Yahoo has started a new advertising service that displays image, video, and other ads formats to the paid listings on search results pages. The services supports displaying images and video, text input boxes for searching for specific products or finding a store location, additional text links to relevant page, and brand logos. The Rich Ads for Search service is currently only available by invitation. According to a New York Times article, Yahoo is charging a monthly fee for the service. Yahoo claims that small group of advertisers that tested the service in fourth quarter of 2008 “saw click-through rates rise by as much as 25 percent” and improved conversion rates.
Category: Search Engines
Search Engines Announce New Tag To Reduce Duplicate Content Issues
Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft have announced support for a new tag to help reduce duplicate content issues. One source of duplicate content is when the same web page can be accessed from multiple URLs. The new canonical link tag specifies what is the preferred URL for the webpage. While search engines will use this as strong hint, they will use algorithmic mechanisms to compare the URLs to deal with improper use or abuse of the tag. The URL must be on the same domain, but can be on a different subdomain and can use relative or absolute URLs. The tag should be in the following format: <link rel=”canonical” href=”http://www.example.com” /> and should be placed in <head> section of the webpage. Google currently supports the tag, Yahoo says that it will implement support “over the coming months”, and Microsoft says that it will provide “full support in one of our upcoming releases.”
January U.S. Search Share Results
Nielsen Online today released its rankings of U.S. search share for January. Overall search increased 27.5 percent year over year to 9.5 billion searches. Google had year over year increase of 40.8 percent and received 62.8 percent of searches. Yahoo had a year over year increase of 8.7 percent and received 16.2 percent of searches. Microsoft had a year over year increase of 18.3 percent and received 11.2 percent of searches.
Study Finds Over Half of Users Use Multiple Search Engines
A new study by Forrester Research found that 55 percent of U.S. online adults use multiple search engines each week. 20 percent of users only used Google each week, 8 percent only used Yahoo, 3 percent only used AOL, 2 percent only used their ISP’s search engine, 1 percent only used MSN, and 1 percent only used Ask.com. The study also found that 69 percent of users used Google each week, 50 percent used Yahoo, and 14 percent used MSN. Finally, the study found 30 percent of users identified Yahoo as their home page, 23 percent identified Google, and 7 percent identified MSN. The study was based on a survey of over 4,800 individuals.
Google Error Claimed All Websites Contained Malware
For an hour on Saturday morning Google’s search results page flagged every web page listed as containing malware and blocked access to those web pages through links on the results page. When Google detects that a website contains malware, it warn users when a page from that website is listed in search results by placing the message “This site may harm your computer” under the listing for a page and by placing an interstitial page when the link for that page is clicked. According to a post by Marissa Mayer, Google’s Vice President of Search Products & User Experience, on the Official Google Blog, all websites displayed the warning due to a change in the manual list of websites containing malware. Mayer explained that “the URL of ‘/’ was mistakenly checked in as a value to the file and ‘/’ expands to all URLs.” Google list of websites that contain malware also includes websites that are listed through automated processes.
December U.S. Search Share Results
Nielsen Online yesterday released its rankings of U.S. search share for December. Overall search increased 19.6 percent year over year to 8.6 billion searches. Google had year over year increase of 33.5 percent and received 62.9 percent of searches. Yahoo had a year over year increase of 13.7 percent and received 16.8 percent of searches. Microsoft had a year over year decrease of 15.5 percent and received 9.8 percent of searches.
Microsoft Signs Search Deal With Dell
Microsoft has signed a three-year deal with Dell to become the default search provider on a majority of the consumer and small business PCs it makes according to a post on Live Search blog. The deal, which involves PCs in 23 countries, will begin in February and also includes the installation of the Live Search powered toolbar. Dell previously had a similar deal with Google and Microsoft struck a similar deal with HP in June of last year, which went into effect this month.
Microsoft Signs Deal to Become Search Provider for Verizon Wireless
Microsoft has reached an agreement with Verizon Wireless to become the default search provider. The initially announcement was made at a Verizon Wireless investor conference, with additional details to be announced later in the day at Microsoft CEO’s keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show according to a Bloomberg report. Microsoft and Verizon Wireless had been in discussion over an agreement for some time and Verizon Wireless had also held talks with Google over a possible deal. Verizon Wireless is the last major U.S. carrier to reach an agreement for a default search carrier, both AT&T and T-Mobile have agreements with Yahoo and Sprint has an agreement with Google.
November U.S. Search Share Results
Nielsen Online today released its rankings of U.S. search share for November. Overall search increased 9.6 percent year over year to 8.1 billion searches. Google had year over year growth of 21.7 percent and received 64.1 percent of searches. Google’s percentage of searches was it’s highest reported by Nielsen Online, surpassing it previous high in April of this year when it received 62.0 percent. Yahoo had a year over year decrease of 1.4 percent and received 16.1 percent of searches. Microsoft had a year over year decrease of 16.7 percent and received 9.1 percent of searches.
Google Toolbar PageRank Updated
Google has released an update to the PageRank values shown in the Google Toolbar. Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s Webspam team, confirmed the update in a tweet. The toolbar PageRank is a simplified snapshot of Google’s internal PageRank , with the toolbar PageRank values rounded to whole numbers from 1-10. The toolbar PageRank is updated every 3-4 months. PageRank is based on incoming links to a page and is one of the over 200 factors that Google uses for crawling, indexing, and ranking.