Bing goes live with Facebook Social Search

cNet

Bing has rolled out its new social search, a feature that can display profiles and updates from your Facebook friends as part of your Bing search results.

This step of the Facebook integration has been in the works for a few weeks, but the techs at Bing fine-tuned the feature before yesterday's rollout, according to a post on the official Bing blog.

The new social search integrates with Facebook in a couple of ways.

If you opt to link your Facebook account with your Bing log-in, searching for the name of one of your Facebook friends in Bing brings up a link to that person's entire profile in your results. This is true even if that person has elected not to share their Facebook profile with any search engines, since only you can see those results. So if you have a Facebook friend named Jerry Seinfeld, a link to his profile will appear alongside results for the famed comedian.

Early testers of the Facebook integration were apparently unhappy that they couldn't view the profiles of their friends through Bing with the same ease they could through Facebook itself, according to the blog, leading Microsoft to set up this specific type of access.

Further, Bing tweaked the age requirements. Facebook requires its users to be 13 or older, but Bing initially limited profile search results to people 18 and older. Based on customer feedback, Microsoft changed this option to let all your Facebook friends regardless of age show up in your Bing search results.

The Bing and Facebook team-up also can retrieve results for items "liked by your Facebook friends." So if you're looking for opinions on a certain movie or restaurant, Bing can show you any Facebook friends who "liked" those specific items.

The ease with which Facebook information can flow into Bing may arouse some privacy concerns. The integration is a one-way street, so no information goes from Bing back to Facebook. But still, anyone wary of the new social search can control or turn off the feature on both accounts.

Review: New Search Partners Not Identical Twins

Associated Press

 

Just because Yahoo Inc.'s U.S. website and Microsoft Corp.'s Bing are using the same technological ingredients for searching the Internet doesn't mean they're slicing and dicing the results the same way, too.

Understanding the differences can be helpful, particularly for people looking for the best alternative to Google Inc.'s dominant search engine.

The 10-year search partnership between Yahoo and Microsoft still allows them to cook up different recipes for displaying the results. Both wanted that flexibility because even though Microsoft and Yahoo are now teaming up to fight Google, they're still competing for traffic with each other. The reason: search requests yield more opportunities to sell the ads that appear alongside the results. If a person clicks on one of those ads while searching on Yahoo, it gets to keep $88 of every $100 in revenue, with the other $12 going to Microsoft. If a person clicks on an ad while searching on Bing, Microsoft gets to keep all the money.

Yahoo switched its U.S. and Canada sites over to Bing's search technology in late August to lower its costs and free up more time and money to focus on building other services. As things evolve, Yahoo has indicated it will do more things to make its search results more helpful than Bing's, but so far, the distinctions have been subtle.

A review by The Associated Press found the differences between the search results on Yahoo and Bing mostly have to do with the ways that the two services compile and display snapshots of key information at or near the top of the first page.

These additional features supplement the boring blue links to other sites that have been standard fare on most search services for the past decade. When it came to those links, along with most of the photo and video snippets, the results were virtually identical at Yahoo and Bing. For the test, the AP entered more than 30 different search requests in at the two sites on topics including sports teams, holidays, travel requests, business subjects, celebrities and high-tech gadgetry.

The AP only looked at results that came from typing queries into the main search boxes on Bing and Yahoo, because that's the most common way people find things online. Bing, in particular, has been heavily promoting its specialty services for travel and shopping as better ways to search for good deals, but often, people have to click another link or tab to use them.

Even without digging deeper into its search toolbox, Bing usually produced the more visually appealing results page. For instance, Bing offers more photo thumbnails on its first results page, as well as more video previews that can be played on the site by hovering over them with the computer's cursor.

Yahoo consistently showed fewer photo thumbnails and video capsules on the first page. What's more, the video capsules within Yahoo's search results usually required clicking through to the site where the clip was being hosted. Yahoo also didn't post any explanations about where the video clips came from or what they were about, something that Bing did.

Another Bing advantage: its site tends to offer more suggestions for other searches likely to be related to the initial request. Bing also provides a pane just to the right of the results that, as a reader scrolls down, provides a glimpse of key information from each site in the list. Even when Yahoo's results featured all the same links, there was no way to get more information without clicking on the link.

Bing also seemed to bring more pizzazz to its results, such as when the AP searched for "Halloween." The recommendations were separated into different categories - "Halloween Decorations," "Halloween DVD," and "News: Halloween" - that were highlighted in orange. That's a nice holiday-themed touch that Yahoo lacked.

Yahoo excels when the requests are about entertainers, star athletes or sports teams. In these instances, Yahoo led off the results with a box containing a picture of the person or team logo, along with biographical information. For entertainers, the box also featured songs and video. In an apparent bias that might bother some people, Yahoo pulls some of this data from its own services, such as rivals.com for requests about some sports subjects.

Bing provided similar summaries on the same search requests, although they didn't seem to be as comprehensive as Yahoo's. An exception came when looking up Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz. Bing produced a handy biography about each executive, including their birthdates. Yahoo didn't do that, not even for Bartz.

Expect to see Yahoo to attempt to cram even more information about prominent people in its summary boxes. The company plans to unveil a new design for the boxes later this fall.

Some of the attempts to stand out proved to be more embarrassing than engaging. For instance, when the AP asked for a list of the best search engines, Yahoo's results led off with a row of five images that included pictures of vintage locomotives, a steam engine and two images of cold medicine.

That kind of incongruous result is the sort of thing that will send more people to Bing search engine marketing or, even more likely, Google.

