Googleopoly: The Motivation Behind Gmail

Googleopoly: The Motivation Behind Gmail

by: Mark Daoust

Just before the close of business on Wednesday, Google announced that it will be launching Gmail, its new free email service set to offer 1000 megabytes of free space to its users. This announcement comes after a flurry of changes at Google, all of which are geared to securing their place as the dominant search engine in light of recent competition offered by Yahoo! and soon MSN. The search engine wars have been predicted for some time now by search engine insiders, and the launch of Gmail is Google’s attempt to win the war before it gets fully started. But is Google really ready to take on the big portals?

It is very unlikely that Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page had any idea exactly how big their original search engine (then called BackRub) would actually become. Google was an innocent project through Standford University. It was a project started in the days of optimism about a free Internet not supported by ads or corporate revenues, but rather the free exchange of ideas. As a result, they focused solely on product. There were no worries about creating a flashy interface, hiring a sharp marketing team, or launching an IPO. They were worried about good search results. The result is that Google is now synonymous with searching the Internet.

Today, Google stands with a much different outlook. The success of the launch of AdWords propelled Google into a class all their own. Almost overnight, Google entered the PPC industry and dethroned Overture as the untouchable kings of PPC. Although other search engines such as Lycos, FindWhat, Kanoodle, and Sprinks had been competing with Overture, none of these engines were able to bring the reach and brand power of Google.

The success of AdWords was a notice to every other Internet giant. Companies such as Yahoo! and AOL – who were providing Google’s results to their users – took notice to the fact that Google had an incredible influence on the Internet, and if they desired, they could leverage that influence into a variety of new markets. Worse yet, Yahoo! and AOL helped Google gain such influence by providing Google results to their users. These giants became nervous, and with good reason. Google started to show signs that they were expanding into new markets. Dictionaries, glossaries, news services, Froogle, Catalog search, maps, blogging, and other services were all emerging from the Google labs and news rooms. If Google was able to instantaneously compete and lead in the highly competitive PPC market, what would happen if they moved in on the territory of Yahoo!, AOL, or MSN? These Internet giants helped make Google powerful, possibly more powerful than they were themselves.

The battle for web searches had begun. Yahoo! has taken the most notable steps by replacing their results provided by Google with their newly acquired Inktomi division based results. To fight Google on the advertising revenue level, Yahoo swooped up Overture, still allstar in the paid search market. Overture, now playing catchup in an industry which they practically founded, launched their own site content match system which rivals Google AdWords.

MSN has vowed to refine their search algorithms to become more relevant. Most of the work being done by MSN has been fairly quiet, but rest assured, there will be a lot of talk about MSN search when they are ready to release their new product to the Internet. And, with every new PC you buy, don’t be surprised if it comes with a host of web searching tools built in.

There have even been rumors over at AOL that they are going to be abandoning their Google based results. The fact is, AOL is scared of Google. As it stands right now, Froogle already steps on their shopping market, and Google News is taking away from AOL’s news delivery service.

By abandoning Google provided results, these Internet giants are attempting to limit Google’s reach. The fact is simple: users still use Yahoo!, MSN, and AOL. They use these services because they offer a host of unique information, updated news, financial reports, maps, phone directories, etc. Most importantly, users visit MSN, Yahoo, and AOL for their free email. While they have these users attention, Yahoo! and MSN will now try to sell these users on their new and improved search results not provided by Google in order to steal a bit of that search engine market.

Just as Yahoo!, AOL, and MSN realized how powerful Google was in the search engine market (and subsequently the danger that posed to them), Google is realizing the real threat that these portals present. If these portals are able to offer suitable search results, users will have less reason to utilize Google’s search. Google has also recognized the main advantage these portals have: free email. Free email is what makes Yahoo! and MSN such popular destinations. People who have email accounts at these locations find themselves visiting these sites multiple times every day just to check their email. While they are there, they have the opportunity to be grabbed by a headline or service offered through these portals. The free email is what brings the users back time and again.

