CheezeDMG Blog

Manchester City might be one of the richest football clubs in the world but they’re still in the bottom half of the league table proving money can’t always buy you success. However, it’s a good starting point and in several years time the story may be very different.

Similarly, Microsoft is one of the richest companies in the world, but in the UK is relatively unknown for its search engine. The Manchester City of search marketing you could say! But is all this about to change with the launch of its new search engine, Bing, and should we all be getting excited about it?

Well, it’s not everyday that one of the world’s richest companies launches a new search engine and surely with all the investment, brains and talent, if anyone can challenge Google’s dominance, maybe Microsoft can.

We should certainly be enthused about companies looking to push the quality and relevancy of search engines, especially as we all use them and rely on them so much for researching, learning and purchasing. But Microsoft’s new search engine isn’t going to dramatically change the landscape of the search market straight away. It won’t wipe Google off the face of the earth and it’s not going make a huge impact on Microsoft’s current UK search query share. AskJeeves.com has proved that through ingenuity and marketing you can increase query share, if only for a short while. It can be done..And Microsoft has realised it can take it to the next level as quite simply it has the cash to do so.

It’s no secret that buying Yahoo! would be the quickest way for Microsoft to gain search query share. This could still happen. In the US this would give it around 30% of the search market – a decent slice of a huge market. All of a sudden things look more favourable for Microsoft. The UK market is slightly different though, especially as doubts over the quality of Yahoo’s search traffic seem to be increasing.

So what can Microsoft and Bing achieve? It’s backed by an above the line marketing campaign throughout the UK it should definitely get enough attention for people to try it and realise that there are search engines they can use other than Google.

Consumers can expect more relevant results. Microsoft improved its algorithm greatly with ‘Live Search’ and has clearly made relevancy a focus with the way its paid search offering has developed. Bing is likely to build upon this further and with the likelihood that it is going to be indexing more and more web pages, it would be a sure step to providing the consumer with better results and a better experience. This means Microsoft could not only attract new users, but keep them too, which is ultimately the bigger challenge.

Bings new image search appears to take considerable strides and offers real promise. This is one thing that Google will definitely be looking at with interest as it’s an area Microsoft is really pushing – the scratch pad idea where you can store images and change sizes is something no other search engine can do quite as well. Let’s hope we see more of this from the new engine as it’s a great element of what Microsoft is bringing to the search market.

The results filter should also be great. A few years back there was talk of a ‘Search Macro’. This never quite took off, but the idea was very interesting and it looks like with the results filter Microsoft will include something similar in Bing, which is exciting. The idea with Search Macro was to add more context to what the user was searching for thus providing more relevant results. For example, if a user searched for ‘soup’, the macro would quantify whether they wanted information on recipes on soup or to buy soup. The ‘results filter’ appears to be an uncomplicated method for the user to add more context to their search. This would be an interesting feature for advertisers to test in the French market for example where users tend to use less keywords within their searches. It could potentially help advertisers to get cheaper clicks as the user can refine their search before clicking on ads.

However, what’s disappointing about this launch is that only the US version will have these cool new features. The UK is a highly sophisticated market, second only to the US with a high level of early adopters eager to test new services. If they’re not going to get the full fat version, they won’t be recommending it to later adopters. So any kudos gained from the launch is lost and as we all know, the Internet world is very unforgiving to services that don’t cater to individual audiences and markets.

How will this new engine affect your search strategy? Will your customers care or even notice? It might see a boost in traffic off the back of the advertising but will it breed brand advocacy? Microsoft needs to weary of ‘reinventing’ itself (as it did with Live Search – which didn’t move any mountains) with, for non-US customers, no USP. As far as the consumer knows, it’s just another search engine. AskJeeves has reintroduced their butler to breed an increased sense of brand empathy but how, crucially, will Microsoft differentiate Bing?

Will it gain market share? Not until it does something spectacular, or buys Yahoo! Do you have to adapt your search strategy? We’ll have to wait and see. For those expecting great things, we’ll have to watch the US and wait. It might change the search world, but Bing wasn’t built in a day.