Google Watching Bing, Not Facebook As Close Competitor

Tech Review

 

Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt had an interview with Charlie Rose this week and it will be aired on PBS Network this Friday.  In the interview, Schmidt says that Facebook isn’t really any concern of Google’s right now.  The search engine that Microsoft has, called Bing, is actually the competitor they are concerned about most right now.

Microsoft has more cash and engineers than Google, Schmidt says and they are more well known for their “storied reputation of technology innovation”.  Google’s search numbers are still well at the top of the charts with about 65 percent, but Microsoft has been on the increase over the past year, and they are sitting at about 11 percent, according to comScore.

Even though you might think that with all the stories about Google’s social network, Facebook would be the largest competition, but Schmidt says that with the studies Google has done, it appears that Facebook users use Google more.  The two companies fit very well together, or at least the demographics are very much the same for both web sites at this time.

Google’s CEO also mentioned one other thing in the interview and that is that Google has expanded it’s agreement to provide Apple with search services.  That is very curious since Android is starting to gain on the iPhone in the mobile smartphone market.

Microsoft sees Opportunities in China after Google's Exit

International Business Times

 

By launching Adcenter advertising platform on Tuesday Microsoft could improve the prospects of its Bing search engine after Google pulled out of China’s mainland in March this year, said a China Daily report.

Microsoft’s Adcenter facilitates pay per click advertising like Google’s AdWords.

The launch is aimed at grabbing the online advertising market share in China where companies have become cautious over going with Google, as the internet giant started redirecting all its mainland traffic to Hong Kong site.

"It's the time to join the market and let Chinese advertisers have more choices," said the report quoting Anderson Liu, general manager, MSN China.

With 32.8 percent market share by the end of 2009, Google saw a continued decline in market share to 27.3 percent in the second quarter.

Feeling the impact from its woes in China, Google snapped commercial ties with two of its 25 advertising agents in the country in July.

To cash in on the Google’s woes, Microsoft mainly aims to grab the overseas advertising from Chinese exporters by the launch of new Adcenter services, the report said. It expects revenues from these new services to contribute to half of MSN China’s business.

Advertising activity from Chinese exporters forms a major part of China's online search engine market and occupied 40 percent share in Google’s revenues, said the report quoting Analysys International.

Currently Microsoft is partnering with Baidu to sell search engine advertising and the company clarifies that the new services will not hurt their tie-up. In the second quarter, Baidu held a search engine market share of more than 70 percent in China.

"Actually I think it's a very good opportunity for MSN China," said the report quoting Edward Yu, president of Analysys International.

Bing Search Share up 88% Since Launch

Information Week

 

Microsoft slowly but surely starting to eat into Google's dominant position in U.S. search market.

 

Microsoft continues to make gains in the U.S. Internet search market as its overall share jumped 7% in June compared to the previous month.

While the software maker's gains are coming mostly at the expense of partner Yahoo, whose search operations it will soon absorb, new data shows that Bing search engine marketing is also chipping away at Google's dominant position.
Bing captured 9.85% of all U.S. searches in June, up from 9.23% in May, according to data released Thursday by Experian Hitwise. Yahoo's share held roughly steady at 14.37%, while Google's market share fell 1% month-to-month, from 72.17% to 71.65%.

Bing's short-term climb is impressive, but a longer view shows Microsoft's upstart search engine making even bigger inroads against its main rival.

Microsoft launched Bing in June of 2009, when it captured 5.25% of the U.S. market. With its share currently at 9.85%, Bing has grown 88% in just 12 months. Yahoo's share has declined 11.24% over the same period, while Google is down 3.2% over that span.

While those numbers might not strike fear into Google, the trend should evoke at least some concern from the search leader. Microsoft, after all, will likely become a more formidable competitor later this year or early next when its partnership with Yahoo fully takes effect. Under the deal, Bing will become the default search engine on Yahoo's Web properties. In exchange, Microsoft will share revenue generated by those searches with Yahoo.

Bing, according to Microsoft, is designed to deliver a more functional experience than existing search engines, including Google's.

That is, queries entered into Bing yield not only information related to the search term, but also links to sites where users can make immediate purchases or engage in other activities related to their queries. For instance, a search on Bing for, say, flights to Hawaii, coughs up real-time pricing and seat availability, and lets users make a booking then and there.

Microsoft's gains show that Google search marketing, for its part, must continue to innovate if it's to maintain its healthy lead in search.

Bing Rolls Out New Features For Google To Copy

San Francisco Chronicle

Microsoft has added a new "Entertainment" section to Bing which features TV shows, music, and movies. Games can be played right on Bing, TV shows can viewed right on Bing, and songs can be streamed right from Bing.

It's a good idea, but the execution of Entertainment leaves us underwhelmed. We searched for "Friday Night Lights" on both Google and Bing. For some reason Bing gave us "News" first, then a gaggle of thumbnails for episodes, then other information.

Google, on the other hand, had a nice fat sponsored link to Friday Night Lights on Hulu at the top. Then it had NBC.com/Fridaynightlights. If we wanted to watch the show or learn about it, it couldn't be more simple or clean.

While we're not crazy about the execution, but we wouldn't be surprised to see Google adopt some of the Bing Entertainment styling in the near future. Everytime Bing introduces a cool new feature, Google is quick to adopt it for itself.

Bing Adds Music, Videos, Games

The Washington Post

 

Tuesday, Microsoft's Bing search engine built on a good news month--Apple added Bing to the search options in the iPhone and its Safari browser, followed by Google's awkward imitation of Bing's artistic home-page photos--by adding some potentially useful search shortcuts.

That's "potentially" because some of these features aren't working yet.