Gmail is a direct attempt by Google to destroy any competition before it arises. With 10 times the amount of storage and what appears to be a superior interface for viewing and organizing mail messages, Gmail is not simply a nice thing to offer to web surfers. Gmail is an attempt to put an arrow through the heart of Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail. The services will not be comparable in quality, and that is the way Google wants it. The goal of Gmail is to make Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail look like laughable solutions to web based email.

If Gmail is successful in converting Yahoo! Mail users and Hotmail users, the search engine wars will most likely be much ado about nothing. The battle and war will be won, and the victor will be Google. But don’t expect MSN, AOL, or Yahoo! to simply watch Gmail launch without developing a plan to strike back hard. Yahoo! alone has invested incredible amounts of money to acquire Inktomi and Overture just so they can compete head to head with Google. It would be uncharacteristic of them to simply fold. And do not forget about the power MSN has with their search. Remember that Microsoft controls what search engine is used by default on most every computer around the world. That is a competitive advantage that Google will have a very hard time overcoming.

Gmail will not be the last new service offered by Google. It certainly will not go unanswered by Yahoo! or another portal. It will, however, mark a fundamental point in this search engine war that appears to now be in full swing.

Copyright 2004 Mark Daoust

About The Author

Mark Daoust is the owner of SiteReference.com (http://www.sitereference.com) and TowerSearch (http://www.towersearch.com). Signup for a free TowerSearch account and receive guaranteed top rankings for all of your chosen keywords.

This article was posted on April 06, 2004

by Mark Daoust

Is New MSN Search More Precise? Just Ask Google.

Is New MSN Search More Precise? Just Ask Google.

by: Lisa Melvin

MSN finally unleashed its new search technology to the world on Monday. The official announcement coming from Bill Gates introduced the New MSN Search engine, ending with a personal invitation to visit www.msn.com and ขtype in your question.ข

Here at WebAdvantage.net, we consider ourselves to be veteran internet searchers, often able to easily find the information we’re after. Considering we spend all day every day online, we should be. Even so, we rarely venture to type search queries in the form of questions on search engines, except for the handful of times we visit AskJeeves.

The thought of being invited to type in a question at MSNกs new search engine intrigued us. We decided to follow the trail of links to learn more about what they were offering. We were, at first, impressed with the pages singing the praises of the new "more precise, more powerful" MSN Search service. We were impressed, that is, until around page five of the "learn more" series of MSNกs site pages. Thatกs when we started to get tired of clicking "next."

Turns out there were ten pages devoted to learning more about what MSN Search offers (which perhaps could have been explained less painfully). But at WebAdvantage.net, we’re dedicated online marketing professionals, so we hung in there.

We were informed that MSNกs search results would now be drawn from their encyclopedia, MSN Encarta, enabling it to function effectively as a reference tool for finding things like definitions, conversions, geographic capitals and historical events. And that it could also now perform news and image searches and would draw music related results from its own MSN Music, placing artist information and sample song clips at the top of any music related search results.

MSN was also offering search functions for your own desktop or Outlook email (if you’re so inclined to download those). Throughout the "learn more" pages, they gave search examples. The first search examples given were in the form of questions; questions with specific answers like "Who is LeBron James?" and "What is the mass of Jupiter?"

MSN Search, they said, would give you more control over your searches, with filters to refine and a "near me" button to instantly localize results. Sounded good and well, but we were still more intrigued with that initial invitation to "visit and type in your question."

So we tried it. We visited MSN Search and decided to use one of their examples, typing in the question, "What is the mass of Jupiter?" To our shock and pleasure, there it wasan answer, right at the top and separated from the actual web results. It said, "Answer: Jupiter: mass: 318 Earth Masses."

