Google has announced “New markup for multilingual content” which has sigificant consequences for anyone running websites in more than one language or in more than one country. This includes those with different versions for English for the US and [...]]]> Google has announced “New markup for multilingual content” which has sigificant consequences for anyone running websites in more than one language or in more than one country. This includes those with different versions for English for the US and UK and also anyone running ONE version of English but using it in multiple countries.

The blog post announcing the changes is here googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/12/new-markup-for-multilingual-content.html.

The background to this is that enormous problems — and significant cost — have been caused to users and especially users of multilingual dot com websites mainly. The core problem is that if you’re serving the same language content to multiple countries, you can’t easily do this without causing duplication problems resulting in the wrong users seeing the wrong content. The same problems apply much less to users of local domains or ccTLDs.

The new markup brings together features of the Hreflang link element and template management in a new format which many users will find complex to implement.

These uses apply principally to users of dot coms. If you’re thinking of localising multilingual websites, do not be confused. These changes do not mean that you should not use local domains. They mean that if you’re in a mess with your dot com and you really can’t move to a local domain – here’s a workaround — and a somewhat messy one sadly.

A full analysis of the changes is available to Insights Subscribers on GlobalCentral.net. To become an Insights Subscriber, you need to buy a ticket to an International Search Summit event anywhere in the world at any price giving access to the system for 12 months after the event you book OR work with an agency which provides access to its clients.

No related posts.

The Financial Times is reporting today that Dealreporter.com (a subscription service) has details of a 400 page document spelling out accusations from complainants to the EU related to abuse of the search engine’s commercial dominance in Europe.

The total list [...]]]> The Financial Times is reporting today that Dealreporter.com (a subscription service) has details of a 400 page document spelling out accusations from complainants to the EU related to abuse of the search engine’s commercial dominance in Europe.

The total list of complainants is now growing in length and includes, Foundem, eJustice, Ciao!, 1plusV, VfT, Microsoft, Elfvoetbal, Hotmaps, Interactive Labs, nnpt.it, dealdujour.pro, and Twenga. There are at least two more German complaints which were referred by the Bundeskartellamt (Federal Cartel Office) and others which have not yet been revealed. In fact Dealreporter.com says that there are now so many complainants that, “The internet search giant will not get away easily as there are too many complainants, most of whom will not be satisfied with mere promises”.

Eric Schmidt is reportedly making a further courtesy visit to the Commission next week which is arousing significant interest from Brussels diplomats. This will be at least Mr. Schmidt’s second visit.

Google is being accused not because it currently servers roughly 90% of search queries throughout most of Europe (excluding the Czech Republic and Russia) but because it is taking advantage of that position by favouring its own services and reducing the rankings of competitors.

Google’s defence will be that it is providing the services it’s customers are looking for — but as an EU fine could be as much as 10% of turnover, Google really will have to cooperate with the Commission to come up with a solution. Microsoft, in the same position some years ago, gave software users more access to choose web browsers. Google may in fact be forced to offer access to other search engines via its own search box.

Google defenders will say that Google is a commercial entity and can offer its own services as such — in fact Bing does the same thing. However, it is highly unlikely that this will wash with the European Commission because of the search engine’s dominance and therefore power over other businesses which will be viewed as giving it additional responsbilities beyond its own commercial needs. Expect a huge fine — it is now definitely on the cards and would be in the billions of dollars.

No related posts.

Strategically a very significant step was announced in eastern Europe today — Yandex’s video search system is to power Seznam as part of a wider partnership agreement! The video search service is at videa.seznam.cz and has been re-developed [...]]]> Strategically a very significant step was announced in eastern Europe today — Yandex’s video search system is to power Seznam as part of a wider partnership agreement! The video search service is at videa.seznam.cz and has been re-developed specifically for Seznam, the Czech language and its users. Seznam has a leading 56% share of the Czech search market according to Toplist’s November 2011 figures.

The new video search engine is based on the Czech language, and takes into account the Czech grammatical structure. Users will also soon be able to automatically correct spelling mistakes and typos in their search queries using the service.

However, this arrangement is much more significant than just a sharing of video technology. Yandex has expanded its team to include members from the Czech Republic which means that we can expect much more cooperation to come out of this partnership.

It makes sense for the two most successful slavic search engines to cooperate in this way and could be a precursor to a complete re-alignment of search marketing in eastern Europe.

Seznam’s new service is based on the same technology as Yandex.Video, Yandex’s video search service for the Russian-speaking audience. Users can search for videos both on the Czech internet and across the entire web. Videa.seznam.cz searches on more than 200 Czech video resources and currently works directly with twelve major video hosting services, including Idnes.cz, Stream.cz and Voyo.

“Yandex and Seznam first met ten years ago and have since stayed in touch, sharing our experiences,” says Arkady Volozh, CEO of Yandex. “Our companies have a lot in common. Like Yandex, Seznam is the leader in its home market, despite the presence of major global players. We are glad that we are now not just colleagues, but partners who share technologies with each other.”

During my last visit to Moscow, I was fortunate to discuss Seznam with CEO Arkady Volozh. It was apparent then that Yandex’s view was that cooperation made most sense. Seznam, the smaller partner in the relationship, may have been concerned about being overshadowed by a much larger partner. However, the threat from Google in the Czech Republic and eastern Europe generally has clearly helped the management team to revise their thinking.

“Seznam.cz and Yandex both share the same goal of keeping the world of search diversified. We are happy that the mission of the company whose video search technology we chose out of four competing search providers was similar to ours. We also appreciate long-term partnerships and are happy that Seznam.cz together with Yandex will bring video search to Czech users,” says Pavel Zima, Chief Executive Officer of Seznam.cz.

Every day, about three million web users visit Seznam.cz. Over 5% of queries on the web portal are related to video search.

Seznam.cz is the largest Czech Web portal visited by every Czech internet user at least once a month. On its homepage it provides up-to-date news, information and e-mail, as well as search engine and links to field-specific websites also belonging to Seznam.cz (such as real-estates offers, car offers, etc.). Seznam.cz uses its own search engine technology. It is the only Latin alphabet technology all over the world that managed to keep the majority on the local market in spite of Google´s presence and trial to change this situation.

No related posts.

The leading Russian search engine Yandex, announced yesterday that its revenues had grown by 65% in quarter 3 compared with the previous year. With a turnover of 5.2 billion Rubles ($161.9 million Rubles) and a profit of 1.8 billion [...]]]> The leading Russian search engine Yandex, announced yesterday that its revenues had grown by 65% in quarter 3 compared with the previous year. With a turnover of 5.2 billion Rubles ($161.9 million Rubles) and a profit of 1.8 billion Rubles, Yandex exceeded stock market expectations.

