Ask.com
Yahoo Holds it Together with Glue
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Written By Drupad Sil | May 8, 2008 | Share This
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Despite all the questions swirling around Yahoo thanks to its rejection of Microsoft’s buyout offer the company has managed to implement an interesting new way of presenting search results called Glue. Barry Schwartz at SearchEngineLand expands:
“The Glue Pages combine classic search results on the left hand column with more visual information related to your query in the middle and right section of the page. The results contain images, videos, articles and more.”
I have to admit, searching on Glue Pages is pretty cool. The modules of information are split between traditional Yahoo directories (finance, maps, news, images) and well-known third party sites (Wikipedia, YouTube, Quick Facts, MonsterTrak) and change depending on the specific query. For example, a search for “Microsoft” pulled up the company’s stock charts from Y! Finance, job postings in
Classic search results are still on the left-hand side of the page, and sponsored links modules also exist. Something no one is mentioning, however, is that the Glue idea is very similar to how Ask.com presents its results. Below are screenshots from Yahoo! Glue Pages and Ask.com searches for “mango”.
The most noticeable difference is the emphasis given to classic search, with Ask.com placing them prominently in the center, and Yahoo more shunting them off to the side. Glue Pages definitely puts more weight on the module content and consequently each module has more information then the corresponding one in Ask. Furthermore, Yahoo possesses more third-party sources of module content than Ask, with an emphasis on image and video multimedia. Overall, I’d say the conclusion is that while Ask.com has had the right idea, Yahoo’s Glue Pages has gotten it right in this beta.
If nothing else, it allows users to understand a topic they are searching for information on at a glance while creating a high probability of the user finding relevant specific information on the main page in an aesthetically-pleasing manner. For now, Glue Pages is only beta for India, which houses one of Yahoo’s key research and development centers in Bangalore, but between this and Google launching YouTube India just a little earlier, it’s definitely a good time to be a user in that large and rapidly growing market.
Ask.com Parent IAC Will Break Up
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Written By Sepideh Saremi | March 31, 2008 | Share This
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Barry Diller and IAC officially won their day in court on Friday: The parent of Ask.com will break up its conglomerate into five branches. According to TechCrunch, the new companies will be the Home Shopping Network, Ticketmaster, Lending Tree, Interval International, and the new IAC, which will be an umbrella for various web properties, including Ask.com. The move is expected to revitalize IAC’s online businesses, but TechCrunch notes:
The problem, as came out during the trial, is that those underlying Web businesses are not growing as fast as Diller had hoped either. Ask.com failed to reach its goal of doubling its market share of search
, and Ticketmaster missed out on the growth of the secondary ticket market and recently had to buy TicketsNow for $265 million to compete with StubHub (owned by eBay).
More:
- paidContent has a great breakdown of why IAC was in court in the first place.
Engine Trouble: Yahoo Layoffs, Strife at Ask.com Parent IAC
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Written By Sepideh Saremi | January 30, 2008 | Share This
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It’s been a somewhat sad few days in search engine news. First, hard days ahead for some Yahoo employees: a thousand of them will be laid off. The company’s earnings were for the last quarter were actually better than expected, but the problem is a bleak outlook for 2008. Yahoo’s leadership didn’t inspire confidence on the call, writes Ashkan Karbasfrooshan, and we agree with Kara Swisher, who pointed out the wait-and-see tone of Yahoo execs is what we’ve heard for months now. At the NYT, Saul Hansell called out the real problem, which is Yahoo’s lack of strategy:
Instead, Mr. Yang and Ms. Decker’s strategy is essentially “vision goes here.” They want to be the “starting point” for users on the Web. They want to be the “must buy” for advertisers. And Mr. Yang said he would assume an “aggressive investment posture.”
The only thing missing from that is the substance. Why would users start at Yahoo? How are advertisers going to find Yahoo superior? And what will the company invest in?
To be fair, I know there are many smart diligent executives working hard at Yahoo who think they have good answers to these questions. But they need support at the top.
Yahoo’s stock dropped nearly 10%. Perhaps the wrong people are being laid off?
