Yahoo continues on the decline and this time it’s showing when it comes to search. New search numbers from comScore show that Microsoft’s search engine Bing is now in second place for the U.S. search market. Google, of course, is still number one.

The findings were from month to month. From November 2011 to December 2011, Bing only gained 0.1% market share which put it at 15.1%, however, Yahoo dropped from 15.1% to 14.5%, a 0.6% drop in just one month.

Google has been the top dog in the U.S. search market for quite a while now. They’re still the go to search engine and had 12 Billion requests in December which worked out to a whopping 65.9% market share. Quite the lead having over four times the share of Microsoft’s search engine.

Via USA Today:

“Other research firms track the Internet search market. But comScore’s numbers matter the most to industry analysts and the companies trying to attract queries so they can make more money from the ads that appear alongside the results. Google’s dominance of online search is the main reason it has established itself as the Internet’s most profitable company.”

With the news of Bing surpassing Yahoo, one could assume that means they’re doing well financially as well, though that doesn’t exactly mean that in this case.

“Pursuing Google has come at a huge cost for Microsoft, which still makes most of its money from the Windows operating software and other software it sells for personal computers. Microsoft’s online division, which is anchored by Bing, has suffered operating losses of about $7 billion since June 2008.”

Bing Beats Out Yahoo, Now Second Place To Google In U.S. Search is a post from: The Inquisitr

Mozilla on Wednesday announced a new customized version of their Firefox internet browser that defaults to the Bing search engine rather than Google.

The announcement comes nearly one year after Mozilla said they would begin including Bing and Yahoo search results in Firefox 4 through an option which can be set within the browser itself.

In a statement on their website Mozilla announced:

“Mozilla and Bing are pleased to make available Firefox with Bing, a customized version of Firefox that sets Bing as the default search engine in the search box and AwesomeBar and makes Bing.com the default home page.”

The statement continues:

“Existing Firefox users can also make these changes by installing the Bing Search for Firefox Add-on.”

Firefox is already distributed with nearly 20 versions in different geographies and through various partners including options for Twitter, yahoo, Yandez and United Internet integration.

Also on the horizon is an upcoming version of Firefox for Android which includes a native UR instead of the company’s XUL implementation. The Android change is expected to produce faster startup times.

Will you be switching to the Bing version of  Mozilla Firefox browser if it’s released en masse as a secondary option instead of the Google search?

Mozilla Has Developed A Bing Default Search Engine is a post from: The Inquisitr

How do you search? If you are like the majority of people in the United States, you probably use Google. Yep, Google is still the number one search engine by a large margin, but new data released by ComScore today shows that the search engine giant is losing a little steam.

But Google isn’t loosing too much steam. Google still accounts for 64.8 percent of core search traffic, which according to ComScore includes “partner searches, cross-channel searches and contextual searches.” That number is just .3 percent down than Google’s score in July.

Still, Google’s small dip is something that both Yahoo and Bing can be proud of. Yahoo! was able to increase its traffic for the second month in a row. Yahoo! accounted for 16.3% of searches in August, which is .2 percent increase from July. Bing is still slightly behind Yahoo! with 14.7% of search traffic, but Bing is also seeing some growth. Bing saw a .3% growth in August.

ComScore writes in its report:

“Americans conducted 19.5 billion total core search queries in August (up 1 percent). Google Sites ranked first with 12.5 billion searches, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 3.6 billion and Microsoft Sites with 2.6 billion.”

Google is still the front-runner by far. But Yahoo! and Bing are starting to catch up. Of course, those aren’t the only search engines in the game. The ComScore report shows that Ask.com is still getting a fair amount of traffic. Ask delivered more than 500 million searches in August. AOL is still a factor as well, but the former internet giant accounts for just over 1% of search traffic.

Is Google your go-to search engine? When was the last time you used AOL or Ask.com to find what you were looking for?

Google Slips in New Search Engine Study While Bing and Yahoo! Grow is a post from: The Inquisitr

As most of us expected, Kinect was a big focus during Microsoft’s E3 press conference this year. Also high on Microsoft’s priorities was the expansion of the Xbox 360′s media capabilities, with the introduction of several new media services and features.

