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The Future of Search in
Europe
di
Phil Robinson
Search has come along way in recent years -
but what is the future of search in Europe and how do the major players see
search developing over the coming years?
A special report from the Search Engine
Strategies 2005 Conference, June 1-2, London
In the first session at the start of Day 1,
Google, MSN & Yahoo were preparing to present their ideas and vision to a
room full of marketers, press and agencies on how they see search developing
and their own corporate strategies for 2005/06. Alongside the big 3 was
Nielson/NetRatings and Hitwise there to give the raw facts and figures on
the current state of the search market place.
Future Vision
Ian Carrington, Google UK was up first
presenting Google's vision, which was 'simply' to make information more
organised and most importantly universally accessible to everyone - whether
via the web, mobile phones or any device from 'anywhere'.
David Graham, MSN UK followed a similar
theme and noted their strategy was to expand via multiple access points such
as through other Microsoft software such as MSN Messenger, Outlook and
Office.
Graham also mentioned the upcoming launch
of MSN's Search Toolbar to complete with versions from Yahoo and Google.
Salim Mitha (Yahoo) noted the distribution of their Search Toolbar will be
essential over coming years - hence the recent development of their Toolbar
for the fast growing Mozilla Firefox. Interestingly, if this is so essential,
MSN clearly has the upper hand with their immense penetration of Microsoft
software brands worldwide.
When MSN's Search Toolbar integrates with
MS Office, how many people will stop bothering to open their web browsers
and use other engines? And how much of Google's share of the search market
will begin to get eaten up?
MSN are already a dominant player at number
2 in Europe, and according to Graham, they have invested 100 million dollars
in the previous 20 months. With Microsoft's track record with software and
games consoles it could easily be argued that there will be a new number one
within years.
Things to look out for not mentioned by the
big 3 are
Pay Per
Call, a new search model showcased by Espotting. Launched in the UK and
US. They argue that this model is a big opportunity for SMEs, in particular
those without a web site who target local geographical regions.
Growth / Trends
All agreed search is still buoyant and
growing further. As expected Broadband penetration in Europe is continuing
to fuel growth and people are spending more time online. Each of the big 3
also acknowledged the strong prospects in Mobile search.
Google noted the trend of integration of
campaigns offline and trend to increase interest and traffic online from
online methods. They also see the changing users behaviour as a factor and
cited the mobile text language 'I want 2 C U' as something that search
vendors need to consider.
Personalisation was talked about
extensively by all search vendors. Yahoo talked about MyWeb - their
excellent beta tool for saving exact copies of web pages which they believe
will see the end of bookmarks. Another Yahoo beta tool is Yahoo Mindset
which uses machine learning to give users choice on how search results
should be sorted.
The importance of local search and
delivering local relevance tailored to the user, country and language was
repeated endlessly. The best examples are from Google with their maps,
weather reports and Google Local UK
which is already an integral part of their search offering.
Trends noted were the increase in news
search, usage of RSS feeds, image and video search
According to Yahoo, Toolbars now account
for 8% of search - of which Google and Yahoo own 95%. As a result of the
aggressive toolbar distribution strategies by Google, Yahoo and MSN (coming
soon!), the surprising 8% statistic looks set to increase strongly over
coming years.
Current Situation
Currently
Google and Yahoo are the most
active with new beta tools being released continuously. In comparison MSN
appear very quiet to outsiders, however, it's no secret that their
innovations may be released in the next major Operating System, currently
codenamed 'Longhorn'.
MSN showed a graph that identified
percentage shares of the big 3 in Europe, which showed Google sitting at 61%
with MSN sitting way behind with 20.6%. It was interesting that Graham
showed this graph with the strap line 'Google No.1 for now!' - and given
Microsoft's huge 100 million dollar investment, incredible installed base of
Toolbar-ready software, upcoming OS system and 'new seriousness' in search -
some would argue these figures might be reversed within 2-3 years.
Nielson/NetRatings presented some useful
stats on country shares of the search market. Germany (29%) and UK (23%) are
the largest search markets, followed by France (18%) and Italy (16%). Europe
is dominated by Google (1st) and MSN (2nd), but the market market is still
big enough for local players like Voila (2nd in France) and Virgilio (3rd in
Italy).
The coming year may see smaller players
that focus on local country needs getting stronger, for example, Ask Jeeves
in the UK who are currently running a million pound off line TV advertising
campaign. Hitwise emphasised the huge opportunities for innovative new
entrants and strong brands.
Challenges
There are different challenges from
different perspectives. From a marketer's point of view the challenge is to
focus on generating quality referrals from search engines that convert to
sales or leads.
Things are moving fast, some of the beta
tools being developed by Yahoo and Google are exciting. The challenge for
them is to get these new tools properly integrated with their main search
engine quickly.
Search is still undeveloped in some areas.
Most of us love search, but being critical think about how search engines do
not understand contexts/multiple meanings, the dead links/outdated
information, and the poor quality pages you come across before finding the
information you really want.
The mainstream search experience is still
not personalised and does not learn or adapt to our behaviour. It is
difficult to search off the web and is not particularly well integrated or
east to use via Mobile and other applications.
The big challenge for the search vendors is
who is going to solve these problems and how quickly?
In terms of innovation, so far Google have
done an great job - and the vision statement presented by Ian Carrington of
Google pretty much covers all the above. Yahoo is certainly trying to catch
up and MSN are quiet but lying in waiting and not forgetting the smaller
local players jockeying for a position.
The race is on, see you at SES 2006.
About The Author
Phil Robinson is the Founder and Director
of ClickThrough Search
Engine Marketing. He provides training and presents at seminars such as
for the Chartered Institute of Marketing, speaking on a range of
internet marketing
topics such as search engine marketing and advanced web analytics.
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