As a company blog post explains, these changes aim to free users from having to click through to other sites (and, in the process, risk themselves to a "drive-by download" malware attack).

First, if you try a query that Bing recognizes as musically inclined, it will include links to play relevant songs--in many cases, entire recordings, not just 30-second previews--and view their lyrics. A query for "r.e.m. radio free europe lyrics," for instance, will connect you to a page with the song's inscrutable verbiage ("Keep me out of country in the word") and an option to listen to the 1983 recording. But on Wednesday afternoon, that second link only led to an apologetic please-come-back-later notice.

Lyrics sites have a bad history of leading Web users to their computers' doom, so by eliminating the need to look elsewhere Bing does its users a favor. (Bing gets its lyrics from Toronto-based LyricFind, which develops applications for the iPhone, Android and Facebook.) But it's a little weird that its site is coded to stop users from selecting and copying a verse or a chorus, and it also misses some less-than-obscure works--if you want to read Lou Reed's wonderful wordplay in "Sick of You," you'll have to search elsewhere.

Second, a Bing search for a TV show or movie title now surfaces extra data. For example, looking for "The Simpsons" brought up thumbnail previews of individual episodes, which started playing once I parked the cursor over each; clicking on the thumbnail brought up a Bing page showing the episode at a more normal size. TV-schedule listings are supposed to come later. Searches for "Mad Men" and "The Office," however, yielded nothing special. A query for "Toy Story 3," meanwhile, brought up a list of show times as well as links to reviews, blog posts and the movie's Wikipedia entry.

Finally, if you search for some popular games--for instance, Bejeweled or blackjack--Bing will let you play them right on its site. Microsoft says it's added "nearly 100" titles, courtesy of its Microsoft Games division, but many searches I tried ("sudoku," "checkers," "Risk") didn't pan out.

Microsoft Shutters Bing Shopping Rebate Program

Associated Press

 

Microsoft is shutting down a program that gave online shoppers rebates when they found items through Bing search.

The cashback program started in May 2008. Microsoft Corp. was hoping cashback would help lure more people to its search engine.

But despite its efforts, Microsoft remains a distant third in search behind Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. Having a bigger audience is appealing to advertisers, and Google's dominance in search has been extremely lucrative for that company.

Microsoft says in a blog post that the cashback program didn't attract as many people as the software maker had hoped.

Cashback offers will end on July 30. People who have earned rebates have a year to redeem them.

Google's Search Market Share Slips as Bing Rivalry Heats Up

USA Today

Google's grip on the Internet search market has loosened just a tad.

 

 

 

The company's share of U.S. searches slipped to 64.4% percent in April, down from 65.1% in March, according to comScore. Meanwhile, Yahoo's share rose to 17.7%, up from 16.9%, while Microsoft Bing crept to 11.8%, up from 11.7%.

Those results are anything but trivial in the current competitive landscape, search experts say. Microsoft and Yahoo are working furiously behind closed doors to blend their search services. The roll out of what analysts have taken to referring to as BingHoo is expected sometime later this year. If the launch of BingHoo came today, it would command a 30% market share.

"Change is imminent for search engines catalyzed by Microsoft's launch of Bing and the push for a better way to deliver more user-centric search results," says Forrester analyst Shar VanBoskirk.

Meanwhile, Microsoft continues to do everything it can think of to keep Bing's momentum going. The software giant on Thursday launched a streamlined MSN Mobile homepage, featuring one-click access to Bing and compatibility with Apple iPhones and Google Android smartphones. Just two months ago, the company redesigned MSN's Internet homepage, also emphasizing deep integration with Bing.

Barry Schwartz, founder and administrator of searchengineroundtable.com, notes that Google, too, has been hustling. "Google has released some pretty cool stuff both on the normal browser search and especially mobile search," says Schwartz. "Just look at Android. And is there anything more innovative today than Google Goggles?"

Still, Google's major redesign of its search results pages, which the company rolled out last week, has gotten a decidedly mixed response. "A lot of people are off-put by the fact that the design changed," says Tom Demers, marketing director at search software firm WordStream. "The tweak in and of itself definitely isn't a game-changer."

Kevin Lee, CEO of search consultancy Didit.com says he expects Microsoft to continue showcasing Bing in its other products. "I think Bing will probably do some interesting integrations between Bing and Hotmail, Windows Messenger and Xbox Live," says Lee. "They need to leverage their areas of strength and turn those areas of strength into adoption."

Vanessa Fox, author of Seattle-based author of Marketing In The Age Of Google, looks for Google and Microsoft to slug it out to see who can do a more effective job anticipating what the person typing the query is truly seeking. Fox notes that 45% of the search queries we type are just one or two words. This makes it difficult for the search services to discern the searcher's intent, she says.

Google resolves this by correlating these queries with millions of others using the same term. So if you type "cats" you might get results for cat videos, if that's what most other people who typed "cats" were looking for, she says.

Bing, on the other hand, uses more of a browsing model. Type "cats" and it will offer you choices of categories of cat topics and try to guide you to what you were looking for. This works especially well for topics involving travel, shopping and health. "I think both engines are continuing to evolve to more of a model that takes into account searcher behavior and searcher intent and the key will be balancing privacy concerns," she says.

Demers credits Google's co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin for keeping the best poker faces in the tech industry. He says it's difficult to tell just how irked they are getting, if at all, by Bing's steady, incremental advances. "Google has gotten very good at developing a game plan and not overreacting to the constant barrage of Google Killers," says Demers. "I don't think you'll see a major sea change on Google's part just yet. You're more likely to see them continue to leverage acquisitions to strategically build out destinations to send their search traffic to."

