN Found that revolves around some fictional bloggers, as MSN Search Finds Viral Campaign from MediaPost explains more.

OK, I don't really get it. Here's the main site for the MSN Found campaign (the nearly pure graphical home page anything but helpful for itself getting found for much in search engines).

It lists six fictional bloggers who talk about various things and make link references to MSN Search queries and stuff you may have found on it. Cool! Well, maybe for you. For me, I found it pretty bogus.

Heck, if they really wanted a viral campaign, just pay bloggers and others a per query fee to put MSN Search boxes on their web sites. That would get some talk going pretty quickly and presence out there. Worked for Overture, then GoTo, many years ago.

The biggest viral presence seems to be within the MSN Search site itself. Look for MSN Found, and you'll see how a link to the MSN Found site has been inserted above regular results (which themselves don't list it at all. Ironically, Google and Yahoo do get it into their top natural results. Dude, what's the deal with MSN not finding its own viral web site without help?)

MSN Search also makes special links for each of the blogging characters that are part of the campaign. Search for Reggie, Tad, Karen, Swing, CY or Denise, and you'll see the special links come up.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:01 AM | Permalink

February 23, 2005

MSN Search Partners With American Mensa

MSN Search has teamed up with the American Mensa high IQ society to help promote the service. American Mensa now sports an MSN Search box on its home page, while MSN is to sponsor Mensa events in the US. More from this Microsoft press release: MSN Search Will Sponsor Upcoming American Mensa Events Including Mensa Colloquium 2005 and Mind Games. Said American Mensa:

"As a group of people who enjoy tough intellectual challenges, American Mensa naturally has some pretty high expectations for the speed and accuracy of results delivered by a search engine on our Web site," said Jim Blackmore, national marketing director for American Mensa. "We've been nothing but impressed with the new MSN Search service's capabilities, and we're looking forward to an ongoing relationship with MSN."

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:30 AM | Permalink

February 16, 2005

Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7.0: What About Search?

In the article: IE 7.0: Missing the Search Boat?, Susan Kuchinskas takes comments (or lack thereof) by Bill Gates about the "full" update Microsoft's IE 7.0 with a strong focus on security. The article also discusses at the rumored browsers from Google and Yahoo! and the problems they might cause for MS.

There's another good reason why Microsoft should do more than add security to IE 7.0, according to JupiterResearch analyst Joe Wilcox: Search rivals Yahoo and Google are both rumored to be working on their own branded browsers, while Netscape is testing a new prototype. Right now, about half of MSN's revenue comes from ads shown on search results, Wilcox pointed out. "Start getting a bunch of new browsers out there pointing to other search engines; that has an impact on MSN," he said.

Posted by Gary Price at 10:01 AM | Permalink

February 11, 2005

Gates: Microsoft Was Stupid

A new AdWeek article: MSN Draws Its Sword In Search Battle With Google, offers some more details about how Microsoft plans to promote their new search service. Here are a few highights from the article.

Stupid Microsoft! At the World Economic Forum Bill Gates said Microsoft was, "'stupid as hell' to allow Google to establish a clear lead in the industry." A few weeks ago, Gates told News.com that, "today's search is nothing."

Massive Campaign To make up ground, MSN said it would launch a bigger advertising campaign than the 2000 effort that promoted MSN. That has been estimated at $150 million. MSN officials would not confirm exact spending levels. "We think there's a hunger in the marketplace for another search competitor," said Bob Visse, director of information services at MSN.

People Think Of Google "When everyone thinks of search, they think of Google," said Jeff Huggins, co-executive creative director at McCann. "The primary task is to make people aware that there's more than one way to search the Internet." I bet the Yahoo and Ask Jeeves folks would beg to differ. (-:

User Loyalty? Not Yet We don't think folks are particularly loyal yet," he [Bob Visse, director of information services at MSN] said. "We feel like there's a great opportunity to innovate and move people to new services."

Posted by Gary Price at 9:37 AM | Permalink

February 1, 2005

MSN Search Marketing Plan Prepares for Takeoff

Pamela Parker at Clickz gives offers an overview of the marketing/ad campaign MSN will utilize for the new MSN Search. The article says this will be MS's biggest online campaign ever. In addition to online advertising, you also see TV, print, and billboard advertising.

