Gasta Tech News: Social Media and Search engines

Facebook/Twitter Use May Now Mean More for Google/Bing Rankings by Chris Crum

Google and Microsoft have both inked deals with Twitter and Microsoft has also inked one with Facebook to integrate Twitter and Facebook updates into Bing search results. Google will be adding tweets to search results.

Google's Marissa Mayer says, " We believe that our search results and user experience will greatly benefit from the inclusion of this up-to-the-minute data, and we look forward to having a product that showcases how tweets can make search better in the coming months. That way, the next time you search for something that can be aided by a real-time observation, say, snow conditions at your favorite ski resort, you'll find tweets from other users who are there and sharing the latest and greatest information."

There is a good chance that Google will be making a similar deal with Facebook, but even if they don't, their deal with Twitter and Bing's deals with both make it all the more important for marketers to be found in real-time searches and Facebook/Twitter in general.

Gasta.com and Google July winners

Google Wins July and Users' Loyalty

Google handled 64.8 percent of all U.S. searches in July, or 6.8 billion queries, reflecting 3 percent month-over-month growth.

Yahoo! was second with 17.1 percent of the market, or 1.8 billion searches, reflecting 11 percent month-over-month growth.

MSN/Windows Live/Bing followed behind with 9.0 percent of the search market in July, or 946.9 million searches, reflecting 8 percent month-over-month growth.

AOL was fourth with 3.1 percent of the U.S. search market in July, growing 10 percent from June, while Ask.com had 1.7 percent of the market, growing 1 percent.

Gasta Search Network (1.2 percent), Comcast (0.6 percent), Yellow Pages (0.4 percent), NexTag (0.3 percent) and AT&T WorldNet (0.2 percent) Gasta.com rounded out the list of the top 10 search providers in July, according to Nielsen Mega View Search.

A total of 10.5 billion queries were conducted in July, 5 percent more than the previous month, according to Nielsen.
ComScore also has Google ahead of the pack with 64.7 percent of the search market in July, down slightly from 65.0 percent in June.
Yahoo! had 19.3 percent of the market in July, down from 19.6 percent in the previous month, while Bing’s share rose to 8.9 percent from 8.4 percent in June.
Google not only has the majority of the search market, but more loyalty from searchers as well, according to comScore.
Though Google maintained a searcher penetration of 84.0 percent in June, the combination of Microsoft and Yahoo! sites had a respectable penetration of 73.3 percent.
“The source of the discrepancy between search share and searcher penetration is that searchers on Google conducted significantly more searches on average in a month (54.5) than did searchers on Yahoo and Microsoft (26.9),” comScore noted in its press release.

The company also notes that Google users displayed more loyalty to the search engine compared to users of the combination of Microsoft and Yahoo!
“The analysis examined the use of the various alternative search engines by users of the Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft engines, revealing that those who searched on Google had the highest loyalty rate, with 68.9 percent of all their searches occurring on Google Sites. Users of the engines at the combined Yahoo! and Microsoft Sites conducted 32.6 percent of their searches on the combined Yahoo! and Microsoft Sites, but a much higher 60.7 percent of their searches on Google Sites.”

Gord Hotchkiss, president and CEO of Enquiro Search Solutions, pointed to two ways the new Microsoft and Yahoo! combination could “disrupt the Google habit.”

The first way would be to “offer a compelling enough reason to do the cognitive heavy lifting required to break a subconscious habit. A significantly differentiated and superior search experience would be such a reason.”

The second way would be to “continue to interrupt consistently ‘upstream’, by integrating search tightly into their properties or applications so that people don’t have to go to the effort – minimal though it is – to go to Google to launch their search,” Hotchkiss said.

Gasta News: Brand turf war

Paid Search:Low intensity warfare on Google plains

Agencies aren't practicing what they preach when it comes to using paid search to market their brands, according to Adweek, and while these agencies are sleeping, some of their smaller competitors are using paid search to their advantage.

