There are rumblings of discontent amongst webmasters, online marketers and internet users. Has the search engine giant Google taken its eye of the ball and seen better days? By diversifying into multiple markets and trying to be so many different things to so many different people, and by changing its core product from a Search Engine to a Knowledge Engine, has Google lost its way?

With such a dominant market position and with so many pies to keep their fingers in, is it possible that Google have become complacent in their very comforable throne? This speculation is not questioning the scale of the role Google has played in making the internet an accessible, user friendly tool for the online shopper, browser and inquisitor. This is not a piece to dispute the positive influence Google has had; rather it is an attempt to interrogate the possibility that the quality of Google’s core activity has started to wane. 

Poor quality search results

Webmasterworld is a trusted and established discussion resource for search engine optimisation specialists the world over, and in recent months their forums have started to simmer with the hushed whisperings of a search engine revolt. The consensus of those in the industry is that the quality of Google’s search engine results has slipped to a place where results being served are the worst they have been for many years.         

This belief is probably best expressed by Brett Tabke, who runs Webmasterworld: “Right now I continue to receive some of the lowest Google results I have seen in years: Duplicate sites, irrelevant Google property spam, author images and squeeze page results. It just feels like Google is in the middle of a full scale panic.”

The SEO team at Liberty had a little dig around, and it didn’t take long before we came across an apt example for one of the internet’s most highly contested key phrases – ‘payday loans’.

Page one of Google’s search results last week can be seen above. Not only are none of the industry’s biggest, most trusted names included, but at least four of the results have nothing to do with payday loans whatsoever – they are hacked websites. Is this the new black-hat way to get on to the first page of Google - hack someone else’s website?

As yet there is no acknowledgement from Google of this problem, although concerns must be rife that the latest batch of algorithm updates and filters intended to improve user experience have had the opposite effect in many cases. However complacent Google may have become, it seems baffling that an organisation which has so shrewdly forged its place at the head of such an innovative industry can allow an obvious flaw in their core activity to remain unchecked for so long.

Flouting of privacy laws 

Aside from poor quality search engine results, internet users are feeling alienated by the Google brand, which is guilty of sending mixed messages to its customer base. Google’s ‘Do no evil’ mantra, which aims to portray the company as their ethical, trusted friend, has time and time again proved to be disingenuous or even dishonest at worst, as Google’s interpretation of privacy seems to differ from that of its users.

There is no shortage of events which have made it clear that privacy does not appear to be a priority for Google’s powers that be. This is in direct conflict with internet users and government officials, who see privacy as a central issue.

In March the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) charged Google with unfair privacy practices, when it set the gmail contact details of users of its ‘Buzz’ social media service as public by default. The Google browsers Chrome and Android have also caused a stir by failing to offer users a ‘Do Not Track’ option, meaning that all of the movements and actions of browsers are tracked in a transparent attempt to digest all of the private information available.

There have also been much publicised investigations, particularly in the EU, into the collection of personal data via Google Street View. Following claims from Google that the collection of data (including emails, passwords and other personal information) from unprotected wireless networks was a simple mistake, fresh insight cast the complaints in a new light. The engineer responsible for the creation of the software claimed he had informed the Street View team that the software he had designed would collect this information, flouting EU laws, although during interviews with the Federal Communications Commission, the Street View team denied knowledge of the report. 

Perhaps the icing on this rather bitter-tasting cake is the recent scandal which clearly flies in the face of Google’s increasingly fragile ‘Do No Evil’ slogan. The company reached a $500 million legal settlement with the U.S. Justice Department to avoid prosecution on charges that it knowingly accepted hundreds of millions of dollars in illegal ads from Canadian online pharmacies, which included illegal drugs and controlled substances.    

Possible alternatives

With these transgressions in mind, which competitors are best placed to gobble up the scraps from Google’s table if it continues to flagrantly contradict its ethical pledge?

Figures detailed in a recent search market share report from Compete.com show that in the last month Bing fielded 19.2 per cent of all search queries, which has led to an increase of 4.2 per cent since August 2011. With a fifth of the market, Bing is certainly no small fry and Microsoft are steadily gaining in confidence. The recent launch of Bing It On, a search engine comparison service, perfectly illustrates this point.

