microsoft

Yahoo! Japan agrees deal with Google

Despite the close partnership of Microsoft and Yahoo! - which will see Yahoo! start to integrate Bing’s search algorithm and ad platform in September this year - Yahoo! Japan has agreed a deal with Google to use its search results and ad service. In return, Yahoo! Japan will provide Google with its data. While this move may seem to go against the recently agreed deal between Carol Bartz and Steve Ballmer in July last year, Yahoo! Inc is only the second biggest shareholder of Yahoo! Japan, while the leading shareholder - Softbank Corp - has no ties or agreement with Microsoft, so instead chose to go with Google . Yahoo! currently holds the majority of the search market in Japan, with 53 per cent, while Google owns 38 per cent - so together the pair will control almost all of the market. Just three per cent of Japanese searches are currently made using Microsoft’s Bing engine. Although the Google Japan blog has now confirmed the deal, it is thought that Microsoft may look to stop it gaining approval from regulatory bodies, after it successfully stopped Google and Yahoo! striking up a partnership in America in the same way. The Yahoo! name in China is also owned by another company - the Alibaba Group - so there’s a chance that they too may choose a different partner than Microsoft. Digg | delicious | Reddit | Google | Twitter | Sphinn | StumbleUpon | YahooBuzz | Facebook | Mixx | Contact bigmouthmedia

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Yahoo! Japan agrees deal with Google

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Ask.com rebrands as social search engine

Stalwart search engine Ask.com has unveiled its new look to the public, returning to its Q&A roots by supplementing search algorithms with human assistance. The new website aims to provide a solution for web users seeking urgent or more reliable responses to tricky questions not available on the internet by incorporating social networking features that allow people to submit queries directly to other users. In an official blog post, Ask.com explained: “Today we’ve officially launched the public beta for the new Ask.com, which combines our proprietary answers technology (specifically tailored to extract questions and answers from the Web) with the human insight of the thriving Ask.com community drawn from our 87 million monthly uniques.” In its beta form, users can only access the service through invitation . By offering “the capability to pose questions to real people”, the new Ask.com aims to answer “those complex, subjective and/or time-sensitive queries that, no matter how advanced, computers simply can’t address.” This rejuvenation of the somewhat struggling search engine - which currently ranks fourth in the US search market with a 3.6 per cent share, according to comScore - may allow it to distinguish itself as a viable alternative to the likes of Google , Microsoft and Yahoo! Or, as the blog post puts it: “Ask.com is now uniquely able to offer the most comprehensive and convenient approach to getting answers, combining pages and people to help users find the answers to all questions - even questions for which no answer is published online.” Digg | delicious | Reddit | Google | Twitter | Sphinn | StumbleUpon | YahooBuzz | Facebook | Mixx | Contact bigmouthmedia

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Ask.com rebrands as social search engine

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Microsoft’s quarterly revenue bounds ahead of competitors like Apple

Microsoft has battled back against top rival Apple with its latest revenue figures, recording

microsoft

Updated Bing Webmaster Tools

Today, Bing launched the redesigned Bing Webmaster Tools. The updated tools are a result of feedback from webmasters and SEO communities, where Bing learned that transparency, more control and more information are what webmasters want the most. The redesigned Bing Webmaster Tools provide you a simplified, more intuitive experience focused on three key areas: crawl, index and traffic. New features include: Silverlight 4 Capabilities: To offer a richer customer experience, the new tools take advantage of Microsoft Silverlight 4 to deliver rich charting functionality that will help you quickly analyze up to six months of crawling, indexing, and traffic data. Index Explorer and Submit/Block URL: Both features provide a more comprehensive view as well as better control over how Bing crawls and indexes sites. Index Explorer: Index Explorer gives Webmasters unprecedented access to browse through the Bing Index in order to verify which of their directories and pages have been indexed. Submit/Block URLS: Submit URLs gives Webmasters the ability to signal which URLs Bing should add to its Index and Block URLs allows you to block specific URLs from appearing in Bing Search Engine Results Pages. For more information about the redesigned tools, check out the Bing blog post