Bing Rolls Out New Features for Spring Revamp
PC World

Microsoft introduced new features to its Bing search engine Thursday including Quick Tabs, an Answer box, and new mapping tools powered by Foursquare to deliver real-time data embedded in maps. Bing says the move represents a further departure from Google-style listing of search results and one toward what it calls a "decision engine" where Bing can intuitively deliver exactly the price, link, score, or weather forecast you are looking for.

The most striking changes to the Bing search results page is the removal of the Explorer navigation pane on the left-hand side of the Bing search results - replaced by the introduction of Quick Tabs (which are related to search queries). Another big change is the delivery of an Answer box that include a combination of reference data, most popular results, and real-time information culled from pricing engines, weather sites, and news sources.

The changes do not represent the introduction of new under-the-hood search technology. Rather, Bing representatives say, it is re-jiggering the way search results are delivered - hopefully in a more intuitive way. Bing says it will roll out all the new features in the coming month with only a small percentage of users seeing updates this week.

Microsoft wants to play around with the location of Quick Tabs, which provide fast access to subcategories of search such as news, events and weather. In its current state, Bing puts these categories in a sidebar to the left, but screenshots of the new format show the tabs on top of your basic search results. I think the success of this feature will depend on how quickly the user can toggle between tabs, and whether the search page they're on in one tab is preserved if they temporary move to another.

Bing inked some major deals with Facebook and Twitter in October, and now we'll start seeing some new features with real-time search results. One of the things Bing will do is show the most popular shared links from news Web sites, such as the New York Times, but Microsoft provides no other examples. Hopefully, there are more.

We got acquainted with Bing Map Apps in December, when Microsoft introduced a bunch of new mapping features in beta. Now, Bing's jumping into the location-based craze with an app for Foursquare, a social game based on visiting real-world places. Turning on the Foursquare Map App shows you who has unlocked specific badgets, and where people have become "mayor" of certain locations. Even if you don't play Foursquare, Microsoft says the app can be used like an "interactive day planner" that tells you what's popular in an unfamiliar city.

Bing Nabs More Web Searches in February

SEATTLE (AP) - Microsoft Corp.'s Bing search engine gained market share in the U.S. in February, according to research groups.

Microsoft has worked for years to improve its search technology and narrow the gap with Google Inc. After launching its redesigned search site last June, the company waged a major marketing campaign to position Bing as better than Google or No. 2 Yahoo for shopping, booking travel and searching for medical information.

Microsoft remains in the No. 3 spot, but Bing's share of U.S. searches has crept up a few percentage points since its June 2009 launch, primarily at Yahoo's expense, according to research groups.

Now there's a sign - albeit a small one - that Bing may also be tempting some Googlers.

The Nielsen Co., one of the research groups that tracks the space, said Tuesday that Bing's share of U.S. searches crept up to 12.5 percent from 10.9 percent in January. Yahoo's share slipped to 14.1 percent from 14.5 percent, and Google's decreased to 65.2 from 66.3, Nielsen said.

But tracking Web searches is an imprecise business, and methods and estimates vary among research groups. Last week, comScore Inc. published its own February search rankings, which showed Google gaining a tenth of a percent to 65.5 percent. Microsoft's share edged up to 11.5 percent from 11.3 percent by comScore's count, while Yahoo's slice of U.S. Web searches slipped to 16.8 percent from 17 percent.

Apple May Give Bing Top iPhone Billing

Business Week

Amid an accelerating rivalry with Google, Apple is discussing ways to make Bing the default search engine on the iPhone

In 2003, when Apple said its iTunes music software would work on PCs using the Windows software of its age-old rival, Microsoft, Apple made up posters that read "Hell Froze Over." Hell may be getting frosty again.

Apple (AAPL) is in talks with Microsoft (MSFT) to replace Google (GOOG) as the default search engine on its iPhone, according to two people familiar with the matter. The talks have been under way for weeks, say the people, who asked not to be named because the details have not been made public.

The discussions reflect the accelerating rivalry between Apple and Google, now the main provider of Web search on the iPhone. While the two companies have worked as partners in the past and Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt had a seat on Apple's board, Apple and Google have more recently begun competing in several markets, including mobile phones. Google sells a smartphone, the Nexus One, that competes directly with the iPhone and it has spearheaded development of a wireless handset operating system that rivals the iPhone OS.

"Apple and Google know the other is their primary enemy," says one of the people, who's familiar with Apple's thinking. "Microsoft is now a pawn in that battle." Apple is also working on ways to manage ad placement on its mobile devices, a move that would encroach on Google's ad-serving business, the person says.

The discussions could still unravel and may not be concluded quickly. Microsoft spokesman Frank Shaw and Apple spokeswoman Katie Cotton declined to comment on potential involvement of Bing seo.

Default Reaps Financial Benefits

A deal between Apple and Microsoft may mean iPhone owners would automatically get Microsoft's Bing as the main search engine, possibly requiring users to actively change phone settings if they want to search via Google. Google is now the default search engine on the iPhone. To search via Bing, a user needs to download a Bing application or go through the browser to call up www.bing.com. Microsoft may also be lobbying to make Bing an alternative on Apple's Safari browser for Mac users. Currently, Mac users can choose either Google or Yahoo search through the Safari browser.

Being the default search engine on the iPhone carries financial benefits for Google, which collects revenue from ads placed alongside its search results and shares a portion of that with Apple. Most mobile advertising now is viewed on Apple's iPhone and iPod touch, according to mobile advertising company AdMob. To clinch the deal, Microsoft may be willing to share a higher portion of its revenue or pay a larger flat annual fee than Google seo does. Neither Apple nor Google discloses the financial terms of their search partnership.

