Yesterday was a big day in the search engine world as Microsoft and Yahoo have signed a ten year partnership deal. To be brief about the, Bing is going to be the search engine for Yahoo! and Yahoo will focus on its portal.

Bing Yahoo! - Deal

What does this deal means for SEO?

Firstly, the Yahoo search engine will disappear pretty soon. So you will not have to worry anymore about the Yahoo ranking report. You should start checking where your ranking on Bing is and take it more seriously because with this deal we can expect a bigger market share for Bing search engine (probably 15 to 20% in Europe, 30% for the US). Good news for reports

If Bing is bigger that also means that our company or your SEO agency should update and create new Bing recommendations and not only focus on Google. Now you should understand Bing and how it is working.

After more than five years of SEO recommendations focused only on Google, the rules will be a little bit different now. SEO recommendations should now include Google and Bing best practices and try to see what Google and Bing have in common as well as their differences.

The good thing about it is that Bing and Google are probably very similar and your SEO strategy should not really change.

Bing has some new challenges, for example the pop-up that opens when you have your mouse on the result. This will need to be covered to make sure it is attractive to the user.

In a way, by having one less search engine more SEO work should be created, because we will no longer focusing on one search engine.

Baidu has had a very good first half of the year. This quarter Baidu has increased its revenue return by 37% when Google had a bad second quarter.

It was not easy for Baidu to increase its numbers because last year Baidu wiped out all the illegal pharmacists who were using its services. Last year revenue was down, integrity has a price…

Anyway, Baidu is doing very well in China with 74% of the market share when Google has only 20%. Google (followingits bad result from the first quarter) is not going to do better any time soon. Baidu plan to hire new staff membera in order to deal with the new clients, which shoud also improve the search engine.

Baidu will maintain its position for a long time number in China. Unlike Yandex in Russia, Baidu tries to understand its market and to improve its technologies at the same time . Even if in China it is trendier (for the moment) to use the occidental search engine Google (which is why Google is doing better in urban zones).

Most if not all of the big companies advertise on TV. A growing number of them will include their website address on the TV ad. TV advertising is an excellent way to reach a large number of people and to describe a product or service.

What happens after you have seen a TV ad? Most viewers will check online (81% are already online while the TV is running – Source: IAB Thinkbox) and this is where most companies and media agencies miss out… there isn’t any correlation between the TV campaign and the search campaign (in particular the SEO part).

People looking online with keywords relevant to the TV ad often cannot find the website, sometimes even if they are using the brand name!

For example, Samsung runs some TV ads with Chelsea Football Premiership team.

Lot of people are looking for the keyword relevant to Samsung and Chelsea (see below).

Samsung TV ad - Search trends

The bad thing for Samsung is that they are not on the top of the Google results when looking for both terms in correlation with each other. How much do Samsung spend on this TV ad campaign?! When you know that only one diffusion of a TV spot can pay for a full year of SEO…

Samsung Chelsea - Google Result Page

Most of the time, this problem is coming from the company and media agency organisation.s Digital and TV are two different groups of people. We can also blame it on the Media planners.

Companies should push for a full coverage (TV and Digital) and not waste any leads. The good news is there are some media planning agencies which are doing a great job at it.

 Yesterday a UK court judged the case of Metropolitan International Schools Limited against Google. The school was unhappy that the Google results page displays some negative results when the school is searched for.

It is a typical case of SERM (Search Engine Reputation Management). Many other companies are dealing with this issue but very few are going to court anymore because France, Italy and previously Netherland courts did not find Google at fault.

The outcome of the trial was similar to previous ones. Google cannot be guilty as under UK law a search engine is not a ’publisher’ because everything is automatic and it doesn’t pick the content that is displayed.

The judge said that the companies should blame the actual writer/publisher of the negatives articles instead of the search engine, which just indexing the content on the net.

Personally I think that it is a just and fair comment. Google is just a tool/computer…if you have any issues with a search engine results page just do some SEO and contact the people who write negative articles in order to find out why they have been posted and if they can be removed. After do some SERM if there is no  possible negotition with them.

I was surprised when, three days ago, I logged to my Google finance page to find there was a new presentation. Effectively, without any announcement from Google, the Google finance page has been updated.

This new presentation is clearer and goes directly to your portfolio (before the Dow Jones Industrial Average graph was the main page). It is also easier to navigate between all the pages by a navigation menu on the left (before it was on the top right).

New Google Finance

It is not a major update but there are some modifications which help the user. Pretty good job from Google.

Also compared to Yahoo! Finance, Google Finance is a lot better and more user friendly. Yahoo!  has not updated their service for a while now. Once again Google beat Yahoo! with an excellent service.

Microsoft is the top Superbrands 2009/2010 and has dethroned Google, who was the top Superbrand in 2008.

This Superbrands ranking is defined by the product quality, the brand trustworthiness and brand characteristics. The top five UK Superbrands 2009/2010 are:
1.Microsoft
2.Rolex
3.Google
4.British Airways
5.BBC

SuperBrands Ranking 2009/2010

This ranking is a little bit different to Top brand, organised by BrandZ where the most valuable brand comes up top. Superbrand is more about the idea/image of the brand in the business.

Anyway, the war between Google and Microsoft has just started…

Three days ago Google had changed its result page for keywords relevant to places (e.g.: Paris, London, Yellowstone park…)
When you are looking for information about London, the Google results page will now include the map result and four pictures of the city.

Google new presentation

This new presentation looks a little bit better but it is not a major change. When you click on the picture on the left of the map you are automatically redirected to Google Maps with the location where the picture was taken.
Compared to Yahoo!, Google is (once again), a little bit late with this update. The Yahoo! results page has a different view and offers its own content relevant to the city and not a direct link to the map. You can, for example, find information about hotel, restaurant, flights and maps. Yahoo! also proposes some pictures of the city and the top rated things to do.

Yahoo! London Search Result Page

For this kind of search the Yahoo! result page is definitely the best functional solution and they also eliminate the competition (because all the content proposed is from Yahoo! or partners). This is probably why Google did not propose any hotel, restaurant on its own result page.
Once again they Google seem to have attempted to copy Yahoo!