CEO Arkady Volozh said, “Yandex delivered strong financial results and made significant progress across all areas of our business during the third quarter. We increased the pace of the number of new product and services launched compared to prior quarters, both on the user and advertiser fronts. We also launched services in Turkey, an important milestone in our company’s development as it is our first truly international market.” He continued, “We continue to see robust growth and usage patterns in our markets and we expect that our investments will position the company for sustained growth and profitability going forward.”

The company also recently invested $15 million in US search engine Blekko and opened operations in Turkey.

Yandex’s office release.

No related posts.

Since their highly successful IPO in May this year when Yandex’s shares increased in value 55% on day one and raised $1.3 billion, the speculation (especially from me) has not been when the company would launch into new markets — [...]]]> Since their highly successful IPO in May this year when Yandex’s shares increased in value 55% on day one and raised $1.3 billion, the speculation (especially from me) has not been when the company would launch into new markets — but which and when. This week Yandex finally put us out of our misery by launching into Turkey.

Alexander Laryanovsky is the Head Of Regional Development at Yandex and he explained to Multilingual-Search.com the reasons why Yandex chose Turkey as its first non-slavic country market, “Turkey is one of the countries where virtually only one search system is present and web users have no alternatives.” Alexander is referring to Google which is the only search engine active there following the demise of other attempts in the early days of search engines.

Turkey Is The Fifth Largest Internet Market In Europe

Alexander Laryanovsky goes on to say that, “At the same time, the internet market is quite developed in this country. Turkey has the 13th largest internet audience in the world with 35 million of users (see the Internet World Stats chart above). There are also a lot of web sites and services in the Turkish segment of the internet. A developed web market is very important for a search system, because it indexes existing content.”

Alexander Laryanovsky Head Of Regional Development Yandex

Alexander Laryanovsky is responsible for regional development at Yandex which includes its development in Russia’s regions and other countries as well as services for localization. Yandex is particularly proud of its local emphasis — especially in the Russian Federation where its results are highly localised and different for the vastly different regions of the world’s largest land mass country.

Alexander was also instrumental in launching Yandex in Kazakhstan and Belarus before the Turkish launch. He joined Yandex in 2008 and has been developing various Russian internet projects for over 15 years. He was born in 1971 in Chardzhou, Turkmenistan and graduated from Novosibirsk Institute of Arts with a degree in TV directing.

However, Yandex has always claimed that is success in Russia and survival of the Google onslaught has been due to its close local knowledge. It could be argued that the existing non-Russian countries are culturally close to Russia in that Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan are all using the Cyrillic alphabet for their languages.

How Does A Russian Company Deal With Culture?

The challenge for Yandex is to prove that it is indeed capable of lauching into a non-slavic market and yet still succeeding. Alexander agrees that Turkey is culturally different. He says, “Yes, of course it is different, but we’re coping with it.”

“Technology alone is not enough to make a good search engine, we also need an understanding of the local culture, language and users’ preferences. Our launch in Turkey would not have been possible without our Turkish team. Currently, there are a couple dozen people working in our Istanbul office, including analysts, managers and translators. The majority of our team in Turkey is directly involved in product development. Our local Turkish team defines our core direction in this country.”

Istanbul The Modern Business City

Alexander is making a reference to the fact that Google does not have offices focusing on developing its presence in many markets and one of the reasons Russia was tough for Google was its reluctance to accommodate systems capable of handling the Russian language — and putting teams on the ground in the market. He is particularly keen to stress, “Almost everything we did for Turkey was developed specifically for this country.”

Yandex Turkey Homepage

The great city of Istanbul is one part of the Turkey which technically lies inside Europe. The other site of the Bosphorus is actually classed as Asia. However, Turkey has been trying to gain membership of the European Union. It’s also the country with the second most engaged internet population after the Dutch.

Economically, this eastern end of the Mediterranean has an economic growth rate others would die for (see below) — and it’s major economic issue is one of inflation. Bordering in the east with Georgia which in turn borders with the Russian Federation, Turkey is surprisingly close to Russia. It is due south from Moscow and a very popular destination for Russian holidaymakers.

The IMF Today Revised Turkey's Growth Up to 7.5 Per Cent

One cloud on the horizon is the fact that both Yandex and Baidu are looking to expand internationally targeting high economic growth countries with an active web and internet population. They’re also interested in markets which Google serves less well. Taken together, these characteristics limit the choices that both search engines have and it is highly likely that both will launch as competitors to Google in the same markets going forwards. Egypt, for instance, could well be candidate where the two emerging search engines may clash directly.

The Search Engine Warzone Map from WebCertain

Alexander Laryanovsky says that the differences between Russians and Turks are surprisingly small though there are some important ones, “There are no principal differences, there are details; but, as is well-known, the devil is in details.”

He explains how details are not overlooked, “Our Turkish staff together with our analysts and marketing managers has been studying the preferences of Turkish web users to modify our products or even develop completely new products. For example, we noticed that Turkish users are very interested in news, so we added more details to our snippets for the most popular Turkish web sites. Another example is product search. We realized that it is a very important area and we quickly developed a new product specifically for the Turkish audience.”

The Turkish Language Is Extremely Complex For Search Engines

“We understand that this is just a beginning for us. You can’t get complete understanding of country and users from surveys. As soon as web users start using Yandex, we’ll discover more new details, than all the information we already know. It will allow us to deliver better results.”

The Russian language is complex but it turns out the Turkish language is frighteningly tough. Alexander again, “The difference between Russian and Turkish is indeed great. The Turkish language has a much more complicated morphology so, for example, while a Russian verb can have no more than 200 word-forms on average, a Turkish verb can have up to one hundred thousand forms. We naturally had to consider this complexity while developing our algorithms. This was a real challenge for our linguists and programmers.”

Google And Yandex Have A Different Approach?

What does Alexander think of Google’s current performance in Turkey — presumably its not impressive enough otherwise Yandex would have chosen elsewhere? Alexander’s answer is surprisingly direct, “Google is performing in Turkey as in other countries. Google is a global company that makes products for the global market. Yandex has a different approach. We develop locally-specific search services in every country we are working.”

Yandex will be putting some limited promotion behind the launch no doubt, but actually the product is the most important marketing tool. Says Alexander, “We believe that the best promotion of services is the quality of these services. This is even more so with internet services where everything is accessible just in one click. That’s why we’ll try to attract more traffic by concentrating our efforts on the quality of our services. Maybe we’ll make an advertising campaign sometime in the future, but first we want to know the reaction of Turkish web users to our product.

Alisher Hasanov Turkish Product Director Yandex

The new head of Turkey is Yandex’s Turkish Product Director is Alisher Hasanov who leads the Istanbul based team.

