Web Search Engine Marketshare - Give Searchers What they Want
MSN search is one of the oldest Web search engines. Back in the mid 90's when I started working as an SEO consultant, Google didn't exist. Search engines were a new phenomenon and just as newcomers to the web today discover, they were the window to the Internet.
The early search engines were lazy and without inspiration about the business opportunities that web search represented. The success that Google has created and enjoyed was not evident to anyone back then. They were completely unaware of the money tree they had at their disposal. Search engines such as Yahoo, Altavista, Magellan, Webcrawler, Go.com, Lycos, Excite, Goto.com, and MSN were the top search engines of the day. Most of them have vanished.
Is there anything to be learned from the demise of these search businesses? Of course. Their demise has resulted from not being customer-focused and not delivering quality results. A further element is branding. Even if you produce good results, there is a popularity and political factor that needs to be mastered. Sometimes a sexy brand can beat out better product offerings. The old search engines lacked them all and had little insight into how to make their search engines "attractive."
Yahoo enjoyed the best brand. At the time, they offered the best search results while the others had their search results tainted by a paid influence. The end result for searchers is that they didn't get the results they were looking for and were wasting their time. SEO's and webmasters had difficulty getting their sites included because Yahoo wanted payment for a directory listing. That limited the volume of results they served up. Search engines didn't have the work of professional SEOs to help organize web sites and for the most web sites were a mess in code and in visible copy. No search engine was that powerful that it could determine the meaning or core topic of those non optimized sites. Search engines never give SEOs credit for helping to organize the web's content.
Altavista provided good results and became noted for it, but their business sense was poor and they eventually disappeared from the scene. Branding was a huge issue for these search engines. They simply couldn't figure out who their target consumer was and how to position their offerings. They didn't create the volume of high quality search results but to their defense, the web was young and there weren't all that many quality web sites back then.
The other search engines listed above eventually lost their marketshare and ceased to be relevant business entities. They were bought out for ridiculously low prices. If the businesses had contacted searchers and asked them what they wanted, instead of asking advertising what they wanted, they might have enjoyed billion dollar successes.
MSN Search Engine - Needs some distance from Microsoft
On the topic of MSN, it seems that while this search engine benefits from the association with the Microsoft brand and the infusion of cash from Microsoft Corporation, it is never popular with searchers. If you take a look at MSN.com, you'll see the site's branding is still all about Microsoft, not about quality search. A few years ago, Microsoft created a new search engine called Live. It is a stripped down search engine that mimicks Google's singular focus on search. However, the MSN association is still there.
Marketshare for search engines as of the End of August 2008
1. Google 71% search marketshare
2. Yahoo 18% search marketshare
3. MSN 4% search marketshare
4. Ask 3.5% search marketshare
Over the last year, MSN search properties have lost another 1.5% of search marketshare.
MSN Still Doesn't Get It
There are varying opinions about why Microsoft can't do search. One of the key reasons is that the corporate policy and its brand scream loudly "pay us first" and "pay to play." Advertisers and users are voting loudly too, that they find MSN even less useful than they did ten years ago. Ten years is a long time. Clearly, the Microsoft brand contaminates anything the search engine might be able to achieve on its own. If Microsoft were to acquire an up and coming search property such as a social media site, that business would be doomed too.
The software giant sees themselves as the center of the universe and yet the rest of the web is telling consumers that web users are the center of the universe. Web users feel pampered and important and resent Microsoft's rigid, self-centered attitude. If Microsoft can't change its brand image and serve customers the way they want to be served, the company itself will be in rough shape. Open source products and even Google services are beginning to really eat into their bottom line. The current recession will see another wave of adoption of open source and other free programs. Google's innovation and growth is relentless. Google seeks to provide web users with cheap, useful services. They're even into smartphones that search cellular transmission sources for the cheapest cell service. Microsoft could easily have done the same thing, but that's the sort of thing that is not within their corporate sphere of thinking.
