July 28, 2008

China's Sohu.com Posts 600% Jump in Profit

Chinese internet portal Sohu.com has announced $40.2 million in second quarter profit, up 600% over the same quarter in 2007. The news comes in the wake of results posted by Chinese search engine Baidu, which saw profits rise 87% in Q2 2008. The big boost in profits for both companies come as the 2008 Beijing Olympics approach.

Check out this display ad from Lenovo on the Sohu.com.

"The growing momentum reflects the overall expansion of the China Internet market, increased shift in advertising budgets from offline to online, the robust pace of advertising spending leading up to the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, as well as our significant traffic increase," Belinda Wang, chief marketing officer of Sohu said in a statement.

via Reuters

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 9:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 24, 2008

Baidu Profits Soar 87% in Second Quarter

Google, Microsoft and Yahoo may have disappointed Wall Street, but Baidu is proving to be a Dark Knight in this tough economy.

Boosted by advertising sales in advance of the Beijing Olympics, the Chinese search engine posted an 87% jump in profits in the second quarter of 2008. Net profit came in at $38.6 million, beating expectations of $35.5 million.

Baidu owned 63% of the search market in China, accoring to iResearch. Google had 26% and Yahoo came in third at 8%.

source: Reuters

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 10:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 27, 2007

Harry Potter Learns Spell To Stop Ebay

I wonder whether Kramer still considers EBay his number one internet stock (he made this announcement on Mad Money last night) - now that Harry Potter had learned the spell needed to stop EBay selling nonauthorised electronic versions of the JK Rowling books.

Indian courts ruled that EBay must cease allowing selling of the electronic versions of the Potter books which the author has never allowed.

Posted by Frank Watson at 10:57 AM | Permalink

November 28, 2006

Exalead CEO Warns Of "Google Monster" & Closed Yahoo & Microsoft

The Multilingual Search Blog covers Exalead CEO Francois Bourdoncle taking a big stick and swinging at Google in a keynote talk at SES Paris. He positions his own service as potentially the savior for those in Europe worried about the "Google monster." Beyond Google, he also criticizes Yahoo and Microsoft for collaborating on a "closed" sitemaps protocol. I'd say the Cold War against American-based search engines is going up a notch.

Let's deal with the Google Monster idea first:

The press in particular should be worried about becoming sub-contractors of Google, he said. Whilst at present Google News brings plenty of traffic to sites under the brand names of the press outlets, this would change to Google's brand in the future.

Actually, Google News has always operated under the Google brand. So much for that secret Google master plan, I guess. In fact, despite using the Google brand, I just covered some stats yesterday showing how Google sends upwards of 22 percent of traffic to newspapers sites.

Of course, Bourdoncle may have meant that in the future, Google will actually host content on Google itself, saving people from making a click through to news sites. Possible. And if so, ironically the newspapers may have themselves to blame. Go back to my write-up about the AP deal with Google. How exactly Google will make more use of AP content remains to be seen. But I explained that there's good reason that Google might host AP content on Google itself, similar to what Topix does.

Google's largely seen to have cut the AP deal in part because the AP may have been threatening legal action. Do a deal, the issue over spidering goes away -- and Google can host news content on its own site. As more companies clamor for deals (such as in Belgium this week), Google might transform into a content hosting service rather than pointing to content elsewhere.

By the way, Yahoo News already operates this way, hosting plenty of news content of its own. So even if Google goes that route, why haven't news organizations been complaining about the Yahoo monster? My guess would be that once you cut deals to host content, you seem less monstrous. And that works again against what Bourdoncle warns. If Google does host content, the news organization should be happy given they will have done the partnering to make that happen.

Bourdoncle isn't the only search engine to swing a torch around to rally the villagers against the Frankenstein's monster of Google. Microsoft just did this last month. CEO Steve Ballmer positioned Google as "transferring the wealth out of the hands of rights holders." Microsoft, of course, does much of the crawling and content gathering that Google does. It's hard to see how it is somehow more altruistic.

Such statements make good headlines, and I'd say they're going to play even better in Europe, which has watched the search industry rise into generating billions of dollars for America, rather than euros for Europe. There are also some serious cultural and political issues to consider. Many people may simply be more comfortable using a service that grew natively from their own country. I don't discount these worries and have great respect for them. I just dislike much of the scare mongering I also see that often feels like politicians and private companies hoping to position their own agendas, rather than a common good.

Such worries are one reason the Quaero project emerged, a planned multimedia search engine that will get government funds. I've likened this to being a Boeing versus Airbus challenge in the search world -- and also covered how Europe has had no lack of native technology already that grew without government subsidies.

Exalead is part of the Quaero project, though I remain confused about how to find more about it and what exactly it is doing. There used to be a site here that brings up nothing but a logon page. I've also seen the Quaero.org site referred to as the home of the project. That's entirely in French and German, and my German remains pretty bad. But I'm pretty sure I don't even see the word Quaero mentioned there.

Anyway, it's long been on my list to catch-up on the project. Chris Sherman's out in France today, and I think he's actually planning to talk with Exalead about Quaero more. So stay tuned.

Finally, Google wasn't alone for criticism:

He also criticised the new sitemaps collaboration announced by Google, Yahoo and MSN at Pubcon in Las Vegas. He said, “The sitemaps specification is not nice and open and it not nice and closed”. He believes the initiative aims to close the door to new entrants to the market place.

Frankly, I disagree. Google's had a sitemaps system out for over a year. In that time, I heard not one word out of Exalead that it thought it made sense that this should be expanded to be supported by other search engines. Now Google, Yahoo and Microsoft agreed to a common specification. Exalead could jump into supporting that now, if they wanted. They could also produce a rival format, if they wanted (and what joy that would be). But instead, what they support is a single page-by-page submission feature. Criticizing a bulk submission feature of your rivals when you offer none of your own doesn't win points in my book.

Instead, I'd say the real issue is that Exalead didn't get to sit at the big table in working out the agreement along with the other three. That is unfortunate, just as I felt Ask should have been included as well. Exalead is an excellent search engine that deserves the attention of both searchers and the search engine industry alike -- as is Ask.

Not being included from the start was unfortunate, but forgivable, as long as we see a working group expand going forward. I'm all for that, though I don't want expansion to slow things down. It also makes sense that the market leaders -- the services with the most queries and thus the most attention from site owners -- are going to take the lead in these things.

Postscript: Quest for a Euro-Google from the BBC earlier this year provides a longer look at Quaero and Exalead's involvement.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:23 AM | Permalink

November 20, 2006

Verizon Spins Off Idearc

Idearc is the newly spun off parent of local search provider SuperPages.com. The company started trading today on the NYSE. The SuperPages brand, which survives the spin-off, will continue to publish Verizon yellow pages. SuperPages has been the most progressive of the incumbent YP sites in embracing new business models (PPClick/Call) and consumer trends (ratings and reviews). Indeed, SuperPages sees itself not as a “yellow pages” per se but as a local search and shopping resource. Let's see how far the company pushes that metaphor now that it's on its own.

Posted by Greg Sterling at 9:49 AM | Permalink

November 2, 2006

In UK, Google To Surpass Channel 4's Ad Dollars

The Independent reports that Google UK is expected to earn "£900m from the UK ad market in 2006." When compared to Channel 4's "£800m at the TV group" this year, Google is expected to beat this TV player in ad dollars. Channel 4's Andy Duncan said, "Some broadcasters have been very slow to realise this. The industry as a whole is frankly rather backward-looking and is perhaps underestimating the scale of change that is going on and the pace of change."

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:59 AM | Permalink

September 27, 2006

2006 Online Ad Spend: 37% Increase in '06 & Search Remains Hot

The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) in conjunction with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) released online ad revenue figures for the first two quarters of 2006, showing a 37% increase year-over-year for the same period. The first half of 2006, revenues from online ads were $7.9 billion. Search counted for approximately 40 percent of those figures, at $3,164 million. Like in the past, they do not break out contextual ads from search ads.

A ClickZ story says that in a separate report, by eMarketer reports all of this year will be worth 15.9 billion. In short, growth is still strong at 26.8 percent but down slightly from last year at 30.3 percent.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:29 AM | Permalink

September 21, 2006

Chicago Tribune Does Big Search Package

The Chicago Tribune is running a big package on search today. There's little new or suprrising for regular readers of this blog, but you might find it interesting to see how a mainstream newspaper tries to dive into the search wars. Gunning For Google hosts the package from there, you find....

Inside a Web giant's manic search for staying power is the first part, where the Trib gets "a rare extended look inside" the Googleplex that instead ends up dwelling a lot on YouTube. The Tribune seems to have arrived when Google was upgrading Google Video, so they seem to have the impression that Google's all about beating YouTube.

Still, it was interesting to see that a recent employee audit shocked CEO Eric Schmidt, who discovered only 60 percent of worker time was spent on Google's core business. "It was quite alarming to find that we were below the 70 percent without knowing it," said Schmidt, from the article.

Man vs. machine in battle for clicks is the second part, with lots of quotes from various search engine companies on how they are all battling against each other.

Meet Google's credibility cop is a focus on Google spam fighter Matt Cutts.

There's much more, but I easily missed the items on the home page when I originally wrote this, because they are off to the side rather than listed below the three main stories. Here they are:

Google vs. the world: A three minute slide show with the reporters telling you what they saw there. Lots of pictures.
How engine works: Nice, an informational graphic like the type I used to do for newspapers.
Web of competition: Another informational graphic, 'cause you can't have a big newspaper story without them. Some nice stats, though the bulk of the graphic is a illustration that doesn't really illustrate anything.
A bunch of audio clips:

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:35 AM | Permalink

September 20, 2006

Again, The Need For Search Ad Revenue To Stand Alone

Has the search bubble popped, given Yahoo's warning yesterday about declining ad revenue? That warning generated a stock plunge that has hit both Yahoo and Google. No, it's probably not a search bubble. Instead, it's a lesson in the danger of not breaking out search ad revenue from other forms.

Exactly as Robert Scoble notes here, the ad slip at Yahoo is not necessarily a search ad problem. What Robert calls "banner ads" is more specifically display advertising, graphical ads that are not pay-per-click text ads that show up in response to a search. Yahoo has a much bigger display advertising effort than Google. The downturn could be impacting just that side of their ad house.

In fact, the Wall Street Journal article about Yahoo's warning suggests this may be the case:

Yahoo's total revenue last year was $5.3 billion and an unspecified, but significant percentage of that was from so-called branded advertising, which includes graphical display ads as opposed to the small text ads placed beside search results.

Analysts say the two sectors Yahoo singled out generally spend heavily on such display ads. John Aiken, head of equity research at research firm Majestic Research Corp. in New York, said data about Internet activity suggest that search advertising for Yahoo and the broader industry appeared to be growing around expected levels. "Branded [advertising] is going to be a bumpier road for growth than people expected," said Mr. Aiken.

Of course, Google's not necessarily immune. A significant amount of Google's income is from non-search advertising -- contextual ads, some of which are graphical in nature. This is one reason why I'd asked Eric Schmidt at SES last month about breaking out search ad income from other forms. From the transcript of our talk:

Danny: Somewhat related: my understanding is that I still can't go to Google's financials and know how much money is going into content ads versus search – and I care about the search. I mean, to me search is a different intention and contextual. And so when people say, "we're going to measure the health of the search market," I want to know how the health of the search market is from a leader like Google. But I've always felt like when those figures are mixed together, it pollutes the data. For all I know, your contextual network is suddenly tanking, a whole bubble is about to burst out there, but search will be healthy. But the whole search industry might go down with it.

Eric: None of that is going to happen.

Danny: None of that is happening. And I was going to say, alternatively, everything has been doing great.

Eric: Since we're on the record, since we're on the record and it's a public company, I want to make sure that what you just said [that the contextual network is "suddenly tanking"] is not true.

Danny: Right. But that's the opposite to what could be happening. But contextual might be doing wonderfully, and search might be [tanking] …

Eric: They're both doing well. Again, we have a whole bunch of people who are trying to reverse-engineer the economics of Google. And we have historically not wanted to give out the detailed information that you're describing. These are clickthrough rates, CPCs, RPMs, and so forth. There are a number of reasons [not to split these out]. One of course is competitive. But there's a more fundamental reason, which is that anybody who looks at how Google actually runs the ad network makes simplifying assumptions that are not in fact true. And it's important that we, Google, not give out information that can be misused or is essentially false. So we've chosen, to the frustration of many, to not reveal the underlying economics of the ad box. Partly because it's changing so quickly. And all of the estimates that you see are based on smart people making estimates without our assistance. We think for numerous reasons that's the right decision. It's how we run the business.

Perhaps now we'll see some change happen. The failure to do good breakouts, the pollution of other ad revenues mixed in with search, directly causes search to perhaps be seen as in trouble when it might be completely healthy.

