By Caragh McKenna
Online Marketing Account Manager
AOL and MSN launch their new search engines, Yahoo! rebrands PPC subsidiary, while Google Desktop Search moves out of beta testing.
AOL
Early January saw the relaunch of a new look AOL Search. This new search facility has a cleaner, more user-friendly appearance, minimising the lists of features and extras on the homepage page.
The homepage does however still offer the additional search technologies "Web, Images, A&V, News and Local". It has a similar feel to Google's homepage, but perhaps that is because the results are still provided by Google.
Inside the search results, sponsored listings are appearing as clearly as ever at the top of the page. Google provides Adwords as AOL's sponsored links. It would appear that most AOL regional engines have also moved to Google Adwords. Many of the regional versions of AOL had been providing Overture results.
Another form of sponsored listings, currently only appearing in the US version of AOL, are SnapShots.
AOL says: "[SnapShots] include images and listings that point to relevant AOL and AOL partner content. Some Snapshots may include paid placement, which is clearly labelled as advertising. They may also include Official Sites for trademarks or brands."
This relaunch seems to very much about appearance rather than content. A search for "Guinness", for example, will still provide the user with the exact same results as Google.com. However, following the purchase of Advertising.com, AOL has also announced a global plan to increase advertising revenues. Will 2005 see AOL dumping Google Adwords in favour of it's own sponsored listings?
AOL is also believed to working closely with FAST to expand its own search capabilities. It is expected that a FAST powered local search will be launched by AOL this year.
AOL are also due to launch their desktop search facility in the summer. More information on the new look AOL can be found here.
MSN
MSN too relaunched it's search facility on February 1st. Following a very long testing period, this is a more convincing relaunch offering both a new look and several new search capabilities.
Previously relying on it's partner Yahoo! to provide organic search results, MSN refreshingly now offers it's own unique search results.
Among the new features on offer are over 40,000 free listings from the MSN Encarta encyclopaedia. The new MSN also offers Apple-which provide music and information by the artist/band. News and image search functionality remain in the search offering.
MSN is also working hard to improve "advanced search" functionality and is aiming to make it more accessible to the everyday user. Ongoing development of this search engine includes the launch of a web log search engine and its own pay-per-click search engine to replace the sponsored links currently provided by Overture/Yahoo!.
It appears MSN is finally launching it's much talked about official challenge to Google.
Yahoo!
Yahoo! too is actively rebranding its pay-per-click subsidiary, Overture to "Yahoo! Search Marketing Solutions". The changeover is due to finish by the end of March.
Yahoo's Senior Vice President, Ted Merisel, said of the rebranding: "Our mission is to be essential to marketers of all types around the world. Unifying all of our search marketing and related products under one banner and one common approach reflects our commitment to integrate and simplify online advertising, allowing businesses of all sizes to take advantage of the Yahoo! Search Marketing Solutions that best fit their marketing goals."
It will be an interesting rebranding to watch over the next few months as it's surely going to be offputting to current competing engines using Overture PPC results. While MSN is working on its own PPC engine, other engines including Excite, WebCrawler and AltaVista may move in a similar direction rather than providing free advertising and branding for Yahoo!.
In conjuction with the rebranding of Overture, Yahoo! will launch "YPN", a competitor to Google's Adsense. This confirmation came from a highly informed source at Yahoo! and it follows the recent discovery of strange ads on the blog of Yahoo! program manager Ken Rudman. In his blog, Andy Baio drew attention to the fact that Rudman's blog was running text ads that were called from a "ypn.overture.com" server. While the YPN acronym is set, what it stands for is still up in the air. Andy Baio suggested Yahoo! Publisher Network.
Yahoo!'s (YHOO) share price is still dropping but it will be one to watch…
Google
Last but of course never least, Google's Desktop Search has graduated from beta testing and Gmail is gaining popularity. For those unfamiliar with the Google Desktop Search facility, it allows the user to search files, PDF's and email on the user's own computer. Since launching version 1.0, Google's Desktop Search can also search music, videos and images stored on the user's machine. And while working in a Word Document you can search from the toolbar and Google search results will open in a mini browser. The new tool is also compatible with Netscape and Firefox browsers. "Google Desktop Search brings the power of Google search to information on the computer hard drive," says Jonathan Rosenberg, Vice President of Product Management at Google.
Gmail, while still in Beta, is becoming ever more popular. The exclusivity of the 1GB email product even warranted a spot in The Irish Times Magazine's "What's Hot" section. Together with the huge amount of storage space Google announced another addition to Gmail: Picasa Photo Editor/Organiser is now integrated with Gmail. You can now log into Picasa from Gmail and send photos. Information on these Google tools can be found here.
It's an exciting time in the search engine world and we at Interactive Return are looking forward to the long overdue challenge to Google's search supremacy!
Back to March's Newsletter