First up, Microsoft showed off a brand new Kinect dashboard. The new dashboard takes advantage of the Kinect’s voice recognition capabilities and allows the user to control practically the entire Xbox 360 experience through voice commands alone. The new interface is streamlined to make navigating and playing your content as easy as possible.

To that end, Microsoft also announced Bing for Xbox 360. It isn’t the same Bing you use in your browser, nor does it mean that you’ll be able to browse the web on your 360. What it does mean, however, is that searching for content – movies, games, and so on – can be done entirely by voice through Bing. Going by the video, it actually seems to work pretty well.

In an even more surprising announcement, Microsoft revealed plans to bring live TV straight to your Xbox 360. Very little details were shared during the reveal, but Microsoft stated that you’ll be able to watch your local stations as well as several networks to be announced closer to the launch of the new service.

As part of its expansion of media available on the 360, Microsoft announced that YouTube will be coming to Xbox Live as well. It’s not known if you’ll have full access or if you’re limited to predetermined content, but either way it’s a start. Also, UFC president Dana White took to the stage to announce that live UFC events will be coming to Xbox Live, and it includes features similar to ESPN3 on Xbox 360 that allows you and your friends to place friendly bets on the outcome of the match.

All of these new features are expected to launch sometime this fall.

E3 2011: Microsoft Bringing New Kinect Dashboard, Bing, Live TV, YouTube, UFC to Xbox 360 is a post from: The Inquisitr

A very lengthy analysis over at Search Engine Land was posted this morning, detailing a “sting” executed by Google to prove that Bing is ripping off their search engine results.

Using some fairly obscure search terms and even more obscure misspellings of the words, Google lays out a case that they say proves Bing is piggybacking off their carefully built, genre dominating ranking algorithms. Danny Sullivan explains the copyright trap into which Google says Bing readily tumbled:

In the example above, Google’s searched for the correct spelling — tarsorrhaphy — even though torsoraphy was entered. Notice the top listing for the corrected spelling is a page about the medical procedure at Wikipedia.

Over at Bing, the misspelling is NOT corrected — but somehow, Bing manages to list the same Wikipedia page at the top of its results as Google does for its corrected spelling results [pic]… Got it? Despite the word being misspelled — and the misspelling not being corrected — Bing still manages to get the right page from Wikipedia at the top of its results, one of four total pages it finds from across the web. How did it do that?

Sullivan contacted Bing about the findings, and Bing didn’t deny Google’s claims, but did say the experiment sounded “like a hack to confuse and manipulate some of these [data collection] signals.” Google was pretty snitty about the whole situation, and Google Fellow Amit Singhal fumed:

“It’s cheating to me because we work incredibly hard and have done so for years but they just get there based on our hard work… I don’t know how else to call it but plain and simple cheating. Another analogy is that it’s like running a marathon and carrying someone else on your back, who jumps off just before the finish line.”

The Search Engine Land piece heavily, if understandably, came heavily down on the side of Google having a right to be pissed about the Bing-related findings. Forbes had a different take, saying that Google should turn the issue into an ad campaign- “Google: Search So Good, Even Bing Uses It.”

Do you think Google has a right to be irked about Bing’s apparent lifting of at least some of their work?

Google: Bing is jacking our results! is a post from: The Inquisitr

In our modern Internet world we seem to have this obsession with search engines. Who’s the biggest, who’s the riches, and who’s an also ran. The thing is that Google hasn’t always been the powerhouse it is today, or will be tomorrow – or not.

In fact there have been a lot of search engines that came before Google. Alta Vista, Excite, HotBot  and even right back to the very beginning with Archie. Even today there seems to be a new search engine starting up every other week so it’s interesting to take a look, with the help of this infographic put together by Infographic Labs as to just how we got here.

via SiliconAngle

History of Search Engines Infographic style is a post from: The Inquisitr

After a long courtship and an expensive dowry Yahoo is finally sporting a nice new Bing tramp stamp on its bottom. According to Nick Eaton at The Microsoft Blog it is showing up on the US Yahoo pages and I can attest to the fact that you will find it so far on the Yahoo English version pages.

I imagine that this branding will start showing up on the other Yahoo sites around the globe in pretty short order.