In fact, as I told a reporter yesterday, I think search will be just fine given its history. Search was booming during the ad downturn of 1999-2001. It was booming because of its highly measurable, highly converting nature. Born from a downturn, I expect it will continue to ride out any future ones, if not benefit from them.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:06 AM | Permalink

August 17, 2006

So Long Daypop & Blogdex

Back in 2003, I wrote about a number of blog search engines emerging at that time. Feedster was brand new and Technorati still pretty young. Both were babies compared to Daypop and Blogdex. Sadly, Gary Price over at ResourceShelf notes in A Brief Tribute to Dan Chan, Daypop, and MIT's Blogdex that neither of these pioneering services has made it to 2006.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 2:14 PM | Permalink

August 1, 2006

A Financial Analyst's View of the Search Industry

Jordan Rohan is a financial analyst who specializes in internet stocks. He's been covering the industry since 1998, and has developed a reputation as a penetrating thinker who's not afraid to tell it like he sees it. Rohan was one of the keynote speakers at the Media Post Search Insider Summit held in Keystone Colorado last week. His talk was wide-ranging, covering competitive trends, the importance of international markets, and of course, Google's dominance—and whether anyone has a chance of knocking them off the search throne. More on Rohan's views of the search world in today's SearchDay article, Rohan: "The Job of an Analyst is not Easy".

Posted by Chris Sherman at 12:01 AM | Permalink

July 9, 2006

The Changing Face of Local

This ClickZ article discusses a new JupiterResearch report called "Local Advertising: Blending Categories to Compete Effectively." The article doesn't go into great detail about the findings or conclusions from the report. But based solely on my reading of coverage in the article it appears to make two relatively straightforward observations about local:

Search engines/portals could steal traffic and potential ad revenues from yellow pages and other stand-alone local sites that seek to cater to traditional directory advertisers
The local product definition is changing and categories are merging as the distinctions between classifieds, service listings, local retail and user-generated content and community are starting to blur.

The first conclusion above is something that has been true and fairly obvious for at least three years. Here's Chris Sherman's coverage of an early report from 2003 I wrote on essentially the same subject when I was at The Kelsey Group. The only difference now is that there are many more local competitors, beyond yellow pages and search/portal sites.

However, the Jupiter report doesn't appear (based on the article) to get into discussion of the sales channel issues and some of the "structural" barriers to local advertiser acquisition by portals and search engines. I go into that complex set of relationships in some detail in this post.

The report's apparent other main observation, referenced above, is much more interesting and part of a larger evolution of local online. It goes to the question: What is the right mix of content and features in local? No one yet really knows what that is. Indeed, there's probably no single, definitive answer.

Offline the differences between trade publications, newspapers, yellow pages directories, local TV, direct mail/coupons, etc. are structural/organizational and very clear. Online those distinctions, basically the legacy of these offline publications, start to break down. There's no necessary reason that classifieds, retail content, service listings and video, for example, shouldn't be featured in the same online product. And there's momentum toward a more comprehensive product that offers a broader use case. (See my post on SuperPages as one example.)

On one end of the spectrum are Google, Yahoo or MSN search, offering conceivably everything available online. On the other end is a very specialized niche directory that provides narrow but deep information about a single subject. The ideal local product is somewhere in the vast expanse in-between.

Yellow pages publishers (and to a lesser degree newspapers) are alert to the threats the report identifies and are actively engaged in the product definition question. In addition to SuperPages, Canada's Yellow Pages Group and Australia's Sensis, both publishers of yellow pages, have integrated classifieds among other local content into their online offerings.

The report cites Microsoft's Windows Live Expo as example of a hybrid marketplace that includes local classifieds, display ads and service listings. Here's my February post on the same general themes.

I tend to believe that what one might call an "integrated local marketplace" is what consumers ultimately want -- the convenience and efficiency of getting their local needs met in one place. If I'm right this gives the search engines/portals an advantage "on paper" because of their more comprehensive content. But, to date, they've failed to fully leverage that opportunity in their local offerings, although they are improving under the intensifying pressure of competition.

It's very easy to discount the assets of traditional media publishers in the competition for local online traffic and ad revenues. But it would be wrong to do so. By the same token, the search engines' technology, faster product development cycles and brands make them quite formidable as local competitors.

It's by no means clear that five years from now (when mobile local search is more prevalent) the local market will be any less fragmented or chaotic. One can hope, but reality always turns out to be more complex and "messy" than the predictions suggest.

What's very clear today is that online consumers want local content. What's also clear is that local advertisers want to be found online. But unlike traditional local media, which more or less "owned" the entire value chain (sales, content, distribution/usage), it remains unlikely in the near term that any single player or segment will duplicate that online. The many moving parts make local a lot more complicated than it would appear from "30,000 feet."

That's what's so interesting and vexing about this space.

Posted by Greg Sterling at 12:46 PM | Permalink

July 7, 2006

SuperPages For Sale

Verizon has formally filed with the SEC to sell its directory unit, which contains the print yellow pages and online yellow pages/local search businesses. A likely sale could bring as much as $15 billion. And because AT&T does not look like it's going to spin off its directory business, SuperPages could fetch a significant premium.

Verizon has been by far the most experimental and innovative of the US directory publishers to date, embracing PPC marketing and PPCall (including in the print directory). It has also sought to expand the product definition by integrating web search, Shopping.com, eBay listings, ratings and reviews and other content to broaden the utility and usage frequency of SuperPages.com.

Indeed, the company has sought to expand from the notion of a ?yellow pages? site into something more like a local shopping portal. The company has also reconceived its role, vis-à-vis local businesses, from strictly a yellow pages publisher to a local marketing agency, which sells print and online yellow pages in addition to other products (including SEM).

Read a longer version of this post on my blog.

Posted by Greg Sterling at 7:29 PM | Permalink

June 16, 2006

Riya To Expand Into Web Image Search

SiliconBeat reports that Riya will expand to a web image search service. Currently, Riya allows you to upload a photo, define the photo as matching a particular person and then it tries to scan other photos to figure out if other photos in your collecton match that person, using face recognition. Riya is expanding that to match images of almost anything on the web. In other words, if I am looking to buy a big blue pineapple chair (love that chair) and I have an image of the one I like, Riya will scan the web for similar images of big blue pineapple chairs. Riya expects to be able to crawl the entire web and index the images they find within about three month timespan. Additional coverage of Riya's expansion can be read at TechCrunch.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:29 AM | Permalink

June 14, 2006

Japan To Build Own Search Engine With 30 Japanese Companies & Government Help

The Mainichi Daily show that Japan is going to be building out their own search engine after conducting a focus group on the idea. Thirty organizations in Japan and the University of Tokyo will be working to develop the Japanese based search engine. Part of the group includes big brands such as Hitachi, Fujitsu and Nippon. The Japanese government plans on providing a subsidy for the project. Why? "Many people in Japan fear that the domination of the three firms will prevent Japanese companies from entering the market." The European Union, led by France, is doing something very similar.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:40 AM | Permalink

April 10, 2006

Cairo Closes Doors

Just wanted to follow up to Danny's post last month about ShopLocal winning its crawling case against Cairo. Cairo has now closed the site and states at the bottom of the page, "for great deals and sales in your area please visit www.shoplocal.com."

Posted by Brian Smith at 1:17 PM | Permalink

April 4, 2006

Top Management Shakeup At Miva

Miva announced this evening that founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Craig Pisaris-Henderson and President Phillip Thune have resigned their positions, but will retain their seats on MIVA's Board of Directors.

Miva's board named Peter A. Corrao, previously chief operating officer, as chief executive officer, and said that Larry Weber, a director on the MIVA board, has assumed the position of non-executive chairman. Seb Bishop, a MIVA director, the Company's chief marketing officer and a founder of Espotting, will assume the role of president and will retain his duties as chief marketing officer.

More on the changes at Miva via this press release.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 6:56 PM | Permalink

March 23, 2006

Yandex, Popular Russian Search Engine, To IPO

Nick Wilsdon notes that Yandex is set to IPO shortly. Yandex is Russia's most popular search engines with 62% market share. The Moscow Times reports that they have spoken with Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank. They may be listed on the NASDAQ, where Yandexs "international peers trade".

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:09 AM | Permalink

March 10, 2006

Richest People in Search

Gary Price reports on a Forbes richest people list for 2006. Gary pulled out those on the list that run the major search engines. So how do they rank?

(1) MSN: Bill Gates, #1 (2) MSN: Steve Ballmer, #24 (3) Google: Sergey Brin: #26 (4) Google: Larry Page #27 (5) Google: Eric Schmidt #129 (6) Yahoo: David Filo: #240 (7) Yahoo: Jerry Yang: #317 (8) Ask.com: Barry Diller #606

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 11:17 AM | Permalink

February 8, 2006

Google Testing Software Distribution With Dell, Plus Details On IE7 Search Battle

We covered last month that Google was providing personal home pages for Dell. Dell testing preinstalled Google software package from Reuters now looks at how Google is working with Dell to put Google's desktop search and toolbar on Dell computers. It's said to be a test distribution, at the moment. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal looks at that and more about the search battle shaping up within IE7.

John Battelle points to Pressuring Microsoft, PC Makers Team Up With Its Software Rivals (paid sub. required) from the Wall Street Journal, which sparked the Reuters story about Google and Dell. The WSJ article covers how Google might pay Dell fees approaching $1 billion over three years for distribution.

The story goes deeper into concerns by Yahoo and Google that the new search toolbar in Internet Explorer 7 might hurt them, since MSN would be the default. Sure, it might. Then again, MSN Search has been the default in IE since at least IE3, if I recall. Despite this, non-Microsoft search engines haven't just survived, they've thrived. Yes, IE7 sports an actual search box this time, but I still think we'll see users change this off the default setting in various ways.

There's lots of detail on Google wanting Microsoft to ask consumers to make a conscious choice about search providers, rather than IE7 automatically using their choice in IE6 (which is probably MSN Search, for most people). It's an odd argument, given that Google has not demanded that Firefox make consumers do similar choices in that browser. A partnership deal makes Google the default in Firefox, except for Asian-language versions where Yahoo cut its own deals.

Chris Sherman is planning our own look at some of these issues in the near future. I'd love to see some universal agreement about how ALL browsers should handle choices of search providers, in terms of how defaults are set and can be changed. What I fear is another round of stealth default changes, where each of the players constantly try to switch you around.

Google and Yahoo encourage you to choose them as a default search provider through their software apps. I don't mind, because I can see they are clearly asking me when this happens. Both also try to encourage you to change in other ways, as you can see here and here. Again, I don't mind, because you can understand what's going on. But a few years ago, other players would just make the changes, leaving users puzzled about why all their searches mysteriously started going through some new search engine. We don't need that again.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:39 AM | Permalink

February 6, 2006

Rupert Murdoch on Web Search, No Assault on Google or Yahoo in the Works

A brief article on News.com.au titled: News Corp won't take on Google, reports that Mr. Murdoch and crew does not plan to get directly involved in the web search business taking on Google and Yahoo. These comments came in an interview that Rupert Murdoch gave to Newsweek..

Murdoch says: "No way will we do a frontal assault on Google and Yahoo," he said.

He did tell Newsweek that by 2010 News Corp will earn a "a conservative one billion dollars" from its Internet interests.

We also read that Murdoch and Fox has spoken to Google, iTunes and others about making tv progrmas available online for purchase and download but has no immediate plans join some ABC, NBC, and CBS. Murdoch says: It'll be a pretty serious piece of revenue for us someday, probably. We'll be into all these things, some quite original and some of what others are doing.

The full text of the Murdoch interview is acccessible here.

January 17, 2006

Yahoo Loses Another VP, This Time To SideStep

Ouch. Last week, Yahoo saw the vice president in charge of its developer network split to start-up Automattic. Now there's news that another Yahoo vice president has departed. This time it's Rob Solomon, who was vice president and general manager of Yahoo Shopping. He's heading over to travel search engine SideStep, to become the new president and CEO. You'll find a relatively recent interview with Rob from his Yahoo days here at ComparisonEngines.com. The release isn't up yet at SiteStep's press release area yet, so here's what we were sent:

Yahoo! Executive Appointed CEO of SideStep Rob Solomon to Run Travel Search Leader

SANTA CLARA, Calif. January 16, 2006 SideStep, the traveler's search engine, announced that Rob Solomon has been chosen as the company's new president and chief executive officer. Solomon has also been named to SideStep's board of directors. He was formerly vice president and general manager of the Yahoo! Shopping Group (YHOO), where he was instrumental in building one of the largest commerce destinations on the Internet.

Solomon's vertical search expertise is considerable, having significantly grown one of the Web's premiere vertical search sites Yahoo! Shopping. Additionally, he brings extensive experience in the travel industry to SideStep, having run Yahoo!'s travel business. Solomon was with Yahoo! for six years.

"Rob Solomon has the track record and ingenuity to strengthen SideStep's position as the leader in travel search and ultimately continue to transform the online travel market," said Jim Barnett, SideStep's chairman of the board. "A veteran of portal and search wars, Rob has seen and touched all aspects of Yahoo!'s business from startup to hyper-growth. He possesses the knowledge and leadership to take SideStep to the next level and capitalize on a search engine on the verge of mass expansion."

