Current Search Share 2010/2011

This is the current organic search share for the end of 2010. You can click on the image for a larger version.

Organic Search Engine Market Share - Global 2010/2011
(Rounded data in brackets)

1. Google/Ask 86.21% (87%)
   
2. Bing/Yahoo 9.06% (9%)
   
3. Baidu 2.97% (3%)
   
4. Others 0.68% (1%)
   

2010 was a busy year for search, due to Google pulling out of China and merging with Ask, and the Yahoo/Bing merger. In order for the above chart to be useful, I've merged the Bing/Yahoo and Google/Ask data, even though for much of the year these were separate search engines.

Yes, you can use this in your presentations, as long as credit is given.

Raw sources: Hitslink, Comscore, E-Consultancy, eMarketer, Hitwise, Nielson Media Research, McAnerin International Inc internal analytics data.

Open Office VS Bing

It seems that MS Bing is either really bad at search, or is allowing it's results to be unduly influenced by either money or corporate policy. I'm leaning towards the censorship version of the story, myself.

Do a search for open office in Google. Now do the same one in Bing. You'll notice the complete absence of openoffice.org in Bing. They send you almost everywhere but to the right site.

Think that's odd? Or maybe just a coincidence? Try searching for "openoffice.org". Nuff said.

Here is the real kicker - Bing's automated recommendations and suggestions all clearly show people are searching for openoffice.org, but I guess that's just too bad.

For shame, Microsoft.

UPDATE:

Matt and Vanessa did some checking, and found it was a technical glitch, and not an evil conspiracy. Although I'm happy the net result is positive for searchers, I'm annoyed at myself for not checking deeper into other possible explanations.

Cannot start Microsoft Outlook. Cannot open the Outlook window

M$ (automatically) killed my Outlook 2007 last night on my Windows Vista 64 system. It was one of those "Windows Update is finished so we restarted your computer for you even though you didn't say we could" issues, followed by the usual Microsoft screw-up of hosing the system they were supposed to be fixing and protecting.

I'd be a little more patient with them if this wasn't caused directly by following their RECOMMENDED procedures. Yeah, I could disable updates, etc, but that rather defeats the purpose of updates in the first place. No, this is totally on M$. Their recommendations, their update, their software, their restart, their screwup.

They don't get off the hook for me not disabling updates any more than rapists don't get off the hook because their victims don't wear chastity belts. (Well, that might be an extreme analogy, but you get the drift. The bad guy is at fault, period).

But, of course, it's still MY problem.*

The error is simple. Office works fine, but any attempt to launch Outlook results in this error: "Cannot start Microsoft Outlook. Cannot open the Outlook window".

If you ask Microsoft, their answer is to use the system restore. Don't get me started on their answer being for me to undo their screw-ups. One guy was told to wipe his system!

Anyway, a much better answer by a user called Dayneb in the new (to me) Microsoft Answers forum was something far simpler:

Start->run..then type the following -> Outlook.exe /resetnavpane

In some cases, you have to make sure you are in the Office Directory on your hard drive for this to work, but work it does. Instantly and easily. Thanks Dayneb!

I'd thank MS for the Answers Forum, but that just feels wrong, since I should not have needed the answer in the first place...

Ian

----
*Serves me right for not switching to Gmail. I'll do that as soon as I can be anywhere in the world, including airplanes and ships, and still be connected. Hopefully that will come sooner than later. I travel too much now to rely on GMail for anything other than a backup system and spam catcher.

Bing! Microsofts New Search Engine (Brand).

Microsoft has just announced that the new name for it's "Live" search engine (which everyone disliked) is called "Bing" which everyone will also probably dislike, but at least isn't as confusing.

The other candidate was "Kumo", which I admit I would have disliked more. Poor Microsoft, I'm pretty sure no matter what they chose it would have been wrong.

You can give it a test drive and find out more here: http://discoverbing.com/behindbing/

Ian

PPC Text Ad Formats for the Major Search Engines

I'm currently working on a very, very cool tool that I can't tell you about (yet). However, part of it (an extremely minor part) allows the creation and export of PPC text ads for all major search engines.

Although I can't share the full tool yet, it took me some work to collect this information in one spot, so I figured I'd share it with you.

Where bulk upload is allowed, the listings use the exact terms that the search engine in question uses (i.e. the heading you would use for the CSV).

"SB" is single byte (i.e. English) and "DB" is double byte (i.e. Chinese). Enjoy!

