People heading to Google for search rather than kicking off their queries at Google-powered AOL equals another quarter of middling financial performance coming up for the portal.
AOL is trying to do all the right things with its technology. They opened up AIM for developers, with the hopes that new applications will bring more people to the rest of AOL’s services. When they had the opportunity to cover the Live 8 concerts online in 2005, AOL earned praise while MTV received jeers for its efforts.
The monthly search market figures from services like Hitwise, Compete, and Nielsen all tell an awful truth. AOL has a small single-digit share of the search market.
That translates to minimal paid search revenue, a situation that vexes Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes. Silicon Alley Insider picked up on Bewkes’ frustration at a Bear Stearns conference where Bewkes spoke.
He sees another flat quarter for AOL as its users continue to go where seemingly everyone else goes for search. Google dominates the US search market, depending on whose figures you choose to follow, by gobbling up as much as two-thirds of the queries being made.
Searching at Google made the search ad company a multi-billion dollar enterprise, fueled by relevant little text ads. If AOL could even pull one more percent of search share in a month, it would have a dramatic impact on their bottom line.
AOL has tried to advertise its search, and its web properties feature search boxes, yet the ubiquity of Google carries people back to it by inertia.