SideStep leads the travel search category, one of the hottest sectors of the $63.5 billion online travel industry (PhoCusWright). SideStep.com searches hundreds of travel brands to find flight, hotel, rental car and vacation bargains around the globe. In addition, it generates approximately $1 billion in gross bookings annually for its partners.

"SideStep is an innovative company with a strong heritage a six year history that began with creating the vertical search market," said Solomon. "I believe in its mission to revolutionize the online travel search sector and look forward to leading the executive team to continue to define and extend a leadership role within the category."

Solomon brings a blend of consumer, commerce, travel and Internet search experience to SideStep. Having served as a Yahoo! corporate officer, Solomon has proven strategy, product and leadership skills. He was instrumental in driving major accolades for Yahoo! including, Shopping Search Engine of the Year (Search Engine Watch) and top ratings in key Comparison Shopping Reports (Consumer Reports and Forbes). He brings relevant experience from top companies such as consumer technology leader Electronic Arts and travel services powerhouse Cendant Corp. A UC Berkeley graduate, Solomon begins his new post on January 23, 2006.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:46 AM | Permalink

January 13, 2006

Show Me the Content: Web Search, Verticals, and Metasearch

Putting the Screws to Google, by Jon Fine from BusinessWeek offers a look at how, "old media could take back its share of search's ad bounty." So, in a sense it's not only putting it to Google but to Yahoo, Ask and other general purpose web engines. Of course, the word Google in a headline gets people to look.

It's an interesting read. How would these "old media" players do it? Fine offers an example of Walt Disney, News Corp., NBC Universal, and The New York Times, joining together to form a "Content Consortium" that offers a search engine containing content that, "no outside search engines can access."

Of course, Google is well aware of proprietary content issues that Fine raises. If you look at the "Risks Related to Our Business and Industry" section of many of Google's SEC filings (including their IPO filing) you'll read:

Proprietary document formats may limit the effectiveness of our search technology by preventing our technology from accessing the content of documents in such formats which could limit the effectiveness of our products and services. A large amount of information on the Internet is provided in proprietary document formats such as Microsoft Word. The providers of the software application used to create these documents could engineer the document format to prevent or interfere with our ability to access the document contents with our search technology. This would mean that the document contents would not be included in our search results even if the contents were directly relevant to a search. These types of activities could assist our competitors or diminish the value of our search results. The software providers may also seek to require us to pay them royalties in exchange for giving us the ability to search documents in their format. If the software provider also competes with us in the search business, they may give their search technology a preferential ability to search documents in their proprietary format. Any of these results could harm our brand and our operating results.

From the BusinessWeek article: "For the life of me, I can't imagine why they haven't done it," says Tom Curley, CEO of Associated Press. Here's one reason: Doing it would require spinal implants for intimidated media barons. But the notion that some pushback is pending is not far-fetched. Curley says he is talking with potential partners about setting up subject-specific Web packages -- say, for travel or basketball -- that will include content from multiple media. Once partners are on board and packages are finalized, search engines will be invited to bid for that traffic.

So the AP might be getting into the vertical search business, interesting.

For a long time I've said verticals will continue to grow in popularity and importance as meta search tools which are getting better all of the time will allow various database and content publishers to offer material (free or fee) to end users who will select these databases at the time of their search based on their information need. Of course, database selection tools to assist users in making these decisions that incorporate personalization, social networks, etc. will also be available.

The metasearch tool could be sponsored and/or have contextually based advertising included as a part of it.

Fee-based content could be made available for free if, for example, the user would view a certain number of ads over a given period of time. Marketers could also sponsor access to databases with fee-based content. For example, Kayak or Expedia might sponsor access to a database containing digitized travel books and videos.

Smaller but focused databases, can potentially offer more precise results (higher precision, lower recall). Don't forget that for many web searchers, the Invisible or Deep Web is everything beyond the first six or seven results. Advanced searchers might also benefit with a unified interface versus numerous interfaces and syntaxes. Training sure would be easier.

In many respects, what I'm talking (in concept not content) has been around for years with services like Dialog and LexisNexis. For example, Dialog offers access to over 1000 databases with many coming from various database producers. I often describe it as a supermarket of databases with a common syntax. Users select various databases depending on their information need.

Another example. I've written numerous times about the many full-text databases (available for free, without going to the library, for personal use). Well, the San Francisco Public Library offers searchable access to many of these databases using a single interface. They call it a cross-database search. Instead of having to go to 20 databases and then search each one, you can pick and choose databases depending on what you're looking for. Articles? Reference answers? Images? Directory info? Business? Local?

The SF Public Library is hardly the only organization offering this type of service. The topic of cross-database (aka federated or metasearching) is a hot topic these days. In fact, NISO, the National Information Standards Organization, has a large initiative in developing metaseach standards.

Postscript: Cold North Wind is another company involved in large newspaper digitization projects. Their PaperofRecord.com site is their public database where you can actually see what they have digitized to this point.

Posted by Gary Price at 2:03 PM | Permalink

Quero's Web Site Goes into Hiding

It was just the other day when I posted links to a couple of articles about Quaero, the multimedia engine that's being developed in Europe by several companies including Thomson. Our post also included a link to the Quaero web site where you could learn more. If you go to the Quaero site today, it's only accessible if you have a password. What happened?

Thanks to Staci Kramer over at PaidContent.org for pointing to this IDG article that says the site the recent press attention and scrutiny that the service (informational only) was receiving did not make Frank Dangeard, the chairman of Thomson, happy According to the article he's imposed a "news blackout" and made the informational site password protected.

"There's been a lot of noise and our chairman decided we should stop making any comments until a more official press event," said Thomson spokesman Philippe Paban.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:06 PM | Permalink

January 11, 2006

Quaero, the European Developed Multimedia Engine, Gets Press Attention

An AP story as well one in Pandia discuss, Quaero, a multimedia engine in development, that's being billed as "Europe's answer to Google."

Quaero is set to be a multimedia engine so a direct comparison with Google seems off the mark. However, the word Google in a story gets people to pay attention.

Btw, this the same search project that Danny first blogged about first blogged about last August and again in September where he points out that France's Thomson once owned a multimedia search engine named Singingfish which is now owned by AOL.

From the AP: So far Quaero is just a scattering of top tech minds in labs across France and Germany, working on what they hope will be the world's most advanced multimedia search engine.

"We must meet the global challenge of the American giants Google and Yahoo," [French President Jacques] Chirac said in an address last week laying out his policy priorities for 2006. But details are scant. None of the key players -- including Thomson, France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom -- would comment on cost.

Yes, that's the same Thomson that once owned Singingfish.

Lars Våge is much more positive about the project in his Pandia post versus the AP story:

From Pandia: A presentation of Quaero will be held at the Agance de l?innovation industrielle (AII) in January.

Will Quaero to some extent be able to recognize the contents of an image? Any way it seems that Quaero has more advanced technology in this area than e.g. Yahoo! or Google. Several companies are involved in the Quaero project along with Thompson. AFP?s article mentions Deutsche Telecom, France Telecom, and the search engine Exalead. This is very promising ? Exalead has an interface that makes Google look out of date. Quareo means search in Latin and it will be exciting to do just that when Quero is launched. This will hopefully happen in spring.

Learn more: Direct to Quaero's home page.

Posted by Gary Price at 4:09 PM | Permalink

January 4, 2006

Rashtchy: Global Search Market to Grow 41% in 2006 and 31% in 2007

Clickz writer Kevin Newcomb has a fact-filled article summarizing numbers and estimates from two new Piper Jaffray notes about the Internet and paid search in 2006. Both notes were written by Safa Rashtchy at PJ.

Fast Facts: Paid search is expected to generate more than $14 billion globally in 2006, with Google leading in growth and market share, according to a new Piper Jaffray report.

+ Paid search expected to grow expected to grow 41 percent in 2006 and 31 percent in 2007.

+ Google captured as much as 64 percent of the market in 2005 according to Rashtchy.

"Over the next five years, we estimate the paid search industry will grow at a 37-percent CAGR [compound annual growth rate] to more than $33 billion in 2010, and we expect Google to capture the lion's share of that revenue and grow faster than the market as a whole," Rashtchy wrote in the Google research note.

+ As we posted earlier this week, Rashtchy has raised his price target for Google to $600/share.

+ The full text of Safa's Google note is available online via Searchblog (PDF).

Newcomb's Clickz article goes on to report key findings from another Piper Jaffray report that focuses on the Internet as a whole.

In the Internet Industry report, Rashtchy predicts that stocks in the Internet sector will bring returns over 20 percent for 2006, exceeding the 12-percent return of 2005. Within the sector, search and online advertising performed best, increasing by 23 percent for the year, and advertising services were up 18 percent.

+ Rashtchy adds: "The mere competition with Google, to keep up the service levels, is benefiting the customers and causing companies to improve their offerings significantly."

Posted by Gary Price at 4:15 PM | Permalink

December 19, 2005

Japan's Government Forms Study Group To Determine if Country Should Launch Its Own Search Engine

Both the AP and Agence France Press report that Japan's government is asking both the business and education/research sectors if the country should develop its own search engine technology and a service that's "unique to Japan" to compete with AJ Japan, Google Japan, Yahoo Japan, and others.

The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry will convene a study group consisting about 20 Japanese electronics companies and universities on Internet search engines, said Fumihiro Kajikawa, a ministry official in charge of information policies...The Nihon Keizai Shimbun newspaper reported Monday that the government plans to spend tens of millions of dollars for a three-to five year project to develop a search engine beginning in fiscal 2007.

Btw, a very recent American entry into Japan's search market comes from Vivisimo. About three weeks ago we posted that a Japanese version of Clusty went live in late November. We also know that Ask Jeeves is currently testing their new blog search engine in Japan.

Postscript (from Danny): See also France To Fund European Search Engine; Replay Of Boeing-Airbus In The Search World? covering an earlier, similar concern that France sees in developing its own search industry.

Posted by Gary Price at 6:00 PM | Permalink

December 2, 2005

On Craigslist, Job Loses at Mainstream News Orgamizations, and Citizen Journalism

The San Franscisco Weekly reports in the article Craig$list.com, that the very popular classified ad site, its founder calls it an online marketplace "like a fleamarket," is beginning to cause layoffs at well-known and established news organizations. The story offers all sorts of interesting facts. For example, Craigslist founder, Craig Newmark, still uses text-based Pine as his email program. Probably not a bad idea. (-:

Seriously, the article includes plenty of good reading. Here are a few passages from the nine page article.

Newmark now suffers from a moral dilemma: He feels guilty about helping cause job losses and poorer-quality papers, but he's excited to accelerate the decline of the big, bad mainstream media. He seems determined to remedy his sins against the media by changing it for the better, lending his name and dollars to a citizen journalism movement populated by J-school professors, idealistic techno-futurists, and so-called citizen journalists. The hardest-hit publications are in the Bay Area, which accounts for about one-quarter of Craigslist's traffic. The Chronicle and its competitors lose more than $50 million per year because of job ads that have migrated to Craigslist, according to a 2004 report by Bob Cauthorn, the former vice president of digital media at Chronicle Web site SFGate.com, who is now working on his own media venture, City Tools. The San Jose Mercury News alone misses out on $12 million annually in employment ad revenue because of Craigslist, according to recent estimates by Lou Alexander... While the failings of the modern newspaper industry are many, if Craigslist wasn't costing them big bucks, it's unlikely that publishers would have created a host of Craigslist-copycat sites. BackPage, the mostly free classifieds site launched last year by SF Weekly's corporate parent, New Times, is only slightly more commercial than Craigslist, offering additional paid services that place an ad higher in the listings or print it in the paper. While it stopped the bleeding of classifieds from New Times papers, Senior Vice President Scott Spear admits that BackPage has little chance of overtaking Craigslist in its established cities. Nationally, BackPage has 1.8 million visitors per month, less than the number Craigslist attracts in the Bay Area alone. To Craigslist's executives, the consequences for competitors and other industries aren't important. Their choices are justified, they believe, by what the user community asks for. Every month, 10 million people worldwide click through 3 billion pages of Craigslist.

A good read not only on Craigslist but also its founder and ciizen journalism in general. Btw, OurMedia, Wikipedia, and Korea's OhMyNews are also mentioned.

Posted by Gary Price at 4:59 PM | Permalink

November 10, 2005

Yahoo China Relaunched With Pure Search Focus & New Majority Owner

Yahoo China has been acquired by Alibaba.com and relaunched as a pure search service. Here's the rundown on the changes and some reasons behind the handout, which still leaves Yahoo itself earning off the site.

Back in August, Yahoo invested $1 billion in Alibaba. That gave Yahoo a 40 percent stake in the company.

At the end of October, there was a UPI report that Alibaba bought up all the assets of Yahoo China for $1 billion. But I think that was reported backwards and working off the August announcement.

