Microsoft cause delays for Yahoo!

Yahoo has stated that the partnership with Microsoft is not going swimmingly. The top level email provider and search engine have a drop in revenue because of technology delays. The internet company has announced a 28% drop in profits as it has to halt development while Microsoft make amendments to their technology.

28% in Yahoo terms is about $300m – Yahoo stated that the new systems at present are not paying off.  Yahoo was also hoping that this partnership with Microsoft would have been the missing component in their business model in achieving a greater market share.

Two years ago Yahoo brought in a new chief executive to improve the growth of the company, and over the two tears there have been mixed fortunes. The comment was made that Yahoo will not re visit the revenue levels that they experienced before they merged with Microsoft till the end of the Year. Many experts believe that this might not happen as well.

The chief executive forecasted that the revenues would pick up around mid 2011. However delays have caused Yahoo to miss this forecast.

Yahoo is striding forward and making progress because of its efforts, the goals are that they will be expanding into a fast-growing mobile internet market – utilising the very receptive video marketing platform.

After the short decline in share price and much criticism, Yahoo’s turnaround is on schedule, and all people involved are confident that Yahoo is going in the right direction.

Bing finally crack the 30% search market share in the United States

For the first time, Bing has exceeded 30% of the search market share in the United States.  It could be argued that this is partly down to their coalition with Yahoo.

Bing commanded a 28.48% search share in January.  However, in February that increased by 5% to 30.1% according to Experian Hitwise.

Whilst the coalition may have had a bearing on the increase, both Bing and Yahoo search traffic increased.  Yahoo increased from 14.99% to 15.69% while Bingo went from 13.49% up to 14.32%.

Whilst this may get the attention of Google, they don’t have too much to worry about yet.  Despite their market share slipping from 66.69% to 64.42% they still hold double the market of Bing and Yahoo.

In order to try and compete with Google, Bing joined forces with Yahoo in July 2009.  The alliance saw Bing run Yahoo’s search engine.

The coalition was permitted by the US Department of Justice and the European Commission in February 2010.

Yahoo! Peruses the Mobile Market with Assistance from Nokia

Nokia have recently confirmed their agreement with NAVTEQ, who will supply their mapping service and a partnership with Yahoo! who will provide a Mail and Chat service. So, what can we expect?

Yahoo! has in the past has been traditionally quite slow in jumping onto the Mobile Market bus. While Google and Microsoft have developed their own OS, Yahoo! has not been as productive. However, better late than never – Yahoo! has got some help from a very popular and known mobile manufacture that will seriously boost its efforts.

The key aspect that Yahoo! has secured with NAVTEQ and Nokia alliance is that the much recent revised maps and Yahoo! Chat and Mail will be pre installed into all future handsets. This set up is very similar to Google Search being the default search engine on the iPhone, but is it too late?

This market is very competitive and Nokia have locked horns with the likes of Apple, HTC and Samsung on many occasions. So, in summary we have 2 separate business types that are trying to complement each other in their own heavy changing markets. Could it therefore be possible that this partnership could distract either Yahoo! or Nokia from its core business activity and so be detrimental to them?

Having considered all these aspects and elements to the partnership, it potentially might not alter any market position for Nokia or Yahoo!. There is an argument that the main mobile marketing battle is currently raging between the OS for iPhone and Android. The Apple iPhone is the most popular consumer device and this has pushed Google’s search platform further.

The Partnership has a massive hill to climb to compete with Apple and Google. For sure, it may generate a spike in interest and Yahoo! will have their brand name on all supporting devices generating more visibility, but will that worry its competitors enough?

Just to make Yahoo’s intentions a bit harder, Bing have been working towards being a default search engine on other devices, by using offers to users, manufactures and distributors that may become fruitful in the future. However, at present Google is the dominate search engine and without needing to check a crystal ball, they are likely to stay dominate.

Yahoo’s major problem is that the search is not strong enough, while their homepage is littered with news, videos, sounds, popular content and a very valuable email following. Breaking into a fierce market with nothing new will be very difficult.

The mobile internet is a new battlefield for the search giants to attack and hold. With their partnerships with Nokia and NAVTEQ, Yahoo! will be rolling into battle in good stead and moral, assuming that there is something to fight for? We already know the brand name and the financial weight that Apple has and they have stamped their authority on the mobile internet ground. Can Yahoo compete, with or without Nokia?

Bing Challenge Google local with Bing Deals

In competition to Google Offers and Yahoo Local Offers, Bing is launching their own local deals service in America.

Microsoft’s offering will be called ‘Bing Deals’ and will cover 14,000 towns and cities, offering over 200,000 offers to users.

Rather than create their own platform, Microsoft has teamed up with service provider, The Dealmap.

Andy Shu, director of product management for Bing Mobile said, “Bing’s mission is to help you cut through the clutter of the web to make decisions more quickly – whether that’s through our own innovations or by teaming up with industry experts.”

Access to Bing Deals is relatively widespread with access available from desktop PC’s, the iPhone and Android mobile devices.  However, because it does not run on HTML5 software, users will not be able to access the service on Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 operating systems.

Bing Deals users can look for offers by location (geolocation when accessing by mobile) and by category.  Offers can be shared with contacts via email and saved.