Yes, it’s finally official – Yahoo is sporting a Bing stamp is a post from: The Inquisitr

Not even a few months the idea if incorporating Twitter results real-time in your searches on both google and Bing were all the rage. People pontificated on how this was going to change the whole search landscape. Even Marissa Mayer one of the head honchos at Google raved on about how this was a changing moment.

“We think the real-time search is incredibly important, and the real-time data that’s coming online can be super-useful in terms of finding out whether – something like, is this conference today any good? Is it warmer in San Francisco than it is in Silicon Valley? You can actually look at tweets and see those types of patterns emerge, so there’s a lot of useful information about real-time interactions that we think ultimately will really affect search.”

Well it turns out that maybe the enthusiasm might have been more than a little overblown if what some recent eye-tracking studies have discovered is true. It appears that people are ignoring those Twitter results that are being included with search results on both Google and Bing.

Personally I have never understood the reasoning behind the so-called importance of real-time Twitter searches. When people are search for stuff it is typically for stuff that they don’t know anything about not about the news of the last minute.

Turns out that real-time Twitter search in Google isn’t such a big thing is a post from: The Inquisitr

The search partnership between Microsoft and Yahoo was finalized today after federal regulators from the U.S and European Union gave the companies a green light.

The move, a strategic partnership will help both companies cut costs, while fighting against Google who controls 70% of the search market.

Under the deal, Bing will provide Yahoo search results and in return Microsoft will receive part of the ad revenues generated from those searches. For Yahoo it will mean not having to support their own infrastructure for searches, while they’ll be able to focus on their advertising platform and other ventures.

The full integration of both companies technologies is expected to be completed by the end of 2011. [GadgetCrave]

Yahoo And Microsoft Finalize Search Partnership is a post from: The Inquisitr

In the technology and Internet world things can change before even the first ripples begin to spread through the Web. For almost as long as most of us can remember Google has been the leader in search. Where all its competitors could barely muster enough eyeballs to get them even close to the double digit mark Google has ruled supreme.

However a couple of things that have happened over the past couple of weeks could very well change the balance of power in the search engine world. The first clue of the coming change was overshadowed by the announcement by Apple of their iPad but during that time it also came out that Apple and Microsoft were in talks for Bing to take over Google’s spot as the preferred search engine on the iPhone.

This follows on the heels of the deal that Bing cut with Verizon to become the default search engine on all non-Android phones. Those two things alone should be enough to make those interested in the search business to stand up and take notice.

But the real kicker came today as Facebook and Microsoft announced that while Facebook would be taking over the ad sales on the social network Bing was going to become the search engine of choice for Facebook worldwide. This means that Bing will now be serving up search results to some 400 million people worldwide.

Combine all those numbers together, Verizon, Apple’s iPhone, and now Facebook and suddenly Bing has the chance of becoming a formidable force in search. Sure that might not be enough to threaten Google’s dominance but it sure is enough to make a severe dent in the company’s percentages.

As Shoemoney said in a post the other day

Microsoft is a lion and they are relentless. They are the only company who have any shot at dethroning Google’s massive market share. They have the patients, money, and resources to do it.

And now it looks like they might be getting the numbers as well.

Are we in for a shift in the search engine biz? is a post from: The Inquisitr

Rumors have surfaced that Apple may be in talks with Microsoft in an attempt to make the Bing search engine the companies default search product on the iPhone, rather than the more popular Google.

Mashable is reporting that the in-fighting between the companies after Google poached their most recent CEO Eric Schmidt and launched their iPhone competing Nexus One has increased, leading Apple into open discussions with Microsoft.

It’s still unclear whether this deal will affect all iPhones or just the next releases of the companies devices. I personally will jump into my Safari settings and change the default back to Google. Currently only Google and Yahoo are found in those settings, which would make the jump to Bing a rather dramatic move for Apple.

Apple iPhone Browser Could Replace Google Default With Bing Search is a post from: The Inquisitr

I was reading a post over at Wired’s Danger Room blog where they were pointing out some of the Twitter action coming from Haiti. Just at the end of the post was a link to a Bing map showing where in Haiti those tweets are coming from.

It’s nothing earth shatteringly great but it is kind of interesting, and cool, to see Twitter messages on the devastated island coming in and where exactly they are.

