Category: Search Engines

Google Adds Features and Introduces Ads to Google Suggest

Google has added features and tweaked its search suggestion tool Google Suggest. The tool, which was introduced last August, suggests search queries in a box below the search box as searcher begins typing in text. The tool was previously only available when making searches from the home page and has now been added to results page. On the results page, the few suggestion show relate to the current search query. For searchers that are logged into a Google account and have Web History enabled, Google may show some relevant past queries.

Google has also added and removed information that is shown in the suggestions box. To help the searcher scan the list the portion of suggested queries that searcher has not typed into the search box will be in bold text. If Google thinks that a searcher is looking to navigate directly to a website a link to that website will shown in the suggestion box. Google will also begin to show AdWords text ads in the suggestion box when they “detect that the most relevant completion for what you’re typing is an ad”. The ad will be shown at the bottom of the suggestion box in a colored box and identified as a “Sponsored Link”. Finally, Google will no longer include the result count for the suggestion listed in the suggestion box.

April U.S. Search Share Results

Nielsen Online today released its rankings of U.S. search share for April (PDF). Overall search increased 4.4 percent year over year to 8.6 billion searches. Google had year over year increase of 7.8 percent and received 64 percent of searches. Yahoo had a year over year decrease of 2.8 percent and received 16.3 percent of searches. Microsoft had a year over year increase of 7.2 percent and received 9.9 percent of searches.

Google Introduces New Search Results Filtering Options

Google today introduced a set of features they call Search Options, which provides users with the ability to filter their search results in a number of ways. The options are accesible by clicking the “Show options …” link under the search box on the search results page. Results can be filter to only include videos, forums, or reviews. Google already provided the option to only show video results through Google Video, but the other two options are new. The reviews filter still needs work as includes pages that are not reviews, for example searching ‘iphone’ or ‘honda accord’ includes the official websites for these products.

Additional individual filter options are available for videos, forums, and reviews results and for viewing all results. When viewing all results, results can be filtered to be only from recently, the past 24 hours, the past week, or the past year. The results can also be modified to include images from the pages or with longer snippets from the pages.

Google wrote in a post on the Official Google Blog that they plan introduce more features to Search Options in the future.

Google Expands Use of Sitelinks In Search Results

Google has introduced an expansion of sitelinks, which brings the possibility of a more limited version of sitelinks being displayed for multiple results on a search results page. Sitelinks are links to additional pages on a website that are shown underneath a result from that website. The decision whether to show sitelinks for a given query and what links to show is determined algorithmically. In a post on the Google Webmaster Central Blog announcing the expansion, Google explains that the purpose of sitelinks is to “enable users to jump directly to important parts of a site, which is often useful for large, complex websites” and to give “users an overview of a website’s content by highlighting some of the popular parts of the site.”

Originally, sitelinks were only shown for the first result of a search with three to eight links shown in two columns. If your search for Microsoft you can see example of this along with a search box, for searching within the given website, that is sometimes shown under the sitelinks. The expansion introduces one-line sitelinks, which show up to four links to other pages on the website. The one-line sitelinks can show up for multiple results, including the first result.

In the post Google also announced changes in the ability for websites to block pages from their websites, through Google’s Webmasters Tools, from being shown as sitelinks. Google will be “speeding up our response time” in blocking pages and expanding the blocking, which is currently limited to blocking pages shown as sitelinks for a website’s homepage, to any page on a website that displays sitelinks.

Yahoo Increases Share of US Search-Ad Revenue in Q1

Yahoo increased it share of US search-ad revenue to 19.3 in the first quarter of 2009, up 1 percent from the year ago period, according to search marketing firm Efficient Frontier. From the year ago period, Google dropped .9 percent to 72.3 percent and Microsoft dropped 1 percent to 3.5 percent. Google had a click-through rate (CTR) of 2.38 and cost per click (CPC) of 54 cents in the first quarter of 2009, Yahoo CTR of 1.16 and CPC of 42 cents, and Microsoft CTR of 2.19 and CPC of 52 cents. The data is based a subset of Efficient Frontier clients and is comprised of over 84 billion impressions and 785 million clicks.

Google’s U.S. Search Share Reaches New High and Yahoo’s Reaches New Low

Nielsen Online today released its rankings of U.S. search share for March (PDF), with overall search increasing 16.7 percent year over year to 9.5 billion searches. Google had a year over year increase of 27.6 percent and received 64.2 percent of searches. Google’s had it highest percentage of searches ever, surpassing November of last year when it received 64.1 percent. Yahoo had a year over year increase of 1.7 percent and received 15.8 percent of searches. Yahoo’s percentage of searches was lower that 16 percent for the first time in the last two years and was 6.1 percentage points lower than it highest percentage in the last two years. Microsoft had a year over year increase of 0.3 percent and received 10.3 percent of searches.

Google Introduces Longer Snippets for Some Searches

Google has begun to show longer snippets for some search queries that include more than three words. According to a post on the Official Google Blog, the longer snippets are being introduced to “provide more information and show more of the words you typed in the context of the page.” The longer snippets span three or four lines. Google also announced that they have deployed new technology that “can better understand associations and concepts” related to search queries. Google is using the new technology to show more related searches and show related for longer queries.

February U.S. Search Share Results

Nielsen Online yesterday released its rankings of U.S. search share for February. Overall search increased 10.1 percent year over year to 8.5 billion searches. Google had year over year increase of 19.2 percent and received 63.5 percent of searches. Google’s percentage of searches was it’s second highest reported by Nielsen Online, only surpassed by November of last year when it received 64.1 percent. Yahoo had a year over year increase of 4 percent and received 16.7 percent of searches. Microsoft had a year over year increase of 2.4 percent and received 10.4 percent of searches.

Yahoo Adds Ad Scheduling and Demographic Targeting To Search Advertising

Yahoo today announced that they would be adding ad scheduling and demographic targeting to their search advertising service in March. With ad scheduling Yahoo will support varying bids based on what time of day and day of the week ads will run, which Google and Microsoft already support in their search advertising products. With demographic bidding Yahoo will support varying bids based on age and gender of searchers, which Microsoft already supports. In addition, Yahoo has added the option to show display advertising on the Yahoo Network targeted to users who performed searches on Yahoo for a given keyword.