"It's the biggest global campaign since the introduction of the MSN butterfly," said Chris Cocks, director of global campaigns for MSN.

The online media plan includes intense exposure across the MSN network, as well as buys on sites inclucing CNET, Weather.com, USAToday.com and CBSSportsline.com.

"We tried to select sites where there's a high degree of usage by MSN users," said Cocks, explaining that the campaign was initially aimed at reaching those who already used MSN.

Parker also reports that TV and online advertising will drive most of the U.S. campaign but billboards and print will be used elsewhere.

More in the Clickz article: MSN Campaigns For Search Share in Integrated Effort. We first blogged about what MS was planning in November: Microsoft Prepares Massive Marketing Campaign for New Search Engine.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:29 PM | Permalink

December 6, 2004

Spin the MSN Search Wheel

IMediaConnection offers a look at one part of Microsoft's ad campaign for their new search engine offering comments from two experts and the ad agency that created the MSN Search Wheel.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:21 PM | Permalink

November 1, 2004

Microsoft Prepares Massive Marketing Campaign for New Search Engine

Can traditional consumer-facing marketing/advertising do anything to help gain search market share from a company, Google, that has used very little of it to build their brand along with a stellar reputation? Can intense marketing get the typical "I only need to use one search engine" type of searcher to try something different and/or switch to another search tool?

Well, get ready.

It looks like the official release of MSN's new search engine is coming very soon (pre-Christmas) as the company prepares for a massive on and offline marketing campaign, "one of its biggest ever."

October 13, 2004

Robin Good's Search Champs Experience

Last week, I had a roundup of various reports from Microsoft's Search Champs. Robin Good has just weighed in with a long account of his own experiences: MSN Search Champs: Robin Good Reports. As usual, NDA keeps any real details from getting out, but he paints around the edges as best as possible -- plus provides plenty of color.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 6:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 12, 2004

Jeremy Zawodny: Yahoo Search Blogvangelist

Jeremy Zawodny is a Yahoo employee who once worked on the search side and now returns to it, as he explains more here: New Job (Again).

Search is also one of the things Jeremy has touched on in his personal blog, with some of the best reading dings at Google and even his own employer, at times.

That blog, he notes in explaining his new position, has had much to do with his move into the new role of improving search products, communication about search, gathering feedback and recruiting people.

What I find most significant is that the move positions him as the first notable blogvangelist employed by a major search company.

Sure, Google has its own blog, launched in May. Yahoo has one as well, launched in August. It's more active than Google's, completely focused on search and frankly often times more interesting. But both remain corporate blogs. They don't reflect the unfiltered views of an individual.

Microsoft has had this type of blogger personality in the form of Robert Scoble. He's someone who works from Microsoft, is vocal about things there but doesn't necessarily follow the party line. He was also instrumental in pulling together Microsoft's recent Search Champs initiative.

As a long reader of Jeremy's blog, he's always been that way as well -- a personality who speaks his mind, regardless of what his employer may think. With his new role in search, we ought to hear more interesting firsthand accounts of someone on the frontline of the search wars.

Meanwhile, will Google and others feel compelled to find their own search personalities to speak to the blogosphere? Google actually has the longest standing unofficial spokesperson around, in the form of GoogleGuy. However, GoogleGuy has to date only participated in the forumsphere.

Search forums have been a key public relations front for all the search engines, given how search marketers will dissect any move and report on the latest findings through them. Now blogs seem to be opening up as a new PR front to compete in.

A recent Google Blog entry did see GoogleGuy edge into the blog world for the first time. However, he remains anonymous. Lifting the lid on his identity (an open secret among many involved in search marketing) might give Google a search personality of its own.

Postscript: Jeremy provides more thoughts and reactions into his new role: Honesty and Blogvangelism

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 30, 2004

Microsoft's "Search Champs"

Next week the MSFT Redmond campus will welcome a group of bloggers, researchers, and others interested in search to a two day event called "Search Champs" where the company will "preview" new technology and seek feedback on it. You can learn more in this eWeek article.

Posted by Gary Price at 9:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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