Over at IAC, Ask.com’s parent company, what can only be described as the corporate equivalent of a catfight has CEO Barry Diller going up against backer Liberty Media, which wants to give him the boot. Kara Swisher explains what the fighting’s all about:
But the fight is a serious one for a number of high-profile Web companies within IAC, which was being restructured to stop just this kind of fighting between Diller and Malone.
Just how Diller has gone about rejiggering it all, in complicated spin-offs in a way that allegedly undercuts Liberty’s control yet again, is what set the new round of tensions off.
Those sites embroiled in the fighting include: Expedia, TicketMaster, LendingTree and Ask.
Diller’s one of a group of IAC execs Liberty wants to oust, and Diller recently retorted, “I am beginning to think these people are insane.” IAC stock has been trending down since November of last year, but here’s hoping Ask.com doesn’t get caught in the crossfire of this squabble.
Taking Ask to Task: Privacy Groups vs. AskEraser
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Written By Sepideh Saremi | January 24, 2008 | Share This
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Last month, we reported that Ask.com’s AskEraser expanded privacy options, allowing users to opt out of having their search data tracked. Now privacy groups, including the Electronic Privacy Information Center, are taking issue with AskEraser, calling it “unfair and deceptive” and lodging a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission.
The groups allege that AskEraser isn’t as pro-privacy as it claims, for three reasons (paraphrased): it requires cookie-blockers turned off in a browser for the installation of the AskEraser cookie, which then remember not to track that user; said cookie is a way to identify a user because of time stamps; and Ask can disable AskEraser without notice. Ask.com says they unsuccessfully tried to speak to EPIC before the group filed with the FTC, and that EPIC’s document is inaccurate and outdated. From Wired, which quotes Ask.com spokesman Nicholas Graham:
EPIC’s filing is flawed in the sense that the document they filed is factually inaccurate, and simply shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the functionality of our product. In addition, many of the issues they raise are outdated, while others are completely misguided from the outset, and others deal with changes that Ask.com already made to AskEraser weeks ago, and were subsequently posted publicly on our website.
Changes “made to AskEraser weeks ago” were editing the cookie settings so there’s no longer a time stamp, so at least part of EPIC’s claim is based on an outdated claim.
But what’s more interesting with this issue is Search Engine Land’s point wondering why these groups didn’t lead with the fact that that Ask.com actually does collect some data for its partners, most famous of whom is probably Google. From Search Engine Land:
That’s a far bigger issue, and I’m surprised EPIC didn’t lead with that, rather than the three other points that are easy to take apart. Someone engaging AskEraser probably does not understand or expect that their query and IP address, along with perhaps a unique cookie ID, is flowing over to Google so that Ask can retrieve ads. And they are not reasonably expecting they have to go to Google or another partner to try and delete information there (if they can — they probably can’t).
That’s the big flaw with AskEraser. The complain also notes that those using the Ask toolbar won’t get AskEraser protection, even if enabled. On that point, I think the FAQ is clear enough.
Ask.com is fairly thorough and forthcoming in its AskEraser FAQ, and AskEraser is definitely way ahead of the privacy policies of other engines. What do you think: Are the privacy groups’ claims that AskEraser is “unfair and deceptive” justified?
Further reading: See The Iconoclast for an in-depth explanation of the time-stamp issue, and Techdirt for an interesting take on the privacy groups.
Searchviews: Week in Review
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Written By Sepideh Saremi | January 11, 2008 | Share This
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This week, we’re launching Searchviews: Week in Review, a digest of sorts in which we’ll highlight the past week’s Searchviews posts, along with noting other top stories in search, social media, and Internet news. Look for it every Friday. Happy weekend-reading:
- This week’s theme was “open,” and it’s shaping up to be the theme of the year. First, Sony BMG let go of DRM, but they came up with a dumb scheme to sell redeemable giftcards. (Thankfully, they got smart and struck a deal with Amazon yesterday).
