SEO Blog

It’s always nice to see new competitors rise up and try to sneak a piece of the market pie, no matter how insignificant the initial slice may seem. In a world where four search engines currently dominate, with one holding a significant share above the rest, there is always a chance that an unseen newcomer will sneak in thru the shadows, and leap up to topple one of the giants when they least expect it…

Ok that’s a little dramatic. But it’s good to hear about new search engines springing up in this Google dominated world.

Accoona (name derived from the Swahili phrase Hakuna Matata, which means “don’t worry be happy”) is one of the latest engines to announce its presence in the search engine market. Although it was founded in 2004, Accoona has been refining itself over the last year. The engine officially introduced its enhanced AI technologies on March 8th, 2006.

Accoona at a Glance:
Accoona offers a clean and simple interface with plenty of white space, a design obviously borrowed from Google. That’s a good start, since this clutter free model is a proven winner amongst users. There are three ways to search Accoona. These fall under News, Business or Web. From the main page you can select to sort by relevance or date.

I had a question or two come in about my last post, and the coffee break drop off. Somebody said - is it like “Google’s Sandbox” - you know it’s there, but show me how to prove it. So I’ve pulled out a chart showing the traffic. This is page loads with each spike representing 5 minute increments. It represents data from 100+ sites, and up to 11,000 page requests / second. Not insignificant.

I still can’t quite figure out the drop off, but it’s been obvious over the last few days.

BTW - 0 is midnight, PST, 12 is Noon, PST

Kind of looks like a nice mountain to climb or ski on

Thoughts / ideas?

Richard

Baidu , China’s largest search engine, and cell phone company Nokia, are teaming up to provide mobile search for Chinese markets. The collaboration between the two companies will see a Baidu search button implemented on some Nokia wireless devices, targeted at mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

“We have chosen to collaborate with the leading Chinese language search provider to connect our Chinese users to information and to each other with the touch of a button,” said Dan Wong, vice president of Multimedia Sales and Channels at Nokia, China. “We are confident that this cooperation will strengthen both Nokia and Baidu’s position as leaders in mobile search in China.”

Specific Nokia phones will be fitted with a Baidu search button, giving mobile users access to Baidu’s Web Search, News Search, Image Search and Post Bar. No specific dates have been given as to when the new phones will be released. However, mainland China users can download a pilot application at http://www.nokia.com/mobilesearch.

I haven’t been posting a lot, but I’ve been busy. Not an excuse, just a statement. Jamie’s a great writer, so I haven’t been pressed to post as much either. As some of you know, I’ve been busy working on a great project. While doing so, I’ve noticed something interesting that I wanted to share.

I’ve been monitoring consolidated usage reports on over 100 sites recently. The details are interesting i.e. market share, breakdown within Google for different countries, usage rates for all the engines in each country, State, city, etc., and also the ways people use Google Images v Yahoo Images, Google Local v Yahoo Local.

One strange thing I’ve noted over the last 5 days is a consistent drop in search traffic at 10:30 PST every day. Traffic goes up across the ‘net starting at around 2:30 a.m. PST and grows steadily until it reaches a peak at around 1:15 pm PST every day. Then it flattens, and drops until 4:00 pm PST, holds steady until 8:00 pm PST, after which is slowly declines until 2:30 a.m. PST.