If you look at the release of the August deal, it talks of Yahoo "contributing" Yahoo China to Alibaba. So I think UPI had it wrong. This other report covers how the deal was concluded at the end of October.

Skipping ahead, via Shak's China White blog, Yahoo! China has 8 months to better Baidu or it's 'game over,' says Alibaba CEO covers the relaunch, as does Yahoo China back to search engine market found via Threadwatch.

The first article covers Alibaba feeling they've got about a year to have a chance in search in China and how the more pure search site will also focus on financial news, entertainment and sports. And political news?

I don't want to get into trouble with the government, so I don't do any political news," said Ma. China requires special certification to publish political news.

It's not all abandoning portal features, however. Email is also being kept, as that's seen as a key portal feature that can't go away.

Yahoo's Jeremy Zawodny who is in Taiwan, heard about the move from his cab driver and was surprised to see that Yahoo China has gained an MP3 search tab.

No surprise, really. China's most popular search engine, Baidu, has built its popularity on music search -- or some would say illegal downloads -- as I covered in my Google's China Situation Better Than You Might Think -- And Other China Search News post. The question really is, will the new Yahoo China feature music content but not get into the same trouble Baidu's had with music companies.

I took a fast look to see if I could find any pirated songs, but needing to log into a Yahoo China account lost me, I'm afraid. If you have to log in, I'm guessing pirated music is less likely.

Finally, doesn't it seem odd for Yahoo to be handing over Yahoo China to another company when just this week, it bought out control of Yahoo UK, Germany, France and Korea from Softbank?

Nah. I'm guessing it's a handy way for Yahoo to profit off of China but get free of all those pesky complaints that Yahoo bends to China's will on political issues. Hey, we didn't hand that email over to the Chinese government. We didn't censor those news results. We didn't filter those search results. Alibaba did -- take it up with them! Yet by owning a stake in Alibaba, Yahoo can earn money of the search business.

As a reminder, Google owns a stake in four percent stake of Baidu. That gives it a bit of a hedge in case Google China doesn't work or the entire Yahoo keeping your distance situation -- if I'm reading that situation right -- looks worthwhile to follow.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 11:17 AM | Permalink

October 21, 2005

Spending A Day With An SEM Firm

A Day in the Life of a Search Engine Marketing Agency from sees a DM News reporter spending time at icrossing's New York office and among some of its 54 employees. I know, I know -- the cynical gang out there will see it as a nice coup for icrossing to get some ink, and no doubt other firms will pitch other publications to do the same. But you'll find plenty interesting to read, from the guy monitoring A/B test results to the person hunting for more search inventory by spotting even more search terms.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 12:52 PM | Permalink

October 17, 2005

What to Buy a Meta Search Engine? Jux2 is For Sale on eBay

Jux2 was the winner of our most recent Search Engine Watch Award for Best Meta Search Engine. It was also a great resource to check for search engine overlap between Google, Yahoo, and Ask Jeeves.

Then, in late May of this year, Jux2 went offline after its developers moved onto other projects and no other established engine "stepped up." Since then, a number of people have emailed me trying to make contact with it's founder and lead developer, Aaref Hilaly, about bringing the service back online. Well, it looks like any talks that took place were just chatter.

Last night, Hilaly emailed me about a new auction on the eBay site. What's the item up for bids? None other than Jux2? If you're interested, here's the listing with complete details about what you get and don't get if you have the winning bid. As I post this entry, the current high bid is $511. This is a no reserve auction (what it goes for, it goes for). Btw, it appears that while the auction is active (about another nine days) Jux2 is back online.

Posted by Gary Price at 11:23 PM | Permalink

October 16, 2005

The Top 100 Global Brands: Where Do Google and Yahoo Place?

BusinessWeek has released their ranking of the Top 100 global brands.

What's the criteria to be considered for the list: The table that follows ranks 100 global brands that have a value greater than $1 billion. The brands were selected according to two criteria. They had to be global in nature, deriving 20% or more of sales from outside their home country. There also had to be publicly available marketing and financial data on which to base the valuation.

So, where do Google and Yahoo place?

+ Google comes in at number 38 (new to the list this year) with an estimated brand value of $8.46 billion. + Yahoo appears at number 58 (up from 61 last year) with an estimated brand value of $5.25 billion from $4.54 billion in 2004 (up 16% over last year).

Other companies on the Top 100 list include: + Microsoft in 2nd position + Apple in 41st position + Amazon.com in 68th position

The Top 5 Companies on the 2005 list are:

Coca-Cola
Microsoft
IBM
GE
Intel

Posted by Gary Price at 9:44 PM | Permalink

October 10, 2005

The blinkx / Autonomy Relationship

Over the past few days I received an email asking just who owns and runs blinkx and blinkx.tv. JD also blogged about an email he received last week.

Late last week, I had an email exchange with Blinkx CEO, Suranga Chandratillake, where he answerd a few questions about company ownership and Blinkx in general.

From Suranga's email: Autonomy is not one of blinkx's shareholders. We [blinkx] enjoy a close relationship with them (Autonomy) but that's because (I was there for years (including as US CTO) and have lots of friends there, (b) we are an OEM customer of theirs, and so depend on them in a number of ways technologically. Under the terms of the OEM agreements, under certain circumstances, Autonomy does have an option to invest in blinkx.

Technical Issues Suranga tells me that blinkx.tv and derivative products like RSS, Smart Folders, etc) use transcription search for some or all sources of data. In some cases with Blinkx.tv you are only searching metadata. He didn't specify which sources offer transcription search and which ones don't.

blinkx does not use transcription to index local media files (let's say a video of your trip to Montreal). "This is because there's a pretty reasonable CPU overhead in doing transcription and most of our client users don't have massively powerful PCs," according to Chandratillake.

The Technology blinkx uses Autonomy technology for both blinkx and blinkx.tv but Chandratillake said blinkx, "also depends pretty critically on what we've built in-house."

He writes: For example, the core speech recognition and video analysis comes from Autonomy (and to a lesser extent some of the things they got in acquiring Virage) (some of which is patented)... but then the web-video spidering, the massively parallel way we process everything and the visual-cue-crawling that lets us associate metadata with videos is all in house. Similarly, the core pattern-match operation that happens when the client matches a screen of content on your PC to a web page is Autonomy technology but then, all of the local indexing, the screen-scraping, the automatic extraction of what the key areas of the screen are (so we don't get dragged off into suggesting content based on an ad or header by mistake) are products of in-house blinkx developed.

blinkx currently has a staff of about 26 with about 18 of working on th engineering side of things.

Btw, here's a fast fact. Virage, the video search technology company that Autonomy acquired a few years ago was founded and led by Bradley Horowitz, who now works at Yahoo.

Postscript: Phil Leigh has a podcast interview with Suranga that was recorded in July. You can find it here. Once on the page scroll to the July 6, 2005 entry.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:48 PM | Permalink

September 28, 2005

BitTorrent Looking To Work With Publishers

Looking for video content? I mean, not just looking but also wanting to download it? BitTorrent is a popular way for many seeking to get the latest television program or film. BitTorrent's Grab at Respectability from BusinessWeek looks at how the service wants to move on by raising capital and turning into a distribution network for publishers, rather than for those sharing published works.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:04 AM | Permalink

September 22, 2005

Websoured Executives Fired

Via Threadwatch, Websourced fires 2 executives from the News & Observer covers how the company has fired two senior vice presidents, after writing of $1.4 million in bad debt.

An analysis into the business continues by parent company Think Partnership continues, the article says. The debt was caused by small companies signing up for one year contracts but refusing to pay because they had too much "success" in the first few months, the company says. The clients themselves, however, are also blamed for not having enough "dedication" to achieving "sustainable search marketing results."

Websourced recently lost its vice president of search marketing Andy Beal and had a planned acquisition of Proceed Interactive get called off. This follows after earlier acquisitions of other firms and some prominent search marketing speakers and writers. Threadwatch also has earlier discussion of Websourced problems here, Rumour: Websourced being Raided by Dept of Revenue.

Want to comment or discuss? Visit our forum thread, Resignations At Websourced.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 1:29 PM | Permalink

September 14, 2005

The Search Stock Index

What's the Search Stock Index? Actually, Nacho Hernandez one of our SEW Forums moderators calls it the SEM 50 Stock Index. It's his brainchild to come up with 50 search firms that are publicly listed that can be tracked. The list is up to 28 so far, as you'll find here. Think there should be others? Come contribute to the list! And why to do I say "Search Stock Index?" Because not all of these firms are involved with search engine marketing. Search Stock Index is more broad. If not SSI Top 50, then maybe the Search Top 50.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 11:07 AM | Permalink

September 12, 2005

Scott Rafer Says Goodbye To Feedster

In a blog post titled, Becoming a Feedster Alum, Scott Rafer announces that he has has left his position as the person in charge at Feedster. Rafer says he will be helping Feedster's board find a new chairman while also working on several new projects in the coming months. Scott also points out that he is now the chairman at Wireless Ink, the parent of WINKsite, a mobile blog service and community service. WINKsite makes it easy to create a mobile-ready version of your blog (or any blog) with just a few clicks. We wish Scott all the best.

Posted by Gary Price at 11:15 AM | Permalink

September 7, 2005

Hey President Chirac -- French-Based Thomson Sold Off Search Technology You Now Want To Fund

Earlier I wrote of the French government wanting to provide loans to help develop a European-based multimedia search engine, an effort to help counter perceived threats to French and European culture by the dominance of US search firms. Something was nagging at me. Why did French firm Thomson -- one of the partners seeking loans for the new service -- sound so familiar. Oh, yes. It's because Thomson used to own a multimedia search engine. Perhaps you've heard of it. Singingfish.

That's AOL-owned Singingfish. Thomson bought the company in 2000 (with nary a word about European encroachment into the US search industry), then sold it to AOL in 2003 (with nary a word about undermining French ability to protect its culture through search in the process).

So now having owned multimedia search technology and sold it, Thomson needs loans to start afresh? Maybe it could use the proceeds from selling the multimedia search technology it used to own?

Want to comment, discuss, tell me to jump in a lake? Visit our forum thread, French Loans To Back European Rival To US Search Players.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 1:52 PM | Permalink

August 31, 2005

France To Fund European Search Engine; Replay Of Boeing-Airbus In The Search World?

Reading my copy of the Daily Telegraph today, I came across news that French President Jacques Chirac has pledged funding a new European search engine to challenge Google, Yahoo and other Anglo-Saxon search threats.

I guess Chirac sort of forgot about French-based Voila, which I believe still uses its own Francophone technology and which also apparently is number two in France. How about Seekport, the European-based search company that runs several multi-language editions? Fireball's an old favorite, a German-based service that had its own technology, though I'm not sure what it's using now. FAST is the Norwegian-based company that gave birth to AllTheWeb, now owned by Yahoo, but which still has web search technology it provides to others like Miva.

Chirac backs eurocentric search engine is the Telegraph article with a few more details. Specifically, Chicac doesn't seem to want to fund an actual web search engine. Instead, he wants to give loans so a French-German partnership between Thomas and Deutsche Telekom can build a "multimedia search engine for the internet." A Bloomberg story says the loans would be about 2 billion euros.

In short, there's plenty of search savvy in Europe that seems to have been OK without governmental support. But if the loans go ahead, it will be interesting to see if we're about to have a trade war emerge in the search space and over government backing, similar to the arguments that are made about government support given to aircraft makers Airbus in Europe and Boeing in the US.

The article has a few more details on the plans for a French-backed library digitization project, as well, as does France pushes for European books online. For past coverage on that from us, see:

Want to comment or discuss? Visit our forum thread, French Loans To Back European Rival To US Search Players.

Postscript: See also my later post, Hey President Chirac - French-Based Thomson Sold Off Search Technology You Now Want To Fund

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:56 AM | Permalink

August 5, 2005

SimplyHired.com Raises $3 Million from Angel Investors of Note, Guy Kawasaki Joins Board of Directors

A news release and Silicon Valley Business Journal story clues us into the fact that job search vertical SimplyHired.com has raised $3 million from angel investors including Rajeev Motwani, and early investor/advisor to Google and Ron Conway, founder of Angel Investors LLC., also an early investor in both Google and Ask Jeeves. In addition to veteran angel investors, the round includes notable entrepreneurs Michael Tanne, founder of the Internet advertising company Adforce, James Hong, founder of top-50 Internet site HotOrNot.com.

Along with the funding news, we've learned that tech evangelist and investor, Guy Kawasaki, has joined the SimplyHired board of directors.

On the search front, SimplyHired launched an advanced search interface last week. One option allows the searcher to limit their search to companies that appear on various lists like the Fortune 500 and the Inc. 500.

Posted by Gary Price at 2:05 PM | Permalink

Baidu.com Goes Public, Shares Soar

Chinese web search engine Baidu.com (Google is a minority shareholder) went public today with its IPO on NASDAQ. Shares opened at $66 more than tripling the IPO price of $27. As I post this item shares are trading at $92. Also, Baidu's CEO, Robin Li, did not comment on rumors that Google tried to buy the company prior to today's IPO.

