Live.com, Is this a threat to Google? Options

[next123]

Hi all,

As you all well aware of Microsoft www.live.com search engine. In UK it is incorporated in MSN. I have seen changes in ranking for some of the keyterms for my clients. These are not major changes but I am still thinking where MSN search is going now.

By reading different articles and Live Owners Help I noticed that eveyone is talking about the fresh content and the themetical structure of the website are getting high importance in MSN search now.

Is live.com could be a threat for Google in future? If Microsoft successed to capture a big share of search market in next one year, so companies can start optimising websites specifically live.com?

[Jem]

I don't think so, personally. Google has become a synonym with searching even for people who don't use the Internet as much as people like me. Most of the people I speak to, even those who use msn.com for other stuff, use Google for searching.

I could be wrong, of course, but I don't see Google losing market share any time soon.

[JohnMu]

I think the AOL search database is pretty clear on the popularity of Google - see the top unique queries . It's particularly interesting since AOL is actually just a rebranded "Google", haha!

It's great to see competition though! I personally think Microsoft is too slow and gigantic to top Google in terms of innovation, but that doesn't mean they can't change or shouldn't try.

John

[rmccarley]

Threat? No.

Clone? Maybe, though they added some of Ask's features too.

LOL

[Jozian]

Big threat, No.

Ranking systems vary greatly already between the big engines.

Using a completly different ranking system could create some opportunity for certain types of sites. Could also generate some energy for their PPC business if it indeed uses a different ranking system. bUt for searchers themselves - dont think it would have much impact.

re:

fresh content and the themetical structure

If true could help ranking of content sites over *spammy* sites like URL squatters... Might also help weed out older content - but some older content is better than the newer content...

I'm always looking for an edge. Anyone have solid evidence that 'freshness' matters more in Live?

-Jeff

[rmccarley]

I dunno if freshness matters but new new sites indexed fast is easy.

Even if its spam.

(Or so I *heard*)

[rynert]

Is it live as in 'liv' or live as in 'a-live' ?

And whichever it is you can't 'live it' like you can 'google it' - so bad brand from the off.

[Kwyjibo]

google is nuts. they are on a major roll. Did you ever hear anyone say "yahoo-it", "msn-it"?? Nope. But "Google-It" is all the rage. Branding is awesome.

It's on the level of kleenex and xerox

but back to live.com ....try a search on a model number of a product, then in the "more" tab choose products. It's crazy. If that idea takes off people won't need to visit retail sites anymore to comparison shop for pricing.....could be big.

[Adrian]

I don't really get the whole live thing to be honest....

To me, in my techy world, live search is where you get the results as you type in a query, not just another 'enter keyword, hit enter' type search.

What's 'live' about it?

Plus, interestingly, it doesn't actually have a submit button or anything, just a vague magnifying glass thing at the end of the form field.

Not really looked at the results yet, but I'm expecting it to be pretty similar to the suual MSN Search stuff.

[Ruud]

I'm not a business analyst so....

I think Live could be big the way Google could be big Live has some excellent products lined up (Windows Live Messenger, Windows Live Mail, Windows Live Mail Desktop, Windows Live Writer, etc.). They all tie into the Live brand.

Both Google and Live have a one-account sign in but Live's tools are better integrated, interlinked.

Google has some work to do. It has a tiny email following, few people know about tools such as Google Notebook, spreadsheets or Writely (none of which are integrated with eachother).

Likewise Live has its work cut out. Could be promoted much better, much stronger. I expect this will start to happen after Vista is released.

Google will likely remain The Search Engine for a long time. It has established itself as such. It came in at a time when searching for stuff on the web was horrible. A real job, a task. The absolute worst search results you can get nowadays from Live, Yahoo or Google are still way better than the most of the best search results you could get back then.

So... introducing a similar landslide effect and feel is in my opinion out of the question. Live won't be better than Google -- just different. Same goes for Yahoo.

This fight will be fought using stickiness (who has the best set of tools and integrates them best so people are in your network by default) and branding. Most Live products are made by teams who produce a labor of love. Live is trying to be very open (the New Microsoft). Live tries to be friendly and kind. Google has received some bad press, big content owners are starting to frown on Google's money making routines, popular press writes about the "evil" aspects of Google.

With the right people at work Live can take a very good spot.

Finally, I wonder, when presented with 3 sets of generic looking search results ... who would be able to spot "their" search engine?

[joedolson]

Finally, I wonder, when presented with 3 sets of generic looking search results ... who would be able to spot "their" search engine?

That's certainly true...when push comes to shove, the only way you can really get to recognize the results of a particular engine is if one of them were to become stagnant. If one search engine stopped updating their algorithm and stopped indexing new sites, you could easily become familiar with that engine's results pages - but even then, you'd really only be able to be certain if you were performing a familiar search.

But not all of the search engines actually provide generic search results - Ask provides their clever little answers, Google has a wide assortment of different vertical creep features and other little "extras" which show up, Live sometimes lists top related news articles in your search results. These features are part of the characteristics of these search sites.

