One of the interesting topics of the panel was Google and Bing’s take on whitelists & exception lists. They spoke on how some sites might be excepted in their search algorithms using white lists, exception lists, wikipedia lists, etc.

During the panel session, Danny Sullivan pressed Google and Bing regarding this issue. Both search engines admitted to having “exception lists” for sites that may get affected by algorithmic signals. They also claimed that these lists did not improve the sites’ rankings in the SERPs.

According to an official statement by Google sent to Search Engine Land, “Like other search engines (including Microsoft’s Bing), we also use exception lists when specific algorithms inadvertently impact websites, and when we believe an exception list will significantly improve search quality. We don’t keep a master list protecting certain sites from all changes to our algorithms.”

To read more about Google and Bing’s response to having exception lists check out the full transcript of the Spam Police panel or listen to the audio of the panel below.

Be sure to let us know what you think about Google and Bing having exception lists in the comment below.

Ads in search on the two partners will be powered by Bing, and their combined audience is estimated at 150 million Americans and over half a billion people worldwide. All of the ads will be served from Microsoft AdCenter.  The two companies are currently working out the technology details, so all of your ads on either network will stay the same for the time being. The hope is to have everything running off of the Microsoft AdCenter by Q4 2010 to capture the valuable holiday season.

What this means for advertisers

If you manage or use either Yahoo! or Bing search advertising, then nothing will change for a few months. The new merger should reach out to all advertisers with ample notice and instruction on moving over accounts, or possibly have everything moved over automatically. We will see how this works out in the Fall or possibly later. There is no hard deadline set for the transition, but it is coming.

The combination of the advertisers may end up affecting your campaigns in more ways than just an interface change. With the combination of searchers, there will also be a combination of advertisers. Currently if you run campaigns in both search engines you are competing in separate auctions for your PPC ads. This split can keep the Cost-Per-Click (CPC) lower because the number of advertisers (bidders) is lower. With this new merger, the combined pool of advertisers may cause the CPC to go up for some of your keywords.

Currently we see the cost of keywords in Bing and Yahoo! to be between 40%-60% of the cost of the same words in AdWords for similar position. These cost savings are a primary motivator to advertise on the Yahoo! and Microsoft platforms. While this new paring will grow the number of searchers it could also increase the bottom line. We won’t know for sure until the move is completed, but it may be a good idea to start planning for an increase in the cost of keywords.

The major benefit to advertisers is the consolidation of advertising. Search Alliance will become a one-stop-shop for PPC advertising. The alliance will instantly become the #2 search advertising platform, so advertisers that run ads on Search Alliance and on Google AdWords can easily capture a large percent of the overall search market.

The bids for keywords will probably go up, but they are still not likely to be more expensive than AdWords. Google currently maintains about 80% of the search market, but that extra 20% can be the difference for some online advertisers. The new Search Alliance between Yahoo! and Microsoft will make capturing that audience easier than it has been before.

You can subscribe to The SEM Blog to stay up-to-date with the changing landscape of Search Engine Marketing and Pay Per Click Advertising online.

Bing Twitter Page and Search

Bing actually created an entire page at bing.com/twitter which displays trending topics in a cloud at the top followed by a listing of the most active links below. Each link is followed by a couple of related tweets. There is some mystery as to which tweets are being selected. It does not appear to be the first tweets or the ones from people with the most followers. It also seems the links are tied to the trending topics, and are not necessarily the most popular links on twitter.

Additionally, Bing adds the ability to search the twitter stream in real-time. After searching a term (like Yankees) and you 4 selected tweets followed by some of the top linked content relating to those words. You can view the full tweetstream and either allow it to continually refresh or pause it a read a few. Be careful with some of the top trending topics, as they can start refresh faster than you (or at least I) can read them.

The Bing search adds some value with the related links, but the selection of how these links (and top two tweets) are chosen is still not fully known. Hopefully some of this will get ironed out as Microsoft continues to make progress in developing this search option.

Google Social Search

Google takes a completely different approach to the fire hose of Twitter data. While this may not be their long-term plan for the data, they are currently integrating it with a few other services in Google Labs. At the Google Labs Experimental Search, you can join the experiment, which gives you the option to use Social Search. Once you have signed up, when you search for something on Google and click Show Options you will see Social at the bottom. Selecting it gets you into the special Social results.

These results will show links from different people you are connected to and how you are connected to them. It also gives you the option to view results from a single person. Google creates these connections using your Google Profile (you created that, right?). I have Twitter as one of my links, as well as my YouTube account. Google scans these two networks to search for connections I might have, then it searches through that data.

This is much different than a full Twitter search, but in many cases it may be more useful. You are probably more interested in what the people you know and follow have to say than the rest of the Twitter universe. It also works to filter out all of the spam that currently plagues and Twitter trending topic. The links go to tweets, blogs, and other links related to the search, which adds some additional value to just searching the twitterstream.

