Yahoo to get up close and personal

Some good blog fodder from today's Yahoo 2009 preview with developments centred on relevancy, open internet and social media.

What does it mean? The search giant is taking those cornerstones and applying them across its new homepage, search, mobile and mail.

The result is consumers being able to aggregate search, mail, social networking sites and anything else targeted and relevant to them in one place.

The new homepage (currently in beta) enables users to plug in applications such as eBay and flickr from a library. Search developments include much richer, relevant results as well as anticipating what consumers are trying to find. The search service is also being opened up so developers and other companies can use it within their sites. And mobile developments include quicker access from the phone's menu and providing users with relevant answers and valuable information.

The thinking behind the developments is the consumer quest for 'return on attention' - a higher return on the time we invest - here's wikipedia says.

Yahoo research shows 68% of us feel it is getting more difficult to to balance life and work, 89% of us have information fatigue syndrome and 63% are worried that if we switch off we will miss something.

So, according to Yahoo Europe marketing man Kristof Fahy the search giant has to continue to do the basics really well and think about new areas such as personalisation, relevance, being open...

The developments look slick so watch this space as releases are slated for end of the year/early next year.

Linda Fox, lead reporter, Travolution

Every face tells a story

Thankfully the headline is not a reference to the, er, classic Cliff Richard single from 1997, but describes quite nicely the results of the Oban Multilingual 'Face of Global Search' survey.

Following the release today of the survey looking at online travel search habits, Greig Holbrook, director of Oban Multilingual, has also penned some analysis of the results:

What the results clearly show is that travel search is a very culturally diverse activity and that search plays a huge part in both the research and purchase of holidays for global travellers.

The growth in Chinese on the web has been phenomenal and reflects the fact that over 900 million people on the web don't speak English (around 70%).

Ninety-nine percent of those people who took part in the research indicated that they have booked travel online at some point. This once again reflects the fact that globally, people are becoming increasingly familiar with booking their travel online.

This means that suppliers not only need to cater from them in their own language but also, as much as possible, allow them to buy successfully from the site. This means the sites need to be very well localised to reflect all search and online purchase behaviours.

Chinese travel searchers don't seem to want to use Google, often preferring their own engines like Baidu much more. With the huge increase in Chinese searchers actually buying online in 2006-2007, it makes more sense than ever to make sure that optimisation for China is focused on local search engines.

It is not surprising that travellers going to different place are looking for different web features. International travel searchers are becoming more specific in their online behaviours so that in addition to multilingual web optimisation, global social media optimisation also needs to take place. In this context, a site properly optimised social media that is visible to a variety of cultures will prosper.

The finding that those who look for multilingual websites tend to avoid Google reflects the fact that international searchers are increasingly demanding good quality multilingual sites which are visible in their own search engines and not simply on Google, as Google is very often not the preferred engine or method for sourcing travel bookings.

In terms of Spanish people travelling to the UK, we have already found that travel sites often fail to provide good optimisation in Spanish for visitors who are seeking to visit the UK.

Spanish people may use some English phrases to search or they may use Spanish, but very few travel sites provide them with the experience they need so they are often forced to use English sites.

There is a great opportunity for travel companies to tap into the demand for travel from Spanish searchers; both for holidays within Spain and for travelling elsewhere like the UK.

Greig Holbrook, director, Oban Multilingual

Cuil will have to get a lot cooler (and relevant) to beat Google

Silicon Valley loves a new product, especially when it reckons itself to be a Google challenger.

So there has already been plenty of hype about the new Cuil search engine, which has a fantastic pedigree amongst its founding exec team and - the launch clincher - an index of around 120 billion pages, around three times as many as Google, according to a FT report earlier today [link not available].

The engine has some good features and is displayed in an uncoventionial way (assuming Google is the status quo here for second).

For example, the keyword 'london' throws up the usual and relevant results and has a handy extra toolbar on the top-right hand corner which allows users to break down the results quickly into different categories types such as attractions, economy etc.

[Just forget for a moment that Ken Livingstone - pictured in the search results - is not in office anymore]



But we thought we'd also run a quick test, the ubiqutous search query 'flight new york london' to check what kind of results are coming in.

Alas, relevancy disappears entirely.


Type in "new york london flight", however, and you'll get 50 results.

We'll go back to playing around and report back.

Please feedback via the comments section any early impressions of Cuil.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: cuil search engine tom costello Anna Patterson

Scoble lays into travel sites - advises Google to go vertical

Just came across this post from the blogmeister Robert Scoble. Sorry for the delay.

It was written on the 2 May, before Microsoft backed away from its attempt to buy Yahoo!, and goes into some detail about how bored he is about a potential deal and why Microsoft is full of - for want of a better word - luddites, etc, etc.

Google gets a bit of a poke in the ribs, too.

He uses travel as a prime example, pointing to the Google Travel page. A poor directory page effort circa in terms of style to 1999.

He asks:

Does that page help? Not really. No video. No cool people telling you about interesting places. No personality. No branding. No interesting Web services.

The big brand travel sites aren't any better, he continues.

There's then follows a bit of hand wringing about what Microsoft may or may not do with its purchase of Farecast.