Google AdWords Character Limitations and Format

Headline: 25 SB, 12 DB
Description Line 1: 35 SB, 17 DB
Description Line 2: 35 SB, 17 DB
Display URL: 35 SB (SB Only)
Destination URL: 1024 SB (SB Only)

Yahoo YSM Character Limitations and Format

Ad Title: 40 SB, 20 DB
Ad Short Description: 70 SB, 35 DB
Ad Long Description: 190 SB, 95 DB
Display URL: 25 SB (SB only)
Destination URL: 1024 SB (SB Only)

MS AdCenter Character Limitations and Format

Headline: 25 SB, 12 DB
Description Line 1: 35 SB, 17 DB
Description Line 2: 35 SB, 17 DB
Display URL: 35 SB (SB Only)
Destination URL: 1022 SB (SB only)

ASK ASL Character Limitations and Format*

Ad Title: 25 SB
Ad Description: 70 SB
Display URL: 35 SB
Destination URL: 1000 SB

*Ask is English Language (SB) ads only.

Baidu Huobao Character Limitations and Format*

Ad Title: 13 DB
Ad Description: 32 DB
Display URL: 35 SB
Destination URL: 1000 SB

*Baidu is Chinese/Japanese (DB) only

Search Engine Share 2008

I just made these for a presentation, based on the latest information I have for this year. Enjoy.

Organic Search Engine Share 2008 for North America

PPC (Pay Per Click) Search Engine Share 2008 for North America

Google Agrees - Hostile Takeover Attempt

I note with some vindication that Google apparently agrees with my assessment that Microsoft's bid for Yahoo is hostile.

Admittedly, Google has a vested interest in promoting the idea that a combination between MS and Y! would be unfair, but, honestly, tough noogies. Competition is good, and I can't see Googles viewpoint as anything other than a cynical attempt to keep and increase their market share by pretending to actually care about poor little old Yahoo. This is the first time they've ever publicly shown an interest in the search market outside of themselves that I can remember.

That doesn't mean they are wrong about the move being hostile, though.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/yahoo-and-future-of-internet.html

It's rather annoying that no one else in the industry seems to care or know about this issue ,and that my thoughts on the subject were ignored in favor of idle posts talking about trying to name the new potential search engine instead.

I'm really starting to wonder why I bother...

Ian

Offer to Buy or Hostile Takeover?

Upon reading the letter sent by Microsoft to Yahoo! more carefully, I think I'm seeing a completely different subtext than I originally thought, which was an offer to purchase.

I could be over-analyzing, but I've been working in and around public companies for many years now and I smell a hostile takeover bid, or at least the threat of one.

Read below and tell me what you think:

1. Microsoft says that Google is consolidating it's position, and if they don't offer an alternative quickly, both MS and Y! will lose. "Today, the market is increasingly dominated by one player who is consolidating its dominance through acquisition. "
   


2. Microsoft states that they tried to play nice, but Yahoo wasn't interested: "We discussed a number of alternatives ranging from commercial partnerships to a merger proposal, which you rejected."
   


3. Microsoft says that they no longer are interested in playing nice. "While a commercial partnership may have made sense at one time, Microsoft believes that the only alternative now is the combination of Microsoft and Yahoo! that we are proposing."
   


4. Microsoft is making a very generous offer: "Our proposal represents a 62% premium above the closing price of Yahoo! common stock". Too generous. This is, in my opinion, aimed at investors, not Yahoo's owners.
   


5. Microsoft expects Yahoo's Board of Directors to reject it out of hand, and warns them they had better look at it carefully instead: "Due to the importance of these discussions and the value represented by our proposal, we expect the Yahoo! Board to engage in a full review of our proposal."
   


6. Microsoft then threatens to go directly to the shareholders over the objections of the Board(a hostile takover), based on Yahoo's expected negative response: "Microsoft reserves the right to pursue all necessary steps to ensure that Yahoo!'s shareholders are provided with the opportunity to realize the value inherent in our proposal."
   


7. Signalling the beginning of hostilities, Microsoft breaks with the traditional quiet, behind the scenes negotiations and announces that the offer to the shareholders will be made public, whether Yahoo likes it or not. They don't even give Yahoo time to accept or reject it, which I think tells us that Microsoft already knows what the response will be and doesn't accept it: "In light of the significance of this proposal to your shareholders and ours, as well as the potential for selective disclosures, our intention is to publicly release the text of this letter tomorrow morning."

