Kindle Fire Defaults to Bing – 12th September 2012 As Bing continue to push ahead with raising the profile of its search engine, Microsoft and Amazon have announced a partnership this week such that Bing will be the default search engine on the Kindle Fire. With the success that the Kindle Fire has had in America, this could be a major coup for Microsoft as more and more searches go mobile. The Kindle Fire is in prime position to pick up a sizable chunk of new mainstream tablet users. Will this give Bing a big enough platform to chip away at Google dominance in the search market arena? Let us know you thoughts by tweeting #SL58 @SearchLately. – Kevin Ting More details: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2204407/Bing-Will-Be-the-DefaultSearch-Engine-on-Kindle-Fire
Google Knowledge Graph Carousel Goes Global – 11th September 2012 Google have recently expanded the Knowledge Graph to include a scrolling banner of pictorial results pinned across the top of a results page. This is in addition to the existing information box which has started appearing on the right hand side. Originally implemented only for Google.com, this has now been rolled out globally across all English speaking domains. Examples can be found for search terms such as ‘cast of Friends’ or ‘moons of Jupiter’. Users can scroll through the results and select a picture to search a specific term; such as ‘Jennifer Anniston’ or ‘Callisto’. However the carousel of results will remain pinned at the top of the new search, making it easy to search other results within the category. The impact on click through rate for affected search terms will be noticeable as users can find a larger amount of information without ever leaving Google. This is likely to effect encyclopaedia style sites, like Wikipedia or IMDB, that hold the top ranking positions for both the category and individual search terms. Future changes to the knowledge graph are not yet clear but if it were to be expanded to include e-commerce terms, this would likely have a significant impact on how search works. Let us know you thoughts by tweeting #SL58 @SearchLately.
– Angie Aiken More details: http://insidesearch.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/explore-with-knowledge-graphcarousel.html
SERP Research By Compete – 10th September 2012 Market Research Company Compete have published some insightful research about SERPs recently. The full report can be downloaded here. Compete analyzed 10s of millions of search engine results pages generated by actual consumers in their U.S. panel in Q4 2011. Some highlights of the results include: -
55% of all search engine result pages contained at least one paid ad somewhere on the SERP. The majority of SERP listings are organic (85%). The remaining 15% constituted paid listings. The right hand side of the SERP is where the majority of paid listings are served (61%) versus approximately 1 in 4 paid listings on the top of the page. The overwhelming majority of paid clicks occur on top paid listings (85%) versus only 13% of paid clicks occurring on the right hand side. Of all paid clicks, 59% occur on the first listing on the top of the page while only 15% are on the second listing on the top. While it’s better to appear first on the right (4% of all paid clicks) versus second on the right (3%), the third listing in the top position is better than any on the right (9%)
Let us know you thoughts by tweeting #SL58 @SearchLately. – Blair Liu More details: http://blog.compete.com/2012/09/10/seeing-between-the-lines-of-thesearch-and-the-click/ http://success.compete.com/seeing-between-the-lines-of-the-search-andthe-click-whitepaper
Google’s Olympic Experiment – 5th September 2012 No doubt everyone noticed the changes to the Google results pages during the Olympics but how many of you gave a thought as to Google's motives behind the change? This article takes an in depth look and analysis of what, in essence, is a Google Website with thousands of pages hosted within the
Search Results pages. However you view Google’s experiment, and the motives behind it, the evolution of the search engine is very apparent: from simply striving to provide the most relevant website results in response to a search query so that you can find what you’re looking for and get there quickly to a destination/website in itself where the need to click through for information is non-existent. That Google did forgo millions in ad revenue to run this experiment makes for interesting times ahead in Search. Let us know you thoughts by tweeting #SL58 @SearchLately. – Ashley Lindley More Details: http://www.barker.dj/blog/google-olympic-experiment
The Future of Search – 6th September 2012 Not a month goes by without some piece of content decrying the death of SEO, Search or some related digital discipline by authors ranging from complete unknowns, guru’s, rockstar’s, magicians to leading industry figures. This is one of the best pieces of content dealing with the much discussed topic of the future of SEO; looking at it’s evolution and relationship with content marketing, social media, and collaborative technology: I cannot sum the article up any better than is done in the final paragraphs: “2012 is the year of change in SEO with opportunities opening up all the time to work, outside the silo, closely with your peers and clients to expand the role of traditional SEO from content SEO, social SEO through to reach and frequency and viral SEO The way you work, the tools you use, and your approach to SEO have all changed. We all know that, but taking action is a totally different ball game.” Let us know you thoughts by tweeting #SL58 @SearchLately. – Ashley Lindley More Details: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2144350/Future-of-SEO-ChangeConvergence-Collaboration
Amazon Set To Take On Google – 5th September 2012 Google have dominated the search market landscape for the last decade, but could they be set for the greatest ever challenge? Amazon has been growing in visits and sales ever since launch and they may be set to battle it out with Google for search market supremacy. “A recent report from ComScore showed search queries are up 73 per cent in the past year, while net sales have increased by 29 per cent in the second quarter of this year to $12.83billion (£8.1billion).” Will users start searching directly on Amazon as they increasingly expand their reach across the internet rather than going through Google to find what they want? Users may start to bypass Google if they feel Amazon can provide them with the information they need a lot closer to the products they are seeking. Let us know you thoughts by tweeting #SL58 @SearchLately. – Kevin Ting More details: http://www.metro.co.uk/tech/910610-could-google-lose-internet-searchsupremacy-to-amazon