Microsoft’s New Plans for Search Engine Marketing

Lately we’ve heard a lot in search engine marketing about Yahoo!, the second most popular search engine on the Internet, making recent and innovative strides in an attempt to boost its user base. With additional search engine marketing content launches like Fire Eagle, which seeks to give Yahoo! a boost in the local search market, and Yahoo! Buzz, which sees the company taking a stab at user-generated content, Yahoo! shows no sign of slowing down. Even as internal strife makes the company’s future direction uncertain.

 

But what has Microsoft, whose MSN search engine has fallen further behind Yahoo!, in the past year, been up to? Well in search engine marketing, not much. Until now, that is. Recently, Microsoft announced its latest search engine marketing project. The software company said that it intends to unroll an updated MSN search engine that provides much better tailored individual search results. This search engine marketing announcement comes just after Microsoft announced that they have acquired the burgeoning search engine company Powerset.

 

And that’s not a coincidence. Powerset is a new search engine that strives to apply “language processing” to searches. That means it’s a search engine built to better understand human language better than Google or Yahoo! currently can. According to the Powerset team’s search engine marketing materials, their engine can read Web pages more like a human reads Web pages, so it can return more relevant results. This means a user can be more expressive in their search queries. They can ask questions or give the search engine commands in plain English (or Spanish, or Italian, or Bahasa Indonesian). Of course a search engine marketing strategy of teaching computers, machines that are purely logical, to understand humans is a notoriously hard job. Humans often think and communicate in metaphors and abstracts, and those can be difficult for computers to understand. And humans have a hard enough time communicating with each other, after all. But the Powerset team believes that their search engine marketing strategy is on to something, and so does Microsoft.

 

This new development in search engine marketing looks promising, but MSN has a long way to go before it’s once again considered a serious contender with Yahoo! and Google. Right now, MSN only registers 10% of U.S. search queries; MSN can’t just rely on innovative technology to regain market share. It has to win a public relations battle and bring new users into the fold.

Is “The Long Tail Theory” for Online Marketing Dead?

The “Long Tail Theory” should be familiar to anyone involved in Ecommerce and online marketing. It was first introduced in 2004 by “Wired” editor Chris Anderson. Briefly, the theory posits that with the arrival and increasing popularity of online marketing and large Ecommerce sites like Amazon and Netflix, and the vast number of smaller Ecommerce sites, companies can achieve success by selling small amounts of products for customers seeking very specific items. The long tail benefits consumers because it gives them a wider range of choices–they can find and purchase exactly what they want.

 

The Tail Theory has become widely discussed in online marketing circles. It has even recently spawned a bestselling book by Anderson, one that’s probably prominently displayed in the business section of your local bookstore.

 

But a recent Harvard Business Review online marketing article by Harvard associate business professor Anita Elberse suggests that the long tail may not be as popular as initially believed. Just because more products are available doesn’t mean consumers will buy them. While a small number of consumers will hunt online for more obscure products, most are content to buy the most popular, or best selling version of a desired product.

 

Anderson has defended his thesis, stating that he and Elberse define the “tail,” the desired product, differently. And it looks like the long tail debate isn’t likely to be resolved among the online marketing crowd anytime soon. But one can be fairly confident stating that the long tail theory can be an online marketing tool that benefits local business with local searches. With the proliferation of online marketing and local search engines like YellowBot, CitySearch and Open List, searching Google for products and services in a specific area will tend to show more and more of these sites.

 

Local businesses can get lots of hits by utilizing these local sites. But it can be time consuming to make sure that your business’s Web site is optimized for the most important online marketing and search sites. That’s where search optimization can help. Good SEO means that people performing local searches find your business. And that’s one of the most important factors for Ecommerce success.