At CheezeDMG we’re always evaluating and reviewing new search engines to make sure we’re adding maximum value to our clients’ PPC campaigns and to gauge whether they can break the Google stranglehold too! In the same vein that we have reviewed/evaluated Cuil, Kumo, Twitter and Oparla in the past, we were really excited to experiment with another new entry into the market with Wolfram Alpha.

Wolfram Alpha, created by Stephen Wolfram, has been creating substantial Internet buzz in recent weeks with private beta access and online webinars providing interesting insight into what to expect.

Stephen Wolfram founded one of the world’s most respected software companies, Wolfram Research, in 1987 which has released mathematical and scientific software over the years and now is entering the search engine market. It pitches itself as a “computational knowledge engine” and is in no way a direct competitor to Google, but a completely new take on retrieving mathematical and scientific answers from an increasing array of areas such as Mathematics, Physics, Date & Time, Engineering and Finance. Instead of searching a pre-set database of information and statistics like other online encyclopaedias, it searches the internet in real time for accurate and up to date sources of data.

Search for "$250 + 15%" on Wolfram Alpha

In terms of the format of results, instead of receiving a list of websites that hold relevant information in accordance with your search, Wolfram Alpha simply produces one result using the highest level of accuracy possible using its algorithm. For example, one of the example searches that Wolfram Alpha suggests to get new users acclimatised is “$250 + 15%”. Please see screenshot to the right or view it for yourself here.

It doesn’t simply give you the answer but even gives you the option of seeing the workings in more detail. This is one of the unique selling points of the search engine, the ability to solve problems and questions for you in real time. It can, however, undertake much more advanced maths, how about trying “x^2 sin(x)” for size?

The other key uses of Wolfram Alpha are the statistics and research, with the ability to source accurate and useful information and display it in a coherent and well thought out manner. For example, searching for “earthquakes in america” (see screen shot below left) results in a map of the United States, with dots depicting recent recordings and additional options like magnitude and time period to tailor the result for users’ need.

Search for "earthquakes in america" on Wolfram Alpha

The search engine is clearly highly intelligent and the quality of results is very high and of course relevant. But it is still missing areas that it can’t interpret like climate change. The gaps will be filled in time, and probably dictated by the users themselves, so by Wolfram essentially meeting demand. With their successful software company, they can financially back continued development, which sets it apart from nearly all other start-up search engines we’ve seen in recent times.

Stephen Wolfram has the product, the money and the programmers to make this successful, though how will he persuade the users of the search engine, you and I, to use it on a regular basis?

When Google were fighting it out in the original search engine war all those years ago with the likes of Yahoo, Miva, Lycos, Excite and Hotbot, the introduction of the browser toolbar helped the Mountain View occupants develop an edge over their rivals by increasing the ease of accessibility and use. Wolfram Alpha is looking to do the same…

Wolfram Alpha is a combination of a useful everyday tool and a search engine which certainly keeps itself an encouraging distance from Google’s well known offering. To encourage users into using the service on a regular basis, it has developed a series of toolbars and widgets which will improve accessibility not only within the browser, but on the desktop and the mobile as well. The full list can be found here but they include browser toolbars, windows and mac widgets as well as an iPhone app and even an iGoogle gadget. The time and money invested in developing these tools will be well worth it if they can encourage the use of Wolfram Alpha in users’ everyday internet lives.

As we are all too aware with Twitter, having a hugely popular product is not enough to sustain a healthy future. Even with the financial backing of Wolfram Research, the maintenance of servers etc will soon lead to the demand of a fruitful business model. A PPC or CPM model would make sense, though there are no clear indications as yet of which direction they’ll go in. They are, however, already inviting interest in a site sponsorship that suggests they won’t be adopting a PPC or CPM model.

The below graph courtesy of Google Trends may not be a clear indication of the usage levels so far but is a clear sign of the rapid rise in interest the search engine/tool is experiencing:

Wolfram Alpha Search Volume over last 30 days

One thing is clear, Wolfram Alpha is an incredibly powerful and intelligent tool, though we know from history that this doesn’t necessarily result in long term success. The difference with Wolfram Alpha, is that it has the financial backing, it has the product, the integration tools and widgets that many other aforementioned search engines never had. In short, it’s perfectly set to become the most significant and high profile search technology in recent times and by placing itself as an extension and not a competitor to Google, it has given itself a fighting chance.

@CheezeDMG
@JamesDGlick