MSN Does Not Steal Google Results to Seed New Index
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Rumorville, conspiracy theory, and over speculation results in crazed forum discussion and a possible slashdot mentioning. Jason Dowdell, someone I have spoken with often for about a year now, published a
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Due to the new advancements Google has made in their Analytics API (Datasource) functionality, the API changed slightly and the code that Felix Geisendorfer had created to work with a CakePHP install wasn't working anymore. He's corrected the problem with this new post with the new code and an example of its use.   In a very productive CakePHP session with nate a couple weeks ago in Atlanta I finally implemented some new HttpSocket stuff that was needed (minimal support for cookies / ssl) for creating the new API as a datasource. Now that its done I'm fairly happy with the outcome of the new API.   You can download the source here and follow his simple two-ish step process for getting it working on your site and with your Google account.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft thinks its Live Search can match GoogleÂ in some areas now, but the company has been theÂ underdog in searchÂ for so long it's not even trying to lure users away from its rival -- at least not yet. Showing off a dizzying array of tools to reporters and analysts at its Silicon Valley campus in Google's hometown of Mountain View, Calif., Microsoft executives said several times that the company is focused on providing a better search experience for current users of Live Search, hoping toÂ get them to search there more often. The Redmond, Wash., company also wants to lure users of its MSN portal to more frequently use Live Search. They compared Live Search's results to those of Google in some cases and said customer research showed its user satisfaction catching up to Google, but didn't talk about grabbing market share. The numbers are damning: About 37 percent of Web searchers sometimes use Live Search, but only about 11 percent of all searches are done on the site, Microsoft said, citing independent statistics. The average user of Live Search does 15 searches on the site per month, while the comparable number for Google is 55. Microsoft runs behind YahooÂ and Google, and Derrick Connell, a general manager in product management at Microsoft, acknowledged that the search product was actually losing market share in the first four months of this year. But the company hopes to gain ground at least among its current base with the new capabilities. Over the past three years, Microsoft has quietly invested in basic things such as coverage, expanding its index to more than 20 billion Web documents, executives said. But it's more flashy additions in video, health, local search and maps that may help Live Search make an impression. The new video search interface, one of the features to be rolled out gradually to all visitors over the next week, lets users play a preview of each video on a results page just by putting the cursor over the image representing it. Using internally developed technology as it "crawls" a video Web site, Microsoft detects moments in a video that are likely to be highlights, said Mike Nichols, a group program manager in Live Search. Those parts are combined in a 30-second preview that searchers can watch to get an idea of what a longer video is like. Audio peaks, flashes of light and scene changes are among the elements Microsoft's automated system looks for. The previews are cached on Microsoft's own servers for quick playing, he said. Microsoft's new specialized health search engine, to be rolled out the following week, will divide results into separate columns for journal articles, Web results and sponsored results. To address consumer worries about privacy, all searches and results on the health site will be encrypted using SSL (Secure Sockets Layer). In local search, Microsoft is using its Virtual Earth tool for richer results. It can project aerial photographs of places on Virtual Earth's navigable three-dimensional maps of major cities, said General Manager Erik Jorgensen. A tool for users to show highlights of a trip, called Collections, will be enhanced so viewers can just click through the trips or passively watch them in a virtual video rather than looking around a map. The maker of a Collection will also be able to upload the virtual video to sites such as YouTube, he said. Local directions will also be enhanced. Rather than make users enter a starting point, Live Search will offer directions from all the major highways, from which users can choose. As an option, the local search engine will also be able to modify those directions in light of current traffic conditions. Local and mapping features will be rolled out by mid-October, according to the company. Microsoft has done a poor job selling its search offerings, and if it has matched Google on factors such as relevance, few people would believe that right now, said Gartner Inc. analyst Van Baker. The new video, health and local search features are impressive and Microsoft is doing the right thing by targeting current Live Search users and MSN portal visitors, he said. "They've got to make sure that [group] is happy first," Baker said. After that, it may be able to convince others that Live Search is worth a try.
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New MSN Search May Be a Google Killer!  The Second Look at MSN's Search technology is available for public beta testing. I've given it a spin myself and must say that I'm impressed. Although they have no ads on the SERP's of the preview site, I'm sure they will load it ...
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After rocky road to public offering, search engine proceeds--but what will it do with its windfall?