In an interview with CNBC, he [Robin Li] said the company is "happy" to have Google as a shareholder and that Baidu.com "will keep its options open" as it moves ahead.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:09 PM | Permalink

August 1, 2005

Baidu.com Gets Ready For IPO

Although a specific date hasn't been set yet, stories about Chinese web search engine Baidu.com, and its upcoming IPO continue to appear. The AP's Joe McDonald does a nice roundup of info about the company.

The article offers bio details about company founder, Robin Li.
A definition of the word Baidu.
The article also mentions that Google owns 2.1% of Baidu.com while Yahoo owns 3721.com, another Chinese search engine.

The article concludes that like the Google home page, the Baidu.com home page is sparse while the 3721.com home page is "busier" like what's seen at Yahoo.com. I wonder if 3721.com also offers a clutter-free page like Yahoo does at search.yahoo.com? (-:

Posted by Gary Price at 1:47 PM | Permalink

Looksmart Averages 15 Cents Per Click; Contextual Text Ads Coming

LookSmart's Q2 2005 earnings were released last week and losses were greater than in Q1. Looksmart reported a net loss of $5.4 million on revenue of $10.2 million, down from $12 million in the first quarter. However, average revenues per click were -- excluding run of site -- was 15 cents, up from 14 cents in Q1. The company also said that contextual text ads will soon be available on their vertical sites like FindArticles.com. More in articles from Media Post and Clickz.

Posted by Gary Price at 11:35 AM | Permalink

July 19, 2005

What's New at Snap.com

Michael Liedtke's AP story: Snap.com Plans to Combat 'Click Fraud', offers a look at what Bill Gross and Snap.com are up to these days including news that the company has just secured more than $10 million in venture capital funding.

Quick takes from the article:

+ ``We feel there is so much more innovation that can take place in search,'' Gross said Monday. ``It's hard to say that little Snap will ever beat Google, but I think we can become a viable alternative.''

+ Gross is among those who believe click fraud is a big problem. He aims to change things with a ``cost per action'' system that only charges ad commission when a purchase is actually completed. ``I believe the commercial side of search will evolve toward cost-per-action in the next five to 10 years,'' Gross said.

Posted by Gary Price at 3:55 PM | Permalink

July 13, 2005

Chinese Search Company Baidu Files for NASDAQ IPO

Baidu files to go public on Nasdaq from SiliconBeat covers Chinese search provider Baidu filing for an IPO on the NASDAQ. The company hopes to raise $80 million with the offering. SiliconBeat's post also contains links to the prospectus and some discussion about what US copyright laws, if any, Baidu might be subject to regarding music downloads.

Google is a minority investor in Baidu, and its interest was covered recently in our Google CEO Schmidt Visits China Interest In Baidu Buyout? post. Other related posts from us are Local Search Goes to China and Baidu Beginning Work on a Film Search Engine.

See also Baidu.com, China's Market Share Search Engine Leader, Files for NASDAQ IPO with U.S. SEC (hat tip, Shak) for more background on Baidu, including cofounder Robin Li's Infoseek roots.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:41 PM | Permalink

June 30, 2005

Earnings Season is Just a Few Weeks Away

Today is the final day of the second quarter which means that we're just a few weeks away from another round of quarterly earnings. Here's a small list of when earnings will be released and the time of the conference call (if available) for a few of the companies we follow. As you'll see, several have yet to post the info on their sites. Yahoo goes first and a couple of days later it will be time for Google and Microsoft.

Yahoo July 19, 2005 Conference Call: 5:00pm EDST

Google July 21, 2005 Conference Call: 4:30pm EDST

Microsoft July 21, 2005 Conference Call: TBA

Ask Jeeves TBA

Gurunet/Answers.com TBA

Looksmart TBA

Posted by Gary Price at 4:14 PM | Permalink

June 6, 2005

US Search Players Moving More Into China

U.S. Web Giants Target China from BusinessWeek is a general overview with lots of stats on US search players moving further into the China market.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 1:49 PM | Permalink

June 2, 2005

Feedster Completes Round of Venture Capital Funding

Earlier this week I posted about Become.com completing a round of funding. Today, word from Feedster that they've also just done the same thing. How much funding? Numbers aren't included in this news release but we do learn that some of the money will be used to greatly expand their server infrastructure.

Posted by Gary Price at 10:22 AM | Permalink

May 31, 2005

Become.com Gets More Funding

More dollars continue to fund search verticals.

The San Jose Mercury News article: $7.2 million in start-up's 2nd round, reports that shopping search vertical Become.com has raised more than $7 million in a second round of funding.

The investment is led by the Transcosmos corporate venture capital group, with participation from Silicon Valley angel investors Ron Conway and Bob Bozeman. Become.com will use the money to work on a price comparison shopping service, to be unveiled this summer, the company said.

Here's an overview article about Become.com that SearchDay published in April.

From the article: The [Become.com] crawler automatically identifies and categorizes web content, indexing only shopping related information and discarding other types of content. Become.com also uses human editors to further refine its index. "Before we push our latest index into production, our researchers identify authoritative and highly rated pages, and these are given preference in ranking and crawling," said Yeogirl Yun, Become.com's founder, chairman and CTO.

Posted by Gary Price at 11:47 AM | Permalink

Jux2 Goes Offline

Some sad news to report. Jux2, the winner of the Search Engine Watch 2004 best meta search engine award, is no longer available.

Over the weekend, Aaref A. Hilaly, one of the developers of Jux2 told me that the service was originally designed to research search engine overlap (it sure was useful) and although they were thrilled and honored that many people also used it as a meta engine, the Jux2 team did not have the time, funding, and resources to keep the site running. Hilaly added that Jux2 did have conversations with other meta engines to see if they would be interested in taking over the service but no one "stepped up."

Here are two other tools you might want to check out that can help determine search engine overlap:

+ Dogpile's "Missing Pieces" More about this new search engine overlap tool in this SearchDay article.

+ Ranking.thumbshots.com Visualize search engine overlap with this tool. Chris wrote about this service in the 2004 article: Exploring Search Engine Overlap.

Posted by Gary Price at 11:33 AM | Permalink

Not Just A Search Engine: 2005 Edition

This time last year, Yahoo talked of being "more than a search engine," sending me off on giant wobble. My Return To The Sad Days Of More Than A Search Engine? article asked if we'd come full circle, with search engines deciding it was cool to be portals again. If so, would search quality slip again as last time? Google's Mission in Context from MediaPost has Google's head of travel explaining recently "we're not just a search engine" to an audience, sending writer David Berkowitz on a similar wobble on whether search engines -- and Google in particular -- are forgetting their missions. Missions? You'll find a recap of Google's and Yahoo's here from me: Missions & Visions & Actions.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:23 AM | Permalink

May 3, 2005

Profiles of a Few Seattle Area Search Companies

Spotted via Geeking with Greg, is this Seattle Times article: Entrepreneurs seek new ways to mine Web, that takes a look at a few Seattle area search companies including:

+ Nervana (enterprise search and a great name for a Seattle company) + SingingFish + Findory + Infospace + The Work of Professor Oren Etzioni at the University of Washington Dr. Etizioni was the co-developer of Metacrawler and is now working on the Know-It-All project.

To address the problem of accumulating large collections of facts, we are developing KnowItAll --- a domain-independent system that extracts massive amounts of information from the Web in an autonomous, scalable manner.

More about KnowItAll here (a paper from the WWW2005 conference; PDF) and here (from WWW20004; PDF.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:15 PM | Permalink

April 29, 2005

2004 Online Ad Spend: Search Is Hot, But Contextual Pollution Of Figures Continues

As Gary mentioned earlier, online ad spending figures for all of 2004 were recently released by the IAB. What do they show specifically for search? Up, up, up, no matter how you want to slice it, though mixing in spending on contextual ads doesn't give a completely clear figure.

Search & Contextual Is Top Category, Again: For another year, search (which includes contextual ads, according to the study) had a far bigger slice of ad spend than any other category, gaining a 40 percent share of all revenue. Display ads were a distant second at 19 percent, though if you buy into the "All Display Advertising" super-category the IAB also provides, then it rises to 39 percent of all spend.
Search & Contextual Worth Nearly $4 Billion: In terms of actual revenue, search was estimated to have earned $3.85 billion in ad spending.
Search & Contextual Had Biggest Spending Rise: Search revenues rose more in dollar amounts than any other category, climbing by $1.3 billion from $2.54 billion in 2003 to the aforementioned $3.85 billion in 2004. That's a 51 percent rise.
Search & Contexual Still Below Other Offline Spending: Despite being worth $4 billion, the report shows that search spending is still well below many other types of media spending. Direct mail tops the list, being worth $50 billion, followed by newspapers at $46 billion and broadcast TV at $33.5 billion. The list ends with outdoor advertising at $6 billion. But with more growth, search may push ahead.

The IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report is available (PDF format) to anyone and has plenty of charts and details. Another nice chart is over in the press release about the report. I used those figures to sort the data differently and put search in better perspective, which you'll in the version of this post for Search Engine Watch members.

That extended post also looks in depth at the giant flaw with report, the failure to break out contextual ads from search. They aren't the same as search, as I explain -- and counting them as search pollutes the data.

I also look at how the recent Google CPM pricing for contextual ads is finally generating more awareness that contextual isn't search, as well as what I've long written, that Google and Yahoo aren't tech companies, aren't search companies but are ad or media companies.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:40 AM | Permalink

April 28, 2005

Report: Online Ad Revenues at Highest Levels Ever

I'm sure Danny will have more to say later but I thought I would point out that the Interactive Advertising Bureau/PricewaterhouseCoopers Internet Advertising Revenue Report with 2004 revenues was released today. Zachary Rodgers takes a look in this Clickz article.

He writes:

Search marketers continued their stampede. Annual revenue in this category leapt from 35 to 40 percent of the overall spend. On a dollar basis, search revenues were up more than half to $3.9 billion.

This press releases from the IAB has much more along with a few tables that break the numbers out by: + Ad Format + Ad Categories + Pricing Model

Want more? No problem. The full text of the report is available here. It's loaded with charts and tables.

Posted by Gary Price at 6:03 PM | Permalink

April 27, 2005

Amazon.com's Spends on Search Technology Development

Amazon.com reported their Q1 earnings yesterday. This IHT has details. If you're wondering if any tidbits about A9 were revealed, this Forbes article notes that Amazon.com spent $92 million (a 59% increase from Q1 2004) on technology. This number includes both A9 and other Amazon.com technology development. Amazon's CFO, Tom Szkutak, added that the company is continuing to hire programmers at A9 and for other Amazon.com web services.

Posted by Gary Price at 4:35 PM | Permalink

Google Interviews, Yahoo and Blinkx Hire

Three search engine personnel stories in the news today. Here's a roundup.

+ Stefanie Olsen reports that Google is interviewing a former U.S. State Department employee, Dan Senor, to head Google's marketing team. Recently you might have seen Senor on TV at press conferences while he served as Advisor to the U.S. Presidential Envoy in Iraq. Senor is interviewing for the position that Cindy McCaffery left last year. Google isn't commenting.

+ Yahoo has hired Shawn Hardin as vice-president of content development. Hardin comes to Yahoo from AOL where he was senior vp of broadband. Before that he worked at several studios and was the head of NBC Internet. He'll be based at the Yahoo Media Division hq in Santa Monica, California.

+ Blinkx, the provider of both contextual search and video search technology, has hired Jonathan Gregg as Vice President, Business Development for the U.S. Gregg comes from Yahoo where he served as Manager of Global Alliances.

Posted by Gary Price at 11:17 AM | Permalink

April 26, 2005

Like Search Engines, Search Marketing Firms Growing Revenue

Fathom that: Ask Jeeves veteran gets successful search result from the San Francisco Business Times profiles search firm Fathom Online and worth a read for those who need a refresher on how search marketing companies are growing as investment and acquisition targets.

San Francisco-based Fathom earned $20 million in revenue last year and expects to double that to $40 million this year (though a large chunk of that may go right back out to the search engines themselves).

The company, only three years old, employs 50 people and expects to reach 100 by the end of the year. It has a single outside investor that's contributed $6 million, so far. But Fathom CEO Chris Churchill -- a former Ask Jeeves exec -- says there are no plans to go public or sell in the near future.

Meanwhile over in Texas, Range Online founders Cheryle Pingel and Misty Locke were recently named in Fast Company's new list of Top 25 Women Business Builders. Like Fathom, Range pulled in over $20 million in revenue last year.

Cast your mind back to January, and you may recall Efficient Frontier had announced (link to PDF press release) they were managing over $100 million in annual paid search marketing spend. What really caught my eye about that, aside from the double zeros behind the one, was the claim they handled more than any other search marketing firm.

