Limping into the Search Engine arena yesterday, new Search Engine cuil, pronounced cool, launched to much fanfare, sporadic outages and intermittent pages announcing that their, “servers are running a bit hot right now.”
Boasting 120 billion indexed pages, the cuil leadership team consisting of expatriate Google workers, Anna Patterson, Russel Power, Tom Costello and Louis Monier, promise Internet users that if big is Google then huge is cuil. However, initial criticism from well respected experts like Danny Sullivan over at Search Engine Land along with glow in the dark servers indicate this remains to be seen. In addition to hot servers, which are not cool, cuil has other features that may take some time for us to warm up to.
Call me quaint or call me simple, but when I enter the name of my own company in a search box, I really do prefer to see it pop-up as the top listing on the results page instead of listings for DUI Lawyers, Dubai real estate or what have you. Funny thing is, quaint or simple, so do all of my Search Engine Marketing clients… all of ‘em!
At least for now, this is going to be a real hard sell for the Search Marketing crowd. How does one respond to a corporate or professional client when cuil with their zippy state of the art Search Engine technology has a new algorithm that relates them to cabbages?
Apparently, we are not alone in placing value on accuracy over quantity. Numerous comments by those that have actually been able to get cuil search results have been unimpressive, to say the least. Our own test searches in what cuil executives tout as the world’s biggest index returned results that can best be described in polite terms as bizarre. Instead of seeing a typical list of related pages similar to those generated by MSN, Yahoo or Google, the too-cool cuil returns a non sequitur search train wreck that could pass for randomness at first glance. To fix this, cuil offers you, “helpful choices and suggestions until you find the page you want.”
Beats me how this is ever gonna be better than Google’s get it right the first time philosophy.
Copyright ©2008 DM Jackson - WebMarket West - All Rights Reserved.
Published by dj //
We were excited here at WebMarket West the first time we heard of a possible merger between Internet giants Yahoo and Microsoft.
A few months later it was still interesting when these same two megacorps admitted to,”talking.”
That’s O.K. We understand that there is a lot at stake in a gigantic merger such as the one that is once again in the news and on the minds of netizens and financial folk alike. However, as with a lot of really great rumors from the past, if something doesn’t actually happen soon, we’re going to lose interest.
So what if we lose interest? Well, probably nothing if it’s only us. But if enough of the Internet’s rank-and-file follow suit, it could turn the union between these two giant Internet darlings’ into a non-super-event rather than the media frenzy that marketing mavens and PR pundits across the net have been salivating over for so long. Imagine what it might do to the stock prices for those involved if people grew bored with the story of giant Microsoft romancing giant Yahoo. What if they decided that the story had gone on too long, and began to ignore the head-lines, by-lines and press releases. And what will happen if everyone is given enough time to figure out that even though this monster merger may actually one day occur, the combined Internet search market share and net online advertising profits from the two combined will still leave them in second place to legendary Google?
Published by dj //
Mountain View California based Google is apparently willing to share even more information than previously regarding what the curious are searching for by providing a list of the 100 hottest topics queried on the Internet’s leading search engine. Available now, the new Hot Trends rankings reveal day-to-day information on the hottest search terms that Google has been providing Internet searchers.
Referring to the Google Trends project he worked on, Amit Patel, a Google software engineer said, “It’s very entertaining and it’s very addictive.” Of course, Search Engine Marketing specialists may desire more than entertainment or to feed an addiction when perusing the daily trends of Google searchers.
A word of caution here, although Google claims that the improvements will enable users to analyze search terms within sub-regions, the results are edited. That said, here’s the link to Google Trends and here’s one for the new Hot Trends Top 100
Published by dj //
Sources at Microsoft Corporation said today that the Redmond, Washington based software giant will pay approximately 6 billion dollars to purchase the on-line advertising company aQuantive. Microsoft has continued to struggle in the on-line advertising market while competing against the mega-giant Google. With its AdWords and AdSense programs, Google currently dominates the lucrative Internet advertising field, a rapidly expanding Internet cash cow returning unprecedented profits reminiscent of the web’s pioneer days.
The deal comes as no surprise, occuring just after Google recently wrestled the purchase of DoubleClick away from Microsoft for a mere $3.1 billion. This was quickly followed by Yahoo’s recent buyout gambit for RightMedia and the 24/7 RealMedia purchase by advertising giant the WPP Group. Still, it’s Microsoft’s largest acquisition ever and the latest in a flurry of deals for on-line advertising firms by big Internet and media companies. According to Chris Dobson, head of global advertising sales at Microsoft, “If you ever had any doubt that Microsoft was going to be big in the on-line advertising space, this should make it clear that it will.”
Microsoft recently tried unsuccessfully to buy DoubleClick and after being outbid and outmaneuvered by Google for that acquisition, faced substantial competition for aQuantive, which explains the inflated price tag for the Seattle, Washington based ad company. Although Microsoft is paying around 10 times the estimated revenue for aQuantive in this latest round of leviathan deal making, it was obviously determined not to be outbid by arch-rival Google or anyone else this time. While Wall Street saw the price of Microsoft stock drop slightly, predictions that Internet ad spending will increase by approximately 28 percent this year to a total of $31 billion globally, indicate the potential for future growth in on-line advertising is strong and expected to expand.
Unfortunately, the result of all of the above mentioned activity, be it Microsoft’s or Yahoo’s or Google’s, will leave Internet advertisers and online marketers with fewer alternatives for themselves and their clients. It’s interesting to note that while history is being crafted in these monstrous deals, history is also being ignored or even worse, disregarded.
Shouldn’t we know by now that we’ve already been taught that true strength lies in diversity? Doesn’t anyone remember the dinosaurs? History teaches that once upon a time they were really big and they were really dominate, until one bad afternoon with an asteroid came crashing down and put them all on ice.
Stay tuned as Web 3.0, “The Only-Net” continues to evolve.
© 2007 DM Jackson - All rights reserved
Published by dj //
Internet leviathon Google recently announced that it will soon be offering a pay per action (PPA) advertising program to compliment the popular pay per click program, Google AdWords. Comonly referred to as affiliate programs or affiliate marketing, PPA affiliate programs offer a fee for customer referrals from third-party web sites and have grown in importance since their inception.
There is considerable speculation that Google’s entry in to yet another lucrative advertising channel is based on criticism over phenomena known as, “click inflation” and growing concerns about how extensive the “click fraud” problem really is. Others claim that this may mark an end to web sites as we know them or at least drastically alter the content of existing pay-per-action affiliate networks.
At this point, it’s anybodys guess. Perhaps this is just the incentive needed in order to re-examine existing web site with an eye toward creating efficient conversion oriented content. Only time will tell if the new Google Pay Per Action program will turn our Internet efforts into the sales funnels we want them to be.
Published by dj //
