Search is so consolidated that it is uncomfortable being an SEO. If Google decides to profile you or kill your sites there is not much you can do, especially because Yahoo! and Microsoft are losing marketshare month after month. Why are Yahoo! and Microsoft losing marketshare? Their bad marketing coupled with Google’s good marketing:
The toolbar has NEVER given anyone any real information. BUT, it has given the world a perception that whatever Google ranks that must be right. It has also helped to give Google millions of devout followers and millions more who are willing to give access to a lot of private data just to see a little green go a little farther to the right. BRILLIANT. So brilliant in fact I have never understood why MSN and Yahoo haven’t done their own white paper and give away a little blue bar to “prove” it works. BUT, that is why Yahoo and MSN seem to be losing market share. Not because their results aren’t as good. It is because they aren’t as good at marketing. I don’t begrudge Google for that. I admire them.
To appreciate how bad Yahoo’s marketing is, consider the following:
- Overture Keyword Selector – their public facing keyword tool is unreliable and does not even promote their own brand or their own network on it.
- Want to sign in to Yahoo search marketing? Go to sem.smallbusiness.yahoo.com. Yup…2/3 of the companies revenues come through a subdomain of a subdomain.
- Yahoo powers millions of domain landing pageviews every day, and are afraid to put their brand on it, all while Google puts their brand (and typically search box) on everything they touch.
Anyhow, this is Christmas and this is supposed to be a happy post. And I am happy, because Wikia Search just launched in Alpha, and plans to publicly launch on January 7th.
Given that the difference between Google and Yahoo is largely one of marketing, and given that Google has been doing more manual editing of the search results, that lends credibility to Wikia’s human search model.
What happens when Wikipedia has a “search powered by you” box promoting an engine other than Google on every page of Wikipedia? Does Wikipedia keep ranking #1 for everything? Does this create another viable search channel for marketers? Does this competition make Google less arrogent and harsh in their webmaster relations department?
Here is Wikias’ whitelist, and here is a blog tracking Wikia’s progress. And here are some of Google’s human review documents that were leaked a couple years ago.
