According to comScore, Google still has nearly two-thirds of the U.S. search market, but dropped a fraction of a percent from 65.7% in Dec 2009 to 65.4% in Jan 2010 [source: Information Week]. While Google is still the leader in the search space, and Facebook only accounted for just under 400 million searches in January, that is a gain of 13% over December. If this trend continues, Google may have ample reason to fear Facebook.   

The Compete data shows that Facebook is the second most popular site in the US with 134m unique visiter in January 2010, ahead of Yahoo! and just behind Google.

Facebook is in the ascendancy but the company must make changes to its own Search engine if it is to become a genuine rival to Google, the vastly dominant player in the space. 

Facebook, like other social networks, represents opportunity for brands because of the simple fact that this is where a lot of the action is taking place online, as demonstrated by slews and rising traffic.  Switched on brands are  already tapping into the Facebook community.  But Facebook Search serves marketers poorly today as a place of discovery.  Check out my search results for ‘mobile handset’:

Not particularly useful.  Three users groups with 210 members between them.

No sign of the brand sponsored pages where Facebook Users can learn about new products, participate in competitions and promotions, chat with other users and potential customers, communicate directly with the company and link through to relevant pages on the Web.

The Sony Ericsson WorldPage has more than 445,ooo Fans (Sony Ericsson is a client) but the way that Facebook Search works prevents this page, which is clearly relevant to the search term, from appearing. 

This is an issue for Facebook.  

We see the same issue if we run a search for ’sneakers’:

The retailer Sole Provider Sneakers comes out on top here, simply by virtue of having the search term embedded in its company name (also the name of the Page).  Yet Sole Provider Sneakers sells a lot of Nike trainers and a search for ‘Nike’ would not have produced their Page in its results.

Facebook has to play a delicate balancing act here.  Ultimately, user activity, personal profiles, user content, sharing and discussion are the currency of social networks such as Facebook.  The company needs to avoid giving users the impression that they are being marketed to via the network, failure to do this could well become its undoing.

One way around this could be for Facebook to adopt a model similar to Google’s Universal Search, which would allow users to chose and filter the types of results that are presented to them via Facebook Search.  This could be built into the privacy settings that Facebook has been so keen to promote recently.

Interestingly, Google listed Facebook as a formal competitor for the first time in a recent 10K filing, as reported by SearchEngineLand:

Our business is characterized by rapid change and converging, as well as new and disruptive, technologies. We face formidable competition in every aspect of our business, particularly from companies that seek to connect people with information on the web and provide them with relevant advertising. We face competition from:

•   Traditional search engines, such as Yahoo! Inc. and Microsoft Corporation’s Bing.
• Vertical search engines and e-commerce sites, such as WebMD (for health queries), Kayak (travel queries), Monster.com (job queries), and Amazon.com and eBay (commerce). We compete with these sites because they, like us, are trying to attract users to their web sites to search for product or service information, and some users will navigate directly to those sites rather than go through Google.  
• Social networks, such as Facebook, Yelp, or Twitter. Some users are relying more on social networks for product or service referrals, rather than seeking information through traditional search engines. (my emphasis)

Some subtle and simple changes to Facebook Search would accelerate the trend towards Facebook and other social networks as a primary channel for Search. 

The challenge for marketers will (continue to be) to resist the tempation to sell via social networks and to engage with social networking users in a way that adds value, build relationships, earns trust and facilitates creativity and connectivity.  Facebook will have to manage the sensitivities of its users delicately but if managed well Facebook could become a natural home to Search, delivering value to users and marketers alike. 

The FT reported today that News Corp and Microsoft are in ‘discussions’.  Microsoft is determined or desperate to catch up with Google in search, the latter being streets ahead.  Microsoft has made it clear that it will invest heavily to achieve its goals. 

Could Microsoft turn the tide in search through exclusive partnerships with publishers? 

Update: Some interesting perspectives on today’s developments…  

Tom Foremski at SiliconValleyWatcher: Is Murdoch Setting Up a Bidding War for News Corp. Index?

Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land: Why an Exclusive WSJ Deal Wouldn’t Help Bing

Lots of discussion this week about Google Caffeine and the impact that it will have on search results. There is a useful post by Matt Cutts, a Google software engineer.

Back links are one part of the search equation. Keywords are another.

Here are a few tools for assessing keyword density and usage. They can help you analyse your competitors (i.e. the people that rank higher than you) and inform your own keyword strategy. Thanks to @jimboot for some of these tips – Jim puts out a series of very useful search videos, which can be found on YouTube.

Here goes:

• To understand what the most often used keywords within a specific website use TagCrowd. This can help you identify the words that are ranking for a competitive site.
• For a different angle on keyword density use Keyword Counter.  You can run an analysis of an entire website.
• For identifying related keywords use the Google Wonder wheel, which can be found in the left hand options column on any Google search results page. The Wonder wheel link can be found under ‘Standard View’. It creates a clickable spider diagram of keywords related to your original search term.
• To check comparative results in the hottest search engines go to Bing vs. Google. Pre-Caffeine results.
• The Google sandbox for running test searches against the new Caffeine code.

There are a plethora of tools for analysing and optimising keywords, we use Keyword Discovery and have trialled Market Samurai.