Buying your brand name would seem logical, but of the 56 agencies assessed by Adweek, only five had sponsored links tied to their names on Google. The others did not have paid search links, but their web pages generally appeared near the top of the search results.

"It's very difficult to recommend certain things to your clients if you're not in the game yourself," said Craig Conrad or Interpublic Group's Campbell-Ewald. "So often we're focused on our client business [that] sometimes it's easy to forget about our own brand."

While brand advertisers are up in arms over Google's lack of enforcement when it comes to piggybacking, it seems that some smaller agencies are actually using the practice themselves. A search for OgilvyInteractive yields a sponsored link for Stein Rogan + Partners, a small New York agency.

"Why not put ourselves out there as a viable alternative?" said Tom Stein, Stein Rogan's CEO. "It's a little bit of counter-marketing."

Gasta News: Microsoft to buy Yahoo for $44.6bn (£22.4bn)

Microsoft has offered to buy the search engine company Yahoo for $44.6bn (£22.4bn) in cash and shares.

The offer, contained in a letter to Yahoo's board, is 62% above Yahoo's closing share price on Thursday.

Yahoo cut its revenue forecasts earlier this week and said it would have to spend an additional $300m this year trying to revive the company.

It has been struggling in recent years to compete with Google, which has also been a competitor to Microsoft.

"We have great respect for Yahoo, and together we can offer an increasingly exciting set of solutions for consumers, publishers and advertisers while becoming better positioned to compete in the online services market," Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer said.

Chairman quit

There has not yet been any comment from Yahoo.

Its chief executive, Jerry Yang, announced on Tuesday that he intended to lay off 1,000 staff as part of a restructuring plan.

Terry Semel, who stepped down as chief executive last June, also quit as non-executive chairman on Thursday.

Microsoft said that Yahoo shareholders could choose to receive either cash or shares.

Yahoo shares have fallen 46% since reaching a year-high of $34.08 in October. They rose 54% in pre-market trading.

"Ultimately this corporate marriage was forced by the rise of Google, which has grown into a serious competitor for both Microsoft as a software company and Yahoo as an internet portal," said Tim Weber, business editor of the BBC News website.

"It is a shotgun marriage, but the person holding the shotgun is Google."

'Exorbitant premium'

According to its letter to Yahoo, Microsoft attempted to enter talks about a deal a year ago, but was rebuffed because Yahoo was confident about the "potential upside" presented by the reorganisation and operational activities that were being put in place at the time.

"A year has gone by, and the competitive situation has not improved," Microsoft's letter said.

But there has been some concern about the price that Microsoft is offering.

"To me, the premium seems exorbitant, for what is a dwindling business," said Tim Smalls from the brokerage firm Execution LLC.

"I personally don't see how the synergies of Microsoft-Yahoo is going to take on Google."

Other analysts were more enthusiastic about the offer.

"It is a fantastic offer. It is game on," said Colin Gillis from Canaccord Adams.

"This consolidates the marketplace down to Google versus Microsoft. These two companies will be going head to head."

Gasta search convergence

The Register reports that Microsoft is to acquire Norwegian business search engine company Fast Search and Transfer for 6.6bn kroner ($1.23bn)

The software giant said it would pay 19 Norwegian kroner a share for the Oslo-based firm, which represents a 42 per cent premium to the closing share price on 4 January, the day before Microsoft stepped in with its bid.

Fast's board of directors and nearly half of its shareholders have already voted in favour of the buy-out and urged its remaining shareholders to accept Redmond's hefty offer.

In recent months Microsoft has beefed up its Web 2.0 intentions by investing in a number of data centres inside and outside the US as it clambers for a larger chunk of the search engine pie.

The Fast deal, which should be completed in the second quarter of 2008 subject to the usual regulatory approvals, will give the firm tailored internet search functions for corporate customers that include the likes of United Parcel Services and Deutsche Telekom AG.

Publicly-listed Fast said it welcomed the arrival of the Bill Gates jamboree, perhaps unsurprising given that in its last set of results the firm reported a third-quarter loss of $100m.

