Keeping up with the search evolution

In the past year a spate of developments has catalysed the search engine sector. These advances have expanded the power and scope of search marketing, making it more informative for users and offering new potential to merchants. Here are the most significant industry changes you need to be aware of:
 
1) Bing's in. Microsoft launched Bing, a major evolution of its Microsoft Live search engine. Microsoft said it has designed Bing as a "decision engine" to help people search the web more intelligently and to simplify everyday tasks such as buying products. Core to the new search engine is the ability to provide people with tools to organise search results to their preferences. For example, Bing includes a category panel, which organises results into products for sale, product reviews, and product manuals, all of which help users find the most relevant results faster.  
 
Bing also offers "Quick Preview", which gives a brief preview of search results in a box that appears when someone hovers the mouse over the search results link. The preview gives a snapshot of the website that the result links to so that people can decide whether they want to click on it.
 
The new search engine also provides even greater targeting opportunities with its secondary search box. This noninterruptive feature lets people search within a site using Bing, delivering results within the site they're searching rather than taking users back to Bing's results.
 
In the US some listings also have a cash-back feature, whereby users get cash back by buying through particular retailers. While this feature is not yet available in the UK, Bing is rapidly evolving, and it won't be long until retailers this side of the pond can capitalise on this innovation.
 
As a search engine, Bing works effectively and has a slick user interface. According to Hitwise UK, on its launch date of 3rd June the search engine received 10.8 percent of all UK search engine traffic, ahead of both Yahoo! and Ask. Bing was also the eighth most visited site in the UK on 2nd June, ahead of all BBC properties.
 
Now is a good time for online retailers to experiment with the new search engine to drive sales, as we anticipate its market share growing. Try Bing and optimise for it. 
 
2) Yahoo! and Microsoft unite. Yahoo! and Microsoft announced a 10-year advertising partnership in a bid to take on the overwhelming dominance of Google, which generates more than $20 billion (£12.3 billion) a year from ads. The deal sees Microsoft's Bing search platform replace Yahoo!'s ill-fated Panama on Yahoo!'s properties.
 
The move consolidates the search marketplace to some extent and leaves Google with a larger competitor. "Providing a viable alternative to advertisers, this deal will combine Yahoo! and Microsoft search marketplaces so that advertisers no longer have to rely on one company that dominates more than 70 percent of all search," the companies stated.
 
While the deal is certainly significant, it really has more impact in the US, where Yahoo!/Bing combined will have nearly 30 percent market share, compared with Google's 65 per cent. In the UK, Google has nearly 90 percent share, so the combined Yahoo!/Bing proposition will have approximately an 8 percent share of the marketplace.
 
But it's not all about Google. While the other search engines have lower market share, they are also less competitive marketplaces, and click prices can be lower. What’s more, their conversion rates are often higher than Google's, so while they should not replace the search engine behemoth in your marketing plans, you should try to bolster your search strategy with a Bing/Yahoo! campaign.
 
3) Real-time search. Real-time search enables users to find online information almost immediately after it's published. The microblogging service Twitter allows brands to communicate directly with their audiences in this way, enabling people to find real-time search results based on current "tweets" on any subject.
 
Facebook has joined this party, spending an estimated $50 million (£30.8 million) buying Silicon Valley start-up FriendFeed. This will enable Facebook to import all shared information from a variety of sources while creating the highly desired real-time search. The purchase surprised many in the industry, who were expecting Google or even Twitter to buy the company due to its real-time search engine.
 
And in fact, Google rolled out its own real-time search several weeks ago. “Now, immediately after conducting a search, you can see live updates from people on popular sites like Twitter and FriendFeed, as well as headlines from news and blog posts published just seconds before,” Google explained on its blog. “When they are relevant, we'll rank these latest results to show the freshest information right on the search results page.” Google cofounder Larry Page is on record as saying, "People really want to do stuff real time, and I think [Twitter] have done a great job. We've done a relatively poor job of doing things that work on a per-second basis." 
 
4) Location, location, location. Twitter announced that geolocation of "tweets" will be launched soon, allowing every tweet to have a latitude and longitude attached. This opens up a whole range of very targeted advertising opportunities should Twitter wish to pursue this revenue stream.
 
Tweet geotagging will be treated differently to the profile location data entered manually by users. Location data in the profile will continue to be used to give a general idea to visitors about where a user is normally based, while tweets will show where they are at a given time. Although Twitter has confirmed that users will need to opt in to sharing their location on a tweet-by-tweet basis, this opens up huge potential for retailers.

For example, with accurate, tweet-level location data, retailers can monitor tweets from anyone in their neighbourhood without having to invasively follow them. This provides a huge opportunity for personalised marketing and the opportunity to use online to drive in-store footfall by informing people of relevant local offers or even simply to confirm that merchandise is in stock before a customer takes a trip into town.
 
According to its blog, Twitter is going to release geolocation to platform developers before it adds the feature to Twitter.com. This means that we'll also see a huge wave of imaginative new applications using geolocation that open up even more possibilities for retailers.
 
With search engines jostling for space and innovations reinvigorating the industry, retailers should remember that it's not all about Google. Now is the time to take advantage of the opportunities presented by the other players in the search marketplace. With advances coming thick and fast, be sure to keep your ears to the ground so that you can capitalise on new developments. The pace of change is accelerating, and some of these new initiatives will present great opportunities for marketers who can move quickly and gain an edge over their competition.
 
Nigel Muir is managing director of search marketing specialists DBD Media.

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