Intriguingly, Alexander revealed that Yandex began crawling Turkish sites already one year ago — so the preparation has been going on for some time. That also means that other planned countries must be being crawled right now.

Are there are results yet to speak of for Turkey? Alexander says, “It’s early to make conclusions yet. But, as we see from blogs, people are really interested. They think some of our services are better than Google’s and they send us bug reports. Generally, they are glad that they have an alternative now.” Time will tell whether Google really needs to worry.

No related posts.

Yandex has launched a new approach to its search engine results pages. Following experiments which have been carried out during the summer, Yandex now has “Infinite Scrolling” search results pages.

The way this works is that there is an additional [...]]]> Yandex has launched a new approach to its search engine results pages. Following experiments which have been carried out during the summer, Yandex now has “Infinite Scrolling” search results pages.

The way this works is that there is an additional button under the search results called “10 More Results”. On the graphic below this is the button which shows top left beginning with what looks like a capital “E”.

Yandex 10 More Results Button For Its Infinite Scroll Results Pages

When you click the 10 More Results button, the next set of 10 results appear, but you don’t lose the original 10 you had found.

Yandex reports that a third of user browse through the results pages at least once a week, 10% scan up to ten pages and 20% return to the previous page. These figures conflict with the accepted view that people “Only look at the first 10 results”.

With the new approach, users can get as many results as they want on one page. They can also refine their query at any time since the search box is visible at all times even when scrolling down.

The Persistent Yandex Search Box On Its Infinite Scrolling Search Results Pages

Google already uses the infinite scroll approach for images and has been testing implement infinite scroll results for web results. Yandex has beaten Google to the gun, but their infinite scroll still requires a click to trigger it. Google’s approach with images is simply to have new images appear as you keep on scrolling down.

I’d like to bet Google will use that form of infinite scroll on its results and the buttonless approach will ultimately become the norm.

No related posts.

There has been a flurry of news surrounding both Microsoft’s Bing and the UK’s Yell organisation in the last two weeks. Firstly, at the end of last week, Microsoft’ Bing and the Yell organisation announced that they were doing [...]]]> There has been a flurry of news surrounding both Microsoft’s Bing and the UK’s Yell organisation in the last two weeks. Firstly, at the end of last week, Microsoft’ Bing and the Yell organisation announced that they were doing a deal to form a “Broad, global strategic alliance, taking advantage of their complementary strengths.” This deal is intended to bolster the performance of both by giving Microsoft better sales support in the UK and Latin America and by Yell benefiting in some way in the UK results of Bing. Here’s the FT.com’s story.

At more or less the same time, Yell also announced a deal with Bazaarvoice. Apparently, the Bazaarvoice deal will bring “enterprise social management to small and medium businesses across the globe.” Cough.

This was announced before the results of both organisations came out later in the week. Microsoft was able to announce a stellar performance with record revenues of $69.94 billion and a 23% jump in profits to $23.15 billion. Outstanding. However, the search arm of the business, namely the Online Services Unit, increased sales by 16.5% but managed to post a whopping loss of $728 million — all a result of trying to do everything it can to keep up with Google. Here’s the BBC summary of Microsoft’s results.

So the Bing part of the Bing-Yell deal is losing $728 million per year — what about the Yell part? Back to the FT.com for their descriptive headline, “Poor print advertising revenues drag on Yell.“. What an understatement. Yell’s first quarter turnover dropped by 11%, the number of print advertisers dropped 7.9%, the average revenue per print advertiser fell 8.7%, turnover from print and directory revenues dived by 18.5%, even the digital internet directory saw turnover fall by 7.1%. Is it any wonder that shares dropped 13% in value bearing in mind that Yell still has a debt burden of £2.7 billion to service?

So what’s the real story? The real story is that Yell is that the print side of Yell’s business is dying on its feet and Yell has moved online extremely late in the day. The only bright spark in Yell’s figures was its non-directory digital services — but it was tiny in the context of the total business. Meanwhile, it’s partnering up with everyone it can based on its historic print directory virtual monopoly — a monopoly which does not exist for it online. Yell itself has said that its turnround plan will take four years!

Back to that deal with Microsoft’s Bing. Basically, in return for Yell selling cloud services and Microsoft software to its customers in the UK, Spain and Latin America, Bing will help Yell in some way not specified with “search solutions” which the FT.com interprets as “favouring Yell in Bing’s results.”

The Microsoft-Yell deal is a deal of desperation in my view and one which ultimately lays bare the weaknesses of both organisations — both struggling for UK share.

Declaration Of Interest:
WebCertain Local Ltd, part of the WebCertain Group Ltd, runs “Yellowtom.co.uk” which could be considered by some a competitor of Yell.

No related posts.

Baidu (BIDU), China’s number one search engine has today announced an agreement for the distribution of digital music with One-Stop China (OSC), which is a joint venture formed by three of the leading global record companies, namely Universal Music, Warner [...]]]> Baidu (BIDU), China’s number one search engine has today announced an agreement for the distribution of digital music with One-Stop China (OSC), which is a joint venture formed by three of the leading global record companies, namely Universal Music, Warner Music, and Sony Music.

Baidu will be providing its users with the opportunity to download or stream both Chinese songs, in both Mandarin and Cantonese alongside international releases, directly from Baidu’s servers.

The company is describing this as a “Landmark deal” and it helps Baidu to respond to the critics who accuse Baidu of encouraging users to download illegal music from other sites. This inlcudes the companies who form part of One-Stop China who have agreed to drop any actions against Baidu in return for the deal. Baidu, however, has always claimed that it did not allow illegal downloads from its own site and it is significant that Baidu’s servers will be used for this project.

Music content owners will be paid by Baidu on a per-play and per-download basis for all tracks delivered through the Baidu MP3 Search service, as well as Baidu’s newly launched social music platform, ting!. The new product offers users the ability to discover and share music and music-related content.  Baidu has also recently launched a new music site ting! where users can sign up for membership free of charge with Baidu making its money through advertising on the site.
 
“Baidu has always striven to provide the best possible experience to our users,” said Jennifer Li, Chief Financial Officer of Baidu. “Our partnership with One-Stop China marks an exciting new beginning. I’m confident that Baidu, the Chinese music fans, recording artists, and the record companies alike will all benefit from this win-win partnership,” said Ms. Li.
 
Lachie Rutherford, President Warner Music Asia Pacific, Max Hole, COO Universal Music Group International, and Thomas Hesse, President, Global Digital Business, US Sales and Corporate Strategy, Sony Music Entertainment, said: “This deal connects One-Stop’s world-class repertoire of licensed music to a massive audience, creating crucial new opportunities for artists. All parties, especially music fans, will benefit from the growth of this type of compelling music service.”
 
