Goggle is wobbling
From respected eWeek columnist Brian Livingston:
Google.com is such a sacred cow in the search business that I hate to be anything other than worshipful. But it’s beginning to appear that Google’s results pages have developed a problem with relevance, based on my experiences and those of my readers.
I’m a website developer. Just lately, I’ve noticed web referrer logs across multiple websites show Google is slipping. Just a few weeks ago Google had a 65-70% share of search engine referrals. This is now down to 60% which, while still massive, is a noticeable drop for what until now has been a relentless upwards climb.
Yahoo and MSN have new or redesigned search engines and are most definitely going Google-hunting. Yahoo’s new search engine is at search.yahoo.com. It is powered by the massive Inktomi search engine (who they own) as well as by their own data. Yahoo pay-per-click ads are now via Overture, not Google. In the search engine world, these moves by Yahoo are the equivalent of a neutron bomb.
MSN has a beta search engine at beta.search.msn.com. Lest anyone need to be reminded, never ever count Microsoft out of anything, even if they appear to have arrived too late to the game to matter.
I’m finding the the Yahoo search engine to be quite smart, with a clean interface and excellent results. You can do specific searches for news, images, products, maps, Yellow Pages, people, as well as search the web.
Let the search engine wars begin!