From a search marketer’s perspective this is great news. Yahoo! has been a lame duck for a few years now and Microsoft can potentially pump some air back into an otherwise lifeless site. Microsoft has typically delivered such small numbers that measuring performance rarely went beyond educated guesses due to lack of statistical relevance. The big question is, will this merger have what it takes to defeat Goliath? With initial numbers from Bing not as great as expected, the immediate boost will increase their market share significantly however, the problem that lies ahead is conversion. How can this partnership convert the other ~70% of people who religiously use Google to give Yahoo! or Bing another try and, more importantly, to make these users stick. Personally I have not used Bing since the week it launched, but that is only a focus group of 1. I stopped, not because I didn’t like it, but because it is very difficult to change old habits. Microsoft does have experience creatively incorporating search into their homepage, msn.com, and now they have another portal to try and do the same, however that will require these two to learn how to play in the same sandbox.

It seems like just yesterday that Microsoft was coming out from under Yahoo!’s wing and launching their own search platform. My how the tides have turned.

MSN should know better than anyone that it is extremely difficult to change the searching behaviors of Americans. In a country where cell phone internet usage is just beginning to catch on, Bing has a difficult task of proving that they provide consumers with better answers than Google, the engine that defined search. It’s going to take more than just a flashy interface to prove this, it’s going to take better content.

Birds Eye vs Google’s Street Map: Edge Birds Eye.

This was a difficult one, however the edge goes to Birds Eye because I have yet to find a location not available, while Google’s Street Map has many gaps, limiting us to just the archaic satellite view. Everyday more and more locations are being added by Google, so unless Bing has something up its sleeve they may quickly lose their edge.

Google Local vs Bing Local: Edge Google.

Both engines allow me to find a thai restaurant near my office, however Bing opens a new window when I click. Because of this annoyance Google wins. If it was just a new tab, this battle would have been closer. Bing’s partnership with Yelp to provide a detailed review does add great value, however the overall navigation is a bit clunky. If they add a partnership with OpenTable to book a reservation I may be convinced to change my mind.

Google vs Bing: Edge Google

The real battle lies in the content. Bouncing around both Bing and Google, performing various searches across categories ranging from health to travel, Google just has better results. Bing has a clear partnership with MayoClinic, as they are the first result on every health search performed. This seems a bit forced. Not saying that Mayo is not a great site and it does offer great content, but it blurs the line between paid and natural, which is a battle that can give consumers a bad taste. As for the other results it was close. The “Related Searches” on Bing has proven to be a great feature and has helped reduce the bounce rates of websites, according to Coremetrics. Getting searchers closer to the content they want makes for a satisfying user experience, something Google learned before MSN even handled their own search results.

The American public is picky and smarter now, ironically, thanks to Google. Simply spending more money on advertising is no longer enough to convince consumers, as it was before Google. I am pulling for Bing and hope that they can make a run at Google and really hope that June 4th was not their moment in the sun. This battle is far from over, and both will undoubtedly continue to improve and refine their results, however first impressions mean a lot and I just hope that users haven’t already given up on Bing.

The guidelines to the policy changes state that the following companies/sites can use trademarks in text if they are:

1. A reseller of trademarked goods or services. Google compares this to flipping through the Sunday circulars and instead of actual products listed it offers “dicount cola” or “snacks on sale” Now resellers will be able to call out the specific products they are selling.

2. Sale of components, replacement parts or compatible products corresponding to the trademark.

3. Informational sites. Comparison shopping is a fundamental piece of the internet, and now Google will allow these sites to draw in more customers. These sites cannot be competitive nor sell a competitors product.

This move not only deepens Google’s pockets, but also helps sites that rely on reselling other companies products. While at first that seems like a win-win for the trademark owners who rely on these sites to push product, at what cost to their own campaigns? As more resellers and affiliates start taking advantage of the policy change CPCs will start increasing, minimizing the efficiency of these terms. While you have little control over resellers and informational sites, implementing guidelines for affiliates can ensure that they do not begin hijacking your own performance.