The three music giants created One-Stop China to facilitate the licensing and availability of digital music in China. It aims to provide progressive digital music services with the widest possible range of repertoire to serve the needs of consumers, while solving the problem of ensuring that the music industry including the artists is able to generate revenues from their efforts.  

No related posts.

For some years we have talked about BRIC countries as being amongst the most interesting for international search marketers to target. It was always inevitable that at some point we would need to come up with a new term [...]]]> For some years we have talked about BRIC countries as being amongst the most interesting for international search marketers to target. It was always inevitable that at some point we would need to come up with a new term and to look at new geographies — especially when one of the emerging markets (China) is already the world’s second largest economy.

A variety of approaches have been put forward but I believe the most useful candidate for web marketers is currently “CIVETS” as we know from our work — and our discussions with search engines — that these markets are being very closely watched.

These are the CIVETS countries:-

• Colombia
• Indonesia
• Vietnam
• Egypt
• Turkey
• South Africa

CIVETS Countries Ranked By Growth In Internet Use

As the above chart shows, you can see that what is particularly interesting to search marketers is the rate at which these nations are taking up the internet — and the figures understate the picture because the growth rate is the average over the last decade. However, growth has been accelerating in some of these markets so these numbers are cautious.

CIVETS Countries By Size Of Internet Population

The CIVETS are equally not small in terms of total numbers — this is not a case of a few nations with very rapid growth from a very small base giving us a very rapid growth rate in percentage terms. Between them as it stands today, the CIVET countries offer 150 million extra internet users — that’s more than Russia or Germany or any European nation on its own.

Of these the largest current opportunity is Indonesia which is already approaching 40 million internet users — yet less than one fifth (16.10%) are actually online today! Turkey, which is the most engaged nation in Europe after the Dutch, already has 35 million online — though with a more advantage connectivity ratio of 44% of the population online.

In all of these markets currently, Google is the most significant search engine — but that might well change very rapidly thanks to the growth rates themselves giving competitors the opportunity to ride a wave if they choose the right moment and product to enter the market.

Let’s Take A Look At Some Quick Economics

Colombia is perhaps a surprise in view of its record at home with terrorist groups however, with a steady leadership, the country has been making progress and has growth, strong inward investment, modest inflation and debt. In 2007 it had a growth rate of 8.2% which and was one of the fastest growing economies in South America. 20% of its population, many of which are online, own a disproportionate amount of the wealth in the country according to the UN, benefiting from a 63% share of the countries incomes. The total GDP is around $430 billion.

Internet Users In South America 2011

Indonesia is a vast and large country and has been seeing strong economic growth with 4.4% in 2010. The country is one of the G20 countries which meet regularly to oversea world economic decisions — and Indonesia is certainly the largest nation in South East Asia. The GDP is round $707 billion estimated and the President of Indonesia has boldly said that the nation will be in the top ten economies within a decade.

Vietnam is also in South East Asia and whilst it is not as large, it’s doing pretty well economically with an 8% growth in GDP for the years 1990 to 1997 — a remarkable pace of growth and it remains one of the world’s fastest growing economies with a 6.8% growth rate in 2010, though it has suffered relatively high inflation at 11.8% in December 2010. Vietnam is also proud of its record as one of the most welcoming South East Asian businesses for foreign investment and doing business.

Asia Top Internet Countries from InternetWorldStats.com

Egypt brings us to the Africa continent and the nearest one of field to the Middle East. Clearly Egypt has had its recent troubles however it has received strong foreign aid for many years enabling it to invest in communications and infrastructure. Tourism is an important market — and of course it also generates revenue from the Suez canal — a key link for European shipments to and from the East. The recent troubles have inserted some uncertainty into the market short term — but Egypt is expected to ultimately sail out of its current state — at least from an economic point of view. The time to invest is really now.

Turkey is a personal favourite of mine thanks to many visits to many parts of the country and it should certainly be high on anyone’s list of target markets. It offers a large market and relative stability. Turkey is a founding member of the OECD and also a member of the G-20. Average growth between 1981 and 2003 was 4% of GDP despite a few economic setbacks along the way and in 2010 it is believed to be achieving an 8% rate of economic growth.

Africa's Top Internet Countries from InternetWorldStats.com

South Africa has the African continents largest stock exchange and despite its long recovery from Apartheid, there is still considerable poverty in the country — but this is despite a nation which is rich in natural resources and generating good revenues from tourism. The recently constructed Nelson Mandela Bridge in Johannesburg is claimed by some to generate 33% of South Africa’s GDP and 10% of that in Africa. It crosses over 40 railway lines and has received vast economic investment. South Africa’s GDP ranks it 25th in a world of over 170 nations.

Sources:

InternetWorldStats
Wikipedia

No related posts.

Google received a warm reception to the announcement of its second quarter figures yesterday having been roundly criticised for losing control of its costs last quarter. The topline was a 32% revenue sales growth in the second quarter, compared [...]]]> Google received a warm reception to the announcement of its second quarter figures yesterday having been roundly criticised for losing control of its costs last quarter. The topline was a 32% revenue sales growth in the second quarter, compared with one year ago. But that belies what’s really happening. Analysis shows that the international activities — excluding the UK — contributed significantly to that performance with a well above average annual growth rate of 41% — effectively powering Google to its result.

Google International US And UK Sales Figures Q2 2011

The above chart shows that international has been growing at a faster rate than the US over the last couple of quarters. Meanwhile, the chart below shows the rate of growth in the US compared with the UK and the rest of the world. The sharp upward curve of the green line demonstrates the uptick seen internationally.

The UK also performed better than last quarter — which may partly have been related to improvements in Sterling to Dollar exchange rates. The US improved its rate of growth too, but only just and both the UK and US are both now sitting at growth rates of 26% year on year — representing 15% less annual growth than the rest of the world.

Percentage Annual Growth By Region Google Q2 2011

The rate of growth in headcount has continued to accelerate and has grown at a rate faster than the rates of growth in the US and UK — but justified as part of Google’s thrust to capture market share around the world. Larry Page has also gone on record as saying that 2011 will be Google’s biggest year in terms of recruitment — but he then expects the headcount rate to slow. He is also reported as admitting that Google is slightly ahead of its planned headcount. In other words, they recruited more people than they were supposed to so far this year.

Comparison Of All International Sales Sources With Headcount And Sales Marketing Spend Google Q2 2011

The chart below helps to make transparent the rate of growth of the headcount versus international and US sales. Controls were imposed in 2009, but 2011 has shot up in terms of expenditure following the appointment of Larry Page as CEO. One has to assume that Eric Schmidt would not have taken such large risks and that that is part of the reason for him moving to the position of chairman and leaving Larry to spend Google’s cash as he sees fit.

