Posts Tagged ‘Search engines’

Yandex – Yet ANother inDEX?

September 26th, 2011

There are parts of the world where Google is not dominant. In Russia the search engine Yandex is the market leader with a market share of over 60%. Helped by rapidly growing internet usage in Russia, the search engine doubled the number of searches it handles between 2008 and 2009. For online businesses operating in Russia there is no question about the importance of Yandex (for more about search engine marketing in Russia read our Internation Search Review post) but since the launch of an English language search engine in 2010 should the rest of the world be thinking about Yandex?

There are two aspects to this question:
1. Will Yandex gain a large worldwide market share?

2. Are there other reasons to observe what Yandex is doing?

Will Yandex gain a large worldwide market share?
In my opinion, no. Right now people have no reason to use Yandex. It is not integrated with any of the online services commonly used in the West, nor is it the default search engine on any of the main browsers. The only ways Yandex can increase market share are either by spending a lot of money on advertising (this is working, but very slowly, for Bing) or by being better at search than Google. Unfortunately for Yandex, they can’t just be a little bit better they need to be a lot better; studies (by Microsoft) show that people say the quality of results from Bing are equal to those of Google, but only when the Bing results are wrapped in Google branding. Any new search engine that wants to dominate the market needs to be an order of magnitude better, just as Google was in 1998.

The search technology behind Yandex
Google beat the competition with their PageRank algorithm. Page and Brin realised that strong webpages were more likely to be linked to from other strong webpages. In other words, they picked a feature that they thought good webpages should have and then built their search engine to rank pages with this feature.

Yandex’s MatrixNet algorithm is very different; given a list of good pages for a queryspace, MatrixNet uses machine learning to decide which features distinguish them from the average. Then they rank pages with similar features in that queryspace. This method is a great defence against spammers because any feature that becomes common is no longer a powerful ranking signal. For example, if everyone has an optimised title tag then having an optimised title tag is not a signal of quality.

The main weakness with the MatrixNet approach is getting the list of good pages to begin with. The internet is too large for this to be manually curated so there has to be another algorithm to generate the list of quality sites. This algorithm must be very conservative in the sites it selects, otherwise results quality will suffer a lot; imagine if having a large number of AdSense ads became a positive ranking factor!

Google’s recent Panda updates use a similar approach. Matt Cutts (Head of Web Spam at Google) has said that they “came up with a classifier to say, okay, IRS or Wikipedia or New York Times is over on this side, and the low-quality sites are over on this side”. However, this algorithm update can only reduce rankings, not increase them so Google do not need to be as conservative with how it is applied (some site owners say they should have been a lot more careful).

As evidenced by their Panda update (and many other projects), Google has the technical ability to do machine learning at web scale. Should Yandex’s approach begin producing SERPs of amazing quality then Google can copy their approach before Yandex’s market share reaches critical mass. This is why Yandex need an order of magnitude improvement over Google; they need to capture a large amount of market share before Google improve their algorithm to match.

Why you should pay attention to Yandex
Like Yandex, the browser Opera also has a large market share in Russia without being a big player in the West. Opera introduced features like tabbed browsing and “speed dial” that have since been imitated by Firefox, Chrome and others. Web designers watch how Opera are innovating because some new features will cross over into the mainstream.

Similarly, you should keep an eye on what Yandex are doing because they take a different approach to search and successful features from their algorithm are likely to appear in other places.

Blog post by Richard Fergie, Consultant at Reform

What data tells us, and how it helps us to improve.

February 4th, 2011

“Data consists of propositions that reflect reality, such as measurements or observations of a variable.” (Wikipedia)

The definition doesn’t necessarily fire one up with enthusiasm or excite your imagination, right? Once I had a boss once who was fond of saying to me, usually when I’d come up with a new and crazy idea for a product or service, “Ah, Mary… that’s all very good, but what does the data tell us?”. She would then squint her eyes and turn on her heel in a most disturbing and enigmatic way. I finally realized, years later, that what my boss hoped for was by my burying myself in the ‘data’, and scrutinizing it for pattern, shape and linear connectivity, the empirical truth and Holy Grail of marketing certainty would emerge… and into the bargain, she would avoid the risk associated with impulsive experimentation. Today marcomms, marketers and media folk have the collective opportunity to use data to afford both discovery and alacrity of purpose.

All around us, the web provides endless streams of real time data… after all, that’s what enabled the internet to become a reality – bits of datum connecting with other bits of datum. Now that should makes us EXCITED, because as it is real time data, we can test and experiment with our new ideas, and gauge almost immediately if those ideas are having the desired impact on our customers and our commercial objectives. We have this opportunity to disseminate and analyse enormous amounts of consumer behavioral data, sound bites, conversations, blogs, films, tweets, transactions and check out drop offs etc.  There’s so much of the stuff, where does it begin and where/when will it end?  THE TRICK IS – DO NOT BE OVERWHELMED!

