Will "Buyable Pins" Boost Pinterest's Pie in Search Advertising?

Pinterest, often considered a "Social Networking" site than a serious Search Engine, is wiggling its way into the advertising sphere by promoting a little blue pin called "Buyable Pin" which allows advertisers to convert consumer interest directly into sales.

Over the past few months, the image-bookmarking service has been making the rounds with advertisers trying to persuade them it’s not a social network but rather a place where consumers search for and discover products.

Pinterest is not a place where people come to connect with family and friends, it’s a “catalog of ideas,” says Tim Kendall, the company’s head of monetization. People “go through the catalog and do searches,” he added.

Source:  http://blogs.wsj.com/cmo/2015/09/14/pinterest-targets-search-ad-budgets/

Artificial Intelligence personal assistant – will it topple the traditional search engine?

    Over the past decade, Google has been dominating the online search domain. With the continual efforts to optimize its website and to improve its algorithm architectures, Google was able to provide users with customized results taken into account of their locations and personal traits. Nevertheless, despite its improvement through the past years, Google still relies heavily on popularity algorithms that often incapacitate differentiation on an individual level. 

    In order to provide consumers with a more comprehensive and dynamic search experience, a slew of companies is developing personalized digital assistants that referenced users’ profile and behavior to deliver more relevant information. Facebook has been testing an Artificial Intelligence-powered personal assistant called M that could link between user’s intent and the transaction where the intent would be fulfilled. Having logged in Messenger, users would be able to type in the message box with specific questions such as “What kinds of A-line dresses available in local stores will be most suitable for the upcoming graduation party?”. The platform would leverage its data on users’ demographics and psychographics, as well as its social network to bring forth the answer that would most likely to appeal to the user. 

    Baidu also unveiled the digital assistant Duer on the 8^th of September that would integrate into the Baidu search app for Android. According to the spokesperson at Baidu, Duer would be able to handle tasks such as food delivery and car rentals via voice commands. It would also provide information on questions such as “which restaurant near me has the best Tuna Roll” by combing through rating websites with users’ location and past preferences in mind. Duer also allows users to control domestic home appliances via smartphone, and to connect with users’ healthcare service providers to provide direct wellness advice based on their heart rates measured by the application. Google has also been developing a similar platform – Google Now that has been implemented as an aspect of the Google Search application. By recognizing users’ repeated actions on the device, Google Now is able to assemble more detailed search and provide information in a clean and intuitive manner.

    These digital assistants equipped with the ability to perform human-like reasoning and problem-solving, would provide better analysis of digital content and thereby substituting Google’s role of being the bridge between users and the solutions. Besides individual users, retailers could also utilize the technology by offering virtual sales assistant that would recommend on products and services based on customer information extracted from the CRM system.

Article Link:

http://techcrunch.com/2015/09/07/facebooks-messenger-and-the-challenge-to-googles-search-dominance/

The most trusted name in news is... Google?

This week the public relations firm Edelman released a report showing that online search is now a more trusted source of news and information than traditional news media. Interestingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, this effect was even more pronounced among millenials.

At this point, you are probably a little confused. Google isn't a news outlet. It does not generate content or track down leads. How can Google be a more trusted news source than an actual news site? What's going on here?

Well, here is how I have been thinking about this.  As more news media moves online, users are more comfortable consuming their news and information entirely from the internet, but as with most things on the internet, we want choice! (After all, have you ever searched for a relatively specific search term, but still felt annoyed or let down when the search engine only returns one or two relevant hits?) Users are no longer limited to the magazines to which they can afford to subscribe or to their local news stations. More sources, more details, and more viewpoints are becoming better. As Quartz explains: "Getting an at-a-glance look at a wide range of stories deemed relevant by a search-engine algorithm—be they from traditional news outlets, blogs, advertisements, and much else besides—is more comforting to the curious reader, it seems, than simply pulling up a single news outlet’s site." And given the inherent biases of so many news outlets these days, perhaps this approach is actually more balanced overall... but that is a discussion for another blog.

So what does this mean for digital marketing and for search engines? Well, on the one hand, this trust gives search a level of credibility and power with consumers, making paid search and search engine optimization even more valuable as marketing tools. Users clearly trust the algorithms to effectively curate their worldview, so imagine how much more likely they are to select an ad or a site that was picked for them and presented as highly and specifically relevant. On the other hand, this revelation should serve as a warning to companies like Google not to overdo it or to lose sight of their core competency. If advertising is not judiciously vetted and well matched to users or if search results become too easily manipulated by crack marketing teams, search engines could lose that valuable trust as quickly as they earned it.

Consumers trust Google's news algorithm more than traditional media organizations
Google is now a more trusted source of news than the websites it aggregates

SEO Quake for FF

Just a quick note--I've been doing a lot of pagerank research at my internship and SEO Quake, a plugin for your browser is fabulously good for this. And they finally released it for Firefox (in our lecture notes it's only for Internet Explorer).

It takes a little tweaking but you can rig this up in preferences so that a page of Google search results will list Pagerank and a whole lot of other metrics next to each URL. Extremely handy when you need to do a quick survey of a keyword/phrase.

Happy SEOing.

