Top Search Terms for 2009
Posted on December 1, 2009 |
We know that Google owns the lion's share of searches on the Web, followed by Yahoo! and Microsoft's Bing. But do the leading search engines attract different types of users?
In recent years the best insight into this question has come in the form of the year-end lists of top 10 search terms published by each company. On Tuesday, Google and Yahoo put out their lists, following Bing last week. One commonality is clear: the king pop was also the king of search this year, as the late Michael Jackson topped all three lists.
But contrasting the three lists below, a few interesting differences emerge. Keep in mind, the methodologies of these lists are likely to vary slightly.
Google's Fastest Rising Search Terms (Global)
1. michael jackson
2. facebook
3. tuenti
4. twitter
5. sanalika
6. new moon
7. lady gaga
8. windows 7
9. dantri.com.vn
10. torpedo gratis
Yahoo's Top 10 Searches
1. Michael Jackson
2. Twilight
3. WWE
4. Megan Fox
5. Britney Spears
6. Naruto
7. American Idol
8. Kim Kardashian
9. NASCAR
10.RuneScape
Bing's Top Trending Topics
1. Michael Jackson
2. Twitter
3. Swine Flu
4. Stock Market
5. Farrah Fawcett
6. Patrick Swayze
7. Cash for Clunkers
8. Jon and Kate Gosselin
9. Billy Mays
10. Jaycee Dugard
In Factery Labs’ Search Engine, Facts Trump Links
Posted on November 17, 2009 |
Despite Google's inexorable gains in Internet search market share, search startups (and behemoths) keep trying to improve upon the search giant's results.
Factery Labs, debuting early Nov. 17, aims to pick up where Google leaves off. Instead of providing the usual list of Web pages, the Menlo Park (Calif.)-based startup reads all those pages first and then extracts facts from them by zeroing in on sentences--strings with a subject, then a verb--and assuming they represent facts of some kind. Then it creates an index of those facts and ranks them. The technology is called FactRank, in a nod to Google's patented PageRank.
"People want facts" out of their searches, says Factery Labs cofounder and President Paul Pedersen, a veteran of search engines such as Infoseek, Google, and Powerset and founder of data management firm Mark Logic. "They want to know right here and right now."
Search Ad Spending Improves–and Boosts Google Shares
Posted on October 13, 2009 |
Hit by the economy early this year, search advertising looks to be on the mend. For the second quarter in a row, two search marketing firms say U.S. spending on text ads on Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft's Bing improved--or at least got less bad. The results bode well in particular for runaway search ad leader Google, which reports its third-quarter earnings on Thursday.
(Source: Efficient Frontier)
Analysts have been saying for months that as the economy improves, search advertising is likely to return most quickly among all other forms of advertising. It's seen as the most measurable, and it's also easy for marketers to increase spending literally overnight because it's largely self-service, requiring no advance commitment. But Web companies from Yahoo to countless startups also hope that an uptick in search ads eventually will open up wallets for display, video, and other online ads.
