Microsoft’s Renewed Focus On Search Engines
by
Randy Mears
The Internet search business is
big. All you have to do is look at
Google to understand that; and Google, as big as it is, still only dominates a
little over half of the US market. Yahoo
is number two and Microsoft is a distant third.
Two articles caught my attention
today, one about improvements
to Microsoft’s Live Search and the other, an interview
with Microsoft’s VP of search and advertising. After reading each article I found the
content and message to be similar. Microsoft doesn’t like its number three standing in the Internet Search
pecking order and is going to do something about it. With current estimates for August, U.S. Web
searches were distributed as follows:
- 57% Google
- 23% Yahoo
- 11% Microsoft
Microsoft’s approach to gaining
search market share includes improvements to Microsoft’s Live Search, such as
increasing the number of sites being searched (by a factor of 4) and overhauling
the core technology that decides which results to display. Additional improvement activities will give
extra attention to four particular search categories including shopping, maps,
health and entertainment. On the
marketing front campaigns to increase usage will be augmented via incentives
directed at the current Live Search user base; estimated at 70 million. While incentives are a transitory activity
the objective is increased momentum for a long term bump in market share.
Though things like 4 times the
number of sites being searched along with improved result display technology
and marketing should increase traffic to Microsoft’s search engine; I don’t see
anything here that is really going to change the game. If Microsoft aims to seriously compete with
Google, or even Yahoo, they will need to do better than that.