It's the features which differentiate the sites, but I'm unconvinced that the average user pays any significant difference to these features - the brand, I suspect, rules the roost.

I wonder how many people there are who won't use Live.com because it's run by the "evil" Microsoft? The same is likely to gradually become true of Google, as well - as the company grows they won't be able to prevent accusations of monopolism, just like Microsoft.

So, on the whole, I don't think the Live.com is any immediate threat to Google. It could develop that way - it's a fine product, although not exceptional in any way. It's just as likely, however, that Google could shoot themselves in the foot rather than have Live.com actually become something fantastic.

[bwelford]

And whichever it is you can't 'live it' like you can 'google it' - so bad brand from the off.

I'm with rynert. There's confusion about what MSN is and what Live is even within the Microsoft ranks, so that's not a good sign.

It's interesting that now Yahoo! is trying to use advertising to get people to Yahoo! their searches. Again a somewhat weak brand. Yahoo has other connotations and that '!' is an extra complication. It even makes you think that ASK's chances are improving with the second and third choices fumbling the branding ball.

P.S. Joe was writing as I was writing, but seeing his post made me realize that Live is an Anagram of Evil. You can draw your own conclusions.

This post has been edited by bwelford: Sep 19 2006, 10:26 AM

[Jozian]

The problem Google competitors has is simple: people are satisfied with what they are getting.

Satisfied people do not look for change, even if they belive that there is something marginally better available, because change requires energy.

Check out Satisficing on Wikipedia for more: Simon's theories on human decision making.

Simon pointed out that human beings lack the cognitive resources to maximize: we usually do not know the relevant probabilities of outcomes, we can rarely evaluate all outcomes with sufficient precision, and our memories are weak and unreliable. A more realistic approach to rationality takes into account these limitations: This is called bounded rationality.

In decision-making, satisficing explains the tendency to select the first option given that can work for the situation rather than the “optimal” solution.

I don't really think it has much to do with brand loyalty, it's more that users get in a rut when they are happy and do not look for change outside of a killer app or paradigm change.

That said Live, ask et al have a huge mountain to climb. I see some cool features out there but no killer apps. The one change that will help Microsoft is the release of Vista - I would consider this a paradigm shift. Ans since they control the shift to some extent...

-Jeff

[Ruud]

All that said, I suspect most here are Google users. Why? Or, why still?

For me it is a way to keep check of what is happening with Google. Good enough results. Also very used to Google being the best so I'm "afraid" to miss something with the others

I will try Live for a while though. I like the results page. Related searches is always a nice feature. Can learn a lot from those sometimes.

Yahoo is nice too but no way I would use it all the time. The features are good but the results page is a bit too full of promotional stuff.

And you?

[joedolson]

Generally speaking, I'm mostly using Google. And I'd say it's almost entirely out of habit: I've gone to Google for years, and I have no pressing reason to change that.

Like you, I wouldn't consider Yahoo - too much promotional material. I've never really liked using Yahoo, and I don't anticipate that changing.

When I'm doing research, I might use other engines, to see what they bring up and how it's different - but for normal day-to-day searching it's always Google.

Even if I do intend to give Live.com a try, to be entirely honest it's very unlikely I'll manage to stick with them. My fingers will still automatically type "google" into the address bar...

Old habits die hard.

[rmccarley]

What is the wisdom of rebranding the third place SE? Now instead of improving what they had they have to let the whole world know about "Live" and that it is the replacement for what they weren't using anyway. It seems like a couple steps back to me.

[Ruud]

Too many brands.

Believe it or not but many people don't know MSN (that well). Those who do in large part are unaware that it is Microsoft. A large part also associates it with an AOL-style ISP with portal.

The idea seems to be to rebrand most everything online to Windows Live. People will recognise it for what it is.

Given the work they've done so far, the tools they've released, they have a fighting change, I believe. But somebody better start working on some streamlining of the brandnames. Office Live has nothing to do with any of the Live services, for example.

[AbleReach]

Speaking of fuzzy branding,

Live is an Anagram of Evil

So is veil!


I think the phrases at the right are kind of fun. Are they simular to what comes up on Google's Adwords keyword discovery tool?

This post has been edited by AbleReach: Sep 20 2006, 12:37 PM

[Kim TT]

Hi - I'm new here. When this live thing happened I went from a consistent 50 unique visits a day from MSN to 1/day. MSN picked up my site almost immediately when I opened and now I must be nowhere. Do you think it will improve? I'm wondering if I should buy PPC on MSN. I think maybe my customer profile would be the type that just uses the search engine that comes with their computer. Would that be MSN?? I would appreciate any input, because this has hurt sales. Kim

[joedolson]

Actually, it's entirely possible that you're still getting the same levels of traffic from Live.com - there's a fairly well publicized bug in Live.com in that it doesn't send a referer string. This means that your statistics can't identify whether there's anybody visiting from Live.com's search results.

SE Roundtable

Of course, if you've also seen a proportional dip in sales, you may have a different problem.

-Joe

This post has been edited by joedolson: Sep 20 2006, 02:57 PM