Haitian tweets get the Bing treatment is a post from: The Inquisitr

Having just witnessed the Steve Ballmer keynote address at CES I have to admit, I could have given the address. Ballmer spent much of the nearly hour and a half talking about what Windows has accomplished, what’s coming in 2010 and what they hope to achieve on the horizon, the only problem? We’ve heard most of it before.

The night started out with a power glitch which delayed the show by about half an hour, after which Gary Shapiro of CES came out to tout Microsoft products, remind us all a bit about products we already knew about (which is fine he had to set the ton) and then introduce the keynote speaker, Microsoft CEO Steve  Ballmer.

Ballmer then appeared, but not in that rowdy, i’m going to jump around the stage like a madman persona we’ve seen in the past, this time he kept his cool and came out swinging with the persona of a likeable guy we’d expect to play poker with on a Saturday night. Steve then introduced Seth Meyers who actually did a really funny skit about what technology has done for him in which he mocks his own wrongful use of tech, it, in my opinion was unfortunately the highlight of the night. For example he says “Before Twitter, if I wanted to know what a person thought their cat was thinking… I would have been an idiot” and “Video games: before technology, I thought I was better at football than 11 year olds.” It was classic Meyers at his slapstick self.

Next, Steve began to talk about Microsoft achievements, how Microsoft was a combination of 3,000 engineers, 50,000 developers and 8 million beta testers from around the world and how the system has become more streamlined that its predecessors, he then touted the notebooks and netbooks that feature the OS, an impressive array of budget friendly devices and PC Magazines Number 1 Gaming system, then again we’ve heard it all before.

Ballmer also preached about Bing with the zeal of a boy who just discover his fathers playboys, reminding everyone in attendance how well the companies new maps system worked when zooming from satellite to your homes front door view, while mentioning the 11 million new visitors they’ve attracted, again, impressive numbers, but nothing we hadn’t heard in one fashion or another recently. One interesting fact, Ballmer mentioned that Bing will become the default search engine on HP products around the world in 2010.

He then spoke about Fiat Blue & Me which is now used in 1 million sold vehicles and he mentioned Ford’s Sync technology which will be discussed by Ford’s CEO Alan Mulally on Thursday morning during his keynote.

Ballmer then went on to display the HTC HD2 which will “debut” on T-Mobile this month and which has been available unlocked for months. While mentioning that a new “HTC device will be out virtually every month in 2010.”

He also talked about the Zune HD and it’s critical success and the various apps it continues to deliver, again we’ve heard it all before.

One thing I found interesting was Microsoft Mediaroom  2.More which is there software that permits pay TV service which according to Ballmer  “[Is] provided to millions of customers. I’m happy to announce later this year that AT&T subscribers to UVERSE will be able to enable this on their Xbox consoles.” Very cool indeed.

There was a bunch more info about Silverlight, about Xbox 360 technology and ultimately project natal which is an amazing piece of tech I can’t wait to see more from and which will be available by the 2010 holiday season according to Ballmer.

Honestly, it was hard to get excited during the keynote, unlike the days of Bill Gates showing off cool new tech, there was the air of “let us woo you with what we already have” and not enough info delving into the future of tech.

Overall, not a horrible way to start CES, minus the power issues and WiFi ups and downs, but here’s hoping to more starting tomorrow morning.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer Woos, Doesn’t Really Wow At Opening CES 2010 Keynote is a post from: The Inquisitr

More than a little bit of a fuss was raised not long ago when word came that Microsoft was trying to cozy up to news industry titans like News Corp suggesting that they might consider encouraging them to yank their content out of Google and go with Bing in exchange for some sort of financial arrangement.

Even though there were no official statements confirming or denying the common consensus from around the blogosphere is that this would be an incredibly stupid move on Microsoft’s part.

Well it seems that maybe Microsoft might have been listening, or had no plans in that direction in the first place, as word comes out today courtesy of The Financial Times that top search executives at Microsoft have all but dismissed the idea.

Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s senior vice-president for online services, refused to comment directly on talks with News Corp, but said that Bing was not looking to get a leg-up on Google by securing preferential access to information.

“That’s not at all a focus for us,” he said, adding: “We generally are not focused on getting non-Google content.”

He also said that keeping information off Google was “not the thing that would be a benefit to us in the long run”.

Source: Financial Times

I for one sure hope they stick with this decision.

