2006 Search Engine Wrap Up

2006 saw the retirement of Jeeves, a new look for Yahoo, and the introduction of free content from AOL. Meanwhile, Google continued to make headlines with its purchase of YouTube and partnership with MySpace. The industry is constantly changing, and we're looking forward to seeing what will happen in 2007!

Google Buys Stake in AOL
Google exchanged $1 billion plus $300 million in advertising credit for a 5 percent stake in AOL. The guys from the Googleplex beat out several other buyers, including Microsoft, to close this highly competitive deal. The value from Google's perspective is that it ensures that AOL will continue to serve up Google's search results and that one of the most popular Internet destinations will remain a Google advertising partner. Google will also be given new opportunities to advertise to AOL's huge membership base. Google and AOL will integrate their content where it makes sense, such as for products like Google Talk and AOL Instant Messenger. AOL will also give the Google spiders access to additional content. To get this deal done, Google may have had to compromise its principle of a clean, graphics-free interface; there are rumors that AOL will be given the ability to place graphical ads on Google's web properties. Time will tell if this investment will be worth the sacrifices that Google has made.

Jeeves Heads to the Retirement Home This Month
It's official. Jeeves, the knowledgeable butler from Ask Jeeves, is retiring. This development was originally reported several months ago, and it appears that Ask Jeeves is now ready to replace Jeeves and rebrand itself as Ask.com. The formal announcement will likely come at the Search Engine Strategies conference in New York at the end of February. Until then, you can check out Jeeves' retirement page.

MSN Revamping Search
Microsoft recently debuted a new beta search engine, dubbed "Windows Live Search." The huge advertising blitz promoting the new MSN search has not really worked out, as the engine's market share actually dropped during the ad campaign. The new Live Search features several cosmetic differences from conventional search engines. It displays results in a continuous scroll, rather than showing a traditional 10 results per page. It also gives users the ability to customize their results via sliders that can lengthen or shorten descriptions and titles. The engine is currently pulling its results from MSN Search, but there has been mention of upgrades to the algorithm to improve the relevancy of those results. Over the past few years, all of the major engines have essentially copied Google's design and layout, so it will be interesting to see how searchers react to a new interface.

Google Wants Users to "Co-op"erate
Google has recently launched a new service called Google Co-op. CEO Eric Schmidt calls the new product "the most exciting product launch Google has had in the past year." He adds, "It harnesses the power of Google's users to structure Google's data and search results--all without Google having to do anything." Apparently, Mr. Schmidt is a big fan of free labor. Google Co-op relies on users to volunteer their time and effort to organize Google's search results. This sounds great in theory, but the level of XML sophistication is beyond what the average user possesses. The reward for putting time into Co-op comes when a lot of people subscribe to an individual's Co-op account. If the subscribers happen to be logged on to their Google accounts, they will see the volunteer's customized search results. Seems like a lot of work for a low probability of a pay off.

AOL to Offer Free Content
AOL has decided to shake things up. The old school Internet giant has seen 30 percent of its subscribers leave since 2002. The company is planning on turning things around by making some of its services free in an effort to increase its membership level. New memberships will be available to those that register for an AOL email address, but the sign-up process will not be as simple as that of other online email accounts, as it will require a lot of the user's personal information. AOL plans to make its money back by offering free services, including email, a

Yahoo!'s New Look
Yahoo! has finally made its new home page design permanent. After months of testing, the new look website was finally released to all. Internet users have most likely seen the new homepage (or some version of it) before because Yahoo! has not been shy with it. The new site has a more graphical interface and includes, in the words of Yahoo!, a "newly designed and positioned Yahoo! Search box that offers consumers a more prominent gateway to the Web, news, multimedia content, local information, shopping and Yahoo!'s directory." It will be interesting to see if this has any effect on Google's majority and still rising market share.

Google Partners with MySpace
Google and MySpace recently formed an online partnership that should make both companies a lot of money. Google has received exclusive rights to provide MySpace with search results and keyword-targeted advertising. In exchange, Google is paying MySpace $900 million over the next three years. On the surface, this seems like a lot of money, but MySpace is one of the most popular sites on the Internet, with close to 100 million profiles. If you do the math, it will cost Google less than a penny per day to advertise in front of each MySpace member. Both companies are said to be collaborating on future offerings, including a MySpace toolbar. This is a big win for Google – a partnership of two of the biggest sites on the Internet has to worry Microsoft and Yahoo.

AOL Sheds Light on Search Activity
AOL recently released data on 20 million queries from 500,000 users. The company had good intentions for the data to be used by researchers, but it failed to recognize the fact that some queries contain personal information. AOL also underestimated the intelligence of the people viewing the data. Searches from the same numerical IDs were quickly grouped together to expose some perverse, bizarre, and downright disgusting insights, turning AOL's good intentions into a public relations nightmare. Soon, privacy advocates and concerned AOL members were weighing in, causing a backlash against the company. Eventually AOL fired two employees, and a senior executive stepped down. It is a shame that this data was mishandled, as it could have provided some meaningful insights into search behavior.

Google Goes Tubing
Webcam artists unite! Google has acquired YouTube in an all-stock deal worth $1.65 billion. The news has sent Google shares to new highs, well over the $400 per share mark. Although YouTube has not turned a profit to date, and some predict that on-site advertising could alienate users, the deal has been very well received by financial analysts. What Google is really paying for is potential: YouTube is one of the ten most popular sites on the Internet, and it is also the major player in the rapidly growing online video industry. (Who doesn't love home movies of teens experimenting with fire crackers?) Detractors say that YouTube will soon be held accountable for the massive amounts of copyright infringement that its users are performing on a daily basis. Some predict that lawyers will be lining up to try and take a piece from Google's deep pockets. This seems like a fairly safe assumption, considering the precedent the legal community has set on going after corporate money.

Big Three Agree on Sitemaps
It's very rare to see three competitors from a major industry join forces to reach a common goal. Could you imagine Ford, Chevrolet, and Chrysler jointly developing a new car? But it has happened -- Google, Yahoo, and MSN have teamed up on sitemaps. Sitemapping has been gaining steam ever since Google introduced the program last year. Yahoo followed suit with a similar program, while Google continued to add additional functionality. In its simplest form, a sitemap is an XML file that lists URLs for a site along with additional metadata about each URL (when it was last updated, how often it usually changes, and how important it is, relative to other URLs in the site) so that search engines can more intelligently crawl the site. It is in the best interests of the search engines to help webmasters make their sites more accessible so they can improve their indexes by adding more content; it's just surprising that the engines decided to make things easier on webmasters by creating a unified standard. Additional information about the program can be found at Sitemaps.org.