But there are two key and rather tantalising paragraphs:

I find that Google listens a lot more than Yahoo or Microsoft does. Google has left billions of dollars on the table that it will go after over the next year, if they are as smart as I think they are.

Google: take the money off the table — build great niche search sites around topics like travel, wine, parenting, housing, automobiles, etc. You have a year to do it before Microsoft can even START to figure out where you’re weak.

It's a fascinating article and raises some of the fundamental questions about where Google, search, vertical search and travel search in particular may head next. Read it.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: scobleizer robert scoble troogle

Yahoo! employees might actually be glad the Microsoft deal has fallen through

Would you want this man as your CEO? Microsoft supremo Steve Ballmer.



Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: microsoft yahoo steve ballmer

Maybe Microsoft just misses running Expedia

Extremely light on the blogging front recently as we're preparing for the Travolution Summit and Awards next week.

So, alas, we've not been able to follow-up on our Farecast story from earlier in the week with any sensible analysis.

Anyway, it turns out that rumours suggesting Expedia was the buyer were a bit wide of the mark and Microsoft is new proud owner of Farecast. Maybe someone mentioned it at an Expedia-Microsoft alumni party?

How about this for an understated announcement on the Farecast Blog:

We’re excited to confirm that Farecast has been acquired by Microsoft! This acquisition creates tremendous opportunities for the Farecast team and our customers. We look forward to sharing more details in the weeks to come. On behalf of the Farecast team, thank you.

Perhaps rather sensibly, comments were not activated on the post.

The deal has, predictably, got the Silicon Valley types foaming/frothing at the mouth, with some earlier in the week excited enough to say any deal should be seen in the context of a Google-Expedia deal.

Our prediction on that: get over it. Always happy to proven wrong, of course.

The best coverage we've seen is on the Motley Fool, which suggests Farecast's fantastic prediction technology should be used by Microsoft to work out when it should bid more for Yahoo!.

Maybe Microsoft has simply just given up on Yahoo! and sees Farecast as the next best thing. Oops...

For some serious analysis of the Farecast deal, Musings typically has the best. Over to you, Mr Bainbridge.

Yen Lee on the UpTake Blog has some more.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: expedia farecast microsoft google

Search within search - Google's big move on 2008

In typical Google fashion - i.e. no fanfare apart from a blog post - a new piece of functionality is now up and running on the main Google search pages.

Users will now be able to see the search box for a host website included in results for some brand names.

Here's an example:


A user can then type in "Paris" into the second search box and obtain results only from Hilton.co.uk, as seen below:


E-Consultancy points out an interesting issue to all this. Some sites might not be too happy about this as they rely on people using their sites for search as a source of customer behaviour data.

Anyway, we have been trying a few things out and so far have discovered that none of the main UK meta search engines/price comparison sites have the sub-box so far.

In hotels, Hilton, Marriott and Premier Inn do. Sheraton and Travelodge do not.

Airlines: thumbs-up for Ryanair. Not so for EasyJet, BA and Virgin Atlantic.

Big operators/verticals sees Thomas Cook get a box, but not Thomson, Kuoni or Cosmos.

OTAs: Expedia, Opodo, TravelRepublic, Ebookers and STA Travel do not, but Lastminute.com does.

So what's the criteria for whether a box appears or not?

Google says:

Through experimentation, we found that presenting users with a search box as part of the result increases their likelihood of finding the exact page they are looking for.

So over the past few days we have been testing, and today we have fully rolled out, a search box that appears within some of the search results themselves.

This feature will now occur when we detect a high probability that a user wants more refined search results within a specific site. Like the rest of our snippets, the sites that display the site search box are chosen algorithmically based on metrics that measure how useful the search box is to users.

One of the interesting things about this is that brand name searches are, by all accounts, still extremely popular despite a supposed surge in online activity by supplier and intermediaries.

Another is will sites be disadvantaged if they CANNOT have their search box included? Not sure...

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: google
search

SES London - MicroHoo: The Big Switch view

Now this is what I call a great way to start the day.

Nick Carr, author of the Big Switch, gave the keynote address here this morning at SES. OK, it was a video recording from the US but it was that good it got a round of applause (including me) which felt a little strange!

I've never clapped a video before.

Still it was filmed specially for SES and it offered a perspective on the Microsoft Yahoo deal which makes sense.

His view is that computing and software is increasingly being used on the web with documents saved there as opposed to downloading the software to your PC.

Related to this is the trend for software providers becoming more and more like media companies offering their software (content) for free or cheap to consumers, relying on ad revenue for their profits.

So here's the rub - if this continues where does this leave Microsoft?

Could the giant have its carpet pulled from it?

They can't take that risk obviously. They need web properties, distribution networks and social sites. Hello Yahoo!.

The other gem from Nick was that this trend could produce a digital elite. Take Craigs List which sells more ads then many traditional, massive media concerns.

Employees? 20. Skype which now serves more customers then BT has only 200 employees compared to BT's and other telco's thousands.

And YouTube only had 60 employees when bought by Google for 1.6 billion.

