February is always a weird month for search data.
It’s a short month. Query volume is always down. And this year was particularly odd with all the snowstorms. Were people on the Internet more or less as a result?
An interesting note in comScore’s rankings for last month is that Facebook search query was actually UP. So, there’s one thing people like to do when it snows. (I think we all knew that already by the sheer number of snow pictures uploaded by people in our network.)
Experian Hitwise today announced that Bing’s share of searches has increased for the third straight month.
Image by SESConferenceSeries via Flickr
In other news, Google accounted for 71 percent of all U.S. searches conducted in the four weeks ending Feb. 27, 2010. Yahoo! Search accounted for 15 percent. Bing accounted for 10 percent. And Ask.com received 3 percent. The remaining 73 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis Tool accounted for less than 2 percent of U.S. searches.
Although marketers probably don’t need to change anything that they are currently doing because of the trends above, Hitwise reported another trend that may require some adjustments.
It will take a few weeks.
We got a glimpse of what the new homepage would be like in November and now the time has finally come. MSN will begin rolling out their new homepage today. But as one of the most trafficked pages in all the web, it should come as no surprise that the full roll-out will take a few weeks.
The new page goes from a blue background to white and relies on structured data from Bing to inform content selection for the homepage.
Other new features include:
Personalized search suggestions now available from historical search clues.
Bing has made an update to its query suggestion feature that incorporates a bit of personalization. Since many web users tend to return to similar search topics, it makes sense to incorporate relevant terms into query suggestions. And that’s just what Bing has done with its Autosuggest feature. It will now take query history into consideration when serving up suggested keywords.
Suggestions based on query history are in purple, similar to a visited link. The other suggestions are in blue, similar to an unvisited link.
A new day in search: It’s so on.
Microsoft and Yahoo! have received approval from both the U.S. Department of Justice and the European Commission for their search deal announced last summer. Now, their attention turns to implementing the deal.
Let the games begin.
Yahoo! will transition their search to Bing, and their paid search platform will become adCenter. However, Yahoo! ad reps will be the sales force for the deal.
The plan is to get things merged by the 2010 holiday season, but they’re also not going to mess with that crucial time of year for advertisers if they fall behind schedule.
Phones are due out by the 2010 holiday season.
It’s called the Windows Phone 7 series and, despite the name, it’s nothing like Windows. Sure, there’s mobile versions of Office, Outlook and Internet Explorer. But if Windows was more like this phone, it wouldn’t have image and reputation problems.
No, this phone is more like Zune HD, which is smooth and sleek. There’s room for games and music and video. There’s also XBox Live integration – you can tinker with your avatar on your phone. Plus, you can update social networks like Facebook directly from your phone. No need to wait for apps to be developed (with apologies to my husband, an iPhone app developer).
Improved imagery for Haiti and Vancouver included.
This month Bing is adding a ton of imagery to its Maps. Much of the new stuff helps users virtually explore the world – specifically Europe and Africa – with Australia, Canada and the U.S. thrown in for good measure.
Also, timely releases for Haiti and Vancouver are included in the release. Here’s what’s new:
Bird’s Eye
- Italy – 5,547 sq. km.
- Netherlands – 554 sq. km.
- Romania – 1,414 sq. km.
- Spain – 512 sq. km.
- Sweden – 1,174 sq. km.
The loss comes at the advantage to several smaller players.
Google and lost an entire point in the search rankings last month, according to Nielsen Online. Yahoo!, Bing, Ask, and other smaller players gained.
Most appeared to gain queries compared to December.
Bing is well on its way in providing street-level imagery on its maps product. Now, they’re incorporating Flickr photos through a new Bing Maps application called Streetside Photos. The photos are associated with their location and laid on top of existing Streetside imagery.
Photos are given attribution, but if you find a photo that shouldn’t be included in the app – or find yours and don’t want it there – you can click the “Report” button to have the image removed.
According to Experian Hitwise data released today, searches on Bing increased 5 percent and search on Ask increased 4 percent in January 2010, while searches on Google decreased 1 percent and searches on Yahoo! decreased 2 percent.
Image by SESConferenceSeries via Flickr
In terms of market share, Google accounted for 71.5 percent of all U.S. searches conducted in the four weeks ending Jan. 31, 2010. Yahoo! Search, Bing and Ask.com received 14.6 percent, 9.4 percent and 2.6 percent, respectively. The remaining 65 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis Tool accounted for 1.9 percent of U.S. searches.