Clinching the coveted default spot on the iPhone would also help Bing gain market share in the quickly growing area of mobile search. Of people who use mobile search, 86% used Google in November, according to the Nielsen Co. Only 11% used Bing.

Google Rivalry Unfolds

Apple and Microsoft are rivals, too, though cooperation between them is not unprecedented. Microsoft builds Mac versions of its Office suite of business programs, such as Word. When Apple co-founder Steve Jobs returned to the company in 1997, one of his first acts was to settle intellectual-property infringement claims in exchange for $150 million in much-needed cash and a promise from Microsoft that it would continue developing upgrades of Office for the Mac. Back then, Apple was in dire financial straits and desperate for friends. Now it's in a position of strength. "If you have to do a deal with the devil, you might as well deal with the devil that needs you most," says Forrester Research (FORR) analyst James McQuivey.

Apple initially agreed with little hesitation to use Google as the default search engine in the iPhone before it was launched in 2007, according to two people familiar with the negotiations. Besides using the search bar, the companies worked together to create special versions of Google Maps and the YouTube video player tailored to run faster on the device. At the time, Apple had little hesitation because Google's popular software could help drive the popularity of the iPhone—and because Google wasn't seen as a potential rival.

That began changing more than a year ago as the two companies encroached further on each other's turf. Apple has refused to approve two Google applications for distribution in its App Store—including one called Latitude that uses GPS data and other types of information to show users which friends are nearby.

Even if it's consummated, an Apple-Bing deal may prove short-lived. The person familiar with Apple's thinking says Apple has a "skunk works" looking at a search offering of its own, and believes that "if Apple does do a search deal with Microsoft, it's about buying itself time." Given the importance of organic search marketing and its tie to mobile advertising—and the iPhone maker's desire to slow Google—"Apple isn't going to outsource the future."

Yahoo's Bartz Downgrades Herself For Moving Too Slowly

Bloomberg

Carol Bartz gives herself a B-minus in her first year as chief executive officer of Yahoo! Inc., saying she could have moved faster to reorganize the company and strike a Web-search agreement with Microsoft Corp.

“It was a little tougher internally than I think I had anticipated,” Bartz, 61, said in an interview at Yahoo’s headquarters in Sunnyvale, California. “I did move fast, but this is a big job.”

Bartz, who marks her one-year anniversary as CEO next week, is striving to keep Yahoo’s 15-year-old site relevant in an era of Twitter and Facebook. Yahoo’s sales have fallen for four straight quarters, and its stock trailed the Nasdaq Composite Index in the past year. Bartz expects Yahoo’s sales and profit to grow in 2010 as it makes acquisitions and improves products.

“Carol was dealt a pretty tough hand,” said Ryan Jacob, portfolio manager of the Los Angeles-based Jacob Internet Fund, which holds about 100,000 Yahoo shares. “A lot of what she’s put in place -- we’ll know in the next year or two really whether it pays off. I think at this point it’s still a bit up in the air.”

After becoming CEO, Bartz cut her staff by 5 percent, shuttered underperforming businesses such as the GeoCities Web- hosting site and installed her own management team. In July, she struck a deal with Microsoft Corp. to collaborate in Web search and advertising, letting it cut capital spending by a projected $200 million.

‘Tough Hand’

The company also has been hiring people for sales and engineering, tapping into the savings generated by its cost- cutting efforts.

“A very good company kind of got buried,” Bartz said. “It is coming out.”

Roy Bostock, Yahoo’s chairman, gave Bartz an A-minus for her first year, said his assistant, Marla Evans. He wasn’t available to comment further today, she said.

The CEO of Autodesk Inc. from 1992 to 2006, Bartz took the reins at Yahoo from the company’s co-founder Jerry Yang. He rankled investors in 2008 by spurning a $47.5 billion takeover attempt by Microsoft. Yang then pursued an ad partnership with Mountain View, California-based Google Inc. That deal fell apart in late 2008 after the U.S. government threatened to challenge the agreement.

By the time Bartz took over, Microsoft said it was no longer interested in an acquisition, preferring a partnership instead. She worked out that deal about six months after her arrival. Under the 10-year agreement, aimed at challenging Google, Yahoo will use Microsoft’s Bing search engine on its Web sites.

Bing Partnership

Yahoo will sell ads that appear next to Internet-search results, sharing the revenue with Microsoft. Bartz expects the deal to get regulatory approval early this year.

The Microsoft deal will help boost operating margins and let Yahoo focus on other services, such as the home page and e- mail, Jacob said. Yahoo expects to achieve profit margins of 15 percent to 20 percent by 2012, up from about 6 percent in 2009.

Yahoo was unchanged at $16.70 at 4 p.m. New York time in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. The shares climbed 38 percent in 2009, a year in which Google’s stock more than doubled and the Nasdaq Composite Index advanced 44 percent. Yahoo’s stock tumbled 48 percent in 2008, when the Microsoft acquisition talks fizzled.

Sales Fall

Investors have held back from buying Yahoo shares because of the sales slump, said Martin Pyykkonen, an analyst with Janco Partners Inc. in Greenwood Village, Colorado. He rates the stock a hold. Third-quarter revenue fell 12 percent to $1.58 billion from the year-earlier period.

Bartz said that while the stock price indicates the company has been in the “penalty box,” the share price is fair. The sales declines aren’t surprising, given the recession and a broader slowdown in advertising, she said.

“We came out of one of the worst climates ever,” Bartz said. “And if you look at growth of Fortune 500 companies, only being down 12 or 15 percent is damn good. I’m not going to apologize for our growth.”