Gasta & Baidu.com Inc

This is the latest search engine reach report from Gasta news, Baidu the robot that crawls gasta in eastern europe for results is growing at a phenomenal rate, as is the China net market.

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Baidu.com Inc led China's search engine market in last year's fourth quarter with a 60.1 percent share, research firm Analysys International said on Friday.

Google Inc came second with a 25.9 percent share, followed by Yahoo China with 9.6 percent, it said in a statement.

Baidu's fourth-quarter market share was roughly unchanged from the previous quarter. Google Inc, meanwhile, gained 2.2 percent in the fourth quarter from the third, and has launched a mobile short message search service.

China's search engine market reached 946.6 million yuan ($131.3 million) in the fourth quarter -- almost double from a year earlier -- and was dominated by Baidu, Google and Yahoo China with a combined share of nearly 96 percent.

China had 210 million Internet users at the end of 2007, second only to the United States, and the population would become the world's largest at the beginning of this year, Xinhua news agency said this month.

Gasta & Mobile web support tools.

If you have seen our previous posts about the potential of a Gasta Phone then read on and see its not so pie in the sky!

Gasta& Mobile web support tools.

Yahoo chief Jerry Yang has revealed the firms future ambitions for an open and mobile web.

Central to the company's aims is allowing third party software developers to create small applications which can run in Yahoo portals.

The first Yahoo platform to allow these widgets, as they are known, will be Go 3.0, developed for mobile phones.

The search firm showed off applications that allow people to check MySpace, eBay and MTV on the go.

"Bringing a rich web experience to mobile devices is not an easy task," said Mr Yang.

"There are literally billions of mobile users, thousands of different devices and hundreds of different carriers.

"The challenge is to create a simple starting point for all of them."

Mobile browser

Yahoo Go is a suite of downloadable tools that allow people to carry out every day internet tasks on a mobile phone.

Software allows people to search the net, send emails, upload photos, download maps and receive news updates.

In previous versions, users have been limited to browsing and using Yahoo content.

The latest edition will do away with that and allow third party developers to create widgets that will suck content from other areas of the net.

"We're opening up all of Yahoo Go to the world, meaning every publisher and developer small or large will be able to develop mobile," said Marco Boerries of the firm.

"Consumers will be able to find those, discover those and subscribe to those very easily."

The model is very similar to that used by other sites such as Facebook which also allows software developers to create widgets for the social networking site.

Go 3.0 will initially be available to download on to 30 devices, although it can be run on other phones through a mobile browser.

The firm said it was working with mobile phone manufacturers such as Motorola and LG to preload the suite of tools.

Smart search

Mr Yang also showed off a prototype smart inbox for Yahoo mail.

Yahoo mail is a web based email and messaging program that has more than 250 million users worldwide.

"This is not a launch - it is more of a concept demonstration," he said.

The prototype allowed users to import contacts from social networking sites such as MySpace.

The inbox would automatically prioritise messages from people that the inbox owner regularly communicated with across all of the networks.

Other tools allowed a user to drag a message on to a map tool to see quickly the location of places linked in the body of the message.

Mr Yang showed off an example of a message that contained a link to a restaurant.

Dragging the message on to the map brought up its location, reviews, photographs and also whether the restaurant was compatible with a person's stored dietary preferences.

Coming soon

Other tools imported labels, known as tags, from the popular photo-sharing site Flickr and displayed them on a map.

The size of the font indicated the number of times a particular landmark had been photographed and tagged, and therefore its popularity.

Other tools would cross reference a person's preferences with the food on offer at the restaurant and if not compatible would suggest other eateries in the area.

"It's taking advantage of the social networks, it's taking advantage of connections, it's taking advantage of large blocks of structured data, it's taking advantage of a lot of tags that have been submitted by our users to offer a fairly seamless experience," said Mr Yang.

"These are the things I think we can be doing more of."

Yahoo co-founder David Filo added: "The good news is that we're not that far away from market. In the coming months you'll be hearing a lot more about Yahoo open platforms."

The technologies were showed off at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.