These two new ways to search Twitter are still early in development so expect some changes and improvements in their results over time.

We do recognize that Search is improving and changing. Bing as being billed as a Decision Engine and you can see short presentation about it at www.decisionengine.com.

In the first versions, Bing will focus on four areas:

1. Making a purchase decision
2. Planning a trip
3. Researching a heath condition
4. Finding a local business

This new view of search engines is very much about comparing information. People using search engines for finding information are often looking for a one best answer. But decisions are more focused on reviews, trust, location and sometimes filtering out what you don’t need. This is where we see search taking on the role of negotiation. Bing seems to take a first stab at search as a negotiation in each of the four verticals. Bing will be revealing results based on Best Match, Deep Links and Quick Preview to provide relevancy and minimize the need for additional clicks. They will provide customer insight built in pages to provide comparisons, reviews and even price predictors in some cases. Really, the market share is open for improvements.

Bing’s advertising campaign will begin to sell the idea that today’s search engines don’t really work as well as thought to solve problems. Even if this turns out to be a better version of search/decision, they will have to compete with the Google brand. Tests showed people still preferred search results with the Google Brand logo, even if the results were not Google results. Positioning may be their biggest hurdle. Oh yeah… the name?

Branding shop Interbrand helped conceive the name Bing, which was chosen because it was memorable, easy to spell around the world and could be used as a verb, as Microsoft hopes to convert people from "Google it" to "Bing it."

Finding words like that these days "is getting harder and harder," said Paola Norambuena, senior director-head of verbal identity at Interbrand. She added that linguistically Bing had a lot of applications. "It's the sound of found."

from Advertising Age

Jonti Bolles

For more information please contact the Search Engine Marketing Team at Schipul – sem@schipul.com

and follow us on Twitter.

January 31 2008 – Microsoft offers up it’s services to run Yahoo! in an unsolicited take over bid. Yahoo! thinks it over.

March 17 2008 – Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt says the deal is bad for the internet.

Meanwhile Yahoo!s stock rises on the news and Microsoft’s dips

Early April 2008 – Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer tells Yahoo! if it doesn’t except the offer they should expect a hostile takeover.

April 9 2008 – Yahoo! and Google announce a partnership in Pay Per Click ads. Yahoo! agrees to run some Google ads in Yahoo!s search results

April 30 2008 – Microsoft states that it wants to keep Yahoo! employees in court documents.

May 5 2008 – Microsoft announces that the deal is off. Ballmer states Yahoo!s deal with Google is a factor

Nothing happens for a little while

July 14 2008 – Microsoft does something we’ve all done once or twice in our life time – drunk dial. Microsoft teamed up with Yahoo! stock holder Carl C Ichan in a bid to take over Yahoo! giving them 24 hours to decide. Hahahaha, that was a funny one.

November 6 2008 – Google breaks off it’s deal with Yahoo! in shared advertising leaving some to question whether Google simply helped Yahoo! to thwart Microsoft’s take over attempt

November 18 2008 – Jerry Yang is out as Yahoo! CEO and Guy Kawasaki tells me to hold my breath

January 14 2009 – Carol Bartz is announced as the new head at Yahoo! only to be overshadowed by the Social Media Inauguration a week later

Search Engine Stocks Over the Past Year

Everyone took a hit over the last year, even Google but they still remain on top with shares trading at $303.08 as I am writing this.

Search Engine Stats Over the Past Year

So now that we are up to date how much was gained and lost by the search engines over the last year? Well you don’t have to be an analytics guru to see that Google made out quite alright in Market Share over the last year;

Google’s market share in March of 08 was 77.70%. As of last month they are now at 81.48%. Yahoo! went from 12.06% to 10.22%. Microsoft went from 3.25% to 2.95%

So while the #2 and #3 duke it out #1 continues to take over the market

So what does this all mean?

I’ve thrown a lot of information at you and the take away is this; if you are planning a marketing campaign in pay per click or SEO go where the market is. In the case the market is clearly in Google.

Jason McElweenie

For more information please contact the Search Engine Marketing Team at Schipul – sem@schipul.com

In their example on their blog they show a search result of Muhammad Ali that returns a variety of results

Hovering over an image you are given an option to ‘show similar images.’ Pick an image you like and show similar images to that image.

That’s pretty cool!

I wish I could send you a link to this but their blog provided no link to their image search function. Oh I’m sure I could find it pretty easily but I’m lazy and don’t want to have to figure it out.

So if you are listening:

Microsoft ‘Please make it easy for people to use your stuff’

TinEye Image Search

Another great image search tool is TinEye. This neat search engine allows you find similar images or what an image is by either uploading it or inputting a URL of an image.

