Microsoft Earnings Key Takeaways: Where’s the Search?
The biggest acquisition news yesterday wasn’t Microsoft-Yahoo but Arby’s-Wendy’s. In both cases, search marketers are asking, “Where’s the beef?”
Better yet, analysts on the Microsoft conference call should have asked, “Where’s the search?”
Microsoft search queries and page views are up year-over-year. By how much? No Wall St. analysts asked the question.
Microsoft reported $4.4 billion in net income for the quarter.
Microsoft’s online services business increased revenue 40 percent to $843 million, including $143 million from aQuantive, which added 96 new publishers this quarter to the Atlas Publisher Solutions, the ad management platform that competes with Google’s DoubleClick division.
Online advertising for Microsoft grew 39 percent. If aQuantive ad revenue ($47 million) is excluded, Microsoft was up 29 percent. Microsoft’s online audience is still growing. Live IDs increased to 18 percent to 448 million.
Microsoft remains focused on the online advertising market (doubling by 2010 to $80 billion).
Yahoo would accelerate growth but the core strategy won’t change: drive innovation and search, increase value to advertisers and publishers through innovation and scale and grow user engagement across MSN and Windows Live properties.
The weak U.S. dollar may be Microsoft’s best friend. While about half of Google’s revenue comes from the U.S., two-thirds of Microsoft’s revenue is derived from users abroad. In addition, about 15 percent of revenue is in high-growth emerging markets.
Microsoft’s strategy of reinvesting existing business, pursuing organic and acquisition growth opportunities makes the company a formidable competitor with or without Yahoo – except in search.
Google Position 6 Smack-Down: Filter, Penalty, or Bunk?
Since late December, best-of-breed search marketers have been chattering about a supposed and creepy “Position 6” Google SERPs punishment pattern where pages which, by all indications, should dominate the organic SERPs somehow place at lowly #6. Google’s Matt Cutts has previously dismissed the notion that Position 6 is real. Yesterday the debate amongst search marketers [...]
SEW Experts: Why Search Is Still Prehistoric
Search is evolving as universal search or blended search results crawl into the SERPs, but it’s still primitive. In today’s Brand Equity column, “Why Search Is Still Prehistoric,” Eric Qualman outlines how user feedback, personalization, and other nascent technologies will lead to changes for search marketers, and search engines. More: continued here sew experts why [...]
Two New Ways Google Teaches You to Market on Google
Google has come out with two new tools for advertisers and search marketers. The first is a Google Webmaster Tools Quick Start Guide. This 10-page guide walks webmasters through the features available in Google’s Webmaster Tools. Hat tip to beu in the SEW Forums for spotting this one. The second is a 156-page AdWords textbook, [...]
StumbleUpon Death Threats in eBay Social Network
Search marketers can enrage diehard members of social communities who want to keep marketers at bay. The result? Death threats, cyberterrorism, obscene language, cyberharassment, and calls for suicide. Social media marketers see StumbleUpon and social networking sites like Facebook as theirs to mine for traffic, links, and sales. A just-released Sapient study shows marketers plan [...]
Didit: Search Spending Slowed In December
If someone standing next to you gets hit with a pebble, the logical response is not to panic. Panic should only occur if lots of large, heavy rocks come afterward. Now, although this scenario may exaggerate the matter, the pause after the first stone bears a resemblance to the situation faced by search marketers. read [...]
Search Headlines & Links: January 16, 2008
Want a snapshot of the day’s search marketing news? Here we’ve collected today’s top news stories posted to the Search Engine Watch Blog, along with search-related headlines from around the Web: From the SEW Blog: SEMPO State of the Search Marketing Industry Survey Now OpenSEMPO is once again gathering feedback from search marketers for its [...]
Searchable Social Media and Adding to the Global Conversation
Rising Voices, a citizen media outreach initiative of the Global Voices, has just released the first of a series of planned guides, An Introduction to Citizen Media. This brief guide offers context and case studies which show how ordinary citizens across the world are using blogs, podcasts, online video, and digital photography to engage in [...]
SEMPO State of the Search Marketing Industry Survey Now Open
SEMPO, the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization, is once again gathering feedback from search marketers for its annual State of the Search Marketing Industry Survey. The survey collects data on respondents’ PPC and SEO spending habits, measurement techniques, and other topics to create a yearly snapshot of the search industry, as it did in the [...]
Search Headlines & Links: January 15, 2008
Want a snapshot of the day’s search marketing news? Here we’ve collected today’s top news stories posted to the Search Engine Watch Blog, along with search-related headlines from around the Web: From the SEW Blog: Cheap Computing Will Change EverythingAuthor Nick Carr says that in the same way cheap electricity changed society 100 years ago, [...]
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