Microsoft tells news moguls – you’re on your own is a post from: The Inquisitr

I am not sure if you can put a price on stupidity or not; but I am pretty sure that if you could weasel out of Steve Ballmer how much this possible getting into bed with the newspaper giants is going to cost you’d have a pretty good idea.

When the news broke late yesterday it quickly became the topic of choice for just about all the tech pundits out there. Even Duncan here at The Inquisitr has his say about the idea but while I wouldn’t go to the extreme of suggesting a boycott of Microsoft or Bing I will say that if this is indeed true this has to be the dumbest idea on so many levels that my neck hurts from shaking my head so much.

To understand just how stupid this inane idea is we need to look at all the players involved in a debacle just waiting to happen.

Google

The short end of this is that no agreement between Microsoft with News Corp, or any number of news organizations that are stupid enough to go this route, is going to have any longterm detrimental effects on Google.

When it comes to Google it has built its fortune around the Long Tail of the Web, not against the fluctuation of an ever decreasing time frame, or value, of the “news” cycle. The search giant knows that it is extremely hard to sell advertising against information that loses its relevancy almost as soon as it is posted.

Its recent rumblings within the real-time web isn’t so much as living up to their ethos of indexing all the information on the Internet as much as it is about not letting Microsoft have all the marbles in the playground. Unlike any deals being cut with newspapers; so that they can continue to prop up an industry in severe trouble, making deals with real-time web services is more of where the web is heading and as such it makes sense to Google to be in that space.

As Kent Newsome, along with a bunch of other smart folks, points out people are forgetting the power of the verb and human being’s general apathy and inertia.

Here’s the thing: people are going to use Google, that’s why it’s a verb.  If you take your content out of the Google search results, people won’t see it.  Merchants go where the people are, not the other way around.

Google knows this and it also knows that what ever is published to the web will eventually make its way into its search index. Real-time or Long Tail it doesn’t matter to Google as long as they can successfully sell advertising against any and all search results.

News Corp and the other desperate Susans of the News Industry

The whole argument being put forward by Rupert Murdoch and the other news industry barons that Google; and the other minor players in the search business, are nothing but bloodsuckers destroying the news business sounds like a bunch of whiny boys threatening to take their bat and balls and go home.

As much as they carry on about the evilness of Google nobody is listening, or caring, any more. We’re all too busy reading the news on sites that are trying to understand and deal with the new way of doing business. Along with that we are reading blogs, reading our Facebook pages and following links to interesting stuff just as we are also doing on Twitter.

And this is one of the major points that the news industry seems to have failed to understand. People don’t go to Google to search for specific news organization’s latest headline. People use Google, or other search companies, to search for ALL of the news about the latest breaking event; or they go to the actual news site itself.

The idea that this is some sort of salvation that will see newspapers finally lift the veil of disaster that is hanging over them is nothing short of delusional. The delivery of news is changing and it is no longer the private fiefdom of an exclusive bunch of rich pricks who think that can buy and sell the world.

Rupert Murdoch acting as the cheerleader of this idea of search engines paying for access doesn’t give a shit about the effect long term of any deals created using this idea. He doesn’t care one iota about the journalists who still don’t know half the time on a day to day basis if they are going to have a job the next day just because Murdoch and his ilk only care about making sure their bottom line isn’t endangered.

This is all about Murdoch being able to keep maintaining control over his media empire while he is alive and he doesn’t care about the survivability of his competitors beyond his opportunity to buy them. Being able to force Internet companies like Google, and Microsoft’s Bing, to pay him the ransom he wants is only a feather in Rupert’s cap – nothing more.

Microsoft

First off I can totally understand why Microsoft would even consider going down this road. That said I think it could be one of the most stupidest things ever conceived of at the company under Steve Ballmer’s stewardship.

As Duncan noted in his post Microsoft has come a long way since its days of being the epitome of evil in just about everyone’s eyes. If this is actually something that Microsoft is seriously considering they could wipe out just about all the good work that has been down to revitalize the company in the public’s eyes.

This whole thing strikes me as nothing more that Microsoft having to pay protectionist money in order to not become totally inconsequential in the search market. The problem is that once Microsoft hands over that first payment they are screwed on so many levels as it is a payment that they can’t take back and will only become the first of a non-stop stream of cash flowing out to the robber barons of news.