The updates – named Caffeine – are described by Google as “a next-generation architecture for Google’s web search“.

Thanks to my old colleague Ged Carroll and his RT for Stephen Waddington to this econsultancy.com article via Twitter.

Google describes the changes as “the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions.”

Google has opened up a web developer preview to collect feedback: www2.sandbox.google.com/

Google is inviting feedback: Engineers will be reading the feedback, but we won’t have the cycles to send replies.

I ran a few searches against my name (daniel young) and found that:

• My Facebook profile result goes from 5 in old Google to 2 with Caffeine
• My FriendFeed profiles goes from 29 in old Google to 8 with Caffeine
• My Twitter profile goes from 18 in old Google to 14 with Caffeine
• This blog goes from 7 in old Google to 24 with Caffeine

Caffeine seems to be:

1. Favouring the sites that are updated more frequently
2. or, favouring social networks over other content
3. or, both of the above – since they are inter-related

The jump in FriendFeed could be attributed to the Facebook acquisition and the increased importance on real-time properties is most likely a counter strategy to the launch of Bing and Facebook’s real-time search capabilities.

Take a look at the results in Caffeine when we use the search term ‘pr agency’:

• Top result is the same in Caffeine and old Google – Punch PR
• GlobalCom PR replaces Yetis 10 at number 3 in Caffeine. Yetis 10 drops to rank 51!  Down 48 places.
• Edelman drops out of the top ten with Caffeine
• VitisPR, Brands2Life, Berkeley PR enter the top ten with Caffeine
• At the expense of Edelman, About PR.net (directory) and The Publicity Agency

My sites are fairly inconsequential but changes to the way that Google produces search results could result in lost business opportunities for organisations that have invested heavily in the Web or are reliant upon it.

The secrecy surrounding the Google algorithm is legendary but it seems odd that Google is asking the user community to tell it about the impact that the change is having on search results.

Does Google not have an obligation or duty to let organisations and individuals know what impact the changes will have on their web properties?

The changes aren’t objective – Google is making subjective decisions about the value of different types of content, sites, activity, formats and so on. These subjective judgements take on particular significance in the context of Google’s extraordinary market position – in excess of 90 per cent market share here in Australia.

This goes to the nub of an issue, which was explored in some detail at today’s AIMIA event in Sydney: ‘Advertiser’s Rights and Consumer Privacy‘.

The event focused on deceptive advertising techniques and unethical practice online.

Unfortunately for Google , it bears the brunt of much of the criticism due in part to its market dominance but also due to its lack of transparency.

The whole value chain came under scrutiny this morning – search engines (Yahoo!, Ask), aggregators, mobile carriers, social networks and digital advertising networks.

Speakers argued that there is a significant lack of accountability in the sector, which is characterised by very complex networks and inter-relationships.

Take two examples cited in today’s event, which featured Ben Edelman – an assistant professor at Harvard Business School:

1. Deceptive advertising tactics are widespread to the point of ubiquity within paid search. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act provides immunity from liability for providers and users of an “interactive computer service” who publish information provided by others:

No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

This means that online publishers are not responsible for the content they publish, no matter how misleading or deceptive it may be – resulting in many instances of dishonest and misleading search marketing tactics.

Search engines are, as a result, failing to take proactive action to clear out these deceptive practices.

2. Google and its partners inflate conversions to claim credit for traffic that advertisers would otherwise have received for free. Edelman outlines four examples of this here.

I don’t believe that Google is an evil enterprise but I am convinced that it has excessive market power and that this is not in the long term interests of our digital economy or the broader community. Perhaps it gets a hard time as a result of its market dominance but leaders in every field have a duty of care and obligation to do the right thing.

Google is pervasive yet untouchable. Mr. Edelman provided an example of this when he highlighted a laughable  and ironic complaints and claims process for Adwords.

The following is taken from Google Adwords Terms and Conditions for Australian customers:

10 Miscellaneous. The Agreement must be construed as if both parties jointly wrote it, governed by California law except for its conflicts of laws principles and adjudicated in Santa Clara County, California. The Agreement constitutes the entire agreement between the parties with respect to the subject matter hereof, and supersedes and replaces any other applicable agreements, terms and conditions applicable to the subject matter hereof. Any conflicting or additional terms contained in additional documents (e.g. reference to a purchase order number) or oral discussions are void. Each party shall not disclose the terms or conditions of these Terms to any third party, except to its professional advisors under a strict duty of confidentiality or as necessary to comply with a government law, rule or regulation.  Customer may grant approvals, permissions, extensions and consents by email, but any modifications by Customer to the Agreement must be made in a writing executed by both parties. Any notices to Google must be sent to Google Ireland Limited, AdWords Program, 1st & 2nd Floor, Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Ireland, with a copy to Legal Department, via confirmed facsimile, with a copy sent via first class or air mail or overnight courier, and are deemed given upon receipt.  Notice to Customer may be effected by sending email to the email address specified in Customer’s account, or by posting a message to Customer’s account interface, and is deemed received when sent (for email) or no more than 15 days after having been posted (for messages in Customer’s account interface).

In short, please send an email to the Google engineers if you want to provide feedback on Caffeine, the new search algorithm (but don’t expect a reply), and submit notices regarding modifications to Adwords agreements by snail mail to their office in Dublin, Ireland.