Google Headcount Compared With US And International Revenue Google Figures Q2 2011

Now we turn to sales and marketing spend which has now virtually doubled since Larry Page took charge reaching over $1 billion for the first time. The rapid acceleration in sales and marketing investments can been seen in the chart below where — just as with headcount — the rate at which cash has been flowing out of Google’s coffers to generate additional spend has dramatically increased as the black line on the chart demonstrates. Just as with headcount, the increase in sales and marketing spend is justified by the international markets — but not really by the US or the UK.

Google Sales And Marketing Spend V International And US Revenues Q2 2011

The final chart below on sales and marketing spend and headcount increase demonstrates just how closely these rates of growth mirror each other — which suggests as some have reported that many of the new hires are related to sales. The company has already gone on record as saying that it needs more people with business experience in their sales teams in order to give their customers comfort. Google’s direct deal with Heineken, as reported here in the Financial Times, suggests that part of Google’s longer term plan may be disintermediation. In other words, Google will deal directly with major advertisers, relegating agencies to the background as something of a nuisance.

Sales And Marketing Spend Compared With Headcount Google Q2 2011

As the volume of rest of world sales accelerates and achieves growth rates well in excess of Google’s domestic market in the US, the question arises as to when non-UK international sales will overtake the US. Of course, combined UK and international sales are already 8% ahead of US sales at $4.870 billion. The chart below extrapolates Google’s announced figures over the last six quarters and forecasts when the rest of the world figures will actually overtake. The answer is in Q4 2013 — so still some six months to go at current rates of growth.

Forecast Of When International Sales Exc UK Will Overtake US Sales Google Q2 2011

Finally, Google has for the last few quarters only, announced the growth or decline in the values of clicks (CPCs) and in the total number of clicks. Google only releases this in percentage form — so the chart below shows percentage growth or decline in CPCs and numbers of clicks.

What is interesting about this is that, where Google has forced increases in the value of clicks — which has happened twice since the figures became available — the number of clicks drops fairly dramatically — as shown by the two areas circled in green on the chart. As the system of advertising is in essence an auction, increases in bid prices forced through by either the market or Google making adjustments to its quality score, generally seems to bring the volume of clicks down.

Clicks put pressure on Google’s system and add to its overall costs, so the best way for Google to increase margins — particularly at a time when sales and marketing expenditure and headcount are reducing gross margins — is to push up the value of clicks and reduce the volume. Three factors affect this. Firstly, good economic performance will naturally improve Google’s margins because of the increase in competition for clicks. Secondly, if Google can introduce more advertisers and increase competition, it can boost the cost of its advertising services. Thirdly, Google has the ability to push the thresholds at which advertisers are allowed to bid through its quality score.

It is most likely that at the beginning of 2009 Google forced the prices higher in order to insulate itself somewhat from economic troubles. It seems likely that the same process is in play right now to fund Google’s increased internal costs.

CPC And Number Of Clicks In Google Q2 2011

Other Reporting:

Wall Street Journal
Digital Trends
Talkin Cloud
Search Engine Watch
Search Engine Land
Financial Times
Fins.com

No related posts.

As part of Comscore’s release of May data, the company provided details of the ten fastest growing verticals in France for the month of May compared with April. As the chart below shows, this showed a dramatic spike [...]]]> As part of Comscore’s release of May data, the company provided details of the ten fastest growing verticals in France for the month of May compared with April. As the chart below shows, this showed a dramatic spike in demand for car rental, help with taxes and flowers, gifts or greetings.

Of course, all markets have their own seasonality and May in France was no exception. Comscore’s team explains, “There were (sic) a string of bank holidays in France in May, the fastest growing web category was Car Rental (up 69 per cent from the previous month), driven by the growth in monthly visitation to Paris-based European rental car company property Europcar, Hertz.fr, and Priceline subsidiary eLocationdeVoitures.fr. In preparation for an annual income tax filing deadline at the end of May, properties in the Taxes category also saw an increase in visitation of 50 per cent. Finally, as Mother’s Day approached for France, properties purveying flowers, presents, and e-cards in the Flowers/Gifts/Greetings category saw an increase of 43 per cent.”

Fastest Growing Verticals in France in May 2011, According To Comscore

From the data, we have also been able to extract the most important verticals — more useful data to most marketers — from the fastest growing ten. This shows, possibly not surprisingly, that after government sites, the French are particularly interested in Fashion with 28.5% of all web activities focused around the fashion segment. This puts fashion ahead of Lotto/sweepstakes which achieved a reach of only 17.9%.

Most Popular Verticals in France Of Those Growing Fastest, According To Comscore May 2011

No related posts.

Comscore has released its May data showing the popularity of various European websites for the month of May 2011 in Europe which provides some interesting findings, including the fact that Facebook now beats Google sites in Europe for number [...]]]> Comscore has released its May data showing the popularity of various European websites for the month of May 2011 in Europe which provides some interesting findings, including the fact that Facebook now beats Google sites in Europe for number of page views per visitor per month. You have to bear in mind that “Google sites” includes the figures for YouTube.com.

Perhaps more surprising is that fact that Vkontakte, the highly successful Russian social network, manages almost as manage page views per visitor as Google despite the fact that it is disadvantaged statistically by only being able to count on users in Russia and demonstrating the growing importance of Russia in Europe. Microsoft sites, eBay and Yahoo all put in creditable performances but are followed by another Russian site, Yandex, the number one Russian search engine.

Comscore Date Shows The Most Viewed Pages for Sites in Europe May 2011

When “engagement” is considered, the Russian social network often considered to be a copy of Facebook, beats Facebook for engagement minutes per user by quite a substantial margin of 170 extra minutes per user per month. Meanwhile, Facebook remains well ahead of the Microsoft and Google sites.

Vkontakte Beats Facebook for Engagement in Europe May 2011

For reach Google still has it reaching over 90% of the European population. It is helped in locations such as Russia, where it is not the number on search engine, by Youtube.com and other Google sites. From an advertisers point of view, Google has by far the strongest reach of any site in Europe.

Reach of the European Population Comscore May 2011

No related posts.

Baidu has announced a deal with Microsoft’s Bing to power its English language results within China. Baidu’s Kaiser Kuo explained, “We have an increasing number of people entering English-language queries on Baidu, and that’s never been our strong suit. [...]]]> Baidu has announced a deal with Microsoft’s Bing to power its English language results within China. Baidu’s Kaiser Kuo explained, “We have an increasing number of people entering English-language queries on Baidu, and that’s never been our strong suit. We’ve been looking for a way to beef up our English search offering and partnering with Bing is by far the most effective way to do it. We already have a partnership with them to provide paid search results for their Chinese language search in China.” The service will launch by the end of 2011.