- In other “open” news, Google and Facebook joined the Data Portability Workgroup, which wants to let Internet users take their social data from site to site. Not to be outdone, LinkedIn, SixApart, and Flickr jumped on board, as well. Many of these sites don’t actually want users to be able to do this because it hurts their pageviews, so we’ll see what happens.
- And final point in “open”: Bebo now invites everyone to design applications for its network.
- Wikia Search finally launched, but to some pretty harsh criticism. Lesson to entrepreneurs: less hype, more private alpha. Incidentally, another “human-powered” search engine, Mahalo, is growing like gangbusters despite initial blogosphere scoffing.
- Ask.com lost a CEO, but kept it in the family with their replacement. Barry Diller really wants you to try his search engine, people, and 2008 is the year he wants to see you migrate over en masse.
- Microsoft kicked off what’s sure to be a year of many M&As with its acquisition of Norwegian enterprise search company FAST.
- Surely our favorite story this week, though we didn’t spill any digital ink on it ourselves, is the Facebook hoax pulled by one young Frenchman, Arash Derambarsh, who got himself “elected” Facebook president via an app… and managed to convince the entire French press that it actually means something. Apparently lack of understanding of social networking is even more pronounced in the European mainstream media (as in, they don’t get it at all) than it is stateside (where journalists and bloggers represent the bulk of users over 30).
- And finally, a bunch of stats released this week affirmed something we’ve been feeling in our gut for a while: online video will overtake television, probably. I mean, would you rather watch those annoying judges from Dancing with the Stars on their own spin-off, dance-off show that is already painfully hyped and will probably make you want to pluck your eyes out… or would you watch this compact but totally genius interpretation of our American past, Drunk History? Not that we’re biased or anything, but we’ll say more about this particular topic soon.
Ask.com CEO Jim Lanzone Steps Down
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Written By Sepideh Saremi | January 10, 2008 | Share This
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IAC announced yesterday a management shake up that sees Ask.com CEO Jim Lanzone leaving the company. Jim Safka, who will retain his position as CEO of IAC’s investment arm, Primal Ventures, will be taking over as Ask.com boss. Lanzone is going to Redpoint Ventures, a VC firm where he’ll be entrepreneur-in-residence, but during his time at Ask.com he led forward-thinking initiatives, like privacy-protecting AskEraser. And it looks like Safka is ready to take over. From the press release:
Mr. Safka, 39, served as CEO of Match.com from 2004 to 2006. Under his leadership, the company grew revenue and operating income before amortization at an annual rate of 25% and 52% respectively. Today, Match.com has more than 15 million members in 35 countries…
“Jim Lanzone was the principal executive responsible for Ask.com’s turnaround over the last two years. His passion for innovation and his every day dedication to the business and its people have been everything anyone could ask for,” said Mr. Diller. “He is a superb executive and leader and I’m hopeful we can be associated in the future.”
Silicon Alley Insider reported what sounded like frustration about Ask.com’s relative lack of market share from IAC head Barry Diller when he spoke at a press conference Tuesday. Diller said, “We certainly have not bitten an inch out of the hide of Google…I’ve been daunted by the progress of that.” Indeed, Diller rightfully noted that the challenge Ask.com faces is getting users to give it a chance. Could Safka’s Match.com experience help find a way to convert Google users?
It’s clear from the rest of Diller’s statements during Tuesday’s press conference that IAC is aiming to make Ask.com its crown jewel. So 2008 could very well be the year that Ask.com proves it’s the little engine that could.
Search and Social Media: 2007 in Review
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Written By Sepideh Saremi | December 20, 2007 | Share This
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The year’s almost over, which means it’s time to look back on search and social media in 2007 and take stock of what happened and what it all means. It was a big year in search and a pretty big year for us at Reprise Media, too: OMMA deemed us Best Search Agency for 2006, we turned four years old, we joined IPG, and we started giving back.
Way back in January 2007, Searchviews predicted quite a few things that came to fruition, among them that Google would keep growing (okay, that was an easy one) and that Panama would be good for Yahoo. The key theme this year was media convergence, with an emphasis on acquisitions and blurring the lines between search and social media. You’ll have to come back tomorrow for our 2008 predictions, but to refresh your memory, here are the big developments of 2007 that we’ll keep close to our hearts… until next year’s big stories overshadow them.