Reform recognizes that our clients and their agencies will need independent expertise and informed guidance into how best to manage all this information and shape it into meaningful business insights.

We also recognize that solutions must be both robust and cost effective, and most often a selection of automated tools alongside human squirreling, will yield the most powerful results.  To this end we have developed sway, our proprietary tool for developing business strategy based on information derived from amalgamating digital data sources. Our sway breakfast seminar on February 15th is a must attend event, and the opportunity to learn more about Reform’s services in this area. (for more info about this event please contact events@reformdigital.com). I hope to see you there!

Blog post by Mary Keane-Dawson, Non-Executive Director at Reform

Bing & Wolfram Alpha? Research Based Search Engine Results Could Bring That Personal Touch

November 16th, 2009

You may (or may not) have heard last week about Microsoft’s deal with Wolfram Alpha – which has been in talks for the last few months and now allows Bing’s search engine to integrate Wolfram Alpha’s database results (in the US only for now). It should be noted from the start, that Wolfram Alpha is not a search engine itself, but more an information database.

The results will generally be integrated for certain niches, such as health (like nutritional information) and statistics (population, GDP, history, etc), but with a very unbiased and real time approach (with results you can interact with). And perhaps this is not huge news to some people, but it sort of hit me as big news.

It’s better than news of other recent Bing developments, such as how natural results on Bing offer content snippets and related keywords along with dividing the results across the keyword you entered, videos, local listings and several variations – a souped up version of Google’s “universal” project, or even the fact that the first page of results now includes several keyword variables, that results in 20 natural listings on the first page (which is quite a bit longer, but still shorter than the results page of Naver in Korea), because face it, its not new. Same goes for the Bing “XRank” thing they implemented, where users find out how popular the name of someone they entered is. Nothing new there.

So why is this still good news for Bing in my opinion? Because its about time! It’s about time Bing (previously known as MSN, Live, etc) started looking towards a different direction for providing search results. It had been wasting way too much time and probably too much money trying to be like Google in recent years.

FINALLY, Bing may be thinking “long term”, with this acquisition. Maybe it will use this and its Facebook share to give more of a “person to person” feel in results (even the real time Twitter results could help, if they figure out a way to get past the “junk”). Combining Wolfram Alpha with Wikipedia results (which Bing US already integrates under its own site) might help too.

Maybe even add a bit of new colleague Yahoo and their Yahoo Answers offering? Suddenly, instead of a commerial search engine going against commercial search engine, we’ve got one that is taking potentially taking the more “person to person” and “research based Wiki” approach. The one that looked many steps behind for a while now, is starting to look more modern? Strange, but its starting to hint at that.

Many innovative search engines have come and gone over the years, but the main reason many of these failed were that they simply lacked the budget to get seen, let alone have competitive results. Microsoft’s Bing at least has the budget part checked off.

But how about this Bing, forget about profit for a while. Let Google concentrate more and more on its increasingly aggressive marketing model (by this I mean, behind the scenes and how AdWords teams are concentrating on generating client spend. Not conversions, not traffic. Spend.) Take some more time behind the scenes and develop a more “personal” based search offering. Do it right and become a research based medium – and traffic might come back over (more than the single digit percentage share you have right now).

Then, when you’ve established a new type of user experience, turn up the profitability a little – in order to cover increasing resource and overall company management. This sort of approach worked like a charm for someone else, um, what were they called? Oh well, I guess this isn’t 100% new either.

Anyway, here are some reference points (saved as screenshots for non US users).

1) Wikipedia Content being served under Bing.com URL

2) Screenshot of a long page in Bing’s results for “auto insurance” featuring several keyword variables

Do I think Bing’s improved in the past couple of months? Yeah, but I also think it’s got a long way to go. Still, it’s finally looking in a different direction though, and thats a start.

UPDATE: You can integrate WA results on Google too, but only if you install this Firefox plugin – https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/12006

Blog post by Niall Madden, SEO Director of Reform

Who are you talking to, Mr Advertiser? What do you want me to do??

November 12th, 2009

 

I like adverts. In fact, I really like some of them.

I’m that annoying person who laughs out loud in the cinema. I get there early so I can see them before the film starts. And, let’s face it, a tube journey would be dull without them too, so we should embrace them. The good ones that is. The ads I like best are the ones that work. The ones that have a hard hitting message or a funny story within .

Sometimes they are really clever and you might not see it at the first glance. You need to look deeper, and when you get it they make you smile or frown or tut- depending on what the aim is.

So what is really annoying me at the moment are the Yahoo! ads that have been popping up all over the place. What the hell are they trying to tell us? What do they want to sell to us? I can’t work it out. Apparently it’s all about me. It’s personal. I’ve been told by people on the inside at Yahoo that the ads do not feature models but rather ‘real people’. That would explain the wooden poses. But what do they mean? Where is my call to action? Most people in the non media savvy world still think of yahoo as an email provider and these adverts are not exactly going to change that.