Yahoo already is benefiting from the rebounding economy, which is encouraging companies to buy online ads, said Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray & Co. in Minneapolis. He said Bartz eventually should be able to get sales growth up to 10 percent annually.

“We believe in Carol Bartz and believe that she is going to get the revenue growth to a point that’s acceptable,” Munster said.

More Acquisitions

Bartz said she plans to do more acquisitions this year, probably of less than $1 billion apiece. Potential targets include overseas companies and data-analytics businesses that help advertisers assess their results, she said.

“Last year people talked about, ‘Oh, Yahoo is trying to get smaller,’” she said. “We were never trying to get smaller. We were just trying to get more focused.”

Bartz said the company continues to improve its products, such as its home page, e-mail service and Yahoo SEO, though she didn’t give specifics. Last year, Yahoo unveiled a new version of the home page, the site’s first major upgrade since 2006.

The home page is the entry point to dozens of services, including Yahoo Finance and the Flickr photo site. The new design lets users easily access other companies’ sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, from the page.

The role of Web portals is shrinking, because more users are moving to social-networking sites, said Sameet Sinha, an analyst with JMP Securities LLC in San Francisco. He gives Bartz a B-minus grade as well and has a “market perform” rating on the stock.

“Aggregation worked in the early stages of the Internet, when people were less sophisticated,” said Sinha, who doesn’t own Yahoo shares personally.

The fact that the company still serves up billions of pages to users daily shows that Yahoo plays an important role on the Internet, Bartz said.

“You’re just going to see Yahoo bloom more,” she said.

Google, Bing Kick Yahoo To The Curb

CNN Money

Once the world's online search leader, Yahoo's share has sharply declined, putting it in danger of losing its relevance in a market increasingly dominated by Google.

Yahoo's search market share in November fell to 17.5% from 18% in October, according to a monthly comScore report released late Wednesday. It's the lowest share ever recorded for Yahoo.

Cannibalizing Yahoo's market share is Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500), whose new Bing search site gained 0.4 points of the search market to 10.3% in November. That was the first time Microsoft owned more than 10% of the market since September 2007.



Despite that good news, it's really a mixed blessing of sorts for Microsoft, which entered into a search deal with Yahoo that is expected to start in the next several months. When the deal was announced in July, analysts largely praised the marriage, since the companies held a combined 28% of the market -- close to the 30% that experts say is needed to convince advertisers that a company is a relevant competitor in a marketplace.

Since the July announcement, "Microhoo" has gone in the wrong direction. The companies' combined share has taken a 0.4-point hit, as Yahoo's share has fallen by 1.8 points, outpacing Bing's 1.4-point gain.

"They're still going to be a viable No. 2 behind Google, but less so than they expected," said Daniel Ruby, research director at search-advertising firm Chitika, Inc. "Everyone is surprised by the fact that Yahoo has lost such a significant amount of traffic. Thirty percent seems like a very long shot."

Google grew its share by 0.9 points since July to take 65.6% of the search market in November. That's the largest share Google has ever garnered.

Meanwhile, Yahoo has lost share for 10-straight months. As the closing date nears for the search rivals' deal, some say Yahoo is reaching a tipping point that could make or break the value of its partnership.


The devil is in the details

Under the 10-year agreement, Microsoft will power the searches that users make on Yahoo.com. In return, Microsoft will pay Yahoo 88% of the revenue it gains from searches on Yahoo's sites. Yahoo.com and Bing.com will maintain their own branding but search results on Yahoo.com will say "powered by Bing."

"There is no getting around the fact that the market share trend for Yahoo is absolutely awful," said Benjamin Schachter, analyst for Broadpoint AmTech. "The Microsoft deal does not guarantee any search revenue, only revenue-per-search levels; therefore, search share and volume are as critical as ever."

Still, another school of thought says not all is lost for Yahoo.

Both Yahoo and Microsoft have poured millions of dollars into advertising campaigns to get users to come to their Web sites. Yahoo's new "It's Y!ou" campaign has been plastered all over billboards and television spots. Microsoft just launched its new highly publicized Bing iPhone App on Tuesday.

As a result, some advertisers believe users who search on those sites are more likely to indulge a sales pitch and therefore are more likely to click on their ads than Google's users.

"Microsoft and Yahoo offer quality versus quantity," said Ruby. "The traffic they drive is more valuable than Google's in some advertisers' eyes, because their users are going to be delivering higher margins."

So even as Google SEO continues to gain share at "Microhoo's" expense, Yahoo and Microsoft live on to fight for high-quality searchers as a way to stay relevant.

MSN Redesign Sneak Peek
Reuters

On November 4, Microsoft Corp. unveiled a preview of its most significant home page redesign in over a decade. The new MSN home page is designed to be the best home page on the Web, with powerful Bing search, the top news and hottest entertainment, and some of the most popular social networks -- all in a fresh new look. The new home page will deliver comprehensive local information from the new MSN local information offering, MSN Local Edition, also unveiled today. Beginning today, anyone can preview the new home page at http://preview.msn.com. The new home page will begin rolling out today and become widely available to U.S. customers early next year.

Ninety percent of people surveyed find home pages such as MSN to be valuable, and they like the convenience of a comprehensive site.* Nearly 100 million people in the U.S. visit MSN every single month, and MSN added over 10 million new customers in the last year alone. However, today's sites often fall short of top customer needs and many haven't kept up with evolving trends. Extensive customer research highlights that people want less clutter and easier access to information and services they care about, including search services that help them make decisions easier and faster.

