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Redefining the Search Scenery
By Jim Hedger, StepForth News Editor,
StepForth Placement Inc. (c) 2006

As expected, the roll out of change in the world of search is
proving to be highly disruptive. Though the year is only three
weeks old, noticeable shifts are occurring among the largest
search entities and throughout the search marketing sector,
making the scenery much different this month than it was just a
few short weeks ago. These are among the most interesting times
on the Internet as the largest players are positioning
themselves to take their unique and collaborative runs through
the year of global convergence.

For those interested in search marketing, a number of things
will soon be different, most notably, our assumptions about the
state of competition in the search sector. The three-way race
between Google, Yahoo and MSN is, for all intents and purposes,
over.

Yesterday, Yahoo's chief financial officer, Susan Decker,
suffered the embarrassment of producing a poorly paraphrased
quote. She made a simple, clear and brutally honest statement
agreeing with a reality everybody else already perceived. It
wasn't as much what she said.

Decker acknowledged in an interview with Bloomberg News
(http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/256748_yahoo24.html)
that Google has a much larger share of the global search market
than Yahoo does and that the gap is not likely to be bridged
anytime soon.

"We don't think it's reasonable to assume we're going to gain a
lot of share from Google," Decker said. "It's not our goal to be
No. 1 in Internet search. We would be very happy to maintain our
market share."

The comment left some questioning Yahoo's long-term commitment
to excellence and innovative search technologies. The attendant
controversy stems in part from the way she chose to state the
obvious but also in part from a public perception that Yahoo has
not fully defined its place in the search sector. That three-way
race metaphor wasn't working anymore.

Google dominates today's versions of search and both Yahoo and
MSN are prepared to admit it. In short, the recent past and the
persistent present belong to Google. For its formal rivals, the
only place to look is the future. Time is accelerated, often to
the point of pointlessness in the tech world and that future is
already functioning online. It is just waiting mass user
adoption.

The interview was conducted last week, just after Yahoo released
fourth quarter financial results that, while wildly profitable,
were seen as mildly disappointing by investors. Wall St.
appeared to be expecting Google-sized gains from Yahoo, results
even Google will have a hard time matching when they release
their Q4 numbers next week.

As for the search marketing community, Yahoo actually delivered
good news that was buried beneath Decker's first quote. Yahoo's
CFO was also quoted saying, "We have held our own, and we should
gain revenue share in the industry as we roll out these new
initiatives. Our goal has been to hold our share and to be a
leading, if not the leading, total marketing platform, which
would include both brand and search."

Yahoo is improving its Yahoo Publisher Network and is almost
ready to bring it out of beta. The YPN is a live experiment in
online publishing built on the idea that an increasing number of
individual web users will help funnel large amounts traffic
based on shared interests.

Meanwhile, Microsoft appears to have been badly affected by
losing the AOL deal to Google. It is almost as if Galileo's law
of inertia is applied in double doses in the Pacific Northwest.
Very little search related has moved forward from Microsoft over
the past year though they do maintain a relatively good search
engine.

A year ago, Bill Gates told the world it hadn't seen anything
when it came to search. MSN search had just introduced its own
algorithmic search engine and was ready to challenge Google.
Nine months ago, Steve Ballmer noted MSN search was going to
produce much better results than Google.

Six months ago, Microsoft reorganized its management structure
to streamline integration between its software and Internet
services divisions, challenging Ray Ozzie to bring it all
together. Three months ago, Ballmer was said to be throwing
chairs in a fit over how badly Google was beating Microsoft,
notably around hiring and retaining talent.

A year later, the search results at MSN are pretty much the same
and they still haven't introduced a search-advertising product
to compete with Google's. Again, Google virtually owns the
space.

In the face of Google's dominance, Microsoft is looking inward
both figuratively and literally. The reorganization of its
management system in the autumn of 2005 was the first clue to
how Microsoft is preparing to redefine itself in relation to the
search sector. Gates' comments at the Consumer Electronics Show
earlier this month mark the second.

Microsoft is retrenching behind the operating system right now.
While it is working to release its paid advertising program
adCenter by the summer, much of its efforts are said to be going
towards finally shipping the new Vista OS, with a number of
search and e-commerce tools included.

Google's dominance of today's version of search is absolute, a
big problem for Yahoo and MSN even as they look forward to an
expanded search environment. Search is the primary way to access
information on the web and in order to stay in business,
Google's rivals need to segment the concepts of search and find
ways to excel in specific areas while Google overshadows general
search.

The next few months are going to seem like a waiting game until
the bevy of new products already introduced or soon to be
introduced, (and user adoption of those products), begins to
change the way searchers look for information and results are
compiled. There is going to be a lot more stuff available to the
common searcher and a lot more sources to draw from.

Yahoo is thinking outside the box by inviting users to create
their own media environments in order to facilitate distribution
of pay-per-use content (TV, music, movies) and pay-per-click
advertising.

MSN is again looking inside the box with its newly revised focus
on Vista. It hopes to erase the lines between the user, their
computing device and the Internet by integrating search and
search related products into commonly used software packages.

Google will continue being Google. As long as it continues to
build on its membership driven services and produce better than
adequate search results, the general public is likely to
continue using it more than any other search engine.
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Jim Hedger is a writer, speaker and search engine marketing
expert based in Victoria BC. Jim writes and edits full-time for
StepForth and is also an editor for the Internet Search Engine
Database. He has worked as an SEO for over 5 years and welcomes
the opportunity to share his experience through interviews,
articles and speaking engagements. He can be reached at
"jimhedger@stepforth.com"
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