The blue packman(Google) is closing his mouth slowly! Google is at all time high according to Hitwise:
| Domain | Apr.-08 | Mar.-08 | Apr.-07 |
| 67.90% | 67.25% | 65.26% | |
| Yahoo | 20.28% | 20.29% | 20.73% |
| MSN | 6.26% | 6.65% | 7.77% |
| Ask.com | 4.17% | 4.09% | 3.69% |
Original article by Search Engine Land.
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A nice article by Danny and SE Land on Yahoo, MS and it’s non existent odds in search without Yahoo.
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Google holds the king title, setting standards. All other search engines are bound to follow to stay competitive. The latest innovation is universal search. This is a second part, a continuation of previous post on universal search of 3 major search engines in the area of blending search results for:
Last time we stopped on “news”, so lets pick up from video search.
Google.com
“abba” (that an old music band =) )
Google went as far as featuring the actual video in its search results. It has unfair advantage here – You Tube, the queen of all video search. Google held it eyes open and purchased video hosting platform which was essentially a solution to video search dilemma. Now big G treats users with blended video search results.
Yahoo.com
“abba”
Yahoo is behind in video blend. Though Yahoo has its’s own hosting platform – Yahoo Video, it is not as widespread and used as the You Tube. Yahoo.com did not feature any videos in search results, loosing out to the big G.
Live.com
“abba”
Live did not feature video, just as Yahoo. Unlike Yahoo or Google, Microsoft does not have a video hosting platform, so it’s a bit tricky for it to blend video results.
The Video Blend.
I once noticed blended video on Google from Metacafe and other websites, not owned by Google. Though it did not directly played in search results, it linked to the video destination. This means that video from other properties can be very well searched, scored and featured in either video search or blended search results. So far Google is leader both in featuring its own property – YouTube and other video hosting properties. Yahoo and Live got to catch up, since this is a clear competitive advantage by Google Inc.
Google.com
“toshiba a200″ (that’s a laptop)
Google gave us variety of choices from its product search engine – Google Product Search. If we click on one of the results, it takes us to very relevant page that features name of the merchant, pricing and whether the merchant uses Google Checkout. The results also specify the exact models, even though the original search was a generic one. As a searcher – I come out a happy creature.
“toshiba a200″
Yahoo did not feature blended results and showed only generic results. Yahoo has “Yahoo Shopping”, which showed up in overall results, but was not featured as a blended option. Yahoo should move to next step and start blending Yahoo shopping with search results, since I was able to find that laptop on Yahoo Shopping itself. This will only increase customer flow to Yahoo shopping channel. It’s got a strong brand, why no use it for shoppers?
Live.com
“toshiba a200″
Microsoft did not come up with blended option, just like Yahoo. Microsoft has product feed, which is MSN Shopping, so a blend of results is also an option for Microsoft. Maybe they will catch up later on.
For now Google is clear winner in blended search results when it comes to product search.
Google.com
“persuasive online copywriting”
Google did not feature any type of blend for this search term, even though they have a powerful book search. Sometimes the book search shows up for completely unrelated terms, but this time it was not there.
Yahoo.com
“persuasive online copywriting”
Yahoo did not show any blend here as well. The results are 100% correct, so i guess there is no need to blend.
Live.com
“persuasive online copywriting”
Live gave exactly the same results, Amazon, followed by the official Grok site.
At book search, every engine is pretty much equal. We searched for a direct book name. Sometimes Google shows book search for unrelated terms, with the philosophy that a correct book will show up. I have not seen this on Yahoo or Live, but then again, I don’t use them enough.
When it comes to search blend, Google comes up a clear leader on most fronts:
All engines are pretty much equal when it comes to:
If we were to award second place it would be Yahoo, since it got upper foot in local against Microsoft(at least in SERPs).
From SEO perspective it is essential to keep an keep eye on universal search, since it has become default and already takes precious SERP real estate. For example, “SEO” on Google.ca has 2 precious spots reserved for videos, 1 is Matt talking about spam and one from “SEO Rapper” rapping his way about SEO. Video results are considered real results and take precious search spots, leaving only 8 for websites.
Blended is also extra crucial in local search. Your listings can be killed if they are not featured in top 10 “Local Blend”. On 1024×768 – that’s a lot of real estate and personally, 80% of the time, those results are enough to get me what I want.
So blend is an important as keeping yourself toned.
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