One of the biggest dangers that this move by Microsoft could create, as Alex Wilhelm at The Next Web notes, a dangerous precedent that we could never go back from.

Doing so would set a precedent that content should charge search engines for the right to be spidered. What you are doing is just that, attempting to buy exclusive rights to News Corp online. This is the proverbial slippery slope.

Openness is one of the most important concepts on the internet. If you create content, it is searchable. Google brought this revolution, and made the internet not just live up to its potential, but made it useable. Pre-functioning search, the internet was just an idea with potential. Search unlocked the dragon, in the best way possible.

By beginning to close search, by hitting other engines with a dollar-war, you, Microsoft, are going to destroy the open internet. If News Corp wants to not play, fine. Let them leave. They will suffer more than they are supposing. But by paying to get an exclusive, you are tearing the fabric of the free exchange of content and ideas that the internet stands on.

For a company that has been making great stride to change the perception of it this idea of buying search results on such a scale the effects would be disastrous. As many have pointed out the calls for a boycott of Microsoft and Bing would start faster than the ink could dry on any deals.

Us: the netizens.

The newspaper industry isn’t suffering this crisis for no reason. We have found new, and in some cases better ways to get our news and most of the time it has nothing to do with newspapers or even news television. We have also discovered that discovering our news doesn’t have to cost us money.

This would change that if only for a short period of time. We are already seeing calls for the return of the paywall with the deluded belief that people – in general – will pay to read the news and that this is the only way for the news industry to survive.

It has nothing to do with the survivability of the news because that will always be there but it has everything to do with big corporations playing power games with us stuck in the middle.

What these companies; Microsoft, Google, and the news industry on a whole, have forgotten is that the game is changing and we are a whole lot mouthier than we use to be. As major contributors to all these companies, whether it be with money or content, we have a say in this as well and for the first time we have the tools to make them listen.

While this is a bad idea for the search industry and most importantly for Microsoft and does nothing more than extend the period of life-support for the news industry it also is bad for us as the lifeblood of the Internet.

Sitting lurking and watching the disaster unfold isn’t an option. We need to tell Microsoft in loud voices that this isn’t an acceptable idea. Hell even if it means using Bing before any deals are made if only to show Microsoft that they don’t need to do this to be successful we need to speak up and stop this idea dead in its tracks.

If we don’t we are the only one’s who will pay the price. Not Microsoft, not Google, and most definitely not the news industry.

Microsoft once more proves you can indeed buy stupidity is a post from: The Inquisitr

Last week my partners in crime over at The Cynical Bastards podcast talked about the deals that Twitter had made with both Microsoft and Google that would allow both companies access to the fire hose of information that Twitter generates every minute of the day. While it was my thinking that Twitter must have made out large in the deals Mark called that thinking into question but as it may turn out I could be wrong in my assumptions.

I say that because of some details that came out in a New York Times article about the marketability of real time search in general and about the Twitter deals in relation to being a provider of content for real time search. As Miguel Helft noted in the NYT article

But Twitter’s chief executive, Evan Williams, said revenue was “not the focus” of its agreements with Google and Microsoft.

What’s more, neither of those companies has immediate plans to put ads on its searches of Twitter, though they may do so later. And Facebook said last week that it received no money from a separate agreement to make some of its users’ updates available in real time to Microsoft.

While a large number of social media pundits, myself included, like to poke fun at Twitter for seemingly being unable to monetize all that data flowing though its timelines it does speak to a larger problem.

Just how do you monetize a constantly changing landscape of hashtags and shortened URLs?

People like blogger Rob Diana suggest that its real strength will only become apparent with the growth of the mobile computing.

A majority of the real time search boom will be in its convergence with another rapidly growing industry, mobile computing. There could be real time recommendations based on your current location using an application that aggregates information from real time searches as well as social sites like Yelp and Urban Spoon. Businesses can easily see the benefits of this as well with local advertisements and “limited time” discounts on your mobile phone.

Just think of the applications that could be possible when you mash together recommendations, discovery, social media and real time information. Not surprisingly, the business model for these new types of applications will probably still be advertising, but it is localized and specialized. Generic search may have known what you were looking for, but the new mobile applications will also know when and where you are looking for it.