As they put it ‘TinEye does for images what Google does for text’

I’ve used it in the past to find out what a certain image is, I highly suggest using it

Jason McElweenie

For more information please contact the Search Engine Marketing Team at Schipul – sem@schipul.com

Microsoft teamed up with Yahoo! stockholder Carl C Ichan in a bid to take over Yahoo! and completely replace(fire) the entire board of directors and the top management team.

Wow, they must have had a few too many Grey Goose martinis if they thought that one would have passed.

Yahoo! Chairman Roy Bostock had the following to say in an official release from Yahoo!;

“This odd and opportunistic alliance of Microsoft and Carl Icahn has anything but the interests of Yahoo!’s stockholders in mind. Clearly, Microsoft, having failed to advance in search, is aligning with the short-term objectives of Mr. Icahn to coerce Yahoo! into selling its core strategic search assets on terms that are highly advantageous to Microsoft, but disadvantageous to Yahoo! stockholders. Yahoo’s Board of Directors will not allow that to happen. Yahoo!’s Board remains open to any transaction that delivers full value to our stockholders – we just do not believe such a transaction should be dictated by Microsoft and a single short-term investor…"

…After negotiating among themselves without the involvement of Yahoo!, Carl Icahn and Microsoft presented us with a ‘take it or leave it’ proposal under which we would be required to restructure the Company, hand over to Microsoft Yahoo!’s valuable search business and to Carl Icahn the rest of the Company, giving us less than 24 hours to respond. It is ludicrous to think that our Board could accept such a proposal. While this type of erratic and unpredictable behavior is consistent with what we have come to expect from Microsoft, we will not be bludgeoned into a transaction that is not in the best interests of our stockholders”

In business speak that translates to; ‘Are you out of your *&$%@#^mind? Look we were never together. I’m with Google now, ok? You need to move on. Go buy Apple or something’

In the press release Yahoo! references its new deal with Google and refers to it as having ‘superior financial value and less complexity and risk than the Microsoft/Icahn proposal’

This doesn’t mean the dance is over yet. Later in the press release Yahoo! states that it ready to sell to Microsoft for the original $33 but Microsoft balked at that deal. I’m not certain but the recent deal with Google’s AdWords, that has come under scrutiny, might have something to do with it.

Whatever happens this sure has been fun to watch, sort of like Desperate Housewives for search nerds

Stay Tuned next week as Steve Balmer cuts the break lines on Jerry Yang’s Mercedes – that is a total falsehood but would make for a good movie though, wouldn’t it?

Jason McElweenie

For more information please contact the Search Engine Marketing Team at Schipul – sem@schipul.com

More than 1 million organizations including schools and non-profits worldwide have participated in this charity event.

How does this work?

1. Start by going to http://www.searchandgive.com/ 
2. Sign in (or create a new account)and choose a charity you’d like to help donate to
3. Start searching from the Search and Give home page

Microsoft Live Search will make a donation each time each time you use this page to search, up to 500 searches per month per person.

Annisa Chan

For more information please contact the Search Engine Marketing Team at Schipul – sem@schipul.com

Microsoft announced over the weekend that it is withdrawing its bid to acquire Yahoo ending its 3 month dance with the second most popular search engine. In a letter released on PR Newswire CEO Steve Ballmer cites Yahoo’s AdWord deal with Google as a factor for the deal falling through.

Ballmer states that Yahoo ‘pursuing a new arrangement that would involve or lead to
the outsourcing to Google of key paid Internet search terms… …would make an acquisition of Yahoo! undesirable.’

Ballmer goes on to give reasons such as; ‘it would fundamentally undermine Yahoo!’s own strategy and long-term viability by encouraging advertisers to use Google’ over its own Ad serving technology.’

I don’t think this is the end of the courtship though, it could be Microsoft’s way of devaluing Yahoo’s stock in an effort to take them over at a later, less expensive, date.

Where does that leave us?

Who knows. Maybe Google and Yahoo form another company and try to buy Microsoft, now that would be funny

Jason McElweenie

For more information please contact the Search Engine Marketing Team at Schipul – sem@schipul.com

And so continues the ongoing saga of the search engines. For those keeping score at home that puts the Yahoo price anywhere between 45.5 to 47 billion and that really is chump change isn’t it? Is there anyway that that could have a trickle down effect for those of us that advertise on both Microsoft and Yahoo’s ad platform? That brings up a good question, once this takeover is finished with will we have ONE interface at which to edit our campaigns for both MSN & Yahoo? No official word yet.

One thing we do know is Microsoft has it’s check book open and their pen is cocked

Jason McElweenie

For more information please contact the Search Engine Marketing Team at Schipul – sem@schipul.com