Set to launch tomorrow is a website that claims to provide structure to the webs infinite amount of data. Wolfram Alpha, named after British inventor Dr. Stephen Wolfram, is a search engine that claims to have the ability to work things out on the fly, just as a human would. It takes search results and compiles them into a database using a combination of human and machine generated content. This search engine is not for the faint of heart though. Early reviews are mixed, with some reporting the results are more complicated than they wanted and others reporting it provides info that no other engine can.

The concept of Wolfram Alpha is a good one; organizing something that is slowly spiraling out of control with data, the internet. However, one big, $120+ billion speed bump stands in their way, Google. With Yahoo! and MSN struggling to gain any ground on the behemoth, it is going to be an uphill battle for Wolfram Alpha to change the gravitational pull of Google and its 141MM visitors per month.

What Wolfram Alpha did successfully do is give the hare a swift kick in the behind. In response to all of the commotion about the new engine, Google released news of Google Squared the day Dr. Wolfram previewed his engine. Similar to Wolfram, Google Squared will provide structure to content across the web, displaying results as squares in an online spreadsheet, thus the name. While the science behind Wolfram Alpha may be superior, Google Squared has one advantage, it will be found within the Google umbrella.

I would be naïve to assume that Google will never be toppled, but is Wolfram Alpha the one to do it? With a name that hardly rolls off the tongue, Wolfram Alpha has an uphill battle. While they may not topple Google, in 5 years we may look back at May 15th, 2009 as the day search changed.

In typical corporate world fashion, Microsoft engineers are again attempting to build a new search engine platform (Kumo) that promises to help you “not just search, but accomplish tasks”. It does appear that Microsoft is finally using the thousands of employees they have as a focus group by releasing it internally and redirecting employee traffic from live.com to Kumo.com, requesting feedback. If only they could redirect internal Google.com traffic… A recent Microsoft insider reported that 4/5ths of internal searches were completed on Google. This is an amazing statistic and should be a rude awakening to the big guys over in Redmond that they cannot buy market share, but rather they must provide a superior user experience.

All of this commotion comes as talks with Yahoo! heat up, again. It appears that Microsoft is positioning themselves to make a big splash in late 2009, with their sights set on Google during the big holiday push. Plans for a $100 million ad campaigns are also bouncing around the advertising world. In my opinion this money will be better spent if they no longer have Yahoo! between themselves and Google.

By using AJAX to build their interface, Google has created a platform that now uses common sense technology. If you see something you wish to change you click on it and change it. For example, in the old system if you wanted to update bids on a term you would check the term and click “edit keyword settings” and then make your changes and click “save changes”. While the page refreshes were relatively quick, to make changes you had to follow only this process. With the new platform, keyword bids changes can be made on any screen where that keyword appears, including reports. Additionally, the idea of bread crumbs have been eliminated and you can navigate between adgroups, even across campaigns, with one click and no loading, allowing more time for reporting and optimizing.

This is a huge leap from the technology found in Yahoo!’s Sponsored Search or Microsoft’s AdCenter. Yahoo! for example, actually takes Google’s setup and converts it to another document that then needs to be uploaded into their platform. This makes no sense. If you create the technology to convert it, why not just upload it straight in. As for making bid changes, tedious is not a strong enough word. While the process is just as many steps as Google, the average page load takes upwards of 10 seconds. This is fascinating since it takes Yahoo! 0.13 seconds to return 216M search results on the term “allergy”.

At least Yahoo! can allow you to upload something into their system, MSN has tried and failed miserably at creating a system for uploading new campaigns. Therefore you have to rely on people to do it for you, which can take days. And for the little amount of volume it typically brings, who has the patience for that?

I am not surprised that Yahoo! lags so far behind, it did take 3 years for them to implement a performance bid model, but MSN has no excuse. Microsoft, arguably the technology leader, should have the resources and the intelligence to create an interface that makes it easy and manageable to run a search campaign. Solving the dashboard issue won’t create searches, but if the plan MSN has to become a real force in the search world succeeds, the worst thing they can do is create a speed bump with their advertising interface.

My recommendation: For Microsoft and Yahoo! to please sign-up for Google’s new AdWords platform and try to learn a few things and accept the fact that Google knows what they are doing.