However there is also a more interesting use of real time search of social media that may turn out to be much easier to monetize which Rob points to as well in his post

There are the basic breaking news applications, which could be huge in their own right, as well as niche applications like social media monitoring.

While being able to market against your typical search results can result in lots of money being made and easy to see ROI real time search is still both too new and ambiguous to provide the same kind of results – for both provider of results and companies advertising against those results. However the thing that real time search does do is allow companies to be proactive to events as they happen rather than reactive.

Rather than having to deal with old news and the built up reaction to past events companies now have a chance to see these negative events, or even positive ones, as they are happening. By being able to deal with consumer reactions as they develop in real time companies are able in the short run to save money that they would have otherwise had to spend on things like lawyers, public relations, and crisis management.

In the long run it puts a human face to the companies who step in early due to their monitoring of social media and in turn presents the company to consumers as one who cares and is worth spending our money on.

This kind of use of real time search might only return savings or make millions for those involved which might not be as sexy as making billions but sometimes reputation is more important than short term dollars in the bank.

Just as social media has been disruptive and mindset changing for our traditional business models maybe real time search will be just as disruptive of the business of search.

The hashtag jungle of real time search is a post from: The Inquisitr

I’ve spent the past few hours searching around the tech blogs, SEO blogs, forums and Twitter but haven’t been able to find anyone who has made the connection between the recent Twitter Lists feature and the Twitter search deals between Bing and Google. Surprising, really, so I’ll take a stab at it.

On September 30, 2009, Nick Kallen wrote an official Twitter blog that they had just rolled out a new lists feature to selected users. Rather than rewrite a summary of that blog here, I’ll quote the main points below, followed by my thoughts. Nick wrote:

“The idea is to allow people to curate lists of Twitter accounts. For example, you could create a list of the funniest Twitter accounts of all time, athletes, local businesses, friends, or any compilation that makes sense.”

Essentially, Twitter users will be able to categorize the people they follow. How does this have anything to do with the later announcements of search deals between Microsoft’s Bing search engine and the Google search deal?

Categorizing accounts adds a new layer of meta data to the enormous amount of random bits of information spewing out of Twitter at any given point in time. That meta data makes it much easier for the search engine software to quickly crunch the data for search queries. For instance, someone goes to Google or Bing and searches for “Lakers game tonight.” Rather than having to crunch all the data coming out of Twitter in the past 24 hours, then find and output relevant tweets, the software first looks for tweets by members who are on lists categorized as Sports, Basketball, Lakers, etc. and give those tweets priority.

Nick then goes on to say:

“This means lists have the potential to be an important new discovery mechanism for great tweets and accounts.”

See the paragraph I wrote above…

“We started working on this feature because of the frequent requests we received from people who were looking for a better way to organize information on Twitter. Of course, that means not just twitter.com – the Platform team will follow up in a few days with information on the Lists API. This will allow developers to add support for Lists into your favorite Twitter apps.”

And the new lists API will no doubt be used by Bing and Google as well.

There have been rumors swirling around for nearly a year now about real-time search. Pundits and tech bloggers have been wondering which of the big search engines would be the first to do “real” real-time search and do it right. The biggest problem that’s been standing in the way of real-time search, in my honest opinion, is the sheer amount of random data being produced by social media and the real-time web. Or rather, no plausable way to make that data easily discoverable on the receiving end where the search engines are.

Other big user generated content sites have turned to allowing their users to categorize and tag things in the past. Look at how Flickr encourages it’s users to tag, categorize and comment on photos and video. From the beginning, Myspace and WordPress.com have benefited tremendously by making it natural for users to categorize, comment on and tag stuff. And long before Facebook started tearing down it’s walls, much of it’s tremendous growth has been due to making it easy for users to grow content and networks by making their data easily discoverable. Of late, Google itself has been encouraging searchers to interact with it’s content by voting up and down, removing items from their search pages and add tags or descriptions to photos.

All of what I mentioned above adds meta data that can be used to deliver more relevant results to searchers, faster.

Twitter is a business with a massive amount of user generated data being produced 24 hours around the clock. Those speculating about Twitter’s business model can finally put the subject to rest. They’ve made their product more usable and at least 2 huge companies have jumped committed to using that product.

Meta data. Twitter lists are just the beginning.