"Now is the time to clean up the mess on the Web -- people need less clutter and less hassle to find what matters most to them," said Erik Jorgensen, corporate vice president, Microsoft. "Microsoft is uniquely invested in search, media experiences and technical innovation. Combining these assets to deliver our new MSN home page is a tremendous win for customers and advertisers."

The clean, new MSN home page cuts through the clutter with 50 percent fewer links than the previous home page and a simplified navigation across news, entertainment, sports, money and lifestyle. The new MSN home page also embraces the latest customer trends by deeply integrating powerful search from Bing and providing easy access to Facebook, Twitter and Windows Live services, comprehensive local information and in-line video. Sophisticated technology powers the home page to deliver personally relevant information, and improved performance satisfies people's need for speed.

Microsoft Updates Bing with 'Visual Search' Feature

By PC World

Microsoft's Bing search engine is stepping up its assault on Google with the introduction of a unique beta search and shopping tool called Visual Search. The Visual Search feature offers an alternative to lists of blue links that are often delivered by search engines when researching cars, cameras, or other topics. Visual Search was announced Monday by Yusuf Mehdi, a senior vice president at Microsoft, at Tech Crunch 50, a tech conference being held in San Francisco.

Instead of displaying traditional lists of Web site search results Bing's Visual Search displays rows images of items that can be scrolled through via a slick interface. For example a search on Bing for handbags, Yoga poses, or movie showtimes will deliver traditional results. Now look to the left-hand side of your search resulst and you'll see a "Visualize" the search option. Clicking on this link takes you to the Visual Search page that allows you to scour images - not text links - to help you explore or winnow your search down fast. The tool also offers refinement options to narrow the number of images by criteria such as price, movie theater, or team (when searching for sports).

To preview Visual Search topics visit this Bing page which should be live by the time you read this.

Microsoft says Visual Search will be rolled into Bing over the next few weeks with some customers seeing it before others. By the end of September, it says, the feature will be live to all. The move comes as Microsoft has seen moderate success with Bing. Since its launch in May Microsoft`s Bing search market share in the U.S. grew slightly in July to 9 percent, according ComScore, a market research firm. Google owns 65 percent of the search market compared to Yahoo with 19 percent (Bing and Yahoo's combined market share is 27 percent).

Visual Search: Hands On

With the example of visually searching for cars I started out with 25 images appearing on my Web browser. Using a scroll bar on the right I was able to quickly scroll through hundreds of images of cars. When I hovered my mouse over a picture of a specific car a balloon popped up containing additional vehicle information. Click on the image and you are taken to Bing search results for the make and model of the car you were looking at.

Thanks to a slick user interface kicking virtual tires of cars is loads of fun, but what makes this technology really handy is its ability to winnow down you search. On the left-hand side are tools for narrowing the number of cars by 25 most popular, SUVs, or make and base price. Each time you select a preference the number images is reduced.

Unfortunately Visual Search significantly limited to 50 topics Microsoft has created Visual Search libraries for. That's right, there is no Bing engine that can create a Visual Search result on-the-fly for just any topic. Microsoft creates them specifically for what it says is popular search results. Search dinosaurs, Olympic sports, or laptops and no such Visual Search is offered.

I found this an addictive way to explore topics not limited to cars, but also politicians in office, MLB players, and dog breeds.

The number of topics Microsoft says it will expand to depends on how popular the feature is with Bing users.

Bing Showing Growth

When it comes to search, there is little change month to month, but the little changes are beginning to add up. At least a little. According to the latest report from Nielsen Online Google still leads the search pack with nearly 65% share of searches. However, newcomer Bing continues to show strong growth.

Here is the breakdown: Google leads with a 64.8% share (3% increase over June), Yahoo is next with a 17% share (11% increase) and then Bing with a 9% search share (8% increase). Rounding out the top five are AOL (3% share) and Ask.com (1% share).




Googlers conducted 6.8 billion searches while Bingers conducted nearly 10 million. Although that is a very large difference, we must keep repeating that Bing only launched a few weeks prior to June and already it is in the top 3; being a part of Microsoft is part of the rapid growth, but consumers are coming back to the engine.

In a related report search advertising network Chitika found that Bing could be outperforming Google when it comes to searches. Researchers found that consumers using Bing were 55% more likely to click organic search listings that they were to click on Google's organic listings.

Finally Microsoft and Yahoo Search Join Forces

Story by CNN Money

After a year and a half of dealing, the tech giants reach a deal to take on Google, which holds a 65% market share in online search.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Microsoft and Yahoo reached a long-awaited partnership Wednesday in a bid to challenge Google's dominance in online search.

Under the 10-year deal, searches on Yahoo.com will be powered by Microsoft's new Bing search engine. Yahoo, in turn, will be responsible for attracting premium advertisers.

Microsoft will pay Yahoo 88% of the revenue it gains from searches on Yahoo's sites. Microsoft will also have the rights to integrate Yahoo search technology into its own existing Web search platforms.

Yahoo said the revenue sharing agreement will increase its operating income by about $500 million annually.

According to Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer, the deal will allow Microsoft to "create more innovation in search, better value for advertisers and real consumer choice in a market currently dominated by a single company."

And in a dig against search market leader Google (GOOG, Fortune 500), the companies said in a joint statement that "advertisers no longer have to rely on one company that dominates more than 70% of all search."

An 18-month odyssey. It was a partnership that was a long time in the making. Microsoft's (MSFT, Fortune 500) search market share has been slipping for more than two years, and the company has struggled to make its online advertising unit profitable. Meanwhile, Yahoo (YHOO, Fortune 500), once the search market leader, dropped to a distant second place behind leader Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) by 2007.

