Search Engine Optimization

Search engines news that happened in the past week:

Ask.com is Becoming Desperate

Seems like Ask.com is becoming desperate for cash, showcasing full page ads on its homepage:

Additionally it features up to 7 ads on top of organic search results which on my resolution 1440×900 hide SERP completely below the fold. In contrast, Google features maximum of 3 ads on top, Yahoo goes up to 4 and Microsoft follows Google with 3 paid ads.

It’s quite obvious that Ask.com focuses on money, at the expense of relevancy and user experience. I personally think Ask will not last long with this strategy and will go out of business, selling assets to anyone willing to pay.

Google Features Links and Paid Ads in Google Suggest Feature

A new update to Google suggest. If you type in obvious navigational query, Google will give a link in the Suggest box. Another new feature is a paid ad is the same box for queries with some sort of sales intent.

Features are still being tested by Google, and might not last, but they’re pretty useful and original.

Google Streetview Tricycle

Streets in Europe are pretty tight. There are many places that a car cannot get into. What’s Google’s solution to this delima? Introducing all new Streetview tricycle spider, designed to index narrow european streets, which cannot be access by a car:

Microsoft To Launch New Search Engine Brand, Again…

Search Engine Land reports that Microsoft will soon be launching a long promised new search engine brand. It is not clear what brand it choosen, and we will only find out by the end of the May, however, here are some of the possible names:

• Kumo
• Bing
• Hook
• Sift

Personally, I doubt Kumo will be the new name. After being used in testing, any “thunder” with that name is kind of gone. Plus, I’ve seen plenty of people on the web ridicule that name as a new brand choice. Sift seems potentially tied to a Microsoft mobile platform, plus Sift.com is actually owned by someone else. Hook.com also is owned by someone else. Bing.com resolves to a blank page, is registered to Microsoft and uses Microsoft’s name servers. So that’s what I’d guess it’s going to be.

Will brand name change help Microsoft in the battle against Google? I personally doubt it. In order to leave a brand impression in people’s mind a brand must offer something no one else does. For instance, Google’s brand was earned purely on relevancy, when most of other search engine plainly sucked. The newly released Wolfram Alpha has already got itself a name in the academic circles and will most likely earn a title as a scientific search engine. SEO Book and SEO Moz earned their small brands by offering better SEO content that anyone else on the web.

What can Microsoft’s new name give us? There are definitely new features under the hood, but its not the features that earn the name – it’s the approach, that no one else did before.

Microsoft has used the same exact strategy when it unrolled Live search, designed to go against Google. It didn’t work. So why is it doing it again? I maybe mistaken and there is more coming to us than a brand name change, and I hope so, but if it’s only a name change I won’t surprised that Microsoft will not move an inch in this battle.

Danny long suggested dropping the whole Live, Kumo and other bling names, and just going with well know MSN Search or even better Microsoft search. Everyone knows Microsoft, and its a brand you can leverage, instead of introducing unknown names every couple of years.

We’ll see how it goes.