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Updated Bing Webmaster Tools

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Blekko promises user-friendly search experience

Plucky new search engine Blekko has launched in private beta , inviting a handful of testers to sample its unique search offering that hopes to take on the likes of Google and Bing before its public release later this summer. The Californian start-up must be well aware of the tough market it’s entering, where other wannabe ‘Google-killers’ such as Cuil and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales’ ill-fated Wikia Search have dramatically failed to make their mark in a market where even silver medallist Yahoo! has begun phasing out its search platforms to Bing. However, according to Tech Crunch, the new search engine may succeed in holding its own by offering “new types of searches” to users. What Blekko may currently lack in index size, relevancy and crawling speed compared to the mighty Google , the search engine will reportedly make up for with “an unprecedented level of access to the algorithms and data that Blekko uses to determine relevancy.” The primary way this is achieved is through slashtags, which will allow users to expediently narrow down their search queries depending on the type of page they are looking for - whether it’s ‘/news’, ‘/amazon’ or ‘/blogs’. Users can also add customised slashtags of their own to deliver more targeted results - which can be as straightforward as a site search (e.g. /bigmouthmedia) or to collate favourite tech sites or similar blogs. These slashtags can also be made public to reach a wider audience

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Blekko promises user-friendly search experience

microsoft

Windows 7 mobile phone platform earns reserved approval from reviewers

Reviews have been streaming in of tech titan Microsoft’s new mobile phone operating system Windows 7, and the general consensus seems to be a guarded optimism concerning the latest offering from the smartphone platform underdogs. Microsoft, once a ubiquitous force in the technology sector, has seen its products put to the chase in recent years, with upstarts Google and Apple carving out bigger pieces of the tech pie, even losing ground to companies or platforms like Mozilla and Linux. As for their jab into the smartphone operating system melee - where Google and Apple have been duking it out with the Android and iPhone platforms - Engadget recently reported a positive experience with the Windows 7 software, provided on a prototype Samsung device. “We were extremely surprised and impressed by the software’s touch responsiveness and speed. In fact, this is probably the most accurate and nuanced touch response this side of iOS4,” the review read. ZDNet also had a ‘preview’ version of the software, describing the OS as a sort of minimalism-for-smart phones approach.

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On its first birthday, Bing continues to eat at Google’s share of the search cake

One year ago, Microsoft retooled and rebranded its search facilities - renamed a ‘decision engine’ - as Bing, in the hope of giving market leaders Google and Yahoo! a run for their money. And, twelve months down the road, the venture continues to grow at a steady pace against the Mountain View tech giant - though search stalwart Yahoo! has kept up at a relatively similar speed, according to the latest figures from comScore. Microsoft’s Bing still finished third in June’s search engine rankings, handling 12.7 per cent of search queries on the web on its first birthday. Perennial runner-up Yahoo! was the destination of choice for 18.9 per cent of searchers, while Google remains just short of two-thirds of the market at 62.6 per cent. These figures may seem daunting for search underdogs, but the trends of the past year give hope to the upstarts. As Microsoft dropped its Live Search - sitting at eight per cent of the market in May 2009 - Bing debuted to an 8.4 per cent share in July 2009, meaning it has gained 4.3 percentage points in the past year, or grown 50 per cent of its original share. In comparison, Google has seen its share nipped and pecked away at, coming down 2.4 percentage points from 65 per cent of the market. Officials and executives at Microsoft may suffer no delusions about toppling the search kingpin, though they remain positive about remaining a key player in the sector

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One hour traffic system with Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising The Scientific Approach