That's my take. Should be fun to watch the fireworks!

Ian

ADDED: Yahoo's first response calls this an "Unsolicited Proposal", instead of the many other things it could have called it (like offer to buy, exciting news, interesting development, etc) which indicates a generally unhappy tone to me.

Full Text of Microsoft's Proposal to Buy Yahoo

If you haven't heard yet, Microsoft has made a bid to buy Yahoo for about 44 Billion, after attempts to create a partnership or other options last year were rejected. If you can't join 'em or beat 'em... buy 'em.

I'd go into an analysis, but honestly Microsoft has done a pretty good job of it already (below). With Yahoo laying people off and Google's stock losing value, this may be very good timing.

FULL TEXT OF BALLMERS LETER TO YAHOO

Dear Members of the Board:

I am writing on behalf of the Board of Directors of Microsoft to make a proposal for a business combination of Microsoft and Yahoo!. Under our proposal, Microsoft would acquire all of the outstanding shares of Yahoo! common stock for per share consideration of $31 based on Microsoft's closing share price on January 31, 2008, payable in the form of $31 in cash or 0.9509 of a share of Microsoft common stock. Microsoft would provide each Yahoo! shareholder with the ability to choose whether to receive the consideration in cash or Microsoft common stock, subject to pro-ration so that in the aggregate one-half of the Yahoo! common shares will be exchanged for shares of Microsoft common stock and one-half of the Yahoo! common shares will be converted into the right to receive cash. Our proposal is not subject to any financing condition.

Our proposal represents a 62% premium above the closing price of Yahoo! common stock of $19.18 on January 31, 2008. The implied premium for the operating assets of the company clearly is considerably greater when adjusted for the minority, non-controlled assets and cash. By whatever financial measure you use - EBITDA, free cash flow, operating cash flow, net income, or analyst target prices - this proposal represents a compelling value realization event for your shareholders.

We believe that Microsoft common stock represents a very attractive investment opportunity for Yahoo!'s shareholders. Microsoft has generated revenue growth of 15%, earnings growth of 26%, and a return on equity of 35% on average for the last three years. Microsoft's share price has generated shareholder returns of 8% during the last one year period and 28% during the last three year period, significantly outperforming the S&P 500. It is our view that Microsoft has significant potential upside given the continued solid growth in our core businesses, the recent launch of Windows Vista, and other strategic initiatives.

Microsoft's consistent belief has been that the combination of Microsoft and Yahoo! clearly represents the best way to deliver maximum value to our respective shareholders, as well as create a more efficient and competitive company that would provide greater value and service to our customers. In late 2006 and early 2007, we jointly explored a broad range of ways in which our two companies might work together. These discussions were based on a vision that the online businesses of Microsoft and Yahoo! should be aligned in some way to create a more effective competitor in the online marketplace. We discussed a number of alternatives ranging from commercial partnerships to a merger proposal, which you rejected. While a commercial partnership may have made sense at one time, Microsoft believes that the only alternative now is the combination of Microsoft and Yahoo! that we are proposing.

In February 2007, I received a letter from your Chairman indicating the view of the Yahoo! Board that "now is not the right time from the perspective of our shareholders to enter into discussions regarding an acquisition transaction." According to that letter, the principal reason for this view was the Yahoo! Board's confidence in the "potential upside" if management successfully executed on a reformulated strategy based on certain operational initiatives, such as Project Panama, and a significant organizational realignment. A year has gone by, and the competitive situation has not improved.

While online advertising growth continues, there are significant benefits of scale in advertising platform economics, in capital costs for search index build-out, and in research and development, making this a time of industry consolidation and convergence. Today, the market is increasingly dominated by one player who is consolidating its dominance through acquisition. Together, Microsoft and Yahoo! can offer a credible alternative for consumers, advertisers, and publishers. Synergies of this combination fall into four areas:

Scale economics: This combination enables synergies related to scale economics of the advertising platform where today there is only one competitor at scale. This includes synergies across both search and non-search related advertising that will strengthen the value proposition to both advertisers and publishers. Additionally, the combination allows us to consolidate capital spending.

Expanded R&D capacity: The combined talent of our engineering resources can be focused on R&D priorities such as a single search index and single advertising platform. Together we can unleash new levels of innovation, delivering enhanced user experiences, breakthroughs in search, and new advertising platform capabilities. Many of these breakthroughs are a function of an engineering scale that today neither of our companies has on its own.

