Google has taken a big enough bite out of the market for too long, if you ask the other search engines.
Speaking of asking, Ask.com relaunches its search engine to take a portion of Google’s traffic.
As expected, most people limit their search options to the top three engines: Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. Ask.com however recently announced that it will be offering question-and-answer services once again in a bid to catch attention by those same search engines.
With the Google Mayday update, this type of fresh content could be just what the doctor ordered to rejuvenate Ask.com’s traction.
The irony of ask.com using the Google search engine to gain traffic against Google is undeniable.
Many in the industry are asking though if it is too little, too late, considering that Bing and Yahoo are also fighting for marketshare by making their own changes.
Consider that Yahoo is now displaying Microsoft Bing organic and paid search listings. This move could account for up to 25 percent of its search traffic in the U.S. as part of a 10-year pact to take market share from the Google search engine juggernaut.
Under the agreement, Microsoft agreed to work with Yahoo and pay 88 percent of traffic acquisitions costs for the first five years under a 10-year deal. For Yahoo’s end, they will provide the global sales force for both companies’ search ads.
Some figures to consider: Google still holds a 66 percent search share and combined, Bing and Yahoo together would take approximately a 30 percent share. This Bing-Yahoo partnership accounts for approximately 25 percent of Yahoo’s search traffic with the idea to partner against Google in the search market.
Both Bing and Yahoo! laid out the plan for integration back in May of this year, and the organic search listings will be powered by Microsoft in August or September, and the paid searches will following in October.
Yahoo and Bing have been working the PR end to ease the transition to Microsoft’s adCenter, and they have been diligently working with customers to prepare for the algorithm change. It seems that has been a common theme in 2010. One technique is to align your search crawler polices for the msnbot/Bingbot and Yahoo’s bots. Bing’s has instructions on its new webmaster tools and policies, it is worthwhile to do some checking to avoid any problems like the ones created by the Google Mayday update.
The Mayday update was sufficient evidence that Google has been doing its best to stay ahead of the competitor’s changes.
Consider also, that soon after Bing introduced its popular graphic background images, in June, Google introduced the option of a colorful background too. These changes and the benefits for the end user, are obvious; Bing has flight search and prediction tools that reveal price fluctuations for certain routes, and advises customers whether to buy or wait.
In addition, Bing Health uses data from online sources like the Mayo Clinic and Health-wise.
Google is still the main search engine as evidenced by the market-share but many users are using Bing thanks to its many new features and look; 12.7 percent in June, and growing from 8 percent, since Bing was introduced in May 2009.
Bing has invested billions of dollars in computing centers necessary to power search and advertising systems as well as cash-back programs on purchases.
Bing has secured partners willing to promote Bing ahead of Google and as a result. Microsoft’s online services division lost $2.36 billion on revenue of $2.2 billion. Innovations like the Bing travel search engine, tying Bing tools to social networking, image searching and even buying start-ups have spent this investment money to varying degrees of success.
This war is heating up and the winners so far are the end users; we are seeing easier more accurate searching, better and fresher data, and more options in the way we access this information.
It will be interesting to see what “weapons” the war develops next.
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