Someone said to me just the other day “I didn’t know that Yahoo had a search engine” but I don’t roll my eyes and explain how it all works any more. I spent 4 years doing that while I worked for Yahoo search. It seems to me that Yahoo could have just put up massive billboards on roundabouts around the UK saying “Hey! Yahoo also has a search engine” and they would have achieved so much more.

They are not the only big media owner trying to show us some love right now though. Oh no. However, Microsoft has got it right. All along the travelator in Waterloo yesterday, I was being bigged up by Microsoft. They listened to us, the normal folk. They made changes that people like me suggested. We count. Microsoft appreciates us. Smiley happy people beamed at me from large ads.

Happy happy happy.

I got on the Northern line wondering what Windows 7 means for me. Even though I had not played any role in the Windows 7 release, I saw the ad, understood what they wanted me to think and now I am aware of the product AND I even know some of the new feature improvements. Well done Windows. Their ads picture people (who may or may not be ‘real people’) and it doesn’t matter to me at all because I can see what they are representing.

Google and Bing to Add Twitter Tweets in Search Results… Is That a Good Thing?

October 22nd, 2009

News came out yesterday that claimed both Google and Microsoft Bing are going to include a bit more tweets from Twitter in their search results.  The search marketing world was abuzz, with comments and ideas for how they can expand their search marketing capabilities and how Bing and Google will benefit greatly from these “real time” updates being integrated in their search results.

Really?  This is good news?  Perhaps I should tweet it to the contrary.  I say, hold on a second.  How relevant are most people’s tweets to the general public anyway?  Lets have a look.  Bing is already doing a beta of this in the US.  All I can say is that it’s good that it’s separate from the real results. 

Google’s blog at http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/rt-google-tweets-and-updates-and-search.html tells me that with Twitter integration, I can now find up to date snow conditions at my favourite ski resort.  So I tried to look for the “weather in Chamonix” and “weather in Whistler” on Twitter Bing (http://www.bing.com/twitter/).  Which by the way is the same as http://search.twitter.com for the most part.

One had no results, the other had ONE.  And it wasn’t even of any use.  No real time info, just some person tweeting that the weather was nice…. yesterday – so much for real time.  

Lets try something more commercial then… what’s more commercial than insurance!!  Here the results are split between blatant sales pitches (that came from automated twitter accounts and have links that redirect to affiliates) and people’s every day lives – such as one that reads “I just got car insurance, what up yall!!!”  True story, not mine.

Don’t get me wrong, Twitter has a lot of use for people that already know you or your company, your brand, etc, and want to know more or be kept posted – such as our Reform Digital account that lets followers know the second this blog is posted (quite ironic I know).  But if you’re a complete stranger that happens to query something related to this page’s content, I’d rather you find this posting in the search results and not the much briefer condensed tweet – which will of course put this lovely page an extra click away. 

While I know many brands have taken advantage of Twitter, to launch unique offers to users who “follow” them, in some ways like the email lists of old – putting this sort of thing on the regular search results sort of defeats that purpose.  Brands lose out from the quality of direct connections that are more likely to convert, and users lose out by seeing a wave of search results that get valued by the engines, but don’t really have much use in most instances. 

From the user end, will it open more Twitter accounts?  Maybe.  Critics such as Steve Rubel of Edelman Digital believe that Twitter already has the users who want to use it.  For the most part, he feels “everyone who wants to publicly tweet is already doing so”.  And I agree.  But, I do think there will be a wave of new accounts and more traffic for Twitter with this search engine integration. 

Brands, advertising, just like the profiles that went astray when mainstream media looked at MySpace and Facebook as revenue generating opportunities.  Its one thing to make sure your brand reserves their presence, and I’m all for proactive campaigns – but there’s a difference between a Tweet about a product offer from a person I know and a search result featuring a tweet from a stranger that tries to befriend me.  Can I really trust the latter? 

One positive that Bing’s Twitter integration claims to have is that it will only expose the tweets from the last 7 days.  This is a good start, as the last thing I want is an archive of tweets muddling up the index in Bing or Google for that matter.  On the other side, all the tweets I see in the results are pretty irrelevant.  Only time will tell I guess.   Twitter can be easy to spam also, which is why I liked the fact that it wasn’t fully integrated in search.  And it’s very easy to post an article and just get loads of accounts to link up to it.

Some articles cite that you can get real time weather, news opinion from regular people and sports information now that Twitter will get integrated on search.  Hmmm, I could get that stuff online already.  This just makes sure I get to see everyone who bangs on about it and thinks I care.  Lets see how Google fares. Good luck.

Blog post by Niall Madden, SEO Director of Reform

Update: Here’s what the US version looks like (for those that can’t see it).

Bing Twitter Homepage in US