I didn't necessarily doubt that they were handling more revenue than anyone else, but how could they prove that? They company's PR firm emailed back:

To answer your questions -- there are no pure-play public search engine marketing firms so there is no public information on fees, spend under management, number of advertisers - so we need to use our data to understand the market.

We were able to compile a list of the top 400 paid search advertisers by using our proprietary technology and our knowledge from the sales cycle. We download the bid landscape each day for all of our keywords (over 7.5 million in 2004 alone) and we run models and estimates to determine how our customers should buy in the space. We also run competitive analysis to figure out what their competitors are spending in the marketplace.

This gives us enough data from our every day activities to identify the top spenders. In addition, our sales team talks to the top 1000 advertisers all day long, so we know what people are spending based on actual conversations. Based on our top 400 spenders list, we were able to confirm that we manage more than any competitors.

That $100 million, by the way, is purely the in-and-out money. In other words, it's what's managed on behalf of Efficient's clients, not what the company itself keeps. So total revenues generated are higher, though what's actually retained by Efficient (as with the other companies above) is less.

By the way, bringing things back to Fathom, that company and Efficient recently teamed up (PDF release) to share services.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 2:11 PM | Permalink

April 25, 2005

LookSmart Faces Delisting

Times might be rosy for the likes of Google and Yahoo, revenue-wise -- but LookSmart's having a tough time. Investors Turn Cold Shoulder to LookSmart from ClickZ notes that the company's stock has been under the $1 per share mark for more than 30 days. If shares don't trade for above that at least 10 of the next 180 days, he company will be delisted. Shares are at $0.80, when I looked today.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 3:17 PM | Permalink

April 12, 2005

Mamma.com Gets Formally Probed By SEC

Several sources, including this Dow Jones story, are reporting that the SEC's (Security and Exchange) Montreal-based search engine, Mamma.com, has been "converted" into a formal investigation.

The metasearch and online direct marketing service company said the SEC may consider matters related to trading in the company's securities.The SEC is also investigating whether an individual and persons acting jointly or with him may have had a significant influence on the company in the past as a result of undisclosed shareholdings.

The SEC began an informal investigation of Mamma.com about a year ago when the the government agency requested documents from the company.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:02 PM | Permalink

March 17, 2005

Getting Answers From Answers.com's CEO

The answer man from News.com has GuruNet CEO Bob Rosenschein -- whose company runs Answers.com -- answering some questions of his own, such why the company will succeed at making money this time, when it failed previously, how it's not competing with other search engines, even though some think it is.

As for search engines having "lists" built into their DNA, that DNA has long been evolving into direct answers, as we've written before. In other words, some people assume that Answers.com is somehow going to wipe out search engines by providing direct answers. The search engines are doing that now, have been doing it and are growing it even more. Our forum thread Who knows Answers.com? looks at this more, with comments from me.

The key thing everyone needs to understand is that search engines are not about spidering 8 billion pages anymore, as Rosenschein puts it. They are evolving into providing answers from spidering or from gather that from any other source that fulfils the role of answering questions. My Looking Back, Looking Ahead: Developments With Consumer Search article examines this more.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:47 AM | Permalink

March 14, 2005

Search's Long Tail

If you've somehow missed discussion of "The Long Tail," it's a reference to a landmark article of the same name by Wired editor Chris Anderson that ran last October. It covered how the media and entertainment industries will succeed not by pushing only mass market hits that are popular among many but by also mining the "long tail" of interest among a few in less-popular books, songs, movies and more.

Sure, maybe thousands want to buy a hit song. But add up all those who want to buy lesser-known titles, and they might generate as much or more revenue than the hits themselves. As a merchant, you want to tap into both the "head" of interest and the "long tail" that follows behind.

The tail makes much more sense when you see charts that illustrate it, such as the one below:

Those are the top 100 queries related to shoes on the Overture network, from an article I did last September about Overture shifting to a broad match system (Overture Shifting To Default Broad Match).

The point I was explaining in that article is that there are a large number of queries that happen far less often than the "leading" terms like "shoes" or "running shoes" at the head of the list. Most queries form the long tail that's illustrated behind the head. Tap into the tail, and you've got sizable traffic, as well as traffic that often is reported to convert better than less general terms.

In other words, search has a long tail too. Indeed, I've long heard references for years to the "search tail" or "query tail" I've illustrated above. I'm not sure where that phrase it originated and with whom, but tails aren't a new concept to the search world.

While it might not be new to search, it's certainly great to have the tail becoming more popularized in general. That's because it will further help those search marketers who mistakenly fixate on only the most popular terms to realize they need to consider the tail as well.

Over the years in my regular SES session "Intro To SEM," I've also referred to the search tail as getting the "onesies and twosies," the queries that might only happen once or twice in a month. Maybe they don't seem important because of the low volume individually, but tap into lots of onesies and twosies, and you can be doing well.

So if you're a search marketer hearing about The Long Tail for the first time, rejoice! Many of you have intuitively been mining it for ages. If you haven't, start! That means considering broad matching on both Google and Yahoo. For organic SEO, it means having lots of good content that will naturally tap into the tail of queries.

Meanwhile, some examples of how the search tail is becoming popularized and integrated as part of current Long Tail awareness for further reading:

The long tail of software. Millions of Markets of Dozens: Out this week from the blog of Joe Kraus, one of Excite's cofounders, this has a chart of the Excite search tail from his day. Kraus says 97 percent of the service's traffic came from the tail and that the "real reason" his company went out of business was because it didn't know how to make money from that tail. I'd beg to differ on that point. Excite gained search-targeted listings through a partnership with FindWhat in April 2001. Over six months later, Yahoo finally got the same through its partnership with Overture. Both partnerships let these companies earn off the search tail. Excite was ahead of the game yet died. Yahoo survived. Blame lack of tail targeting? No, something else was at work. I'd say Excite went bankrupt because among other things, it couldn't afford to continue competing in the expensive portal competition it was trying to fight. Maybe if it had gone after the tail even earlier, it would have survived (my The End For Search Engines? article explains why this was hard). But as noted, the fact that Yahoo pulled through doesn't mean that failing to target the tail can take such heavy blame. Also be aware that while Excite the company died, Excite the web site is still going. The traffic is much reduced, but it's earning revenue today for the company that runs search there, Infospace.
Google's Long Tail: From Chris Anderson's Long Tail blog, you can see an example of how Google in February was trying to tap into the new understanding and popularity of the Long Tail idea to illustrate to investors how it is a long-tail type of company. Google's always been this way, but the better understanding of what it does (and what Yahoo's Overture pioneered back in its GoTo days) is growing.
On the Trail of the Long Tail: Also from February, this post on the Yahoo Search Blog shows Yahoo directly saying the same thing -- we're a long-tail company. Sadly, they didn't provide any charts to help illustrate this more!
The Paid Inclusion Dinosaur article I wrote from June last year looks at why Yahoo has stuck by its guns to run the program -- doing so lets it tap into the giant tail of queries that marketers even using broad matching might never consider, especially giant when you understand that paid inclusion ties into the editorial results that are far more likely to be clicked on than ad listings. From the longer version of the article for SEW members:
Right now, Overture and Google struggle with how to fill out the "tail" of search queries with ads. These are queries that happen only a few times per month but in aggregate represent a huge amount of unsold inventory.

For example, advertisers focus on high frequency terms such as "shoes," which Overture reports had over 1,000,000 requests in April 2004. It sells for a top bid of around $0.55 and has 90 advertisers competing for it.

In contrast, "winged track shoes" happened only 27 times last month. No one is bidding on the term. That's most likely because the low frequency doesn't make it seem worth the time. Yet someone searching for something so specific might convert better than the more generic "shoes" searcher.

Paid inclusion is a perfect solution for unsold ad inventory like this. Simply tell the advertiser that you'll spider their site and let pages appear in the paid placement area for a flat, low-cost rate when there is space available. Advertisers can still target the important terms, but they gain easy visibility for other important ones. Yahoo reduces its unsold inventory. Searchers are spared confusion.
Search Engine Marketing Goes Mainstream: A report out of our SES Boston conference in March 2003, it covers how back then the "tail" of search was being discussed in both economic terms as well as a search marketing tactic.
Just Right: Targeting the Tail: Cached copy of a LookSmart presentation at SES Australia in March 2003 that says all the things you're hearing about today in terms of the Long Tail. It mentions the "keyword tail" and the "search tail" and concludes:
- Top 50% of queries = 80% of volume
- 80/20 rule does not regularly apply to search
- Focusing on just the first 20% of keywords will invariably miss most of the value

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 4:46 PM | Permalink

March 10, 2005

Amazon's A9 Reaches To India

Amazon's A9 team may be based out of California, but the company also has a dedicated development team in Bangalore, India that's working on the push into search. More in Amazon cooking up search, Web products in India from IDG.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 2:50 PM | Permalink

February 24, 2005

FindWhat's Q4 Earnings Flat

Pam Parker's Clickz article, FindWhat Blames Low Growth on Quality Control, takes a look at FindWhat's recently announced Q4 2004 numbers and their expectations for 2005.

The company posted net income of $4.7 million for Q4 on revenues of $58.7 million, resulting in per-share profit of $0.15. Full-year revenues came in at $169.5 million, for a profit of $17 million, or $0.60 a share.

We intentionally removed during Q4 certain traffic sources that would have generated $70,000 of revenue per day," said Craig Pisaris-Henderson, chairman and CEO of FindWhat.com. "Our focus is to deliver traffic that converts."

As I post this item (11:15 AM), shares of FindWhat are currently trading down 21% at $10.56.

Posted by Gary Price at 11:14 AM | Permalink

February 17, 2005

Shopping Search Technology Firm IM2 Gets Venture Cap Funding, Say Hello to FatLens

Those of you with an interest in shopping search might be interested to learn that Silicon Valley startup IM2 Inc. has received $8 million in their first funding round. An article from TheDeal.com goes onto say,

IM2 unveiled its FatLens search technology, which trawls e-commerce sites and presents its results in an interface designed for comparison shopping, in January. Now in beta-phase testing, the FatLens engine serves the online event-ticketing industry and will be expanded to include other industries in a few months, according to [CEO Nanda] Kishore.

Posted by Gary Price at 11:49 AM | Permalink

February 16, 2005

Four New Customers for Vivisimo's Clustering Technology

Vivisimo, the search company that plays in both the consumer search space with Clusty and in the enterprise search world has announced that they've landed four new clients for their crawler/federated search/dynamic clustering technology. These new clients include: + University of Pittsburgh Health Sciences Library System + FatWallet (it's already live on the this e-commerce site)

An article in the Pittsburgh Times: Vivisimo search gets four new clients, mentions that the company currently receives 70% of their revenues from enterprise search and 30% from Clusty.com.

Posted by Gary Price at 7:22 PM | Permalink

February 4, 2005

Safa Sez: Search Worth $14 Billion In 2007, But No One Amazed

Piper Jaffray analyst Safa Rashtchy has been covering the paid search space for ages, offering one of the earliest independent predictions of future spending. Rashtchy's Golden Search Turns Platinum from MediaPost looks at how his March 2003 projection that search would hit $7 billion was greated with amazement, while his recent November 2004 estimate increasing that figure to $13.5 billion seems to have caused hardly a ripple. Why? "I think search is now accepted as a big business," Rashtchy said. In this article, a closer look at his latest estimates -- though as always, I dispute that "contextual search" is search or that those figures should be lumped in with search.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:48 AM | Permalink

February 1, 2005

Another Web Search IPO in the Works

The Reuters article: China search engine eyes IPO informs us that Chinese search provider Baidu.com has plans for a U.S. IPO sometime this year looking to raise $200 million. In June 2004, Google became a minority investor in Baidu.com.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:05 PM | Permalink

January 31, 2005

NYT On Yahoo's US Gains & Google's Endless Betas We've had nearly a year of full-blown search wars, but the New York Times notes in Search Sites Play a Game of Constant Catch-Up that despite new releases and "me too" matching of products, Google has still increased its share of searches worldwide from 44 percent in November 2003 to 47 percent in November 2004.

So all's great for Google? Not at all. Yahoo had a gain too, from 25 to 27 percent. And in the US, it was much more dramatic. Google rose from 37 percent to only 38 percent. Yahoo leaped from 29 percent to 35 percent, not that far behind Google's share.

What's behind the gains? The article has lots of quotes from me commenting on how Yahoo shows a desire to define a project, deliver on it and move on. In contrast, I remark how Google delivers something in beta form, then moves on to something else without seeming to finish the job.