Microsoft is fresh off big upsets against the Mac brand which makes PC's look like a second rate solution to consumers. The company's perpetual gouging of consumers on overpriced Microsoft office products and the operating system is forcing business to seek cheaper solutions. Open source is improving more everyday particularly outside the US, and even Mac is being seen as a solution even though its cost may be worse.
I received a $200 free advertising coupon the other day from Microsoft and could only think how worthless it is. Leads from MSN are usually poor quality and the low volume means the effort actually costs you time for almost. Clients are always stopping their MSN advertising after trying it out. And opening MSN advertising accounts is no easy matter. It is difficult and time consuming testing your stamina and patience.
No one chooses to go to MSN to search. They are most often sent there through some misfortune or because some new web service or windows update/installation tries to set the users homepage to MSN. Serious web searchers do not consider MSN results to be credible.
For searchers, the msn.com homepage offers links to popular searches, pictures on top stories, which only a select few are interested in, football scores although it's baseball post season right now, pictures of models, and expensive automobile advertisements although few can afford to buy a car right now. The page misses the boat altogether. MSN has so much money, it doesn't need the pathetic revenue from its homepage advertising, so why is it there?
The MSN search results pages in contrast appears very much like Google's search results and the listings are similar to Google's. Since most people only click on the first page of results, you'd think that it's good enough to be considered as good as Google. The problem then must be the Microsoft brand.
There is nothing warm and fuzzy about Microsoft. Its cold, take it leave it offerings, and its alienation of web users makes everyone look for alternatives. When a viable alternative to Microsoft evolves as Open Source or Google products may, everyone will dump its overpriced products. The failure of Vista and its elimination of products people still wanted to use infuriates users. This brand failure leaches into the search sphere which is branded Microsoft.
I expect MSN search to go out of business. There is no way to save it, or any search product sponsored by Microsoft. Its core values are not about consumers needs, and its search engine is only about helping visitors reach tired, old Microsoft ideas and products. Just seeing and using Microsoft brand products puts you at odds with the world. Its not about you and the wealth of the web. It's just about them. There's nothing new to discover at Microsoft so there's no point in using MSN search.
What searchers want:
> information on topics such as recent reviews (search engines have trouble with delivering recent news)
> links to in-depth information (links from the top ranking web pages)
> pages written by credible authorities
> pages that are about specific topics, not a collection of unrelated topics
> unfiltered results - all potential web pages are included in the results including sites that aren't "authorities" on a topic
> good quality results from page one to page ten - no cut off by filters that keep certain pages off the rankings and down at number 250 to 500. Any page might have the info they're looking for
If people don't drill down in the pages at MSN or Google, they want to find results. On some keyword topics, relevant information doesn't show up. That's because the results are too heavily filtered. Today everything is focused on the first page of ten results and these pages are highly over-optimized in some manner. Those other pages that don't have enough links pointing to them may not even show. Some of these pages have relevant, interesting information and should not be filtered out. One reason the search engines don't show quality results past the top ten, is because people ignore the text ads when they go past the first page of results. They would rather searchers just started a new search. So, the goal of the search engine isn't necessarily to give the best results, it is to get more exposure for the ads.
MSN would be well advised to forego ad revenue and built its reputation for quality results in pages one through ten. Their search quality has always been poor and its time to re-engineer for the future.
Gord Collins of California SEO Consultants [http://www.california-seoconsultants.com/] provides Internet marketing services for a range of global clientelle including major ad agencies. Search engines are primary focus of concern for Internet marketing companies and while it is assumed they do not add anything to the value chain for consumers/searchers, this is not true. The organizational creativity of SEO [http://www.california-seoconsultants.com/seocompany.html] company for instance, makes it easier for search engines to compensate for their indexing limitations. The influence of paid advertising is affecting search results quality thereby limiting access to potentially useful information which is suppressed or exclused due to slanted search engine algorithms. Consumers need to complain about search quality as it would help search engines such as MSN stay alive. Competition in the marketplace is healthy and important. With only one search engine with a corporate profit-motive-only existing, search results will decline.
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