Inquisitive and competitive by nature, we wondered what would happen if we typed in the very same question at Google. So we asked Google, "What is the mass of Jupiter?" Amazingly enough, Google spat out an answer right at the top of their results page as well. But Googleกs answer was, "mass of Jupiter = 8987 × 10 to the 27th power kilograms." Now, we’re Internet marketing experts, not rocket scientists, but it appeared that Google actually provided the more precise answer.

Good humored sports that we are, we went promptly back to MSN Search to give it another try. Since their first result at least taught us that Jupiterกs mass is 318 times that of the Earthกs mass, we typed in the next logical question, "What is the mass of the Earth?," thinking that we could then arrive at our own conclusion by multiplying that answer by 318 to arrive at the answer Google had already provided.

Unfortunately, MSNกs answer to "What is the mass of the Earth?" was "Answer: World: mass: 1 Earth masses"

Youกd think that the folks over at MSN would have tested their examples on MSN Search as well as testing the same queries on other major competitors before selecting them for the final cut. Well, maybe not.

We then spent the better part of the afternoon periodically asking MSN Search and Google questions to see how theyกd fare. If you’re ever bored, try asking them, "How hot is the sun?", "How many eggs are in a bakers dozen?" or "How far is it from New York to Utah?"

Hereกs what we learned from our afternoon of follies.

1. If you’re looking for encyclopediatype answers to questions like "What is a marsupial?" ask MSN Search (or visit encyclopedia.com or Britannica.com)

2. If you’re looking for a black and white photo of daisies, use MSN Search because the image search is nicely arranged and you can filter results by size as well as by color or black and white.

3. If you’re looking for results ขnear me,ข stick with Google’s automatically localized results by including the city and state in your query.

4. If you’re looking for the most precise answer, perhaps you should stick with Google (at least for now).

About The Author

Lisa Melvin is the Search Engine Optimization Copywriter at WebAdvantage.net, the Traffic Optimization Company, Maximizing the visibility of their clients’ sites, driving targeted traffic and increasing sales with their Search Engine Optimization, Media Buying and Online Marketing Services.

[email protected]

This article was posted on February 12

by Lisa Melvin

AdSense is Stupid When…

AdSense is Stupid When…

by: Kamau Austin

There are times Googleกs heralded ad affiliate program isn’t in your long term business interest. Oh no I said it!

AdSense isn’t the unstoppable revenue engine for every eBusiness. Before I am taken out and flogged by the eCommerce pundits please let me explain what I mean in my defense.

I make revenues from AdSense at a very high clickthrough rate. I experience high clickthrough rates with AdSense without resorting to questionable tactics like tricking site users with photos (the AdSense trick and tip dujour).

So my perspective is from one who has made decent income from AdSense to fund aspects of his business like advertising seminars and outsourcing to his virtual assistants. Yes, AdSense is a legitimate and significant revenue source. However evaluate AdSense with some type of balance.

By now you may have heard about people like Joel Commกs six figure income with AdSense, or Jason Calacanis of Weblogs being on his way to generating 1 million dollars in AdSense revenue. Googleกs Ad revenue sharing affiliate program for publishers certainly seems to be an eSales Nirvana for many webmasters.

But there are obvious and not so obvious times not to use AdSense ads on your sites. Letกs list examine and explain them below.

~~~~> 1. On Sales or Minisites

This is a nobrainer. If you are trying to sell a particular product that is important to your bottomline, you don’t want AdSense ads distracting your customers from either joining your email list, or hindering your siteกs online sales process.

However I do see hybrid sites that are minisites or full scale eCommerce sites, with AdSense at the bottom of their pages. This might not be so bad since only 1% 15% of your site visitors will either buy from you or fill out a form.

The thinking with this approach is you might as well make money from disinterested parties using up your serverกs bandwidth.

~~~~~> 2. SEO Business Sites

If your livelihood depends on search engine optimization or marketing for a living you might want to think twice about displaying AdSense Ads on your site. I can tell you this from personal experience. I once was on top of MSN for search engine marketing in my local area. I concentrated on my local area because I found people felt more comfortable hiring an eCommerce consultant locally.