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MSN Search to Challenge Google and Yahoo  The new MSN Search is a full speed ahead effort for Microsoft to catch Google and Yahoo in the search engine race and are about ready to release their MSN Search Engine. Microsoft has offered a search engine since long on their MSN website ...
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The seldom used auction system that  Web search giant Google Inc. GOOG.O used in its initial  public offering was expected by some to change the way Wall  Street does business, but almost three months later, there has  not yet been another deal like it.
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Huge databases that generate Web site content on the fly can be the bane of search engine spiders' existence. They can't find pages; they can't see URLs. So they can't index pages.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft Corp. is removing the beta, or test, tag from Live Search, its next-generation search engine, and making it the underlying search tool at its MSN.com portal. The move comes as Microsoft anxious attempts to gain traction in the search engine market, where it remains a distant third behind leader Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. Because search engine-based advertising is a fast-growing, multibillion-dollar business, Microsoft has invested heavily in improving its search tools and accompanying ad network. But it has failed to make a dent in Google's dominance. In June, Google nabbed 45 percent of all search engine queries in the U.S., while Yahoo got 29 percent and Microsoft 13 percent, according to comScore Networks Inc. This represents a market share reduction for Microsoft of almost 3 percentage points from June 2005. From Tuesday to Thursday, Microsoft will replace the current MSN Search engine on MSN.com with Live Search, which features a revamped image search service, an improved local search, a redesigned user interface and new tools to refine query results, said Derrick Connell, general manager of the Microsoft search business unit. The change will take place progressively on different MSN host servers. When users run a search on MSN.com, they will be taken to a Live Search results page on the Live.com domain, but there will be links there to guide users back to the MSN.com portal, he said. Live Search went intoÂ public beta testing in March at Live.com, the home page of the Live-branded initiative Microsoft launched last year to boost its software-as-a-service offerings. Live.com is also exiting its beta status this week. Among the enhancements in Live Search are new options to view full-size photos in image search results and an increased number of "bird's eye" aerial images in local search, which is shedding its beta label in its U.S. and the U.K. services. Live Search also features a new social search service called QnA, in which users can pose questions and have others chime in with answers. Yahoo, Google and others have similar question-and-answer search services. Â
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After Google announced their search software utility and Yahoo! told the world they are working on a similar program. MSN is now beta testing their software.
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(InfoWorld) - Word that Microsoft had a crack team of developers in Silicon Valley working on a cutting-edge search project is news to the company's head of search and advertising. "When they get it done, I hope they'll send me a link to it so I'll know about it," Satya Nadella, corporate vice president of Microsoft's search and advertising platform group, jokingly said late on Monday at the Search Marketing Expo in Seattle. He was responding to a question about a rumor making the rounds online that a team of engineers at Microsoft's Mountain View office is working on a new search engine to replace its existing one. While Nadella denied any specific effort to build a new search engine, he did say that his group, as a very young search operation compared to some other giants, would need to take risks in order to improve its position. Microsoft search is just over 3 years old and has about 10 percent of the market, he said. "We'll experiment," he said. One way that Microsoft may work to improve its search ranking is by trying to leverage its position as a content provider. The MSN portal has around 500 million unique users globally, he said. His group is trying to find ways to encourage them to use Microsoft's Live search. The MSN A-List is an example of that effort. The A-List is a page that shows top searches on Live search. In addition, the main Microsoft.com page only recently got a Live search bar, he said. Microsoft will also have to differentiate its search product from the others to get ahead, he said. Offerings like 3D maps, where he thinks Microsoft is in the lead, as well as mobile and image search could help the company gain users. Longer term, Nadella wants to experiment with and "reconceptualize" the search user interface. There's a "ton" of innovation that can be done on the user experience side, he said. In addition to innovating on new products, Nadella's group will get more scientific in researching how customers use Live search. "The crux of our problem is how do we get existing searchers to use it more," he said. To figure out how to do that, he wants to have more data about things like abandonment rates. Microsoft has an uphill battle to fight as it competes against current search leaders. Microsoft's Live search trails far behind Google, which has about half of the search market share. Yahoo, the second largest search provider, had nearly 27 percent share in April, according to ComScore Networks.
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By Michael LiedtkeSAN FRANCISCO, Associated Press  INTERNET search leader Google Inc.
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In spite of Google's annual revenue growth of 52%, many Wall Street analysts are now advising their clients to hold off on buying Google stock. Has Microsoft's bid for Yahoo made that much of a dent, or are there other factors at play?