Instant Pages - Google new Search Tool

There is no doubt that Google is a Search Engine leader and the reason is simple. Innovation and Wisdom of Crowd. Google introduced a new idea of instant pages that means they will start caching the web results locally instead of sending it to the final destination. The core reason to come up with this idea is to compete with other search engines by offering optimized search speed. It will save searchers 3 to 5 seconds of download time that in computer processing time matters a lot.








This new tool sounds interesting for searchers but what about the companies who own the sites. Will Google face legal issues because of this move? Possible as I remember archive.org also known as way back machine had many legal campaigns for not only copy right violations but also for keeping the records/old versions of web sites.



I have raised this question in our last class "Is this possible to develop a real time live search engine?". I think this instant page is one step ahead of same direction. Wouldn't that be great if we get what we expect live from the web sites. Well the only think that makes it hard is the processing time and a powerful multiprocessor architecture. May be by using quantum computing it will soon no longer be a myth.



This article was originally posted on Search Engine Land that was re-posted on my personal blog at Web Technologist.

Bing's issue is more than technology.

Two weeks ago, Professor Kagan opens the lecture by reporting on the current news events of the week. He spoke briefly about Google's Wave, a new online communication and collaboration tool, and Microsoft's Bing, an improved search engine. Last week, I decided to explore both applications. I watched the Wave preview video for only 20 minutes, and used the Bing search engine searched occasionally throughout the week. My first impression of Wave's integrated instant messaging and e-mail platforms was very positive, and continued view Google as an innovative company. However, the Bing user interface is impressive, but I had no "Wow!" effect. In the short run, I will use Bing occasionally, but I will most likely remain with Google as my default search engine. I introduced Bing to a co-worker, but he did not seem too excited about the search engine. Bing has two big issues: Google's reputation as the leader in the internet industry, and Microsoft image as a Windows company that stifles innovation. Microsoft evolved from an era where the company controlled technology and dominated its sector. On the contrary, Google evolved in the era of the World Wide Web where open source software and free software are the norm. Microsoft's reputation as a controlling company may have, also, hurt its brand and the recent product launch of Bing. Making matters worst, in the article by Ben Parr (http://mashable.com/2009/06/07/blindsearch/) that compared the results of Google's search engine with Bing's was not positive for Microsoft. The blind test shows that users perceive that Google's search results are more accurate and relevant than Bing's and Yahoo's. Google with be force that Microsoft will have to reckon with in the future. Although Microsoft has financial and intellectual resources to sustain the company as player in the internet era, Microsoft my have to play from the back seat until it changes its mindset and image.

Fear Grips Google?.. Really?..

Is Google really scared of anything other than the term 'anti-trust'? :)

According to James Doran in the New York Post on June 14th, "co-founder Sergey Brin is so rattled by the launch of Microsoft's rival search engine that he has assembled a team of top engineers to work on urgent upgrades to his Web service."

So why does Bing have Google scared?

• Apparently there is something about the search algorithm in Bing that has Brin concerned - and the fact that one of Google's co-founders is so hands-on regarding this particular competitor has industry insiders taking notice.
• Google and Yahoo! dominate the search market, with 60 and 20% market shares respectively, and Microsoft has been largely unsuccessful in competing - but Bing has been received favorably by critics, was launched with a gigantic marketing budget ($80-100M according to the Post), and early statistics show Bing increasing Microsoft's market share by two percentage points, to about 11 percent.
  

But 'Fear Grips Google' seems to be a bit of an overstatement by the Post at the moment, as Scott Kessler, senior analyst at Standard & Poor's and a Google specialist, notes the main motivations for consumers' choice in search is ease of use and habit - making Google harder to scare than an $80M marketing budget and favorable reviews.

While I've tried out Bing and find it to be quite user-friendly, the force of habit motivation that Kessler mentions is a difficult hurdle to overcome. It will be interesting to see how Microsoft proceeds in gaining market share once this initial marketing push phase is complete. Can they stay in the game, after setting the pace at $80-100M, to overcome this Google habit of ours?

Read 'Fear Grips Google' in the NY Post here:
http://www.nypost.com/seven/06142009/business/fear_grips_google_174235.htm

Different rain in Naverland

In South-Korea 76% of internet searches are being done on search engine Naver. Where Google is not the market leader in search in China nor Japan, it seems almost like none of the South-Koreans Google anything at all. Naver does not only search but also provides an internet portal drawing together news, e-mail, discussion groups, stockmarket information, videos, restaurant reviews etc. According to The Economist some 17m people visit its home-page every day and since January they have been able to customise it according to their own tastes.

The Economist has an interesting article on search-engines in South-Korea, China and Japan. The article gives as main reason for the success of other search engines the adaption to local needs. Searches require typical results in anglo-based countries, but might need to show complete different results in Asian countries. Where 'rain' leads to hits on falling water in Google, Naver brings people to results on a popular singer and actor called Rain.

If you're curious about search in Asia, read the full article at http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13185891

Google Search vs. MSFT Live Search

I heard from a former MSFT employee that his colleagues use the best product out there regardless of brand. In the past month, many MSFT employees have supposedly been switching from the Google search engine to MSFT's Live Search (www.live.com). Even if MSFT's Live Search is better, are the majority of today's users too entrenched with Google to consider switching?

I went to Live Search and tried it out. IMO, I don't think it's any better than Google's or Yahoo.

On another note...if you guys haven't purchased www.YourName.com, you should before someone else does! :)

Happy Thanksgiving!