Operational efficiencies: Eliminating redundant infrastructure and duplicative operating costs will improve the financial performance of the combined entity.

Emerging user experiences: Our combined ability to focus engineering resources that drive innovation in emerging scenarios such as video, mobile services, online commerce, social media, and social platforms is greatly enhanced.

We would value the opportunity to further discuss with you how to optimize the integration of our respective businesses to create a leading global technology company with exceptional display and search advertising capabilities. You should also be aware that we intend to offer significant retention packages to your engineers, key leaders and employees across all disciplines.

We have dedicated considerable time and resources to an analysis of a potential transaction and are confident that the combination will receive all necessary regulatory approvals. We look forward to discussing this with you, and both our internal legal team and outside counsel are available to meet with your counsel at their earliest convenience.

Our proposal is subject to the negotiation of a definitive merger agreement and our having the opportunity to conduct certain limited and confirmatory due diligence. In addition, because a portion of the aggregate merger consideration would consist of Microsoft common stock, we would provide Yahoo! the opportunity to conduct appropriate limited due diligence with respect to Microsoft. We are prepared to deliver a draft merger agreement to you and begin discussions immediately.

In light of the significance of this proposal to your shareholders and ours, as well as the potential for selective disclosures, our intention is to publicly release the text of this letter tomorrow morning.

Due to the importance of these discussions and the value represented by our proposal, we expect the Yahoo! Board to engage in a full review of our proposal. My leadership team and I would be happy to make ourselves available to meet with you and your Board at your earliest convenience. Depending on the nature of your response, Microsoft reserves the right to pursue all necessary steps to ensure that Yahoo!'s shareholders are provided with the opportunity to realize the value inherent in our proposal.

We believe this proposal represents a unique opportunity to create significant value for Yahoo!'s shareholders and employees, and the combined company will be better positioned to provide an enhanced value proposition to users and advertisers. We hope that you and your Board share our enthusiasm, and we look forward to a prompt and favorable reply.

Sincerely yours,

Steven A. Ballmer
Chief Executive Officer
Microsoft Corporation

AdWords PPC Geotargetting / Language Setup

"When geo-targeting ads by a client's country, what is the best practice for language targeting?"

As a general rule of thumb, your ad should be in the same language as the SERP the searcher is looking at.

Let's say you target Korea, to use an example. If you are just beginning, then it would be best to geotarget Korea and also target the Korean language. Although many Koreans read/speak English, it' s jarring to see an English ad when the rest of the SERP is in Korean. It makes it stand out, but in the wrong way. Usually they decide that the company is clueless and "doesn' t understand Koreans". I've had many discussions with Koreans on this very topic. The same also applies to Chinese, and especially to Japanese.

If you wanted to be more accurate and do a really thorough job in the market, you could do the following (though it's more work and for some markets isn't worth it):

1. Geotarget Korea (or whatever country you are looking at)
   
2. Create a KeyWord list. Separate out the keywords that are the same in English and Korean ( i.e. " Samsung") from the pure Korean words.
   
3. Anything that is pure Korean, target Korean language only.
   
4. Anything that could be both (and would result in a SERP with both English and Korean in it) you would use as two different groups – one targeting English with English ads, and one targeting Korean with Korean ads.

Some other observations:

1. A single English word ("Samsung" ) could be equally in either language, but multiple English words "Samsung office in Seoul " is usually (though not always) an indication that the target language should be English. This also works the other way – one English word in a Korean phrase is probably Korean.
   
2. If in doubt, use the official national language of whatever country you are in, or the most common language of the region if there is more than one. For example, in Canada, you would default to English for western Canada and French for Quebec, unless someone indicates that they are looking for a language specific Keyword.
   
3. Due to the different character sets between Asian languages and English, this might seem more complicated than it needs to be (you are normally safe in assuming any keyword written in Chinese characters has a preference for Chinese ads, for example) but as a best practice it 's a good idea to language target as well as geotarget, especially when you begin to work with multiple languages that share characters (English/Spanish/French or Chinese/Japanese/Korean).
   

Practical Final Answer: Start off with Korean language ads geotargeted to Korea and the Korean language keywords, including the dual-language Korean list. See how that goes. If it goes badly, you are unlikely to fix it by adding English to the mix , and it will just complicate things.

