search marketing blog: ambergreen

Microsoft and Google are in the midst of a war of words as Bill Gates’ behemoth accused Google of adopting a ‘cavalier’ attitude to copyright laws, criticising Google’s use of books, TV, films and music without seeking permission.

Google has earned millions from the use of intellectual property to which they did not have rights, a situation to be discussed by Tom Rubin, associate general counsel at Microsoft, at a presentation to the Association of American Publishers in New York yesterday.

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Microsoft is offering a webcast on adCenter and the tools that it provides to help target the right audiences by demographics.  The adCenter webcast will discuss the system and related tools and offer case studies and demonstrations designed to focus on improving ROI. 

To be broadcast on Wednesday 17^th Jan 8:30 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada) – sign up here.

A new McAfee survey has found that AOL has the most trustworthy search results, not listing sites that might be unsafe for searchers. Testing 2,500 results McAfee found that only 3.6% of those sites returned in the top 5 pages for the queries were unsafe or risky.

These figures show that the engines seem to be winning the war against unsafe spammy sites, with the vast majority of results being safe. The red results above are dangerous sites (i.e. giving out adware, sending spam if you give an email address) and yellow sites, which are classified as those which deserve caution (tries to change browser settings, pop-up ads).

Interestingly it was the paid results that were found to be the most risky across all search engines, as seen below.

This survey was first carried out in May, with the update information being added two days ago. Changes over the past 6 months show that since the release of the first study in May 2006, the percentage of red and yellow sites in search results decreased from 5.0% to 4. 4%. But while Google, AOL, and Ask now return safer results than they did in May, while Yahoo! and MSN return riskier results.

Microsoft seems to be taking another step in the ‘keep up with Google’ game and have launched a beta version of Live Search Books, a direct competitor to Google Book Search and yet another example of how Microsoft is trying to keep up with the neighbours.

Providing content from out of copyright texts only, Live Search Books is, according to the team behind it, “working hard to offer the most relevant Search service to you, our customers. There is a lot of trusted and authoritative content that can only be found in books today. With this beta launch we’ve taken our first steps toward making that content discoverable and easy to read.”

As Google makes moves to organise the world’s information, it was only matter of time before Microsoft made similar moves, but given the head start Google has had on them, it may seem to be a move designed to keep them in line with their competitor, if nothing else.

Live Search Books looks good and provides some really interesting results – but so does Google Book Search. But only time will tell and as Google steams ahead in its bid to catalogue every piece of information available on well, everything, it might be difficult for Microsoft to distinguish their service enough.

As mobile web use continues to grow, MSN has announced the beta launch of Live Search Mobile client, a local search mobile service offering users three different ways to search.

Offering a mobile software application download, mobile browsing and via the map at mobile.live.com/search, the service makes pulling up information on the go even easier.

MSN’s mobile client allows users to search for directions, get up to date traffic information and search maps quickly and easily on mobile devices, pulling maps directly from Microsoft’s main servers and making it easy to click and drag, as well as zoom in and out of maps.

The service is even accessible via text message for those who don’t have a web enabled mobile. By simply sending a text with a request such as “music stores, washington” you can immediately get the nearest applicable business’ addresses and phone numbers.

See more about the US only application at Live.com’s mobile search about page.

Following the poor Microsoft share prices seen last week, Erik Selberg, one of the brains behind the Live.com team has let rip with an insider’s view of the problems Live faces if it’s to challenge rivals Google and Yahoo for their search market share.

Take a look at the Search Engine Watch blog to find out what Selberg has to say, it’s not optimistic stuff and somewhat reminiscent of the Yahoo! ‘peanut butter’ memo from last week. 

Google, MSN and Yahoo! have teamed up to support Sitemaps, a free open source software tool which allows webmasters to make their site more accessible to search engines.

Sitemaps will allow a catalogue of pages to be created in the form of an XML file listing URLs along with additional metadata, and will also inform spiders of content updates and newly added pages.

This is an interesting development and an unusual one to report on! It’s not every day that you can say that Google, Yahoo! and MSN all back the same development, but better indexing can only be good for the web and it’s good to see the search giants put their weight behind such a project – it can’t be too long until everyone else joins in.

Have a look at the interview from PubCon where the announcement was made.

Both Google and Yahoo!’s share of the search market continues to grow, with the former driving 78% of referrals in the four weeks to 21st October 2006, up 9% on 2005’s figures for the same period according to new stats published by Hitwise.

As Yahoo! retains second place with 7.7% of the market, Hitwise revealed that the share of referrals from search engines to e-commerce sites has grown.

VP of Research Heather Hopkins said: “Google and Yahoo! Search in particular are seeing strong growth in their share of the UK search market and their share of referrals to online retailers. Growth for these search engines seems to be organic, driven in part by toolbar usage but also growing familiarity with the Google and Yahoo! brands.”

Microsoft’s 3D mapping system Virtual Earth 3D went live yesterday allowing local search results to be mapped in a three dimensional way.

With only 15 major US cities offering local search mapping at present, it may be a while before UK results are offered, but Live Search expects to extend the service to other locations shortly. The detail is impressive however, and it is almost possible to look into the office windows and see me tidying my desk (don’t be silly, it’s not that good).

A competitor to Google Earth, Microsoft’s Live Search option is a step towards a three dimensional internet, giving users a visual rather than a text based experience.

Stephen Lawler, Virtual Earth’s general manager recently told vnunet.com; “Microsoft is … bringing the richness of [Windows Live] plus all this 3D stuff into the browser window.” The virtual world experience is even to be carried over into the way in which advertising is displayed, with ads displayed as part of the map environment, for example as billboards on the side of roads and buildings.

With local search becoming one of the fastest growing online activities, Microsoft is hoping to capture a significant portion of the market with it’s interactive technologies.

While the maps are a bit clunky to use in some areas at the moment, it certainly seems as if this is one service that Microsoft will be putting a lot of effort into in the future. Have a play around with it and let me know what you think.

Microsoft published a patent last week which discusses some of the indicators that might be used to determine which results are shown and which to hide. With engines constantly striving to provide the most relevant results, avoiding duplicated results is key, a process which the patent application provides some insight into.

According to the abstract; “A system and method are provided for optimizing a set of search results typically produced in response to a query. The method may include detecting whether two or more results access equivalent content and selecting a single user-preferred result from the two or more results that access equivalent content. The method may additionally include creating a set of search results for display to a user, the set of search results including the single user-preferred result and excluding any other result that accesses the equivalent content. The system may include a duplication detection mechanism for detecting any results that access equivalent content and a user-preferred result selection mechanism for selecting one of the results that accesses the equivalent content as a user-preferred result.”

Fortunately it does go on to be a bit less geek speak and a little more easily digestible.

Taking into account various factors including URLs, navigation and domain extensions, this patent indicates how Microsoft might filter comparable results. Take a look at SEO by the Sea for an analysis of the patent.