One day my site fails totally out of the MSN index. After intense study I noticed that I obviously had a filter on my site from MSN.

I analyzed all the top ranking sites in MSN and noticed the only difference between me and the other top ranking sites was I had Google AdSense ads on my site. Someone at MSN felt that my AdSense ads, and perhaps to a less extent, my book on SEO, was getting a free ride in the MSN search engine database.

In fact I noticed that there were no sites with AdSense ads for at least the first 3 pages. Plus the sites with AdSense were only using 1 ad unit at the bottom of the home page (there were very few of them in the top 5 pages).

I knew it was strange to not have AdSense ads on the top Internet marketing sites. This prompted me to scan other industries where I noticed the same trend.

Many of the leading SEO gurus have sites that have been banned from the top listings by the search engines. It seems the more visible you become, the more of a target your sites are to the search engine auditors.

Some of my sites are still on the top of MSN with AdSense ads but that doesn’t mean they won’t also be targets in the future.

Letกs face the facts. MSN and Yahoo! have competing ad networks to Googleกs, and this competitive situation is rife for a potential backlash against SEO sites with AdSense ads.

Many SEOs will point to exceptions to this position. However you have been warned!

Think about it, how long will MSN and Yahoo! sit back and watch SEO driven websites use their search indexes to fund Google? Did you know SEO in MSN and Yahoo(!) is much easier to obtain.

Therefore optimized sites are creating an ad sales wealth transfer from MSN and Yahoo into the pockets of Google! It won’t be long before Yahoo! and MSN begin to devalue ranking on AdSense sites in their databases if not outright ban them.