Whether this operational style is behind Yahoo's growth or if there are other factors, I don't know. Google responds that it's hard to say it's dropped the ball on any major releases. With respect, I beg to differ:

Google Images -- one of only two NON-beta products out there -- was allowed to be nearly a year out of date with images. Only now is it showing signs of being updated.
Gmail remains both still in beta and invite only mode nearly a year after its rollout. How about finishing it up and making it public before moving into other things?
The Orkut social network service? Ditto.
Google Desktop still doesn't support Firefox indexing. We've had some notable Firefox developers get hired by Google recently -- perhaps they could take a minute or two to help make what we view in Firefox searchable?
The Google Toolbar that has been out even longer than Google Desktop still doesn't support Firefox.
Google is literally years behind providing query refinement support to searchers. Google Suggest is Google catching up on this front with the other major players. It was a "20 percent" free time project that one of its engineers cooked up and still hasn't come onto the actual site. It should have been an 80 percent time priority to happen years ago.
Google Catalogs? Another beta project rolled out then apparently abandoned. The most current Ikea catalog is from 2003. Just kill it, already.
Google News nearing its third year of beta? Google cofounder Sergey Brin has said before that it will come out of beta when it's ready. If it's not ready after three years, when will it be?
Similarly, in the NYT story, Google says it will keep the beta label on things until time can be found to add "important features" to these products. Three years for Google News, over two years for the Froogle shopping search engine -- if time hasn't yet been found to put needed important features on these products, then pull them off the home page.

The reality is that Google seems to have no distinction between what makes a "beta" product versus a "final" product. Even the story notes that some of the beta products from Google have been upgraded with new features over time. Any of those times would have been a time to take them out of beta.

How about this roadmap to follow:

Alpha: You release a product in limited form to a select group of users. Gmail, Orkut are alphas.
Beta: You release a product to the general public with the expectation that feedback will be taken over a short period of time (two to three months) before a final release happens.
Final: You put the product out on the Google home page or accessible via the More link on the Google home page. Anything out in front of the public in this way is no longer a beta. If it is still a beta, then get it off the main site and back into Google Labs.
Point Release: After the final, this is when you add substantial new features to a product. Froogle today is arguably Froogle 2 or Froogle 2.5, given that it has had several major enhancements.

As for point releases, these needn't be labeled for the general public. Froogle doesn't have to be called Froogle 2, for example. But it is useful to use the terminology for those who are commenting on the changes. It lets us say things like "the second release of Froogle" and know there are substantial alterations that have happened.

Google Groups is a classic example of this. Google Groups was a final product. A new Google Groups 2 came out in limited beta. Then it was deemed good enough to replace the original Google Groups. That happened -- but what DIDN'T happen was removing the name beta from what really was a final product.

Believe me, I love that Google has a fun, creative process -- something I did mention as part of my interview for the NYT story but which didn't make the cut. That's probably because I was much more negative about being frustrated by the lack of completion Google has shown.

At this point, Google is well overdue for an operational pause. Don't roll out anything new until you bring stuff out of beta or declare it dead and no longer supported. Then please give me a wealth of new, fun, exciting and technologically disruptive things in the way you do so well -- as well as a firm timeline as to when those things will either receive official, final support or get rolled back out from public view.

More more on this topic, also see More On The Endless Betas Of Google and if you're a Search Engine Watch member, my Breaking Out Of Google's Beta Limbo that charts when major Google services were launched and how they they were (or still are) in beta.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 1:13 PM | Permalink

January 28, 2005

Impressive Quarter for InfoSpace

Infospace had an impressive Q4 with their profits almost doubling. Accoding to recent company filings. Here are some highlights:

Infospace fourth-quarter net income was $18.9 million, or 50 cents a share, compared with $9.9 million, or 29 cents a share, in the year-ago period. Revenue climbed to $79.7 million from $39.0 million. Revenues for the full year 2004 were $249.4 million, reflecting a $117.1 million (or 89%) increase over the full year 2003. Net income for 2004, which includes the gain from the sale of its Payment Solutions business, was $82.4 million, or $2.26 per diluted share, versus a net loss of $6.3 million, or $0.20 per diluted share in 2003.

The INSP news release also includes a breakdown of search-related revenues.

Directory revenues were $47.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2004, an increase of $18.8 million or 66% from the fourth quarter of 2003. During the fourth quarter, total paid searches in North America for both Search and Directory were approximately 205 million, an increase of 32% from the prior year fourth quarter. Average revenue per paid search was approximately $0.19, an increase of 27% over the prior year fourth quarter. Search & Directory segment income was $21.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:12 PM | Permalink

LookSmart Reports $1.5 Million Loss

LookSmart reports a $1.5 million loss for last quarter, blaming the failure to go after sales in high-margin topics. Next quarter, it expects a loss of $4 to $5 million. More details from ClickZ: LookSmart Details What Went Wrong. The company had warned losses would be greater than predicted and recently reorganized. See the past post LookSmart Reorganizes, Raises Loss Projections for more on that.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:44 AM | Permalink

January 18, 2005

Report: Paid Search Still Hot In 2005, But Growth Will Slow

MediaPost's Report: Rich Media's The New Paid Search looks at eMarketer's predictions that 2005 will see rich media overtake paid search in terms of growth. But paid search spend will still dwarf rich media, $4.7 billion predicted versus $1 billion for rich media. Paid search will make up 42 percent of the predicted online advertising spend this year.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:55 AM | Permalink

January 14, 2005

LookSmart Reorganizes, Raises Loss Projections

LookSmart has revised the loss it expected to make last quarter from less than $1 million up to $1.4 to $1.7 million. Reason? Lower revenues due to not getting as many new advertisers as hoped. In reaction, the company has reorganized into two divisions: consumer products and paid listings/syndicated technologies, with new execs named to lead those. More details from ClickZ: LookSmart Warns, Shuffles Execs.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:00 AM | Permalink

January 13, 2005

WPP Pushing More Into Search Marketing

Ad agencies don't get search? Well WPP Group says it gets it in a big way. From Revolution, WPP eyes world domination with search marketing arm tells us briefly that the organization plans to launch a network of 47 offices worldwide to focus on search marketing through a new agency, mSearch.

Bouncing ball time here: mSearch has been made by rebranding the AdvancePositions.com company that WPP acquired in 2000. But wait a minute, didn't I just post out WPP has acquired other firms that eventually were rolled up and rebranded into Outrider in my Will 2005 Bring More SEM Acquisitions post last month?

Why yes I did. So I called Mike Chowney, who is heading up operations of the new mSearch company outside the US. Yep, mSearch will compete with Outrider to some degree, but that's the only other WPP unit he's aware of with a search marketing focus.

Outrider does more than search marketing, of course -- mSearch will be focused entirely on this. But it still feels odd that one media group will have two different units that could compete against each other for business. Or perhaps that's the way WPP wants it :)

Postscript: See also mOne Forms Search Unit

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:42 AM | Permalink

Search Ads Were Hot In December 2004

DoubleClick-owned Performics has provided more figures about the holiday shopping period and search, finding consumer searches were way up in December.

Based on what? Performics compared clickthrough in December 2004 to all of the third quarter of 2004. On average, daily clicks were more than double (144 percent) for December than on average through the third quarter period.

Conversion rate in December was also up, 124 percent when compared to the average of the entire period.

Average ad price per click rose 23 percent -- but as the volume of clicks greatly increased, overall ad spend in December was up more than double compared to the third quarter average.

A few more stats from this Performics press release, along with a quote saying search was good to consumers and advertisers. For information about previous releases for the holiday period, see the DoubleClick Says Black Friday Was Good For Search Marketing post.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:56 AM | Permalink

Survey: Google Still Leads, But Competitors Closing Gap

In today's SearchDay, Yahoo & MSN Closing the Google Gap, Chris Sherman looks at a new study that finds while Google is maintaining its leadership position with searchers, Yahoo, MSN Search and Ask Jeeves have all made significant improvements over the past year and are narrowing Google's mindshare advantage.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:39 AM | Permalink

2005 Ad Spend To Rise 30 Percent; Search In 2004 Ranked Third

A Deutsche Bank/MediaPost survey predicts ad spend will increase 30 percent in 2005. Looking back at 2004, 42 percent of ad spend went toward branded ads, according to the survey based on questioning 100 media executives. Direct response followed at 24 percent, then paid search at 10 percent. Paid search might involve some branding or direct response, of course, but the survey doesn't seem to encompass this.

What will be hot in 2005, in terms of new focus. Half said behavioral targeting, followed by video ads at 21 percent, then local search and pay-per-call coming in at 16 percent. General search ads don't make that list? If not, it sounds like because it may not have been included as something new as a focus area.

MediaPost has more details in Deutsche Bank: Online Ad Spend Could Grow By 30 Percent In 2005.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:34 AM | Permalink

January 12, 2005

$$$ in Desktop Search?

Can money be made in desktop search? Business Week's Ben Elgin offers his thoughts in a new article. He writes, "The money-making potential of desktop search is dubious in the short term. The various players haven't announced business blueprints, but it's likely that some will experiment with ways to cash in, such as placing relevant ads alongside search results." The complete article: Can Desktop Search Find Profits? is available here.

Posted by Gary Price at 2:33 PM | Permalink

Google At $235 Per Share?

RBC analyst Jordan Rohan thinks that expansion in Western Europe, more spending on search advertising, and more searches generated through broadband growth means Google is going to be worth more. His previous target price was $200. Details from The Street: Google Target Rises. Thanks for the tip from Search Engine Guide.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:38 AM | Permalink

January 7, 2005

New Numbers: Value of China's Search Market

Asia Puluse (via Yahoo News) reports that China's search market in 2004 was valued at $113.6 million/U.S. and is growing at 60%-70% annually.

Posted by Gary Price at 9:24 AM | Permalink

$10 Billion From Paid Search In 2009

From MediaPost, Merrill Lynch Bullish On Paid Search, 'Neutral' On Google has Merrill Lynch predicting that paid search might generate $10 billion in 2009, up from $3.4 billion estimated last year. Google gets rated neutral given its stock is already considered "fairly valued."

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:44 AM | Permalink

January 6, 2005

Web Search Into Consumer Search & Other Reflections

In today's SearchDay article Looking Back, Looking Ahead: Developments With Consumer Search, I review some major developments I saw in search during 2004 and try some looking forward into 2005.

In particular, I think this year will be one of web search morphing into consumer search, where major search companies offer a robust range of ways to search for information in specialized areas.

In the article, I also reflect on:

How legal issues will continue to impact the maturing search industry.
How personal search has erupted as a significant new force for change.
How vertical search features will continue to usurp general web searching.
Why search marketers need more support from search engines.
Why everyone should understand search doesn't mean just paid search and that contextual isn't search at all.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:38 AM | Permalink

January 4, 2005

Search Spend To Rise 25-30% in 2005

Media forecaster Jack Myers predicts search spending will rise 25-30 percent this year, based on a survey of 225 ad industry executives. A few more details here from DMNews, Forecast: 2005 Online Ad Spend Will Rise 30%, and also from this summary at Myers's own site.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:35 AM | Permalink

December 19, 2004

Australia's Sensis is Confident

The article: Sensis confident of online advertising success, takes a look at how the company's ownership of content gives Sensis an advantage over Google, Yahoo, and others in Australia.

"The winner in this market will be the organisation that can collect and organise the content most efficiently and be able to publish it in many forms - voice, wireless (for handheld wireless computers and mobile phones), PC internet and print," said Greg Ellis, general manager of Sensis Search

Posted by Gary Price at 3:55 PM | Permalink

Friendster's Director of Net Ops Joins Feedster

Nick Heyman, formerly Director of Network Operations for Friendster, is joining Feedster. He'll be doing the same type of work for the RSS search engine. More on Scott Johnson's blog.

Posted by Gary Price at 3:41 PM | Permalink

December 9, 2004

Omidyar Invests in Feedster

The Omidyar Network (Pierre Omidyar, Founder and Chairman of the Board of eBay) has made an undisclosed investment in Feedster.

"We recognize that Feedster is fulfilling a need in the marketplace by delivering more relevant information from individual commentary, blogs, and edited news sources," said Doug Solomon, Vice President, Investments, Omidyar Network.

December 7, 2004

Google CFO Say Clickfraud Needs Fast Fix

Gary blogged earlier about a Financial Times article on clickfraud. Here's a related one from CNN, inspired by Google CFO George Reyes telling an investor conference recently, "I think something has to be done about this really, really quickly, because I think, potentially, it threatens our business model." For more, see Google CFO: Fraud a big threat.

Reyes later comments accurately that clickfraud is not just a Google problem. Others such at Yahoo, eBay and Amazon also are impacted. But as for a solution, nothing was offered.

Jessie Stricchiola, one of our regular speakers at Search Engine Strategies on the topic, is quoted saying the search engines aren't doing enough about the problem -- and she says despite the refunds Google issues, they are the most "stubborn" and "least willing" to work with advertisers.

For more on the topic, see also my past blog post Clickfraud: Whose Problem, FTC, Search Engines Or Advertisers?. FYI, our Auditing Paid Listings & Clickfraud Issues panel returns to Search Engine Strategies next week in Chicago. Once again, both Google and Overture have declined to take part.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 11:26 AM | Permalink

December 6, 2004

December 3, 2004

Former Compaq CEO Takes Top Job at Search Company

Eckhard Pfeiffer, the former CEO at Compaq, has been appointed as CEO at new business search engine Accoona.