Yahoo
It was a tough year to be #2, especially for the ever-beleaguered Yahoo, which kicked off 2007 with some bad press courtesy of Wired. The magazine skewered the company’s spotty strategy and its then-CEO Terry Semel. No big surprise, first quarter earnings were disappointing, and Semel was replaced with Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang over the summer. Yahoo released some interesting 2.0 tools and bought some others, but this year it mostly floundered when it came time to pull together a cohesive social network strategy that would truly leverage its existing gajillion or so users.
On the search front, Yahoo had a slightly better year: its introduction of Panama was a great move (here’s our full report), America said it loved Yahoo the most, and improvements to its search engine were a step in the right direction. Now Yahoo’s signing up publishers to serve contextual ads in PDFs, and the company also bought Right Media and BlueLithium to expand its ad network. Here’s to putting the ! back into Yahoo! in 2008 - in a good way.
Google
Every year we ask Google, is it possible to be so successful? Really? If it wasn’t for everyone’s favorite upstart-in-shower-slides, Mark Zuckerberg, and all the press and industry upheaval Facebook inspired, I’d say this was Google’s year.
Unlike in 2006, though, Google’s growth didn’t come without costs — 2007 saw the rise of Google as a true world power, wherein Google became everyone’s best Frenemy - i.e., the company we all hate to love (though Zuckerberg seems to be gunning for top spot in the frenemy category for next year). Google managed to get sued for $1 billion over YouTube, had some antitrust trouble over its acquisition of DoubleClick (apparently now resolved), inspired the ire of both librarians and newspapers, served us some questionable ads, introduced shady “preferred cost bidding,”and without really launching it in a meaningful way, introduced OpenSocial, a consortium that looks like its sole aim is to take down Facebook.
On the other hand, Google also created a super-cool mobile platform/operating system (maybe cooler than the iPhone, maybe not), kept monetizing everything (this could maybe also go in the list of bad things, but we’re all marketers here), and got its hands dirty with TV (not yet a smashing success). Not to mention, Google also continually improved its already supremely useful services (Gmail, Analytics, Reader, etc.), bought and integrated Feedburner, launched iGoogle, and kept us sated with free versions of expensive stuff. Probably in his 20% time, Google co-founder Larry Page even came up with a plan to save the planet and Google funded it. All in all, not bad for a year’s work. Plus, of the top 3 engines, Google’s social network efforts seem most promising and logical. We’ll be watching you, Google, and we know you’ll probably be watching us.
Microsoft
Microsoft was on the defensive (or is that the offensive?) much of this year, especially because Google beat them out for DoubleClick and surpassed it in site traffic. MSFT paid a whopping $6 billion for online ad company aQuantive to help nurse its wounds and then drove Facebook’s valuation to $15 billion by paying $240 million for a small stake - exemplifying its strategy this year, which was to buy or partner up wherever it made sense. Microsoft’s new operating system, Vista, launched with much fanfare but also to mixed reviews. We’ll have to wait and see with this one.
Ask.com
Ask.com is tiny but worked hard this year, introducing contextual ads and getting props for its proactive privacy policy. Its parent company, IAC, decided to be less confusing by breaking up its holdings into a few smaller companies, which should benefit the search engine, and Ask also secured $3.5 billion deal with Google.
Facebook, Social Media
Arguably the leader of the social media pack, Facebook’s high value as a communication vehicle became clear when, after shootings at Virginia Tech, students used the site to share information faster than the news networks could. That paradigm shift continued when the site opened up its API to allow outside development of applications - a move that made VCs sit up and that forced direct competitors and even other industries, like notoriously draconian mobile providers, to follow (in rhetoric, at least).
Thanks to Facebook, it’s not enough to have a site, you’ve got to have a platform. Applications became microcosmic indicators of Facebook’s massive success, and the site made its first acquisition in July. But the social network was also plagued by a some missteps this year. Users of the site are resistant to overt advertising and Facebook bungled the launch of its newest ad program, Beacon, shaking the faith of its advertisers and causing some (minimal) unrest among users, though it continues to secure funding.