If you are in the search engine business stay search engine neutral, or create multiple sites for different search engines.

~~~~~> 3. When AdSense Becomes Your Only Business Model

When you become so myopic in your thinking that you build a business solely on AdSense revenue think again my friend. Why build a business solely on the largess of Google?

I don’t know if your realize it or not, but the sites making the real big AdSense money usually have a following that doesn’t depend on the search engines. Internet mavens like Chris Pirillo or Joel Comm have been on the Internet a while and have followings for their websites. Therefore they can consistently make six figures with AdSense.

These content powerhouses are an asset to Google and not the other way around. But do you think Google is going to sit back and watch just anybody make big bucks off of their top rankings?

If you do a search on most keywords you will notice many of the top ranking sites are news sites, .gov sites, or .org sites these days. The only exception is in industries where these sites don’t really exist like eCommerce industries (clothing, shopping, etc.).

No doubt in most industries you will notice a conspicuous scarity of AdSense sites in the top rankings. In other words don’t bet your future fortunes on AdSense.

An IPO based on projections of AdSense revenue isn’t in the future for the average eBusiness. Think of Google AdSense as supplemental income. Building a business solely on AdSense revenue isn’t just silly itกs just plain stupid.

About The Author

Kamau Austin is the publisher of over ten websites. See more of his eCommerce and Search Engine Commentary can be found at: www.eInfoNEWs.com and www.SearchEnginePlan.com.

This article was posted on September 12

by Kamau Austin

Has Google Lost the Plot?

Has Google Lost the Plot?

by: Courtney Heard

With the help of MSN, recently I’ve been reminiscing about the Google of old. Remember those days? When you could take a good quality site, add a few keywords, get a few incoming links and badabing, badaboom, it’d be #1 on Google? Remember the old days, preFlorida, presandbox? The days when we, as search engine optimization specialists, didn’t feel like a private schoolgirl smoking in the bathroom? When we didn’t feel like the iron fist would come crashing down at any moment? Yes, those were the good old days. And MSN has finally brought them back, though on a much smaller scale.

Google hit it right on the nose back then. Search results were almost never irrelevant venturing to the second page of results was an event that drew gasps. There was never, ever any reason to leave Google and search for the same query on another search engine. Satisfied users the world over, it was the search engine of choice almost everywhere searches were conducted. I myself never strayed from Google, I was loyal and I was rewarded for my loyalty with consistently relevant results.

But has Google taken their quest for perfection a few steps too far? Case in point: http://www.jimmylerner.com this web site is the official site of an author. Search on MSN for his name, ขjimmy lernerข and his web site is the top result. Now, try the same search on Google. The top results are pages devoted to reviewing his book, book stores selling his book, a press release I sent out to announce his new site and a few times I’ve even seen sites show up in the top ten that simply have a link to his site from theirs and are completely unrelated. His site has been jumping from the second page to the first and back again.

This begs the question, optimization or no optimization, what, exactly, is the problem with a quality, informative web site reaching number one for a search query that is probably conducted specifically to find that exact site? Has the focus and aim of Google changed from offering relevancy to satisfied searchers to simply impeding the progress of SEOs? Is Google’s main concern now, to stop individuals from helping a site reach number one? It can seem that way, can’t it? And I can only say one thing about it. Bad move, Google.

I’ve heard a few people say that it’s just a transition period. That all web sites are in the same boat, everyone’s waiting to see the fruits of their optimization labour. Perhaps this is true, and perhaps over the next little while we will see changes at Google that make our jaws drop, impressed at the level of perfection we never thought possible. But I think maybe Google needs to refocus their energies. Take the focus back to the user, not the SEOs. Get back to the nearimpeccable relevancy level before I start using MSN to learn about all my favorite authors.

About The Author

Courtney Heard is the founder of Abalone Designs, a search engine optimization company in Vancouver, Canada. She has been involved in web development and marketing since 1995 and has helped start several businesses since then in the Vancouver area. More of Courtneyกs articles are available at http://www.abalone.ca/resources/.

[email protected]

This article was posted on February 06

by Courtney Heard

Dear Bill Gates, You Clever Fox

Dear Bill Gates, You Clever Fox

by: David Leonhardt

Dear Bill Gates.

You did it. You casually left a live grenade at the Grand Charity Gala and walked out of the room to see if anybody, especially Google, will notice.

Once again, you have created an innovation in marketing that is poised to take the world by storm. What I love about it is how you have just tossed it out into the public for all to see, and yet nobody seems to be noticing it.

