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Bing Now Hits 10% of Searches

ComScore released the search market share results recently showing a nice increase in Bing’s market share. Bing has now hit over 10% of market share with Yahoo dropping to about 17%. That still leaves Google as the dominant player with over 65% market share.

What I find interesting is the feedback on Bing. Some of our writers use Bing first for writing research as the search results are more oriented to information than some of the spammy results for searches found on Google. Clients like Bing and are focused more on organic performance there. It appears that slowly the shift in consumer viewpoint and use of Bing is positively increasing.

Remember when Firefox was new and only 5% of the browser market? Look where Firefox is now a mainstream browser that is the first choice of many business networks and users worldwide. Could acceptance of Bing be headed in this same direction?

Personally I like the Bing interface it is clean, uncluttered and provides quality search results. It will be interesting to see if Google’s new Caffeine update addresses some of these issues and improves quality and has some of the most likable Bing tweaks.

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Google Says 50% of Searches Using Caffeine Now!

Google has announced that one of the data centers is already running the new Caffeine algorithm. This in not new news, but Google stated that 50% of searches are now coming out of the new Caffeine algorithm.

We know that all of Google will move to the Caffeine algorithm after the holidays, but with 50% of the searches running on Caffeine now is hot news.

I suspect that the week between Christmas and New Years Google will roll out the full Caffeine update. Partly because there are typically low search numbers in that week and that may give Google a chance to tweak some things and kind of do a test run live before traffic returns after the New Year.

On the other hand everyone at Google may be off between Christmas and New Years and so the update will roll out the first week of January. Your guess is as good as mine which approach Google will take.

I am taking a poll, just leave your comments on when you think the rollout will be.

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Selling Locally? When Should You Advertise Off Line?

For many clients online advertising is done in addition to direct mail, print advertising, flyers, and Yellow Page advertising. For some online advertising is the only type of advertising that is done. When should you consider advertising offline once you have an online presence?

Here are my tips:

1. If you have a store location, it would strongly benefit you to advertise in the local and regional yellow pages as well as online. Some customers may not be able to find you quickly with a Google.com search and may pick up the phone book, especially when it comes to local services like a plumber, attorney, or even a dog walker.

2. If you are advertising on Google AdWords, Yahoo, and Bing and have great conversions now’s the time to expand your offline presence to really work to penetrate your market if you have a local business. Some of our clients have expanded into bus advertising, billboards, radio, and even local flyers. In this case this type of advertising makes perfect sense. This approach does not make sense if you are located in California and selling nationally. The sheer expense of bus advertising in all the major markets is really left for huge enterprises and not right for small to medium sized entrepreneurs.

3. Have you considered flyers? If you live in a densely populated area such as New York or Washington DC where you have condos, co-ops, and apartments and many non-driving customers flyers placed on bulletin boards in lobbies, meeting places, bistros, and local restaurants can really work to drive traffic to your website and potentially bring you more business. This approach does not work for suburbia or areas where there really are no common meeting places that are heavily trafficked.

I think the real takeaway from this article is that online advertising is important to nearly every business in today’s world, but is not the only place you should advertise. Your marketing plan should contain both offline and online efforts. For businesses who really have not done much advertising at all, online is an excellent place to start.

If you need help with online advertising using AdWords, Yahoo or Bing give me a call at 301-705-7303 or visit my website at www.McCordWeb.com.

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Google’s Instant Search Results

This past week Google announced that its search results would be instantaneous. Meaning specifically that indexing the web every week or every month just had to go! They have to spider the web continuously to provide up the second results.

Sounds like Google is feeling the pinch with the popularity of Twitter news sharing and Facebook interaction to me. With instant news being found out on Twitter and shared, who has to go to Google News anymore. Remember when Michael Jackson died? I found out on Twitter before any of the news networks had picked up the story. That really must have made ole Google feel out of the loop.

In the past weeks Google has signed non-exclusive agreements with Twitter and Facebook to use their instantaneous news to update their own index hoping that it can woo back immediate news and information junkies from Twitter Search and Facebook updates. Although this doesn’t sound like a problem, Google must be scared with the increasing popularity of Facebook and migration of regular email users to solely Facebook mail users as this will hurt them in their pocketbook for sponsored advertising.

For Twitter users this new Google thrust is a boon. Your tweets may very well be the hot property and viral message that now gets incredibly huge exposure and bonus staying power by being included into the Google index.

Based on this information if you are not on Twitter, you’d really better be considering getting started. This mash-up of Twitter, Facebook, and Google is bound to be a huge boon for website and businesses who dare to really take advantage of it.

If you need help with implementing Twitter check out our Twitter services to help you get started.