Big Oak SEO Blog

Ms. Dewey Search Engine

Well, someone (Microsoft) finally made a search engine that throws Google’s logic in the face of everything we know about search engines. Ms. Dewey is uses Live Search (Microsoft’s search engine) to produce search results so I’m inclined to think this is merely a marketing ploy and not a serious attempt and reinventing how we search.

If you go to the siteand take a look you’ll see it requires flash and there is video and slick looking screen. No simple white background and minimal design like Google. It also takes 3 times as long to display results and you can only view a few at a time without scrolling. So why would someone give it a try? Well, it is fun, it is a nice brief diversion and its something different, if only for a day. Oh, did I mention it is hosted by Janina Gavankar. What male internet searcher wouldn’t want an attractive femal interacting with them if even she is only real in cyber space.

I’m sure most people will denounce Ms. Dewey for her long downloads, poor user interface and complication of what should be a very simple procedure. But on the other hand, it was cute (probably too cute for most searchers), made me think about why search works now and it did prompt me to write a blog post about it.

The question now is when will they build a search engine with a female perspective in mind.

Posted in Google, Live Search (MSN), Search Engines | Comments Off

Search Engine Loyalty

It turns out that searchers are more than willing to use multiple search engines according to Nielsen/NetRatings. In January 2005 Google reported 71 million unique searchers, 58 percent of which had used another search engine. Yahoo’s percentage was higher – 71 percent.

So how does this affect your search engine optimization efforts? It shows that you cannot afford to only concentrate on the rankings you are receiving in one search engine. Currently the market is dominated by Google, Yahoo and MSN with several other engines sharing a small percentage of traffic. And all these search engines have different methods of drawing their results giving different levels of importance to content, links, page elements, etc.

Monitoring your search results across multiple search engines for multiple keywords gives you a truer picture of how well you are ranked. By not putting all your eggs in one basket you can reach more of your targeted market.

Posted in Google, Live Search (MSN), Search Engine Optimization, Search Engines, Yahoo Search | Comments Off