The dealings between the two companies began Feb. 1, 2008, when Microsoft made an unsolicited $44.6 billion cash and stock bid for Yahoo. A week later, Yahoo rejected the bid, saying the $31 per share offer "massively undervalues" the company, despite the fact that the bid represented a 62% premium over Yahoo's $19.18 closing stock price a day before the announcement.

In an attempt to fend off Microsoft, Yahoo launched a two-week trial partnership with rival Google on April 10, 2008. That involved outsourcing advertising space to Google as part of a short-term agreement that could eventually lead to a bigger partnership.

Microsoft threatened to take its bid to Yahoo's shareholders by the end of April if a deal could not be reached, and even sweetened the pot to $33 per share. In a turnaround move, Microsoft opted to avoid a hostile takeover and simply dropped the bid for Yahoo altogether on May 5 of last year. Microsoft CEO Ballmer cited the economics of the deal as well as Yahoo's interest in a long-term Google partnership as reasons.

Almost as soon as the deal seemingly died, signs of life re-emerged. First, activist investor Carl Icahn threatened Yahoo's board with a proxy battle if the company's executives didn't return to the bargaining table with Microsoft. Then, shares of Yahoo rocketed higher on May 19, 2008, when rumors circulated that Microsoft was interested in Yahoo's search advertisement business.

On June 12 of last year, however, Yahoo announced that discussions with Microsoft had ended without a pact. The same day, Yahoo turned around and announced a deal with Google to put Google ads on Yahoo's search pages. That tie-up was later nixed after a Justice Department antitrust investigation prompted Google to end the partnership. Icahn and Yahoo reached a truce in late July of last year.

The situation at Yahoo took a turn for the worse after the credit crisis erupted in October. Yahoo announced it would lay off 10% of its workforce in late October, shares slipped below $9 in November and Chief Executive Jerry Yang announced his resignation.

When Carol Bartz came on as Yahoo's new CEO in January 2009, she said she would not sell the company outright, but appeared to be more open to a sale of the company's search business.

Rumors of a possible deal were reignited when Bartz acknowledged at the All Things Digital conference on May 27 that Yahoo and Microsoft had been talking "a little bit," and said outright that Yahoo's search business was for sale, albeit for "boatloads" of money.

The next day, Ballmer unveiled Microsoft's new Bing search engine. Reports began to circulate in mid-June that Bing was a success, growing Microsoft's beaten-down search market share and eating into Yahoo's, and Ballmer reiterated to Fortune's Patricia Sellers that Microsoft "remains open to a partnership with Yahoo."

Bing Continues to Show Growth in Search Activity
Story from ComScore

Microsoft Sees Gains in U.S. Searcher Penetration and Share of Search Result Pages During the Second Week of Bing’s Debut

RESTON, VA, June 17, 2009 – comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released a follow up study on the performance of Bing, Microsoft’s new search engine, during the second week of its public launch. The results show that Microsoft has continued to increase its position in the search market following the initial week of Bing’s debut.

Microsoft Sites saw its average daily searcher penetration and share of search result pages in the U.S. continue to climb during the second week of Bing’s introduction. Microsoft Sites’ average daily penetration among U.S. searchers reached 16.7 percent during the work week of June 8-12, up 3 percentage points from the May 25-29 work week prior to Bing’s introduction. Microsoft’s share of search result pages in the U.S., a proxy for overall search intensity, increased to 12.1 percent during the period of June 8-12, also climbing 3 percentage points from the pre-introduction work week of May 25-29.

Microsoft Sites Search Performance
Work Week: 5/25/09 – 6/12/09
Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations
Source: comScore qSearch

Work Week *************5/25/09-*************6/1/09-*************6/8/09-
****************************5/29/09**************6/5/09***********6/12/09

Searcher Penetration**13.7% ***************15.8% ************16.7%
(Avg. Daily)

Share of Search**********9.1%****************11.3% ************12.1%
Result Pages

“It appears that Microsoft Bing has continued to generate interest from the market for the second consecutive week,” said Mike Hurt, comScore senior vice president. “These early data reflect a continued positive market reaction to Bing in the initial stages of its launch.”

Nielsen: Is It Time To Rethink Search?
Story from Biz Report

May 2009 search numbers are in and, while the numbers are much of the same, there is a new twist and it's called Bing. The question is, can Bing help to rethink and redefine search? Or is there no way for search engines to conquer the Google mountain?

First, the numbers. Nielsen Online found that of the 9.4 billion search queries made in the US in May more than 5.9 billion of them were made on the Google engine; that is a 63% share. Meanwhile closest competitors Yahoo (1.6 billion search queries, 17% share) and Microsoft (890 million searches, 9% share) continue to lag behind. This despite the fact that Yahoo posted a 22% YoY growth spurt.

One thing going against Google is the amount of time spent on-site. Although more consumers are searching via Google, consumers are spending more time on Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL engines, in some cases hours more per searcher.

And then there is Bing. Debuting on June 1, Microsoft's new Bing engine immediately doubled the number of unique visitors to the MSN/Windows Live hub, pushing Microsoft's search share for that week up about 6%. However, after the relative newness wore off, consumers seemed quick to return to their old Yahoo, Google and AOL haunts rather than continue pushing Bing to the forefront.

So, is there simply too much of a lead by the Google's and Yahoo's of the world for a new engine - even a Microsoft engine - to fare well for a long period of time?

"I think that many of us can agree it is very optimistic to think of Bing as an entirely new piece of technology, but the point is that online search hasn't really changed during the last ten years. So in order for Microsoft, or any other competitor, to pick up search share in this market they will have to redefine what people think of search," says an internet marketing consultant.