Bing It On allows users to enter five search queries, comparing the results side-by-side with those from Google. Although the test is only available in America, Bing claim that an independent study found that users preferred the results displayed by Bing to those produced by Google by nearly 2:1. Bing have clearly thrown down the gauntlet on this one.   

A more recent entrant to the market, Duck Duck Go, believes Google’s position has weakened to such an extent that they are actively targeting the growing anti-Google crowd. An illustrated guide by the newcomers, http://dontbubble.us, shows just how Duck Duck Go aim to capture a different breed of internet user by offering less presumptuous search results, which offer a more rounded range of information by breaking users out of the bubble that search engine tracking automatically imposes. 

The Future

So how do we expect these developments to impact on the future of online search?

If the Google decline is set to stay and Bing, along with other new entrants, continue to mop up their disillusioned users, the market will segment and SEOs will have to pander to the algorithms set by other search engines to keep achieving results. Until now, SEO strategies have been devised to follow Google best practice, but if Bing continue their surge, before long SEOs will find themselves moving to the beat of a new and slightly drum. Regardless, these developments bode well for the internet user. A more tightly fought market will drive innovation and increase the search for competitive advantage, which in our experience is never a bad thing.

A recent study has shown that Google may be falling short of Microsoft's search engine, Bing, when it comes to the helpfulness and relevance of their search results. The study looked at just how many searches made using the search engines actually resulted in a visit to one of the suggested websites. The findings were very interesting; around 80% of searches conducted on Bing resulted in the user visiting a link provided by the search engine. Meanwhile, over at Google, searchers made use of the links provided by only 67% of the searches.

This brand new research has been conducted by the web tracking firm, Experian Hitwise, who concluded that both search engines showed room for substantial improvement in terms of the number of search results that users actually go on to explore. Researchers at Experian Hitwise believe the high percentage of searches which did not lead to a website visit shows that both search engine services could stand to enhance the precision and usefulness of their results.

The results of Experian Hitwise's study could suggest a number of things. While it is possible that Bing, and its related search sites, are simply more likely to come up with the link or answer that searchers are looking for, the results of the study could also mean that people using Bing and Google are using the two search engines in different ways and for different reasons. This may account for different patterns of use and may mean that the disparity between the two does not necessarily reflect badly on Google.

The comparative success of Bing over Google in this section of the search engine market, however, looks as if it could be mirrored by the state of the companies' respective market shares. In July, Google's US search market share dropped to 66.05%, a drop of 2%. Searches conducted through Bing on the other hand experienced a 1% increase, taking their share of the market to 28.05%. The most substantial growth, however, was recorded by the Bing-affiliated Yahoo, whose shares in the market ballooned by 4% to achieve a 15% share of the market. Interestingly, and perhaps relatedly, searches conducted on bing.com itself dropped by 2% to 13%.

The latest comScore Press Release shows that between them, Bing and Yahoo! now have a 30% share of the US search market. The two search engines are set to merge later in 2011, which would create a serious competitor to Google.

Whilst Google is still far in the lead, with over 65% of all searches, the percentage of queries made using its system has dropped by 0.3% in April compared to March. Bing and Yahoo! each rose by 0.2% during this time.

In the UK, the amount of market share that Google has is believed to be 90%+, though Bing is rising in popularity on this side of the Atlantic too, so it certainy shouldn't be ignored by search engine marketers.

Our Pay Per Click team has found, across many businesses and markets, that Bing and Yahoo! traffic may be a lot lower in quantity, but it redeems itself in quality. In sectors as diverse as software, insurance, training and clothing, conversions were slightly more expensive when sent over from AdWords than they were from traffic brought in by the adCenter and Yahoo! Search Marketing systems.

If you are an AdWords advertiser then we recommend testing out adverts in adCenter. Now is a good time to get started - before the rush.

With Microsoft Advertising adCenter now providing all paid search results for Yahoo! Search and Bing in the US, and Bing supplying the organic search results for Yahoo! Search, they have just announced that this will be rolled out in select markets across europe and the UK in early 2011.

The european transition will begin with the UK, France and Ireland with all of europe expected to be completed by early 2012.

Current advice is to continue using adCenter as normal but to expect further information regarding the pending changes approximately 3 months prior to any changes taking place.

This week Yahoo! announced that their transition from Yahoo! Search powered results to Bing search results is complete. The organic results are now powered by Bing in the US and Canada, whilst the search ads are still from Yahoo!