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Today's announcement from Facebook is the reason why Google announced OpenSocial last week. They must have gotten a leak from one of the companies that stood with Facebook, so they knew what was coming. They weren't scared of Facebook's technology, because they didn't respond with technology. They were scared because Facebook has a better advertising story than Google does. They are getting ready to offer some very premium web real estate that (pay attention now) Google can't compete with. And advertising is Google's bread and butter, advertising is to Google as operating systems are to Microsoft. They can't let somebody appear to be better than they are in advertising. Yet that's what Facebook is, better than Google in advertising. Here's what Facebook can do.  Let's say I bought a Wii and I like it. They can tell all my friends "Dave bought a Wii and he likes it." That's a lot more likely to result in a sale  than an intrusive ad like this one, that was displayed next to an email I sent to some friends about their New Networked Living Room. Google thinks I might want to buy Moroccan Lamps, or something called a Unique Shabby Chic (huh?) or Crate & Barrell bedroom furniture. Of course I tune that shit out, I don't even see it. It has zero impact.   Anyway, I was talking with Doc Searls a few minutes ago and he mentioned OpenSocial and I told him it was just a lot of noise meant to distract people from what Facebook was doing in advertising. He hadn't heard anything about it even though he was at a tech conference in Denver today and yesterday. I said there you go, Google's strategy worked. But to no effect, longterm, because Facebook has the momentum and Google, try as hard as they want to stop it, will not be able to, any more than Alta Vista or Infoseek were able to stop Google once they figured out that their lunch was eaten. Google will be around for a long time, I'm not saying they will go away, but Facebook will be around too. And Google will have a hard time catching up to them.  Long-term, however they both have problems because advertising is on its way to being obsolete. Facebook is just another step along the path. Advertising will get more and more targeted until it disappears, because perfectly targeted advertising is just information. And that's good!  8/3/06: "Information is welcome, advertising is offensive."
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft drew the largest number of Web site visitors worldwide in December, a recurring accomplishment that makes the company's disappointing online ad business all the more disconcerting. Close to 509 million unique visitors, ages 15 and up, went to Microsoft Web sites in December, comScore Networks said Wednesday. Google came in second with a little over 494 million, while Yahoo landed in third place with almost 477 million unique visitors. Microsoft also led in March 2006, and its lead over Google was bigger. Microsoft had almost 539 million unique visitors to almost 496 million for Google. Third place went to Yahoo with little over 480 million. However, the difference in online ad revenue between Microsoft and its two rivals is massive, a sign that, despite heavy investments in the past three years, Microsoft isn't close to matching their ability to monetize Web site traffic, especially Google's torrid growth in the search engine space. In the quarter ended Sept. 30, 2006,Â Google's revenue, which comes mostly from search engine ads, grew 70 percent to $2.69 billion, whileÂ Yahoo's revenue, mostly derived from various forms of online ads, came in at $1.58 billion, up 19 percent. By comparison, in that same quarter, Microsoft's Online Services Business, which includes online ad and Internet access sales, generated only $539 million in revenue, down from $564 million in the same quarter the previous year. Microsoft executives have acknowledged that the Achilles heel of its online ad business is its search engine segment. In December, Microsoft's share of U.S. search engine queries continued to fall, landing at 10.5 percent, a distant third place from leader Google, which nabbed 47.3 percent, comScore said in a separate study. In July 2005, Microsoft's U.S. search engine query share stood at 15.5 percent and Google's at 36.5 percent, according to comScore. Overall, unique Web site visitors grew 10 percent globally from December 2005 to December 2006 to almost 741 million. Microsoft and Yahoo both grew 5 percent each. However, Google topped the market growth category with a 13 percent increase, in part due to its international appeal and to the rising popularity of some of its non-Web search services, comScore said. For example, Google's image search engine grew its unique visitors by 40 percent, Gmail by 71 percent, and Google Maps by 62 percent.
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Microsoft&#39;s search engine is due to appear on MSN tomorrow, Thursday, according to an awful lot of anonymous sources. The New York Times heard from &quot;a person knowledgeable about the announcement&quot; while Reuters made do with &quot;sources close to the company&quot;.
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The activity in the search-engine realm shows no signs of abating. Each week seems to bring a new development that has the major players sparring anew for bragging rights.