Flitting from forum to forum, everyone is talking about your new MSN beta search engine ( http://beta.search.msn.com/ ), but nobody seems to have discovered the secret marketing bomb you left ticking there.

Google sure was clever with its PageRank gimmick. In fairness, PageRank is not just a gimmick, but it was marketed as much more than it is the big kaboom that sets Google apart, despite being only a small part of its algorithm.

But your kaboom will be bigger. You have actually given searchers like me control over my own rankings. While other search engines are talking about กpersonalized searchก, youกve given us the levers to incrementally change rankings in searches themselves.

You are probably aware that webmasters are kicking the tires on your new search engine to see how high they rank. Those who are more adventuresome or who earn their living understanding (or trying to understand) search engines are taking some of your special features for a spin. Most of those features are fairly mundane. Like กlinks toก (although it might just be the most comprehensive listing on the Internet – hint to webmasters) and กlanguageก.

But whatกs this at the very bottom, almost falling off my screen?

Results Ranking.

Hey, this is cool. I can control the results myself. I can give more weight to recentlyupdated sites, which is great when I am following a breaking story (After the Americaกs Cup, I do not want to find all the prerace predictions, for example.). Or I can weight the results in favor of static pages if I am trying to find again the health information I had read last time my daughter broke out in blue and green splotches all over her body.

And you let me decide whether to weigh heavily exact matches, if I know exactly what I am looking for, or approximate matches if I know only that the itchy splotches come from some rare Polar virus transmitted by stampeding transAtlantic penguins.

I even get to choose to boost rankings for popular sites or, if Iกm feeling like a rebel, for less popular sites. Yes, you have even appealed to my deepest psychological mood swings. This is really cool.

But what really counts is this: I control MSN!

I can just imagine the TV ads you have already planned: The ad character (a student, a construction worker, a nurse?) says, กMove over Bill Gates, Iกm in charge now.ก The voiceover says, กSearch MSNก PageRank will taste like yesterdayกs chewing gum.

I decided to find out if I really do control MSN, using one of my client sites. I chose DotcomMonitor Web Site Monitoring ( http://www.dotcommonitor.com ) and the search term กwebsite monitoringก. As I write, the site sits at #3 for that search term.

I turbo charged the popularity lever to 100%. Whoa. DotcomMonitor lost a spot. What does that mean? Somebody who does not rank as highly as my client got a boost by weighing link popularity higher (and, by extension, onpage content lower).

This tells me that my clientกs onpage content is in good shape. It also tells me which competitor has the best backlinks to check out.

PageRank was an effective gimmick for wrapping webmasters and SEO consultants around Googleกs fingers. But this results ranking thingy could wrap both the public and webmasters around MSNกs fingers.

Just one word of advice, Bill. Results Ranking? Is that the catchiest moniker you could give it?

Bill, you are to be congratulated for devising such a clever marketing tool, and for purposefully leaving it right out in the open like a live grenade without even a hint that it is there. That is what you did, isn’t it? You did do it on purpose, didn’t you?

If not, please let me know, so I can send you my invoice for your next great marketing idea.

About The Author

David Leonhardt is an SEO consultant

http://www.seowriter.net/freelance/seoconsultant.html

and a website marketing consultant:

http://www.seowriter.net

Pick up a copy of his SEO ebook:

http://www.thehappyguy.com/SEO.html

[email protected]

This article was posted on November 25, 2004

by David Leonhardt

Google Slavery…Old Habits Die Hard

Google Slavery…Old Habits Die Hard

by: Kirk Bannerman

For the first few months after Yahoo decided to go their own way with natural search (and MSN decided to get serious about the search business), the search results provided by those two could only be described as bizarre. Enough time has now passed that the dust has somewhat settled and there are three main (from a traffic standpoint) sites for quality natural searches.

The term กnatural searchก is to distinguish true searches, as opposed to paid advertisements which appear in the search results for many search engines these days. I guess you can’t really fault the search engine companies from wanting to make some money (actually, BIG money) selling ad space, but the debate over the virtues of natural search versus paid advertising search is something that could take up a very large book and still have no clear resolution…much like arguments revolving around religion or politics.

Like most people that have been working as online home business entrepreneurs for a few years, I was strongly conditioned to the need to กfeed the 800 pound gorillaก of the search engine world. Basically, กif Google didn’t love youก, it was very difficult to get any meaningful natural search traffic to your website. Since Google was actually the search engine that was serving up the results for most of the popular search portals, if Google didn’t look kindly upon your site and rank you well, you would not be ranked well for most of the high traffic search sites on the Internet.