What do an empty shopping mall and your brand new website have in common? If you guessed “zero traffic” then you are correct! Your website may have the most stunning design in the world, you may have the hottest product or service on the market, but without traffic you’re going to make just as much as that empty mall: NOTHING.  In order to jump start your marketing efforts without waiting for Google and the other search engines to rank your website, you need a secret weapon: pay per click marketing.  Pay per click marketing allows you to test your product, service or market conditions in real time.  This will save you from spending countless hours of work on campaigns that were never going to be profitable, quickly find ones that will be, and start profiting literally hours after launch. The internet has many parallels to the offline world, especially when it comes to commerce.  Whether you are promoting a physical or digital product, a service or even a brand name, without traffic you simply cannot be successful.  If people don’t know you exist, they can’t give you their information and they can’t buy your product, it’s simple as that.  And while you wallow in obscurity, you can bet your competitor is getting their product, service or brand name in front of people and laughing all the way to the bank. So, you make the decision to dive into PPC marketing, now what? The first step is deciding where you are going start your campaigns.  The obvious choice is Google since they currently dominate the search engine and PPC markets.  However, since it’s the obvious choice, that means you are going to have quite a few competitors, especially in the larger niches, which is something to consider.  Google isn’t the only gig in town though.  Microsoft Ad Central and Yahoo all have similar PPC platforms that you can profit from.  And while their reach pales when compared to Google, they still receive millions of visitors a day, which is more than enough to work with.  And since these are less popular advertising platforms for PPC marketers, you will face far less competition. In most my seminars and webinars , I do my best to get some free coupons from most these advertising service providers, so my clients and students can test all platforms and get a feel for what works and what does not.

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One hour traffic system with Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising The Scientific Approach

microsoft

Bing to launch entertainment portal for music, TV and games

Microsoft is poised to launch an all-encompassing entertainment page to its Bing search engine , to provide a single hub for users to watch TV shows, play online games and listen to music. The company issued a statement yesterday in which Yusuf Mehdi, senior vice president of Microsoft’s online audience business, revealed that a survey of Bing users found that 76 per cent desired a central destination for online entertainment services - something that Bing will aim to provide as Microsoft’s ‘decision engine’ continues to gain ground against Google . “As the content on the Web has exploded, it has become difficult to navigate and find what you are looking for,” Medhi explained. “So we see a great opportunity to help customers make important entertainment decisions.” BusinessWeek reports that Microsoft’s statement also invited the press to the official announcement of the updates, to be held in West Hollywood, California. One of the most prominent features will be Bing’s incorporation of the Zune music service - Microsoft’s answer to Apple’s iTunes, which allows users to stream or download music, as well as watch TV shows hosted on sites such as Hulu and YouTube. But Bing will also go a step further, in providing users with reviews and schedules for TV programmes and the ability to invite friends on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks to watch shows together. As for video games, Bing is expected to host 100 casual games that can all be played within the search results page, and these will also include multiplayer options within the user’s social network

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Google’s homepage experiment cut short

Search seraph Google tends to lead the way when it comes to search engine trends, but once in a while an experiment backfires - as seems to have been the case with its poorly-received ‘experiment’ in customising the Google .com homepage with artistic images. Observed by many industry commentators to be reminiscent of the style of Bing , the randomly generated background images appeared for many registered users on Thursday unannounced - though Google has explained that it was not its intention to thrust the new designs on users without warning. “We had planned to run an explanation of the showcase alongside it -in the form of a link on our homepage,” said Marissa Mayer, vice president of Search Products & User Experience at Google , in the company’s official blog. “Due to a bug, the explanatory link did not appear for most users. As a result, many people thought we had permanently changed our homepage, so we decided to stop today’s series early.” The blog explained that these homepage images were intended as a 24 hour experiment, but because most users did not receive the explanatory link - and reacted negatively to what they believed to be a permanent change, for which they could not opt out - V3.co.uk reports that the experiment was ended after just 10 hours. The Google blog explained that the experiment was intended to supplement a feature unrolled last week for registered users.

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