Google threw their hat into the ring in January by launching Google Offers in an effort to cash in on the ever growing social commerce trend.

It’s not a surprise that it’s not available in the UK yet as Google usually test the water in the US prior to rolling out globally.

Yahoo! Re-vamp Search Result for ICC Cricket World Cup

As with all search engines, Yahoo! continually explore ways to improve the user experience.  They have chosen the ICC Cricket World Cup to change the appearance of certain search results.

Yahoo’s objective is to provide users with relevant information rather than the standard results.  Specific to certain cricket keywords, users will now be able to see the following information on their search results:

* Live Scores – Searches such as ‘live cricket’ or ‘cricket will provide users with current scores for live matches (up to 2) or results of previous games.  The details will reveal current scores, who’s batting and the scores of the 2 men batting.

* Schedules – as you would expect, this will display upcoming matches (up to 3) with time and date of the match.  If you search for specific team schedules, Yahoo! will return results showing the fixtures of that particular team.

* Player Profile – Whilst the Cricket World Cup is on, searches on specific player names will return player statistics.

Yahoo! claim this is just the start and plan to roll out similar experiences for other major events.  This initiative ties in nicely for Yahoo! as they are the official event website for the 2011 ICC Cricket World Cup.

Google Continue to Lead the comScore Rankings

The findings of the latest rankings report from comScore confirm that the most popular search engine in America is Google.  No shock there!

The report advises that Google had a staggering 65.6% share of searches carried out last month.

Yahoo! came in second with a 16.1% share.  Microsoft’s Bing followed Yahoo! with 13.1% which is a rise of 1.1%.

The January results saw a decline for Google.  In the December 2010 comScore results saw Google with a 66.6% share of searches.  However, not too much for Google to worry about yet as during December there were more than 16.4 billion core searches carried out on the web as a whole.

January saw almost 17 billion core searches carried out on the web with 11.1 billion of them belonging to Google.

The Yahoo! Transition to Microsoft Continues

The Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance team are continuing to make progress with their global transition of Yahoo Search functions to Microsoft’s search platform, adCenter.  With the US and Canada already implemented, the Search Alliance team made further progress by adding the organic search for Australia, Brazil and Mexico last week.  This is another milestone for the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance team as they continue their efforts to provide a smooth transition for their advertisers and partners across the world.

The objective of the transition is to provide a competitive option in search with greater value and efficiency by supplying superior audience on a single global platform.

Yahoo! and Bing will work closely together to provide the organic and paid search results for Yahoo! within the Microsoft Advertising adCenter.  The Search Alliance team plan to make the switch for the UK, Ireland and France in the first half of 2011.

Google smash December 2010 Search Engine Rankings

Specialists in measuring digital world statistics, comScore, have released its latest search engine rankings for December 2010.  As you would expect, Google dominate the search engine market in the United States.

A staggering 66.6% of searches were carried out on the search engine giant’s pages.  If nothing else, this should convince companies using digital media to invest in using Google for their pay per click (PPC) campaigns.

Google have increased their market share by 0.4% during December compared to the 66.2% reported for November 2010.

In comparison, Yahoo snatched 16% of the market share, dipping by 0.4% and Microsoft saw an increase of 0.2% taking them to 12% of the distribution.

Of the 16.4 billion searches carried out during December, just short of 11 billion were carried out on Google.

The results of the search engine rankings were as follows:

Yahoo undertake online shoppers survey

With another festive shopping spree behind us, Yahoo! decided carry out research to find out how search played a role for shoppers.  The key question for Yahoo! was: How are people who use search as part of their shopping process different from other shoppers?

Yahoo got together with marketing consultancy agency, AddedValue to survey 2000 shoppers.  They were quizzed about their shopping habits and whether they used search before making a purchase.  Yahoo discovered that those who used search as part of the purchase process represent a group of hyper-engaged shoppers.

The survey revealed that the hyper-engaged shoppers had more knowledge of products and used more online resources than non-searching shoppers.

The survey revealed the following facts:

50% of searchers source customer reviews and ratings online
43% of searchers visit shopping comparison websites to make an informed decision
37% of searchers visit coupon websites to check daily deals
25% of searchers check out a brand’s social media channels like Twitter and Facebook
53% use their mobile devices to help them research a purchase

Following the survey, Yahoo! invited it’s hyper-engaged shoppers to provide them with feedback so they can try to improve the users experience where possible.

Search set to dominate online spend in 2011

The search market is ending the year as it started 2010 by controlling online spend.

According to a recent IPA Bellwether report, advertisers are increasing their search budgets by 9.9% for the next quarter.  Despite the touch economic climate marketers remain confident in performance based marketing.

 Search advertising has now grown out of its infancy so users are no longer scared of using it and are confident in its transparency.

We have seen performance marketing outgrow the conventional use of search and affiliate work and move towards the Twitter and Facebook ad models.  Earlier in the year we saw large brands moving direct response funds from Google to Facebook.  This came as a result of agency work that proved search campaigns can be successful on social media.

Google could be justified in being a little concerned in this trend as reports suggest the social media trend will continue to grow over the next 12 months.

Another aspect to keep an eye on is the fresh approach from Yahoo and Microsoft.  Their combined platforms are offering advertisers new opportunities but has yet to hit the dizzy heights of Google’s strength in brand.