In most markets Google is the dominant search engine by a significant margin. No more so than in NZ where, according to latest Hitwise figures, Google’s share is 92.8%.

Add in the fact that YouTube, also owned by Google, is the 2′nd biggest search engine globally & it’s clear Google dominance of the NZ search market is almost total.

New Zealand Search Engine Shares

The extent of Google’s dominance in other markets varies, e.g. Australia 87.3%, US 71.2%, & UK 89.43% (source: Hitwise Jan 2010). And of course there are also some notable markets, such as China, Japan & Korea where Google plays second fiddle (or lower, as in the case of Korea).

Despite this, Google is clearly the #1 search engine globally. According to latest figures from Hitslink Google’s global share in January exceeded 85%.

In many quarters growing concern is being voiced about Google’s increasing dominance and the associated market control it brings. Given this, it’s not surprising that the Yahoo & Microsoft combined search and advertising arrangement has just been given clearance by both the European Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice.

Clearly the hope of these regulatory bodies is that the combined strength of Microsoft & Yahoo! will present Google with a serious competitor & keep the market competitive.

Whether this will be the case remains to be seen, given Yahoo’s share of the U.S. search market has been steadily declining. In January 2010, its share had dropped to just 14.63% compared to Bing’s share which had grown to 9.64% according to Hitwise. Most of Bing’s growth seems to have been at Yahoo’s expense rather than Google’s.

The 10-year agreement will see Microsoft taking over Yahoo’s organic and paid search platforms, while Yahoo handles sales. In other words, Bing will become Yahoo’s underlying search engine & Microsoft adCenter will replace the Yahoo! Search Marketing PPC platform, AKA ‘Panama’.

Merging these is going to be a BIG job & won’t happen anytime soon. According to a joint statement issued on Feb. 18, the two companies “hope to make significant progress transitioning U.S. advertisers and publishers prior to the 2010 holiday season, but may wait until 2011 if they determine the transition will be more effective after the holiday season. All global customers and partners are expected to be transitioned by early 2012.”

Given Microsoft adCenter doesn’t currently operate in Australia & NZ, I don’t think we’ll be seeing Google’s domination on the PPC advertising market in this part of the world challenged by Microsoft/Yahoo in the foreseeable future. Any more immediate challenge is likely to come from different quarter altogether.

And that’s Facebook…something we’ll discuss in a future post.

As discussed in a previous post Google has been testing a new look for their search results. But has this included Google trying out banner ads in their SERPs? (Search engine results pages).

Last week a client told us they were seeing banner ads in Google search results & said they wanted them run for their campaign too.

Banner ads in Google SERPs? Hard to believe! We were skeptical & suggested what they were in fact seeing were display ads on the Google content network.

But no, they insisted it was in normal Google search results & to prove it sent through screen grabs showing banner ads being displayed in Google SERPs. Below is an example.

We were stunned & immediately tried to replicate the results. But no matter how many searches we tried we couldn’t get display ads to appear – be it in Google.co.nz, .com,.com.au, .co.uk or whatever.

Then we twigged. The client was using a web proxy service & that was presenting the display ads on the SERP page by using a frameset. (The little X to the right of the banner is the giveaway).

Damn – for a moment we thought we had a real scoop….

Rumours have been circulating about Google launching a revamped version of its famously minimalistic search interface. Well looks like this is the case &, as reported in Gizmodo, it’s possible to see this for yourself by opening Google.com and  pasting some JavaScript into your web browser’s URL address field. Note it doesn’t seem to work for www.google.co.nz at this stage.

If you can’t be bothered doing that, below are screen shots showing the old & new interfaces side by side. As you’ll see the new one has a cleaner looking logo & brighter buttons. The key difference however is once you’ve done a search.

In the new interface the search options automatically get presented down the left hand side of the search results page, whereas in the current version these options remain hidden unless clicked on. This is an interesting enhancement &, on reflection, not surprising.

Last week at the Search Engine Room Conference in Sydney Justin Baird, an “Innovationist” for Google (cool job title), gave an interesting presentation entitled Search – Personalisation, Localisation, Portability. Something he highlighted was the fact Google gives users the option of refining searches by clicking on the “+ show options” link at the top of search results.

However when I asked him during the Q&A session how many users actually refined their searches this way his answer, whilst not explicit, indicated few normal users do. Reading between the lines it sounded like it’s a feature only SEOs & other advanced users use.

I’m guessing this is likely to change with Google making these search options very prominent in the new interface.

Below are screen shots of the current & new interface. The left hand column has the old current interface & the right hand column the new interface (click images to enlarge).

Since its launch Bing has slowly been growing its market share. However according to figures released last week Bing’s global search market share faltered in September, slipping to 3.39% from 3.52% in August.

The significance of this minor fluctuation is debatable, however given the extensive marketing Microsoft has been doing to promote Bing as a “Google killer” these latest figures have prompted lots of of discussion both on & offline.

Clearly Microsoft is not everyone’s favourite corporation & so not surprisingly there have been gleeful postings by Microsoft detractors about this fall in market share signalling ‘game over’ for Bing.

Ahh, the joy of schadenfreude!

Do they have a point? After all, recent Google challengers Cuil and WolframAlpha both seem to have faded into obscurity. (When, if ever, did you last use either?). Despite promise of new ground breaking search technologies neither has made any real impression on the Google Juggernaut.

Despite this, if any search engine has a chance of challenging Google it has to be Bing.

But in my opinion it won’t be because of Bing developing better search technology than Google (unlikely as that is), or from Microsoft’s deep pocket marketing.

Think of this like a race between trains on the same track. Google is already way ahead down the track running at full steam, whilst Bing is just starting to pull out of the station.

And the only way Bing will ever overtake Google is if Google goes off the rails.

Which is exactly what happened with AltaVista. Ten years ago they were the kings of search and Google was a nobody. But then AltaVista lost their way, turned into a ‘portal’ and started producing crappy search results. Only then did people who habitually had used AltaVista look to alternative search engines. Google was in the right place at the right time, and their ground breaking technology which provided great results did the rest.

A gross simplification, admittedly. However my point is that even with their better mouse trap Google probably wouldn’t have become the top dog in search if AltaVista hadn’t dropped the ball.

Will Google eventually go off the rails & leave the open the door to another search engine? At this point I’d say that whilst possible, it’s unlikely. But if they do, Microsoft is probably the only contender who can last the distance & exploit the opportunity if it arises.

What do you think?