Left to right: Kaiser Kuo, Director, International Communications and Andy, Baidu Reception, Beijing

The paid search results agreement dates back to 2006 so the connection between Microsoft and Baidu has already been established for some time. However, Microsoft will earn nothing from presenting its English results to a Chinese audience, rather it will gain more traction in the global market place which is mostly significant in its global competition with Google.

Chinese searchers who choose to search in English represent a relatively small proportion of the Chinese population — but the volume is growing and the demographic is attractive to advertisers because they are typically urbanised cosmopolitan people and at the higher ends of the income graph.

Whilst Google’s greatest weakness globally has always been that is search results were originally conceived to server English language searches and then have been converted to suit other languages, it is also its greatest competitive opportunity against rival regional search engines. Search engines, such as Yandex in Russia or Baidu in China, have not been able to provide effective English searches which has meant losing users to Google because of its ability to work in multiple languages.

Yandex launched Yandex.com, its own response to the same situation in May of 2010. It chose to launch and control its own version and I asked Baidu why they did not take the same approach? Kaiser Kuo replied, “Producing our own world-class English-language search would be a non-trivial undertaking. At this point, it’s not at all worth the effort when there are other more attractive and sensible options available.” Baidu have said they are working on search in other languages and not producing results in English saves bandwidth in the reported 12 additional languages they are targeting.

The deal is only for English language results in China and only for organic results. Baidu does not sell a lot of keywords for English search terms at present — which is not surprising since they don’t focus on providing English results. Of course, this situation may change as a result of this deal.

A number of points are intriguing analysts. First, China is the largest internet market in the world with currently 470 million users — a number which represents just one third of the population. If China had the same internet penetration as the US, there would be four users online in China for every American online.

Additionally, Baidu dominates the market particularly since Google withdrew to Hong Kong complaining about the censorship regime of the Chinese Government. Baidu receives at least 80% of all search queries in China and that share is heading towards 85%. Microsoft has a very different position towards Government control than Google saying that it always complies with local regulations.

Other reports of the deal:

China Daily
BBC News
Wall Street Journal
New York Times
CNN
Search Engine Land

No related posts.

Nielsen reports that 41% of Malaysians accessed the Internet in 2010, a 15% increase over the previous year. People in the younder ranges of 20-24 were the highest users with 57% of them using the internet for just [...]]]> Nielsen reports that 41% of Malaysians accessed the Internet in 2010, a 15% increase over the previous year. People in the younder ranges of 20-24 were the highest users with 57% of them using the internet for just over 22 hours per week. Malaysians primarily use social networking sites with 71% keeping in touch with friends and family via these sites, a 24% increase from 2009.

As is often the case in countries arriving later to the internet, a growing number of Malaysians are accessing the Internet via notebooks and smartphones. 55% of consumers are using laptops and netbooks and 11% are using smartphones a nine point increase from 2009. 19% of Malaysians aged 20-24 access the Internet via their mobile phones.

“Although mobile phones accounted for the smallest portion of the three devices, market share will increase due to the importance of three key consumer requirements: mobility, flexibility and accessibility anywhere and anytime,” said Luca Griseri, Director of Customized Research at The Nielsen Company.

The penetration of 3G phones is a key factor in the increasing use of phones to access the Internet. Almost half of Malaysians aged 20-34 own one. But almost half of these users do not use 3G functions, primarily due to cost. That should change, however, as service providers offer more competitive pricing schemes.

“The main trends started last year, such as the uptake of smartphones and the increasing usage of data will continue. At the same time, new trends, for example the success of tablet computers will further change the market and affect consumers’ expectations,” Griseri said. “Telecommunications players can position themselves to accommodate these changes by continuing to offer the latest products and services and focusing on the customer experience. They need to adopt a focused approach around users’ needs by identifying differences among user groups and offer solutions for them. Flexibility and simplicity are key success factors.”

No related posts.

You may never have heard of Neelie Kroes but now is the time to change that — she has the most profound influence over the future development of the global web of any human on the planet. How come? [...]]]> You may never have heard of Neelie Kroes but now is the time to change that — she has the most profound influence over the future development of the global web of any human on the planet. How come? Neelie Kroes is the “European Digital Agenda Commissioner” and a Vice-President of the European Commission. She is in charge of the Digital Agenda for Europe which means creating “Improved standard-setting procedures and increased interoperability as the keys to success”. Most significantly, this means that Ms Kroes is respondible for protecting intellectual property rights online;updating the eCommerce Directive; reviewing the EU data protection rules (which means checking out cookies) and putting forward a code of EU online rights.

For those of us who work in international European online marketing, this means that Neelie Kroes is in our space and potentially in our faces — except that many in the industry have never even heard of her. Additionally, because most web regulation comes out of Europe — where privacy and competition issues are more closely regulated that in the US where the technology companies are based, no international web marketing company including Google, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft, can afford to ignore what she says. Let’s not forget, that the European Union is the world’s largest economic grouping with a GDP greater than the US. From the Arctic circle to the Mediterranean and from the Atlantic to the Aegean, the European Union is vast and growing and makes up 7% of the world’s population but 20% of global trade. What power!

Just this morning, the Financial Times reported under the headline of “Europe telecom groups target Google” that European telecoms companies want to change the way that access to the web is charged for, so that organisations such as Google with YouTube.com, Facebook and Apple with their video solutions will have to contribute to the huge cost of delivering video content (actually all content but video is the biggest problem) to consumers. Guess who is involved in this? Correct, it’s Neelie Kroes who is concerned that European telecoms companies are not investing enough to improve on broadband speeds and putting pressure on the telecoms industry. They retort that they can’t justify the investment because they don’t earn revenue from the delivery of additional content. Hence, the quest to extract cash from — mostly — American technology companies.

The Guardian is quite critical of Neelie Kroes and the European Commission’s decisions that cookies must be regulated. In the words of Charles Arthur of the Guardian Technology blog “What is one to make of an organisation which in one week decides that cookies – little text files that sit on your web browser and relate where you’ve gone online (but which you can control quickly and easily via preferences on your machine) must be regulated as though they were an outbreak of Ebola fever, but says there’s no need to impose “net neutrality” duties on telecoms companies?”

The fact is that whatever is decided in Europe is going to affect companies everywhere. Firstly, it is likely that some — if not all — European regulations will be adopted by other countries. It is also likely that large technology businesses will try to find a solution which they can apply worldwide — rather than having different solutions for different continents.