As a result of the deal signed over a year ago, Microsoft now owns 28.1% of the US search market (as of July’s 2010 comScore numbers), though this figure still represents less than half of the 65.8% share held by Google. In the UK, Google’s market share is thought to be closer to the 90% mark.

The change may not be immediately apparent to Yahoo! users, as the search interface will remain the same. However, the eagle-eyed will notice on the status bar in their browser that the search data is actually loaded from Bing.

Another crucial factor in the deal is the migration of Yahoo! search advertisers to Microsoft’s adCenter platform. This stage is currently still under development, with Microsoft “optimistic about completing this phase later this year.”

So what does this mean for businesses? The main thing is that there is one less search engine to optimise a site for. If your sites were high up on Yahoo! but not Bing then this is bad news, if however, you were ranking well on Bing, then those high rankings you are enjoying will now expose your business to a lot more searchers.

The other main impact is the migration of Pay Per Click advertisers from Yahoo! Search Marketing to Microsoft adCenter. The programmes work slightly differently and anyone who was using YSM will now have to familiarise themselves with the Bing system.

A new article on Business Week, here, details how Twitter has managed to get both Google and Microsoft to pay them for the right to include tweets in their search results.

The article states that "In exchange for making short blogs, known as tweets, searchable on Google, Twitter will receive about $15 million…adding that the Microsoft partnership is worth about $10 million. "The deals were huge…With two scoops of the pen, a lot of revenue came in."

This is pretty big news as it's the first time that either of these major search engines has paid to index a website and is especially surprising given recent activity in the web world. Last week, Google was successfully sued in French courts for copyright violations, thanks to the books it has scanned and lets people search through the Google Books engine. The company is also currently in a war with Rupert Murdoch and NewsCorp for indexing their news articles which get placed within Google News.

Writers and journalists around the globe must be scratching their heads, wondering why search engines are willing to pay millions for random tweets, yet their own content gets included regardless.

Twitter must be over the moon as this marks the end to a very successful year. Since starting up in 2006, Twitter has become one of the most popular and respected websites on the internet, growing at a phenomenal pace during 2009. Even so, the site still wasn't making any money. Whilst this deal doesn't make the micro-blog that profitable (it barely covers the estimated annual running costs), it does show that the vast amount of information held on the website is valuable and if the site keeps growing, selling content could become a very lucrative revenue stream.

According to a recent report by Advertising Age, an exciting new deal is in the pipeline between Yahoo! and Microsoft. If it goes ahead, Yahoo! will use Microsoft’s Bing as its search engine instead of its own, effectively joining forces to become a more serious competitor to Google.

The deal could have a huge impact on Search Engine Optimisation. comScore reported that Google commanded an impressive 65% share of the search engine market share in June, while Yahoo! and Bing held 19.6% and 8.4% respectively. If all of the current Yahoo! users were to continue using Yahoo! via Bing, their combined share would reach 28%, which could really begin to challenge Google in the future.

So what does this mean for your SEO? A number of possible things. If your website currently ranks well in Yahoo! but not in Bing or Google you could really be in trouble of not ranking at all. Alternatively, a website at the top of Bing and Google but not for Yahoo! could see a considerable increase in traffic, as Yahoo! users will now see their site via Bing’s engine instead.

Pay Per Click advertising could also see a major change. Either Yahoo! Search Marketing will be replaced by Microsoft adCenter, or the two will merge. This could affect the Cost Per Click and positioning for many of the Sponsored Links found when a search query is made.

In recent years, Google has been criticised for its strict rules and T&Cs as well as its somewhat monopolistic nature towards the World Wide Web. This is fairly understandable, given that two-thirds of all Internet searches are run through them. However the Ying/Bahoo! engine could encourage Google to relax or change some of its policies and prices, especially if the combined alternative becomes popular enough to claw away some of Google’s dominant market share. This could have a radical effect on AdWords, AdSense and other Google services in the way that they’re operated and managed - perhaps a potential sigh of relief to many search engine marketers.

Overall, the important thing to understand is that change could be on the way, with this new partnership being a possible indication of things to come. Anyone who believes that Google will remain the king of the search engines forever will be hugely unprepared if Bing and Yahoo! meet or even overtake its share of the search engine market. Of course this might not happen at all, but it’s best to be ready, just in case.

OVER the past decade the battle between the main search engines has remained intense and, even though Google has long been the dominant player, it looks like the real fight is only just beginning.