Twitter Lists and Real Time Search deals – The Big Picture is a post from: The Inquisitr

Well there is no denying that today was an interesting one when it comes to the world of search and the real time web. From everything I have read so far today everyone seems to be of the opinion that the two deals Twitter made today are pretty important and I would have to agree with that assessment.

Microsoft

Other than Twitter I would have to say that the big winner of today’s announcements definitely has to be Microsoft. Not only did they ink a deal with Twitter but they also made one with Facebook as well. While Microsoft’s Bing search already has a beta page up for searching Twitter it will be a couple of months apparently before their work with Facebook will be available.

The fact that Microsoft was able to have even a beta result page ready for the announcement today could prove to be very important for the company. As it stands Google won’t have anything available for anywhere from a few weeks to a couple of months – depending on who you talk to.

This is a golden window for Microsoft and Bing because it will give them time to review and fine tune how the results are made available during which they can try and capitalize on being the only major search provider searching the real time web. While they won’t see a rush of new users to the search service it could definitely cause more than a few to start using Bing on a more regular basis.

Google

While the web’s search darling has announced inking a deal with Twitter for access to the fire hose the fact is that they are still some time from having anything people can actually use. I find it interesting that Microsoft was able to get a beta Twitter search up for today’s announcement but Google wasn’t. This would mean that Microsoft has to have had access to that hose prior to Google which goes to suggest that Microsoft has a better grasp on the importance of Twitter and real time search.

This isn’t to suggest that Google won’t have a good product when they do bring it to the table. On the contrary I fully expect them to have an interesting take on how real time search results should be handled. I just would have expected given the current opinion of Microsoft being a stick in the mud enterprise oriented company and Google being the do no evil Web 2.0 darling perpetual beta company that they would have been first in this little skirmish.

The fact that Microsoft beat them at this point with a usable real time search product doesn’t mean that the tables have turned. Google isn’t going to lose any sleep or long time users over the deal but Microsoft may have just been given a golden opportunity to show they have a very capable product that will win some folks over.

Twitter

You have to admit this was a pretty cool deal that Twitter managed to pull off without anything really leaking out about it. Being able to ink 2 non-exclusivity deals with serious enemies who are always looking to one up each other and nothing gets out almost right up until the announcements – nicely done.

While I am sure that Twitter will be banking some serious cash out of these deals I am sure it is nothing that would pale by comparison to an exclusive deal. This has me wondering if it was Twitter that made the non-exclusivity a requirement of even talking about making any deals. If so kudos to the Twitter team for making some good money but at the same time making sure the Twitter stream remained neutral.

Overall

We are the winners here – make no mistake. Microsoft gets a chance to prove to new users that they have a better search, Google gets to index even more of the world’s info only in real time, and Twitter gets to probably put some serious cash in the bank and possibly start living up to its valuation. In the end though it us the users who will ultimately benefit.

Twitter FTW.

Looking at the nuances of the Twitter search deals is a post from: The Inquisitr

Thanks to a heads up from Robert Scoble on Twitter we just found out that the Twitter search on Bing has gone live. I am only now playing with it so I don’t a real reaction yet to the whole thing but here’s some screenshots of what is there for you to explore.

And of course what would a search be without a little vanity tossed in

BREAKING: Microsoft’s Bing and Twitter search results live [Screenshots] is a post from: The Inquisitr

Did someone say Crispin Porter + Bogusky? Microsoft’s current online display advertising for search engine Bing has taken to using jailbait and sick children to drive traffic.

The themed campaign focuses on a search term and related image, for example in the ad above, it’s colic. A skyscrapper includes the search term “stomach flu” and features a kid with a green tongue. The jailbait comes into play with lots of underage girls. In one ad for “school” it’s four blonde, very 15-16 year old girls with tight tops and a bit of flesh for good measure as well. In another for celebrities, it’s a blonde again, decidedly skinny, and most definitely youthful.

I get using jailbait as a sale tool, even if it’s a dubious direction to head in (after all, Microsoft isn’t Disney), but screaming babies? kids with green tongues? Those images don’t make me want to use Bing, they actually deliver the opposite response, on that simply says “do not want.”

Microsoft’s latest Bing campaign: jailbait and sick children is a post from: The Inquisitr