My point is, we should all know more about the work of the European Commission and the thinking of Neelie Kroes! It’s in all our interests — wherever you are in the world.

The Guardian Technology Blog
The Financial Times on European Telecom Groups Targeting Google
European Statistics

No related posts.

Yandex’s launch of Yandex.Maps in July of 2010 following its acquisition of GIS Technologies is now to be fully exploited through the addition of Geo-targeted ads which will appear in the maps, in Yandex’s business directory and more significantly [...]]]> Yandex’s launch of Yandex.Maps in July of 2010 following its acquisition of GIS Technologies is now to be fully exploited through the addition of Geo-targeted ads which will appear in the maps, in Yandex’s business directory and more significantly within the search results themselves giving local businesses the opportunity to obtain greater “Stand Out”.

Business owners can opt for a premium placement product which means that the company’s location is highlighted on the associated maps and access to the contact details for the firm needs a simple click. This is a new market for Yandex and the company says it is aiming to provide the ideal solution for Russian small businesses who don’t actually have any kind of online presence — such as bakeries, hairdressing salons or repair shops.

Head of the Advertising Technologies Group at Yandex, Eugene Lomize, a regular speaker at the International Search Summit, points out that, “Geo-targeted ads have one important feature that they share with the ads served by Yandex.Direct: they are triggered by users’ search queries.” Advertisers can obtain the advertising solution through around 20 companies in Russia — as well of course as from WebCertain.

The following screenshots demonstrate how the service works and its presentation. Of course, this is very similar to Google Maps and critics will say that this is a copy. However, Yandex have achieved a very attractive presentation of the service. The first screenshot shows a search for “Car Services” near “Golovinskoe Shosse” in Moscow with the company “Наука-авто” or “Nauka-Avto” highlighted.

At the top of screen are two search boxes, on the left is the “What” and on the right is the “Where”. The number one listed Nauka-Avto is the organisation paying a premium to have its location on the map highlighted and also its listing to appear at the top of the listings shown on the left hand side.

The next screenshot shows a search for banks in the “What” search box on the left and “Vatutina Street” is showing in the “Where” search box on the right — a street in Novosibirsk. The results are showing “БИНБанк” or “BINBank” as the number one on the map and on the right hand side listing.

The final screenshot shows a search for coffee houses near Nevsky Prospekt in Saint Petersburg (a street of which I have fond memories ) and the firm Chainaya Lozhka or “Чайная ложка” is highlighted.

When comparing these with Google Places or Maps, the key differences are in the presentation of the maps and the fact that Google notes that highlighted listings are “Ads” which is not shown on the Yandex versions — something I’d like to see them change! Google also lists and has more reviews to show. In fairness to Yandex, they are not so dependent on listings being provided by partners in Russia.

Just like Google Boost, the ads are charged at a fixed price for a fixed period of time. Advertisers from Moscow would 9,450 Rubles or $317 to list their business for 3 months and in Samara it would cost roughly one third of that for the same package but targeting a smaller population.

For international businesses this new approach offers the opportunity of establishing a small new business in Russia — perhaps in one of the smaller cities — and undertaking some test marketing of a concept before rolling it out to the whole of Russia.

No related posts.

Yandex has just released its financial figures for 2010 and the number one Russian search engine managed to achieve a whopping 43% growth in revenue taking them to $410 million — 88% of this increased revenue related to pure search [...]]]> Yandex has just released its financial figures for 2010 and the number one Russian search engine managed to achieve a whopping 43% growth in revenue taking them to $410 million — 88% of this increased revenue related to pure search ads as opposed to the other advertising products offered by the company. And search ads actually grew faster at 45% growth than the other advertising types.

Yandex points out that the Russian Association of Communication Agencies have reported growth for the first three quarters of 2010 of 14% overall and 37% for online — which simply goes to show that Yandex’s growth both partially reflects the development of search advertising within the market, and at the same time demonstrates growth above the average. CEO Arkady Volzh reinforces this point, “The highlight of 2010, as we see it, is that by constantly improving our product quality we managed to increase our share of the search market. The considerable revenue increase we report this year reflects two important trends — a post-crisis revival of the small and medium-sized businesses and a shift in advertising expenditures from other channels towards online advertising.”

The Russian internet statistics organisation LiveInternet says that Yandex’s share of the Russian search market grew by 5.2% to 64.1% in December 2010, with its share in the Ukrainian market going up 6.2% to 27% and its market share in Kazakhstan increasing 4.6 % to 24.4%. ComScore also says that Yandex’s monthly audience grew 64% from November 2009 to November 2010, peaking at over 54 million users in November 2010. During the past year, Yandex added localized services for users in Belarus (yandex.by), released a search engine customised for Ukrainian users, and launched an international search service (yandex.com) alongside a number of vertical market targeted services including Yandex.Realty, Yandex.Jobs, Yandex.Music and Yandex.Amenities. Yandex now has 180,000 advertisers which was itself 40% ahead of the figure in the previous year.

The result is a fabulous one for Yandex, and a blow for Google, and means that Yandex is continuing to maintain and to build on its share of the Russian-language market and they are beginning to show growth in the historically closely-related Slavic eastern Europe.

No related posts.

Alibaba has leapt ahead of Google in terms of the share of online advertising revenue it earns in China — it’s home market. According to Analysys International, Alibaba’s Taoboa keyword advertising and the further development of its interactive advertising [...]]]> Alibaba has leapt ahead of Google in terms of the share of online advertising revenue it earns in China — it’s home market. According to Analysys International, Alibaba’s Taoboa keyword advertising and the further development of its interactive advertising offer in China are the root cause of this development — rather than Google’s failure.

Baidu continues with the lion’s share at over 30% but after Alibaba and Google, the market is pretty fragmented with Tencent also having shown a spurt of growth — just not quite enough to see it jumping ahead of Sina anytime soon.

Alibaba was founded in 1999 by 18 founders including Jack Ma and thanks to funding from Softbank and Goldman Sachs amongst others. The company employs roughly 18,000 people in 60 cities and regions. Whilst it is most successful in the Far East, it also has operations in the UK and USA.

Taobao is Alibaba’s online retail marketplace. Alipay is its payment portal which reputedly has more than 300 million registered users.

No related posts.

Leading Russian search engine Yandex, has introduced a new method of predicting user intent in order to improve the quality of its results and thereby improve relevancy. The Yandex team advise that the system, known as “Spectrum” is based [...]]]> Leading Russian search engine Yandex, has introduced a new method of predicting user intent in order to improve the quality of its results and thereby improve relevancy. The Yandex team advise that the system, known as “Spectrum” is based on analysing user queries statistically, categorising them — and then making sure that a range or “Spectrum” of possible answers to the query is delivered in the search results pages based on popularity.