Since Google launched, just 11 years ago, the company has become synonymous with the internet and how we find information. But rather than scare off competitors, it looks like the meteoric rise of the search giant has inspired many internet entrepreneurs to have a go themselves.

The problem these hopefuls face is differentiation. Without a new or improved way of presenting search results, why would anyone stop Googling and take up their service instead?

Existing engines are being re-inventing to try and grow market share (the new Microsoft Bing and recently re-branded Ask Jeeves are examples), and new entrants are coming up with big ideas they hope will drastically change the way we search.

While many have tried to develop world class search engines – and failed – developers now have the advantage of access to over 10 years’ worth of data on people’s search habits. Technology firms now know how we want information presented to us and are trying to find new ways to satisfy us.

The end goal of all search engines is to present us with the answer to our question as soon we ask it. Even though search engines of today offer results much more accurately than ever before, it is still sometimes a chore to find specific information. Many companies are investing a lot of R&D dollars in Latent Symantic Indexing. LSI focuses on the meaning of words and the relationships between different phrases, rather than just looking at a word as a collection of letters. Google has invested heavily in the technology and believes that it will allow them to present users with the most accurate results of any search engine.

While accurate Latent Symantic Indexing may still be some way off, several of the latest search engines feature new innovations that its creators believe will allow them to stand out from Google.

Bing, a search engine developed by Microsoft, is officially only a week old, although it is based on the company’s previous offering, Live.com. It is being touted as a “decision engine” as it offers more information to searchers, helping them make choices and leading them to their goal. This is clear with the preview button that appears next to searches, which when clicked offers a more in-depth look at the web page. Reviews so far are very positive, concentrating on a much improved quality of results. These changes have helped Bing receive more traffic than Live.com, but will they be enough to keep this growing after the initial buzz, and $100 million advertising campaign, die down?

Wolfram Alpha is the most important search engine you’ve probably never heard of. Its creators prefer not to have it known as a search engine – instead they call it a “computational knowledge engine”. Rather than presenting users with a list of search results to choose from, Wolfram Alpha tries to answer their question by displaying data from a knowledge base. Putting “Cardiff” in as the search term brings up a page showing the location, population and weather of the city, among other things. It’s this creative way of trying to get us straight to what we are looking for that is leading to this site becoming touted as a future competitor to Wikipedia as well as Google.

Recently there has been a whole host of new Google applications and features, almost too many to follow. It is easy to spot the keyword options that drop down below the search box, but less clear is the “Show options” link displayed at the top of the search results page. It offers more in-depth options so that a user can choose where they want to take the search. Choices include narrowing results by time, such as “Past 24 hours” or “Past week”, and having the option to mix image results with web pages. There is also the option to show the relationships between keywords in a graph, called the “Wonderwheel”.

Will these innovations change the way we search? It’s hard to see how they won’t. All search engines, new and old, are trying to get us to the information we seek far more swiftly. If it wants to continue its reign then Google will continue to develop its technology, either in-house or by acquiring smart sites such as Wolfram Alpha.

(This article was originally written last month for Welsh news website, Waleshome.org).

Microsoft has launched www.bing.com, a new type of search engine that they prefer to call a “decision engine”. The software giant hopes that the replacement for Live Search (which was the third most popular search engine in the UK, behind Google and Yahoo!) will change the way people use search engines. By offering users greater options in the search results and helping them find what they are looking for quicker, Microsoft believes it now offers what internet users have been looking for.

Bing certainly looks different to the other search engines. The large homepage image shows their intention to stand out from Google by avoiding the use of big white spaces. Once you perform a search however, the look and feel is instantly familiar to anyone who has used a search engine before.

When it comes to features, changes include a list of related searches along the top left hand side (Google places them at the bottom of the results) and a nifty little box next to each search result that you can choose to pop-up, with further information from that web page and a list of other pages from that site.

At a first glance, the algorithm seems to be centred much more around local results. Microsoft has shown an interest in local search for some time, and it looks like this could be their bid for that market. Some of the results are a little questionable at the moment, but you can bet that a lot of work will be put into making this Beta release a very strong search engine in the near future.

Will Bing successfully change the way we search? Will it start taking market share from Google and Yahoo!? Time will tell, but with the Bing marketing budget rumoured to be $100 million, you can bet that Microsoft think so.