Accoona, set to launch on Monday evening, is owned by the China Daily Information Company in partnership with the China Communications Corp. Here's what they say about the service (we still haven't used it), "With a database of over 20 million US companies and over 30 million companies worldwide, the user will be able to search for businesses utilizing a large array of criteria: such as Name, Physical Address, Telephone, Fax, Business Description, industry category, company's URL and geographic location." Accoona utilizes an open web crawl along with some proprietary info.

Posted by Gary Price at 9:32 AM | Permalink

November 30, 2004

Lycos Reselling SEO

There's discussion on our forums about Lycos reselling SEO services, causing some firms to wonder if more search engines will do the same and perhaps have an unfair advantage by clients who will assume they have some type of inside knowledge. Read more here in this forum thread, Lycos, ASK to resell SEO in the US. And Search Engine Lowdown has Ask downplaying the idea of it trying to do the same.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 12:41 PM | Permalink

Snap Stats: Seeing What's Up With Snap.com

Via John Battelle, news of a nice nice write-up from SiliconBeat looking at the data Snap is freely providing about its operations, such as daily earnings, number of enrolled advertisers, ads generating clicks per day and other information.

Any worries that too much information is being given out? Nope, said founder Bill Gross, in the story Snap: the future of transparency?

You can see Snap's data directly via the its stats home page. Charts show number of advertisers, paid click, daily searches and more.

Drilling down via the financial stats page, I see that November has been the best month for the company, earning it $1,631.68. That's above the $1,176.40 in October, the only other month revenues have been earned.

Via the advertiser stats page, LookSmart is revealed to be the company's top advertiser in the last 30 days, spending $1,303 with Snap, dwarfing the next highest advertiser of Smarter.com at $90.

A traffic stats page shows that Top20.com just edges out Google as the site's top referring source. Both generated on the order of 50,000 referrals over the last seven days.

And yes, there is a keywords stats page, with "location" as the odd top query for the last seven days, followed by "book summary."

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 12:23 PM | Permalink

November 29, 2004

Mentioning Google For Good PR

Gary blogged earlier about ridiculous press releases that make mention of being top ranked in Google or getting a Google PageRank increase as a way to attract press attention. The LA Times has a nice, short write-up consolidating both of those absurd incidents along with another: Google Ranks High in Press Release Mentions.

At the end of the write-up is a story about Synergy Brands having its shares sore 42 percent after announcing it would be a Froogle "select merchant." Even the company's own chair describe the rise "irrational exuberance," though it rings a bit false since his own company put out the press release obviously hoping for some type of gain.

Deconstructing that press release is interesting. It says the company has been "selected" by Google to be one of "the select merchants" in Google's "soon-to-be-introduced shopping engine" Froogle. Reality check?

Google doesn't really "select" anyone for Froogle. Material is gathered from across the web if it appears ecommerce related. And if Google doesn't find you, then anyone can submit a feed. It's hardly exclusive. Or to quote from the site about getting in: "How much do I have to pay to be included in Froogle? Zip. Zero. Nada. Inclusion in Froogle is completely free. Our goal is to enable users to search over the broadest possible range of products for sale online. To do that, we include all merchants at no charge."
There is no such thing as "select merchants." Perhaps Synergy feels it is "select" by being on Froogle, but Froogle itself conveyed no such distinction to Synergy.
Froogle isn't a "soon-to-be-introduced" service. The shopping search engine was launched nearly two years ago. It remains in beta. Perhaps Synergy knows something about it being released from that status? Nope, Google tells me:

"We have not made any announcements of Froogle coming out of beta, nor is there a 'select' merchant program associated with Froogle. Synergy Brands is just another merchant submitting feeds to Froogle," said Google spokesperson Eileen Rodriguez.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 1:39 PM | Permalink

November 10, 2004

A Chat with the CEO of Business.com

Here's a search tool we haven't heard much from in recent years...

If you're wondering what Business.com has been up to, Susan Kuchinskas at InternetNews.com offers up an interview with Jake Winebaum, CEO of of the company.

Its directory now contains 26 major industry categories and more than 400,000 listings within 25,000 sub-categories. Although the glamour is gone, the site boasts 12 million unique visitors a month and has carved out a niche providing its targeted search to online business publications.

Q: Business.com launched in 2000, but there seemed to be a two-year hiatus between 2002 and 2004. Is that the case?

A: We've been in stealth mode for a while. We learned a lesson: Deeds, not words. We built this thing out, kept it under the radar screen. Now, so much attention is being given to specialized search, we've been raising our hands.

Btw, Business.com just announced a new round of funding.

Posted by Gary Price at 3:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

No, Microsoft's Not A Google Killer. Nor A Yahoo Killer

John Battelle has a nice post, Can We Please Bury The Netscape Metaphor, pushing back on the idea that Microsoft will roll over Google just like it rolled over Netscape.

Yeah, too right it's a bad comparison! I've been saying this for ages, in response to the many press articles that have pursued the metaphor since the search wars heated up last year.

Since the hype is picking up again as a result of Microsoft's expected new search technology rollout tomorrow, here's a recap of my past thoughts on the subject:

Some have assumed that back before the Google IPO, Microsoft would bulldoze Google because of its large cash coffers. This neglected the fact that Google had already done amazing things without needing much cash at all. My article from Nov. 2003, Surprised Google & Microsoft Talked Takeover? You Shouldn't Be!, looks at this more.

My review in February about a New York Times article on the subject of Google v. Netscape looks at how the media was painting this picture back then and earlier. It also explains that ultimately, we're not dealing with a software product this time but a media product. It also notes how there's a third player in this battle, Yahoo, and highlights my network model view of search that I've discussed since back in 2003:

This isn't Microsoft-Netscape part two. Instead, this is ABC-NBC-CBS-FOX. There's unlikely to be one overall winner, but a particular search network may get a larger share than others depending on the quality of its programming.

In March, I revisited the issue and highlighted how unlike with the battle against Netscape, Microsoft didn't buy technology this time to jump start its efforts. Imagine the situation today if it was already using good technology it had purchased from someone like Ask Jeeves or AllTheWeb.

In April, I pulled everything together in my Search Wars: Battle Of The Search Superpowers article, looking at the current battle Microsoft is fighting against not just Google and Yahoo.

Microsoft is a serious competitor to both Google and Yahoo, not to mention AOL and Ask Jeeves. But it's not likely to wipe either Google or Yahoo out. It's in for a tough, long fight with no guarantee of victory.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 2:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 28, 2004

Internet Search Firms are Parasites

Internet search engines will kill growth in the online publishing business according to Andrew Hart, managing director of Associated New Media, the online publishing arm of the UK's Associated Newspapers.

According to this Journalism.co.uk article, Hart called search firms "parasites" during a recent conference presentation.

Here's a bit more:

"Everyone from billion dollar conglomerates to penniless bloggers all have the freedom to publish and exchange information and ideas." said Mr Hart.

"And from the user point of view, search is the start of online journey. It's as if all the knowledge in the world is just one click away."

But he said that search has now become a tool that can be exploited, with specialist agencies paid big bucks by big business to improve their position in search results.

"This kind of complex distortion is only made available to the big players and will make business in the long term impossible for small firms," said Mr Hart.

"Spend on search is the fastest growing sector in online advertising spend, so money is flowing to just a handful of online web search brands - and to those with only the biggest marketing budgets."

The article also includes comments from: + Lorraine Twohill, director of European marketing at Google + Paul Rossi, publisher of Economist.com He describes Google as a "brand killer."

Read the entire article: Online publishers rail against Google.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 14, 2004

GuruNet: Another Search Related IPO

GuruNet, the useful "answer engine" and search utility began trading on the AMEX yesterday. Details in this story from Israel's Haaretz.com: GuruNet launches on Amex.

If you've never taken a look at this tool, it's more than worth a look. Here's a link to Chris's positive SearchDay review: GuruNet: A Handy Information Magnet.

Btw, in the past few months GuruNet has: + Released a desktop search beta + Launched a version of their client for the Mac + Launched a web-based version of their product. You can now access most of their content without having to download any software.

Posted by Gary Price at 9:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 13, 2004

Baidu Set to Double Revenue in 2004

According to this Reuters article, Chinese search company Baidu will see their revenues double in 2004. Google holds a minority stake in the company.

The country's search market will be worth an estimated $50 million this year and its expected to grow to $200m by 2006, according to iResearch. A recent iResearch survey found that Baidu is nearly twice as popular among Chinese Internet users as Google, with a market share of about 49 percent. But competition has been rising after Yahoo beefed up its presence by buying 3721 for $120m late last year.

Posted by Gary Price at 11:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 30, 2004

Will Better Search Sabotage The Business Model?

Microsoft search researcher Eric Brill suggests that as search gets better, it will be less a money-maker: Microsoft Researcher Questions Search Engine Business Model from CRN, a nice catch from Search Engine Guide. Brill's comments were made yesterday at a conference at MIT. Brill's been involved in developing an answer engine for Microsoft, as Gary's blogged before: Microsoft Research Gets Serious About Search.

I'd love to have known more of the discussion. I'm guessing the idea is that if you give people the perfect answer naturally in the "free" results, they won't need to click on any of the ads.

Perhaps. But I also suspect we'll see that for very popular, very generic searches (think cars, movies, dvd players and so on), the "free" stuff simply won't be shown until well after ads. And as long as those ads are fairly relevant, it probably won't send most users fleeing from search engines.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 29, 2004

More On Mixing Contextual & Search Spending

Niki Scevak saw my Google's Revenue Is Not All Search-Derived post yesterday decrying the mixture of contextual and search revenues and points out that Jupiter Research's own paid search estimates appropriately don't mix the two: The Myths of Contextual Advertising.

He goes on to discuss how AdSense doesn't just mean contextual at Google any more. Instead, it's an umbrella term they now use to represent both "AdSense for search" and AdSense for content."

This came up on our forums earlier this month: AdSense for search? As I explained there, Google shifted to using the umbrella term internally a few months ago. You really saw it make its public debut in the Google IPO filing, when AdSense was used throughout those documents to represent any type of ads placed outside of Google.

Advertisers, of course, tend to think of two different things: AdWords (meaning ads that show up in response to keyword searches) and AdSense (meaning to advertisers the ads that show up contextually placed and which are considered by many of them as an option they can choose for their AdWords campaigns).

From Google's point of view, AdWords is simply the program that lets advertisers place ads into the AdSense program -- which means both AdSense for search and AdSense for content.

Niki goes on to outline that contextual ads are in his view a dismal earner for Google but one it can afford because they represent incremental income for the service, rather than its bread-and-butter. Don't forget, the deals also have the impact of denying Google competitors from gaining partnerships, denying them cash). He also notes Google is stepping back from some "vanity" deals which may have even cost it money.

Meanwhile, Kevin Ryan takes another look at those IAB search projection figures I blogged about earlier, the ones where contextual doesn't appear to be broken out. In his Why Search is Slowing, Ryan gathers a few comments about the fears of a slowdown in search, despite still incredible rises. In short, some leveling off was in order.

He also notes that keyword search emerged as an ad format in 2002. To be correct, the ad format was there well before this. It was just that no one bothered to track it.

Spending on paid search ads began with Overture back in 1998. It happened even earlier than that, if you want to count keyword-linked banners. Google started carrying paid ads at the end of 1999.

All this spending could have been tracked back then. It wasn't. It took the rosy public financials of Overture to wake up Wall Street, research firms and even advertising organizations to something advertisers were already doing: spending on search in droves. My Search Engine Marketing Finally Getting Respect article from 2001 looks at this more.

Meanwhile, tracking of spending on "free" or "organic" or "natural" search seems non-existent. That's something that research by SEMPO may help correct. It's long overdue. Not having these figures is like trying to predict the state of any type of marketing solely on ad buys but not public relations efforts.

Postscript: The IAB figures do apparently track spending on search engine optimization as well as advertising.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 6:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 20, 2004

Search Spending Continues To Rise -- But Contextual Is Lumped In

In the second quarter of this year, paid search advertising was nearly $1 billion -- a 29 percent rise from the same period as a year ago. It also makes up 40 percent of all online ad spending. This is according to new figures from the Interactive Advertising Burean and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

However, I'm fairly positive that contextual ads -- which are NOT search advertising -- are nonetheless lumped into these figures. That's because I don't see a separate category for contextual. If this is the case, then the figures are misleading. They give no idea what's really fueling the rise -- more spending on search, more spending on contextual or what???

More details from MediaPost here: Search Expands Role As Online's Ad Engine. And Gary tells me when the actual report is out for the public, you should be able to find it here.

Want to comment or read discussion of this topic? Please visit this thread in our forums: Online Advertising Coming Back: Search Surging.

Postscript: The report is now available. The definitions DO include contextual ads as "contextual search" and part of search spending. That's bad. On the upside, spending on "site optimization" IS included, so the figures aren't purely on the advertising side of things.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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