LONDON: A market where Microsoft is considered the under-dog and a challenger brand is a strange one indeed. However, such is the dominance of Google in search that Micro-soft's long-awaited deal with Yahoo!, under which the Bing search engine will power the Yahoo! website, has been met with a muted response.
Google, a once-in-a-generation success story, and a byword for success in search marketing, therefore seems to leave little alternative for advertisers, or does it?
Ryan Scott, director of twentysix search, believes the deal signals an attempt by Microsoft to buy up market share, but that, ultimately, it will have little impact. 'Yahoo! doesn't have the same brand penetration as Google in the UK,' he says. The question, then, remains as to what its challengers can do to redress the balance.
Martin McNulty, client services direct-or at search specialist agency Traffic-broker, says that Bing would have to be twice as good as Google to succeed. 'There simply isn't a high level of dissatis-faction with Google and you can't accuse the company of resting on its laurels.'
This is not to say that all the trends in search marketing have been positive for advertisers. Despite the recession, costs per click are rising in many sectors. Arjo Ghosh, chief executive of digital agency icrossing, says that since Google's trade-mark changes came into force in the US, there has been an increase in search costs for many brands. For some, the cost per click has jumped from 6p to 30p between January 2008 and March 2009, while clickthrough rates fell 40% over the same period, according to the IPA.
'We think consumers are using natural search results more,' says Ghosh. Clearly, for some brands search is approaching the tipping point where it is no longer cost-effective, particular-ly in the wake of falling ad rates in other sectors. However, according to McNulty, some clients are simply paying an 'idiot tax' by using Google badly or focusing on the wrong keywords. In some sectors, though, such as insurance, many brands simply don't have the budget to compete.
Google's brand, products and propo-sition are strong, but near-complete dom-inance of the market by one media owner is very rarely a good thing from a market-ing perspective. Inevitably, some brands are being priced out of the market, and are searching for greater value elsewhere.
One of the biggest trends affecting the industry is the growth of 'social search'. Many consumers are using sites such as Facebook or Twitter to search for brands, products and services, a shift that could potentially erode Google's market dominance. Agencies say that cost per click is generally lower on Facebook, compared with Google. However, while consumers actively search on Google, Facebook relies on behavioural targeting and profiling, an approach that is not universally popular with consumers.
Luke Regan, head of social media at digital agency Latitude Group, claims that search is evolving to be about far more than the top five rankings on Google. 'Google has made changes which aim to segment the results depending on what you are searching for, including things like forums and reviews,' he says. In short, user-generated content, which includes groups and forums on social networks, is poised to grow more important in search.
Other innovations include allowing consumers to search within a significant time frame, for example over the past 24 hours. This makes constant brand-tracking and responsiveness increasingly important. While natural search has always been fluid by its nature, these changes will, inevitably, force brands to reappraise their marketing strategy.
'Authority previously came from how old and established your website is but this is all changing,' adds Regan.
The Obama effect
The most famous example of a successful social media strategy is undoubtedly that of US president Barack Obama, when running for election. His site had 1.5m volunteers registered, raised $600m in online donations and had a mobile database of 3m.
When the benefits of engaging with social media are so clear, it is surprising that so many brands have engaged with social media only on a basic level. As PR, above-the-line and digital agencies fight it out to determine who is best-placed to advise brands on their social media strategy, it is the brands that are losing out.
Andy Mihalop, head of search at digital agency i-level, argues that vertical search hasn't really taken off in the way many in the industry had predicted.
'At the moment, the reality is that it is unlikely that your average searcher would go to a specialised search site,' he says, adding that Microsoft's Bing is focusing on particular categories of search such as travel. 'Bing has recognised that a lot of queries go un-answered and it is focused on helping consumers make a decision in specific sectors such as travel.'
However, icrossing's Ghosh believes that specialised search could erode some of Google's marketplace. 'The opportu-nity is there to become a search platform in almost every sector,' he says. He cites the fact that many consumers now go directly to Amazon to search for books, or to sites such as Spotify to search for music.
On a basic level, the implication of this for advertisers is that several brands need to go back to the drawing board with their search marketing strategy. While being at the top of Google's rankings is certainly a phenomenal sales tool, from a branding perspective, search does not work in isola-tion. If a consumer chooses to search blogs or a social network for a brand, those rankings are obsolete.
It is also clear that a number of brands are failing to grasp the basics when it comes to search, either by focusing on the wrong keywords or responding in-ade-quately to competitors. Many of the UK's leading brands haven't even registered their trademarks with Google. This allows their competitors to bid on them and is symptomatic of their lack of preparation for the inevitable extension of Google's revamped trademark policy to the UK.