The Chatterbox

Search 2003-2004

The last entry brought us to the last couple months of 2003. Let's take a look a the major changes that have occurred in the last few months.

First, back in mid-November of 2003 Google conducted what can best be described as a pre-emptive strike by making some major changes in the algorithm they use to rank sites. Needless to say, it is difficult to predict an outcome when you make changes to 1's and 0's and those changes affect billions of web pages. I have no doubt that Google was trying to improve the relevancy and search experience of their users, however this is far from what ended up happening.

Some very good sites that had worked hard for months, or in some cases years, to obtain a much treasured high ranking position for their search terms suddenly fell off the map. We're not talking small changes here. Not like a #2 site dropping to #20.

In many, many cases Top 5 sites that were very good and very relevant to the search term being used fell as low as position 1,000 or below!

You can imagine the outcry. Especially since it happened at the height of the Christmas buying season. Needless to say a lot of eMarketers got hurt badly. And conspiracy theories ran rampant.

I really don't believe Google was doing anything sinister. Instead they were simply changing the weight different elements used in their algorithm when ranking sites. And it didn't go well.

To this day Google still doesn't provide search results that were as god as those pre-November in my opinion. They seem to be putting an awful lot of weight on links and linking text... Too much weight IMO.

I make this statement as a searcher, not as a search engine marketer. I used to use Google for all of my searches and were pretty happy with the results they returned. These days I don't use Google nearly as much as before, simply because I don't have the time to wade through 30 or 40 sites to find what I need, and what used to come up in the Top 5 every time.

As far as optimizing a site for Google at this moment in time, it's laughably easy to totally skew their results if you want to. Simply get a lot of links pointing to your site that use the phrases you're trying target in the link text. It doesn't necessarily matter if the page is optimized for that phrase. It's all about links and linking text with Google at the moment. That will trump everything else.

I'm sure they'll keep tweaking things until they get it right. Or hope they will anyway, because it's far from perfect at the moment.

Now, a normal searcher would wonder why Google would make such a major change since they were the only game in town.

The reason is simple. They had to prepare for two major competitors entering the market to contest their dominance. And they knew they were going to be becoming a Public Company.

All of these changes were going to happen over the course of a few short months, so they were trying to get a jump on everything. And find some way to differentiate themselves from everybody else.

The first shoe fell in mid-February 2004 when Yahoo's contract with Google expired. When it did, they began (finally!) to use their own search technology to produce their search results pages. It's not like they didn't have the expertise, considering they'd purchased several search technology companies in the previous 18 months or so.

The moment this happened Google lots a good portion of its marketshare. The way I view marketshare anyway. To me, if Google supplies the results that's Google marketshare. I don't care if people are searching on AOL, it's still Google data.

So a new player was there that had the technology and wherewithal to compete head-to-head with Google. Which is something they'd not had for years. Most of their life in fact.

Truth be known, Yahoo! even has some advantages over Google. Google has a very recognized brand name, but so does Yahoo! The difference is that Yahoo! is more of a Portal than strictly a Search Engine. They have a lot more data (hopefully anonymous data!) about their users and their habits than Google could ever have with their business model. Which will be an important factor going forward, but that's another discussion.

Next, around the same time, MSN (which now uses Inktomi data, which is owned by Yahoo! ... yes it's convoluted) publicly announced that they were developing their own search technology. This had been known for some time by insiders, but the announcement made it official.

MSN, which is of course owned by Microsoft, is the proverbial 800 pound gorilla. They have both Google and Yahoo! quite concerned. Not only do they have significant cash to throw at the market, but they are also marketing wizards! Whether you like the folks in Redmond or not, you have to admit that they have done a very, very effective job of marketing their products.

The part that is the scariest for G and Y, and everybody else for that matter, is that Microsoft dominates the PC market. It's their operating system on the vast majority of the world's computers. It would be laughably simple for them to integrate their search product directly into the operating system and make it the default search product for most users.

And while Yahoo! has a fair amount of data about their users, the information they have at their disposal pales by comparison to that MS has available by owning the platform.

MSN, at this moment in time, is still using Inktomi data to seed their search results. I expect this to change within the next 30-60 days though. I really expect that MSN will have their own search technology in place on their site before the end of July 2004. And start a major marketing blitz right after it goes Live.

If I were Google or Yahoo! I would be very scared, just like I'm sure they are. Especially if I was Google and had an IPO worth billions set to roll out.

That brings up up to today. Next we'll take a look in Randy's Crystal Ball to see what the next "killer app" in search will be about.