If it does well, then add the dual-language English list to the mix. In this case, you would just create a second campaign, but this one geotargetting Korea but only the English language , then use the dual-language English words. In this case, Google (for example) would not treat that as a duplicate, but would trigger the English ads for searchers that had indicated a preference for English, and Korean for those who indicated a preference for Korean.

This type of system is especially useful when you have products and numbers involved – for example, the "SGH-L760 " from Samsung is the same search term in any language – Korean, English, Chinese, Japanese, etc. You simply can' t just geotarget it – you have to also target the language in order to trigger the correct ad.

I hope that helps,

Ian

Robots.txt and Sitemaps

Last week at the NYC SES Conference it was announced that all 4 major search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask) now not only support the sitemaps.org sitemap protocol, but also support the new auto-discovery feature for the robots.txt file!

In order to use the auto-discovery feature, you simply add the following line to your robots.txt file:

Sitemap: http://sitemap_location

Example Robots.txt file:

User-agent: *
Disallow:
Sitemap: http://www.mcanerin.com/sitemap.gz

I have updated my free Robots.txt Generator so that it will generate this properly for you.

Ian

Google China President Dr. Kai-Fu Lee Speaks

Dr. Kai-Fu Lee, Googles President of Greater China, visited Seattle last week and gave a presentation to Googlers and other guests. Since it was recorded as a Tech Talk, I was able to listen in, as it were.

Dr. Kai-Fu Lee is one of the most respected people in the Chinese IT community. He was a founder of Microsoft Research Asia (and a former VP) and is an expert in text to speech, speech recognition, artificial intelligence and advanced search. He has also worked for SGI and Apple, where he helped developed most of the Quicktime family - Quicktime, QuickDraw 3D, QuickTime VR and PlainTalk.

When he left Microsoft for Google in 2005, they actually sued him in an effort to prevent Google from using his search knowledge against them. They settled in July and the good doctor has been working for Google ever since.

To the best of my knowledge, his one year non-compete runs out in June, only 4 months away. I'm looking forward to what happens after that. Until then, according to the settlement, Dr. Kai-Fu Lee is not allowed to use his knowledge of search for Googles benefit, only his huge amount of contacts, trust and knowledge of China - which, in my opinion, is a huge benefit to Google.

This is a guy who you listen to when he talks about search in China. Or damn near anything else related to technology and China. He's highly respected by both the Chinese and in the West. During his presentation, he showed a picture of 2 completely packed auditoriums of Chinese students wanting to hear him speak, and then mentioned that there were about 3000 people standing outside of these!

Googles China Plans

I liked this quote, and I think it's the right attitude to succeed.

We will take a long-term view to win in China.
The Chinese have 5000 years of history.
Google has 5000 years of patience in China.
- Eric Schmidt - CEO Google

Googles plans for China (and coincidentally also the only things Dr. Kai-Fu Lee is legally allowed to do, timetable-wise) were presented as follows:

2006 - Build a foundation, establish Google and begin recruiting local engineers. ('Planting")
2007 - Begin rolling out new products, and demonstrate the quality of Google search.("Harvesting")

So this should be in interesting year for Google in China. I hope to hear about several new products. If we are lucky, they may make the announcements during SES China in May (you are going on the China Search Marketing Tour and SES China, right?).

He mentioned a few areas where Google may wish to enter into, including the usual suspects (image, scholar, etc) plus BBS search and community building.

It was also pretty clear that there are really good opportunities for local search, since the Chinese tend to be city-centric, and there is currently no online Yellow Pages, Mapquest, Craigslist, etc.

Some other information from the presentation

• Chinese internet use is currently growing at a rate of 25% per year (compared to about 3% in the US). It should pass the US in about 3 years at that rate.
• There are currently more broadband users in China than their are in the USA!
• The internet users tend to be quite young, and are more interested in gaming and music than browsing. This is compounded by the large number of malware infected computers in China - it's hard to trust the browser.
• Community building is very strong. the Chinese love to share information and argue.
• Music is the number 1 search currently.
• There are not that many credit cards, and even people who have them prefer face to face commerce.

One of the most telling comments he made during the presentation was that one difference between successful companies in China and unsuccessful ones is hinged on whether the local Chinese management was trusted to make decisions.

Ironically, Microsofts insistence of central control and hierarchy is one of the major reasons Dr. Kai-Fu Lee originally sought to work with Google. It appears Google is willing to trust him.

I would, too.

Ian

Matt Cutts, McAfee and Malware

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