Media Convergence, Money, and Ad-Model Growing Pains
ComScore introduced new engagement metrics this year, and social networks added search-like, CPC ad structures. A rash of acquisitions made it clear that everyone was eager to get into the social media game, even if they didn’t know quite how: Ebay bought StumbleUpon, and CBS snagged online video show Wallstrip and music service Last.fm.
This year’s housing market crisis had many worried that the economy’s headed for downturn, but we didn’t think online advertising would be drastically affected, and so far, we’re right. Traditional offline industries (music, TV, and newspapers) continued struggling with web monetization. Steve Jobs railed against DRM, and Radiohead practically gave away their new album as an experiment. The New York Times got rid of paid content online, successfully, but the rest of the newspaper industry seems not to have figured out how to make enough money. In TV, the writers’ strike is still underway because networks aren’t giving writers a cut of online profits, while networks experiment with ways to distribute content online.
And Other Top Stories Worth Remembering…
- For the third year in a row, we evaluated big advertisers for their search-savvy in our Super Bowl Search Marketing Scorecard. The winners made search an integral part of their campaigns, ensuring that millions of dollars spent on TV campaigns didn’t get lost when it came to the search box. Here are parts 1, 2, 3, and 4 of that feature.
- Taco Bell, dirty as their restaurants may have been, proved they know how to leverage search to make the best of a horrible health and PR nightmare.
In sum, a lot of growth for the search industry, the emergence of social media as a real force, and still some hobbling by traditional media companies to catch up or keep up - 2008 will definitely be interesting. What stories do you think will still matter next year? What would you add to this list?
Will Google Replace Some Ads with Organic Search Results?
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Written By Sepideh Saremi | December 13, 2007 | Share This
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Tech-gossip site Valleywag today caught a Google search results page that featured organic search results, videos and products, in its right-hand sidebar, which normally features high-position AdWords ads. Click to enlarge the below screenshot:
Though Valleywag notes the results were probably part of a very limited test, will Google replace some ads on its search-engine result pages with organic, universal search results that include video, images, and other non-text results? Ask.com has this feature for some search results (see Britney Spears), but I’d be very surprised if Google replaces above-the-fold ad space with organic search results. First, that’s prime advertising real estate. Second, as Andy Beal at Marketing Pilgrim notes:
It’s always fun whenever someone discovers one of Google’s many experiments with their search interface. 99% of the time, the discovered tests never materialize as a major rollout for Google…
Then again, the way that Ask.com integrates ads on that Britney Spears results page, right in the main body of the results, would likely increase click-through rates, which means more cash for Google. Search Engine Journal also notes the Google results page does look a lot cleaner with the universal results off to the side:
Google has become cluttered with too much media overflow in its results, and these changes are overwhleming the average user. The tests it is conducting seem to address this issue, and in line with its original Universal Search plans, Google is testing alternative yet monetarily efficient ways to better their user experience.
Google has recently made a few notable changes to AdSense, its program for publishers, as well. Last month, it changed ad click-area to reduce invalid clicks. Yesterday, reports popped up that Google is experimenting with buttons to allow end users to scroll through AdSense ads. Also yesterday, last week’s report from Search Engine Land that Google dropped its AdSense “Advertise on this site” feature was confirmed by Google’s Inside AdSense blog. Marketers can still target individual sites, but they have to go through AdWords to do it:
Our recent findings indicate that the Onsite Advertiser Sign-up feature, which allowed advertisers to sign up for AdWords campaigns on your site, hasn’t been performing as well as we had hoped. We’ve elected to gracefully retire this feature and focus our efforts on developing and supporting features that drive better monetization results for you. Call it time management, call it ROI, call it our unwavering commitment to our publishers. We want you to earn more revenue, and sometimes that means “sunsetting” certain features we created.