However, the search landscape changed dramatically early in 2004 and things have been very fluid and interesting since that time. Its not that Google has stumbled, or become ineffective as a search vehicle, its just that major players like Yahoo and Microsoft (via MSN) have decided to make a major thrust into the search business.

Having been firmly conditioned (since shortly after 1998) that Google was the กsupreme deity of search enginesก, I took the highly publicized search entries of Yahoo and MSN with more than the proverbial กgrain of saltก.

Throughout a very recent two month period, one of my websites occupied the #5 position on Google, Yahoo, and MSN for a very popular and important (at least in my line of business) three word search term. This situation provided an opportunity to measure the current popularity of each of these three search providers.

If asked กbefore the factก, I would have guessed that Google would still be the overwhelming #1 search choice and that Yahoo and MSN would be distant #2 and #3 choices. Therefore, I was somewhat surprised by the results that were tabulated during this recent 60 day period.

For the period in question, the search popularity results were as follows:

Google: 34%

Yahoo: 31%

MSN: 20%

All others: 15%

Granted, the above results are for a single search term over a particular 60 day time period, but the results clearly show that Yahoo and MSN are already important players in the search business.

Webmasters that stick to the old ways and focus entirely on Google are missing out on a lot of search traffic these days if they are not also well ranked by Yahoo and MSN.

About The Author

Kirk Bannerman operates a successful home based business and coaches others seeking to start their own home based business. Visit his website at http://www.businessathome.us for more details.

This article was posted on September 02, 2004

by Kirk Bannerman

MSN & Yahoo Communities (The Basics)

MSN & Yahoo Communities (The Basics)

by: Martin Lemieux

Iกm sure at one time or another, weกve all explored either an msn or yahoo community or both. Communities are a FREE service that allows us to build and manage, discussion groups,family sites, business communities etc.

These communities can be a powerful tool to promote your business only if you know how to use them effectively.

There are 100กs of very popular communities that allow anyone to post as many กClassified Adsก as possible. Unless you to spend hours doing this, I suggest you leave if be for the time being.

What Iกd like to focus more on is กWHYก you should create your own msn & yahoo community for yourself!

See, many of the best search engines will pick up your community because of the sheer size and popularity of msn & yahoo.

Also, I see many marketers waisting a lot of time because they are trying to promote too many services or opportunities at one time. A community will allow you to add ALL that you promote into one site and then all you have to worry about is promoting that one site!

This won’t happen over night and learning how to easy it is to build & manage your own community will be posted in the next issue #2.

Before we get into that, youกll want to join the ‘top Ratedก communities in the business sections. Doing this will allow you to familiarize yourself with whatกs ‘the normก with these communities. Also, after youกve made the necessary adjustments and youกve prepared your own community, youกll be using all the top communities to promote your own.

I must appoligize to those who have never joined and msn or yahoo community. Youกll need to sign up for a user passport which is simply an msn or yahoo email and password.

For an msn passport click below: http://register.passport.net/default.srf?sl=1

For a yahoo passport click below: http://edit.yahoo.com/config/eval_register?.intl=us&new=1&.done=http%3a//www.yahoo.com&.src=www&.v=0&.u=0f49rckvhg06m&partner=&.p=&promo=&.last=

When signing up for an msn community, youกll want to click the option ‘reAD ALL MESSAGES ONLINEก. This way you won’t fill your email account with countless messages that are posted everyday… Also, click on กKEEP MY EMAIL PRIVATEก so that you don’t get any junk this way either.

And now you have the basics of communities, please look for the sequel to this article titled:

กBuilding & Managing your own communityก

About The Author

Martin R. Lemieux

Smartads President

Affordable Web Design & Web Site Marketing Tips

http://www.smartads.info

ASES Affordable Search Engine Specialists

http://www.flyinggelatingames.com

GOING TO PUBLISH THIS ARTICLE?

Send us a note of the location so we can add a link on our site to where you have used the article! http://www.smartads.info/contact

This article was posted on November 12, 2003

by Martin Lemieux

New MSN Search Engine: How Good Is It?

New MSN Search Engine: How Good Is It?

by: Nowshade Kabir

If you have an online business or you just use Internet as one of your marketing tools, you know that how important are the search engines in your quest to get more targeted visitors to your website. The changes in search engine field can have unexpected outcome for your online endeavors. That’s why it is important to be wellinformed on impending progress in this sphere.

