Digital Marketing and Technological Insight

Is there any greater buzz right now when it comes to Search Engines then the promise of real-time search? Over the past couple of weeks I have had numerous conversations revolving around the possibilities brought on by Twitter search and the promise of real-time. But, is it really the future of search? Depends on who you ask. I for one see real-time search as being a huge part of where search engines are heading in the not so distant future. However, right now, I am seeing three major issues with any search engine that pushes their “real-time” search results.

• Results
• Relevancy
• Spam

In my opinion the true “Google Killer” will be a hybrid of both real-time and standard “cached” search results. Searching for a current topic like “Swine Flu” you want the most recent results to see what is going on at that very moment and content offering in-depth / credible information.Creating a hybrid search engine offers the best of both worlds and limitless possibilities. Take for example a standard e-commerce query -  a user searches for a product  and the results that comes back are for sites that are not only  selling /  reviewing that product but also real-time results for active coupons that have just been posted. Same thing for news or anything related to current events - real-time results for what is going on at that very moment and standard results for more in-depth information. Now all of a sudden real-time search results are creating more value in the SERP, which is true game changer.

So is the future of search real-time? Yes. But with some modifications…

The monetization of any “Web 2.0″ website is a hot topic, regardless of how much traffic and/or buzz they have. At some point you have to make money, not just spend it. Digg, the leader in social bookmarking, announced yesterday their plans to further monetize their traffic by incorporating ads into the main Digg “river” that users can either Digg or Bury. How users react to the advertisement will determine how much the advertiser will end up paying.

Today, we’re announcing our plans to roll out a new advertising platform — Digg Ads. Digg Ads will give you more control over which advertisements are displayed on Digg. The more an ad is Dugg, the less the advertiser will have to pay. Conversely the more an ad is buried, the more the advertiser is charged, pricing it out of the system.

You can see what Digg Ads might look like here.

From a users perspective I like the concept of Digg Ads, of course having no ads would be ideal but Digg has a right to make money. However, having the ability to control what I want and don’t want to see makes the idea of integrated ads somewhat bearable. From an advertisers perspective I absolutely hate Digg Ads. First I cant imagine many ads will actually get Dugg very often, the majority of people will choose to bury ads - especially in the beginning. On top of that, not having a clear understanding of end cost isn’t appealing at all.

The concept of Digg Ads will surely  interest some advertisers enough to run a few tests. But, since there is no shortage of  high-traffic sites that target the same demographic , don’t expect Digg Ads to stay up for very long if it doesn’t catch on.

If you visit Bing.com today you will no longer see the a “coming soon” message - yes Bing, the new Google Killer from Microsoft is live and ready to be used.

So now what?

Well if you play around with Bing long enough you will start to realize that aside from the results being similar to what you saw from Live.com (I am assuming the  new algorithm is slowly being phased in) the new Bing is actually a good search engine. Along with relevant web, image and video results; Bing brings cool (and useful) new search features that aim to enhance the searching experience for users.

Better search engine, cool new useful features and a $100 million ad campaign…so what does this mean for the Search Engine Wars? Easy. Microsoft will gain a percentage of users, Yahoo will lose market share  and Google will still dominate. Looking at the data from Compete.com below, it is obvious that  Microsoft isn’t going to catch Google anytime soon, but if everything goes according to plan they should see the gap close.

The best case scenario for Bing and Microsoft entails a successful massive media campaign that draws a good amount of people to Bing to try it out for themselves. Of those people who visit and actually perform a search, a percentage of them become so impressed by the results / UX  that they either no longer go to Google as their first choice or use Bing as their secondary search engine.

Want another prediction? Bing will become the e-commerce / shopping search engine of choice for millions of people . This is where Bing has the opportunity to be a leader…