Ask.com Expands User Privacy Options with AskEraser
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Written By Sepideh Saremi | December 11, 2007 | Share This
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Search engine Ask.com launched AskEraser yesterday, giving users more control over their search data. Namely, AskEraser allows users to keep their activity from being tracked in the first place; turning AskEraser on erases Ask.com cookies and stops recording search history. Search Engine Land reports on the new feature’s potential impact on Ask’s search-result relevance:
Since Ask.com tends to use search queries in their Edison algorithm, how might missing this data impact results? Jim [Lanzone, Ask.com CEO] explained that the data used in their algorithms for relevancy is done on a “sampling basis”. He said that if 100% of Ask.com’s users adopt the use of AskEraser then Ask.com would have to “modify a lot of what we do.” Ask.com would embrace that change, since it means Ask has hit on “something super important to users.”
In an age of increased personalization, AskEraser may seem counterintuitive, but this is a really good move for Ask.com because it helps the company cement its reputation as the search engine most protective of user privacy, which is what CNET deemed it in August. (Google, in contrast, was called the worst by a UK watch group.) In light of recent online-industry privacy concerns that have been getting increasingly visible and going mainstream, particularly when it comes to advertising (ahem, Facebook Beacon), AskEraser makes Ask.com look responsible and sincerely concerned about its users. It’s too soon to tell, but perhaps the last few weeks mark a fundamental shift in the way that online companies treat (or, at the very least, are expected to treat) user privacy - preemptively giving control to users rather than being vague about the way data is collected and saved until users make a fuss. Josh Catone at Read/Write Web notes that privacy will be a trend in coming months as well.
Top Search Terms for 2007
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Written By Sepideh Saremi | December 4, 2007 | Share This
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Google and Yahoo this week announced 2007’s fastest-growing and top search terms, respectively, providing some interesting insight into the Internet’s collective psyche. Unsurprisingly, celebrity terms remained extremely popular, especially evident on Yahoo’s overall list. Yahoo’s 2007 list of top trends breaks up search terms into thematic categories that are a good reflection of media coverage trends; see environment (”Grass is Always Greener”) and crazy celebrities (”Celebrity Downslides”). This year they also added a list of searches on social bookmarking site del.icio.us, which are slightly more celebral than their top 10 overall list that is topped (again) by the venerable Britney Spears. Here’s that top 10 overall list (via WebProNews):
1. Britney Spears
2.WWE
3. Paris Hilton
4. Naruto
5. Beyonce
6. Lindsay Lohan
7. RuneScape
8. Fantasy Football
9. Fergie
10. Jessica Alba
Yesterday TechCrunch reported that Google exec Marissa Mayer revealed 2007’s fastest-growing search terms on the Today Show. Here’s the list she announced:
1. iphone
2. webkinz
3. tmz
4. transformers
5. youtube
6. club penguin
7. myspace
8. heroes
9. facebook
10. anna nicole smith
Note the relative absence of celebrities in Google’s list when compared to Yahoo’s. Google’s list is fundamentally different from a top 10 most popular list by definition, because it is compiled by determining the most popular search terms for 2007 and seeing how much queries increased compared to last year (at least, that’s how Google determined 2006 fastest-growing terms, TechCrunch notes). Yahoo’s trend list methodology sounds similar (emphasis mine): “To come up with the Top Trends of 2007, we analyze search queries based on a number of factors, including absolute volume and growth versus previous periods, to see which themes and trends bubble to the surface”; the continued presence of Britney Spears on their overall list, though, suggests that absolute volume is still a dominant factor in their equation. The end effect on the overall list is that Yahoo’s users end up looking a little dumber than Google’s users - perhaps this is why the overall list isn’t included on Yahoo’s trends page (in fact, I couldn’t find it on Yahoo though it was available on TechCrunch and WebProNews), though I’m sure the overall most popular list from Google would show similar queries.
Mayer will talk about Google Trends in a Zeitgeist webcast this afternoon, though it’s unclear if she will reveal a most popular search terms list for Google then. Incidentally, Yahoo’s editorial focus this year is a good way to organize and contextualize search information but I think their list last year, which was more straightforward, had a far more interactive website.
Update: Not to be left out, Ask.com just released their list today, calling it the “real deal.” Number 3 on that list? Google.