Microsoft has recently come out with the latest beta version of its much touted search engine. Supported by 5 billion indexed pages, it is poised to become one of the most powerful search engines in the market. Right now MSN is using Yahoo provided search results for queries done through its search page, which it’s planning to change somewhere in early next year with its own. You can check out the search engine at http://beta.search.msn.com.

Google’s immense success and profitable business model enticed Microsoft and others to look into lucrative search engine market seriously. Amazon, for example, has recently launched its web search site A9.com. Today, Google carries out almost 50 percent of all searches on the Internet. Yahoo with 24 percent of the market share is trailing in a distant second place. MSN with 14 percent lags far behind from the competitors – a situation, which won’t be very easy to change.

However, Microsoft has a long history of copying booming products; make their replicas some times, arguably, better then the originals, and clinch larger portion of the market shares. Microsoft has successfully done this to Borland’s dominance of programming languages in the early days. The list of victims continued with once utterly popular word processor –WordPerfect, market dominant spreadsheet – Lotus 123, Novell’s Netware and finally Netscape. Since 90 percents of all personal computers run on Windows, Microsoft gets an extra edge against its competitors, which it’s capable of exploiting very effectively.

What is new in MSN search?

This version of MSN search incorporated several interesting features, which other search engines are lacking at this moment.

Direct answers to plain language factual searches

Unlike Google or Yahoo, Askjeeves has better ability to find answers to direct plain language searches. MSN search has taken this one step further by adding Microsoftกs Encarta reference tools to its features. Ask, what is the capital of Russia? You will get the right answer at the beginning of the result page. Questions like ขWhat is the size of a Blue whale?ข also brings in exact answer. No doubt, students will love this feature as it makes a lot easier for them to get specific answers to the questions related to facts and figures.

Near me

Microsoftกs new search engine includes a กกnear meกก button that helps users find websites for a given location. In this release, this works only in United States.

Once you press this button MSN search figures out where are you located using your computer’s IP address. However, this can be easily superseded by changing setting preferences. This is important if you are located in New York and looking for something near Boston.

Search Builder

In other search engines, if you would like to customize your search you have to use advance search options from a separate page. MSN search has made it a lot easier for average users by adding the ability of customization right on the search box.

Once you click on the Search Builder from the link right underneath of the search box a drop down menu will open. Initially, the menu might look a little confusing; with little patience you will be able to use available great features easily.

The tool ขsearch termsข allows you to add Boolean search options. Site/ Domain tool is used for limiting a search to specific site or domain, or excluding them from your query. ขLinks toข tool helps you make your query within the sites linked to a specific site. Country/ region and language options are required to make geography or language specific searches.

The best option from this group of features is the ขResult Rankingข. This option allows you to refine searches and give you a better control over the search result by using a set of three bars. By sliding the bars up and down you choose whether you want to see more of exact match or approximate match, more popular or less popular, static or dynamic pages as search results. You can generate an impressive range of results for a single query thanks to this option. This could be very useful for some types of searches. For example: if you are looking for news based pages, you might prefer to choose more dynamic pages rather than static ones.

Preference setting

Most notable options on the setting page are ขSafe Searchข – ability to filter out sexually explicit images and texts, and ability to fix the number of results displayed from one particular site.

Relevancy

Many reviewers claim that if you compare the search results with Google, MSN search engine ขfalls shortข in relevancy. However, my results showed otherwise.

I ran a search on the phrase ขtrade leadsข. The results from both the search engines were very relevant. The only difference in MSN I noticed is our http://tradeleads.rusbiz.com managed to turn up on the first page. But, a search on the word ขecatalogข was brought better – more relevant – results on MSN then Google. This time too I was happy to see http://ecatalog.rusbiz.com on the first page of MSN search results.

Conclusion

If you consider all the new features of MSN that Google does not have yet, its ability to cover natural language queries, quality level and relevance of results, ability to refine searches, there is no doubt that MSN search engine is as good as Google.

About The Author

Nowshade Kabir is the founder, primary developer and present CEO of Rusbiz.com. A Ph. D. in Information Technology, he has wide experience in Business Consulting, International Trade and Web Marketing. Rusbiz is a Global B2B Emarketplace with solutions to start and run online business. You can contact him at mailto:nowshade[at]rusbiz.com

This article was posted on November 23, 2004

by Nowshade Kabir