The issue with keywords which have can have multiple user intentions behind them is that it is too easy for a search engine’s results to be dominated by the most popular single meaning associated with a particular keyword. Yandex says that around 20% of user queries on their engine are ambiguous. A query for “Apple” might mean the fruit or the company — likewise someone searching for “pizza”, might be searching for a restaurant or a recipe.

The new search technology has been developed by the Yandex team and focuses on allowing the search engine to return a whole “spectrum” of results matching a variety of user intents based on the frequency of user searches.

Yandex is attempting to regularly analyse user searches and to connect the most popular meanings behind the searches, based on the subsequent search paths of the users, then creating categories which become associated with the particular keyword. This meaning-based categorisation means the search engine “knows” what the range of most likely meaning options is and can cover the broader range within the immediate results reducing the amount of time the user needs to go hunting for the answers.

Each ambiguous keyword is analysed for objects such as personal names, films, books or cars. Each object is then classified into one or more categories. So, in the search query [panadol dosage] the medicine’s brand name ‘Panadol’ will be categorized as ‘medicine’, while the search term [casablanca] will be classified both into the ‘city’ and the ‘film’ categories. Currently, Spectrum uses about 60 (and counting) pre-defined categories.

For each category there is a range of search intents, the intentions with which the users look for something. So, the ‘product’ category will have search intents such as buy something or read customer reviews. The search intents for this category, consequently, will include ‘buy’, ‘reviews’ and ‘feedback’. A category may have from two or three search intents to dozens of them.

The query analysis undertaken by Yandex is fully automated, the company says. “Using the power of over a thousand processor cores, Spectrum analyses over 5 billion search queries on each analysis. The resulting database is kept up to date by repeating each analysis several times each week.”

Effectively, Yandex is using the historical experience of many searchers and searches to “guess” more accurately what the popular range of non-visible intentions is. In addition to search log statistics, Spectrum also uses information from reference sources and encyclopedias, such as Wikipedia. This helps the search engine to recognize new objects, learn about new meanings that do not fit any of the existing categories and add new categories.

No related posts.

Combining the capabilities of Google Translate with Google Search has long been a feature of international search experiences — but somewhat in the background. Not anymore. Google this week rolled out a feature across the non-English speaking world, [...]]]> Combining the capabilities of Google Translate with Google Search has long been a feature of international search experiences — but somewhat in the background. Not anymore. Google this week rolled out a feature across the non-English speaking world, which gives users the option to extend their search to other languages with the results presented in their own language and based on the keyword search conducted in their own language.

Take the example below from Google Poland where the search term “Pozycjonowanie stron” — or as some of us know it, “Search engine optimisation” — has been searched for within the new category of “Pages from Translated Languages” on the left hand side under the “Pages from Country” and “Pages in Language” settings.

High Speed Global Searches

In this category, Google does the following things:-

• Translates the keyword on the fly to one which Google knows is well searched for in relevant target languages — the system works less well for less popularl keywords.
• Based on the keyword, decides which languages to present.
• Searches the relevant index with the translated keywords.
• Creates a set of results based on what it considers to be the most relevant results from all language selections.
• Translates the results on the fly and presents them to the user as translated listings.

Take this example from Italy below where a search for “Voli” or “Flights” has brought back results in English, Spanish, German and French. A different search would produce a different set of selected languages. The arrows show the keyword in Italian in the search box and then again in Italian on www.skyscanner.net which is pulled from Skyscanner’s English pages which have then been translated by Google into Italian. Interestingly, Skyscanner already has a very professionally produced Italian version page which gives a much much more professional translation than Google’s rather sad attempt.

Sometimes It Doesn’t Work So Well

In the Google France example below, the keyword “Acheter pc portable” or “Buy Laptop” in English, has picked up the Best Buy site in first place — but Google’s own system cannot translate the page so clicking on the initial link fails and goes to a page saying, “We’re sorry, we cannot translate this page”

What this does do is gives us a clue as to how many parameters Google is using to rank the pages — and it definitely doesn’t fit the the usual “More than 200 parameters are used in the Google Algorithm” statement.

The Original Language of Content Displayed

The new approach does give the user strong clues as to the original language of the web contented presented in the results pages. In the page below, the pages from this Hungarian search for “Palacsinta” or “Pancakes”, presents results in both English — the first two results and the fourth shown — and German in the third result. The Hungarian language (see “Magyar” in the red circle top right) can also be changed to choose any one of Google’s core languages in a drop down menu.

Page Titles Don’t Play The Same Role

What is clear from our research is that the resulting page titles have little to do with the keyword search as you can see below in the Danish search for “Search Engine Optimisation” or “Søgemaskineoptimering”. As you can see, the keyword is only shown in the first and third result and not the second. The search results have more to do with the translated keyword than with the original term. In this case, “Søgemaskineoptimering” was translated into “SEO” for both English and German results.

Built In Geographic Bias

As the Google Norway search for “Video reklame” or “Video ads” shows below, the automatic selection of languages and thereby the choice of keyword is biased by the local geography. A search for video ads wouldn’t naturally choose the countries of Denmark and Sweden — the fact that they are geographically adjacent to Norway has to be large factor in this. So whilst the language selection is linked to keywords, the set of available languages is actually initially limited to the proximity of the countries — not the relevance of the search.

Automated Language Selection Makes Odd Choices

However, despite the initial geographic bias of the language selection, as we can see in the Dutch example below, the varying selection of languages presented per keyword is sometimes odd and intriguing. Why would a Dutch search for “Luggage rack” or “Bagage drager” choose to present Arabic, Chinese (traditional) or Russian? Sadly, they’ve also made the horrendous mistake of assuming that “Traditional Chinese” is a language which it is not — it is merely a set of characters used by both Mandarin and Cantonese which really are languages.

Keyword Weighting Lower Down Than Normal Results

It is my belief that, because of the system Google is using, the weighting given to page titles is much lower than it would be in the normal results — see below — so the question is what is the weighting? Links have to be a major factor — but it seems that body content has a higher weighting than normal too.

The Issues

Multilingual-Search.com will publish further analysis of the systems at play in this new development in the near future particularly looking at the following immediate questions which this poses for international search marketers:

• How to ensure that users are seeing good quality content in the results — does this mean preventing Google from translating pages?
• How their web pages are translated by Google Translate?
• Links just became even more important. Oh dear?
• What to do if your site suddenly receives lots of international traffic?

No related posts.

]]> http://www.multilingual-search.com/google-rolls-out-foreign-language-search-globally/10/12/2010/feed/ 1