The recent lay-offs from Yahoo! take on a slightly different light now.

Matt Brocklehurst, marketing director, Latitude Group

Technorati tags: microsoft yahoo google skype youtube

SES London - Cash in China; Mobile in Japan

Boy, search is complex in Asia.

In Japan keyword choice is made that bit more difficult in that the same word will have multiple spellings.

Venice, for example, has six well used versions so you need to make some informed decisions on which version(s) you use on your site.

Japan has a different no 1 SE - Yahoo with 47 million users per month to Google’s 27 and Rakuten's 27.

The number 1 social network is not MySpace or Facebook but Mixi with 17 million users.

But probably the most intriguing fact is that more people in Japan now access the
internet via mobile then PC.

But China, forecast to overtake the US in internet users this year, really takes the biscuit (I would say Fortune Cookie but apparently these don't exist in China and are actually made in Mexico).

China search is dominated by Baidu.

This is very different from Google, not least in that paid inclusions sit at the top of the 'natural results' yet 90% of users don't realise they're paid for.

On the subject of paying most Chinese still prefer to pay in cash.

Particularly in travel with 60% of online transactions on C-Trip (the Chinese 'equiv' of Expedia) involving cash on demand that involves a man on a moped arriving at the online buyers doorstep, getting the cash then handing over the tickets.

This will change as credit cards are growing but, in the meantime, this is a stark example of just how different internet business really is in China.

Matt Brocklehurst, marketing director, Latitude Group

Google says Microsoft-Yahoo deal would be trouble for the web

Google's only response to Microsoft's hostile approach for rival portal/search engine Yahoo! comes via a official blog post from David Drummond, senior vice president for corporate development and chief legal officer.

If anyone thought a deal between Microsoft and Yahoo! would be plain sailing... think again.

In fact, Google's comments are nothing short of hostile.

Drummond says:

Could Microsoft now attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC? While the Internet rewards competitive innovation, Microsoft has frequently sought to establish proprietary monopolies - and then leverage its dominance into new, adjacent markets.

Could the acquisition of Yahoo! allow Microsoft - despite its legacy of serious legal and regulatory offenses - to extend unfair practices from browsers and operating systems to the Internet? In addition, Microsoft plus Yahoo! equals an overwhelming share of instant messaging and web email accounts.

The gloves are off.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Yahoo+Microsoft - travel sites in the UK probably won't care too much

Clearly the biggest story kicking about today concerns Microsoft's "audacious" (or so says the MediaGuardian, which loves the hyperbole of it all) bid for Yahoo!.

Microhoo or YaSoft? Both sound rubbish.

A letter to the Yahoo! board last night proposed a £22.4 billion takeover of the company.

The Silicon Valley blogs are going crazy with excitement. [Excellent coverage of a Microsoft conference call]

From a search point of view you can see why the Americans can hardly contain themselves.

Yahoo share coupled with Microsoft's is around 33% of the market (Comscore), against Google's 58%, meaning it would certainly have a decent challenger in the US if the two combined.

In the UK, however, it would be a different story. Google currently commands between a 75% and 80% share of the market, depending on which measurement you use.

Nevertheless it completely dominates the search market here.

From a travel perspective I would hazard a guess that a takeover would hardly send digital marketers skipping happily into balmy sunset.

Almost everyone we have talked to in the past year or so has spoken admirably of Panama (YSM's search platform) and Microsoft's AdCenter - "but without the volumes there is not much point".

Where this proposed takeover might make a difference is in the area of portals.

Yahoo has a sizeable travel portal (and there's always Kelkoo!). Microsoft has the Live network.

Search plays a part in the all this, but I wonder if the takeover is more of a way of reaching consumers with other services.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: yahoo microsoft google

Yahoo! should! buy! Expedia! or! Orbitz!

Following last night's post pondering the state of Yahoo!, Silicon Valley guru Sramana Mitra has shared her thoughts on what Yahoo! should do next.

Given that it's probably losing the search battle with Google, Mitra reckons Yahoo! should snap up an online travel company.

But not just a content site or meta search engine. Oh no, aim high.

Yes, really high - like Expedia, Priceline of Orbitz.

"Yahoo should acquire one of them, and become a serious player."

A few questions about these pearls of wisdom:

• How much should a company which has lost $20 billion in market cap over two years be willing to pay for a business like Expedia?
• Is this really the right strategy?
• How would the market react to a - still reasonably signifcant - search company owning a online travel company?
  

Mitra offers more advice on the GigaOm.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Hat-tip: The Boot

Technorati tags: yahoo expedia priceline orbitz

What is the problem with Yahoo?

Some people would answer that question with these five words: 'it', 'will', 'never', 'be' and 'Google'.

One of the first sentences of an excellent article on ZDNet, written by Stefanie Olsen, goes like this:

If Yahoo could be placed on a psychiatrist's couch, the internet giant would be told it was suffering from an identity crisis.

Here in Europe the problem is even worse, with the site languishing even further behind the dreaded Google in terms of search traffic.

As the ZDNet article explains, Yahoo and its reasonably new CEO Jerry Yang - one of its co-founders - have a tough job on their hands.

In the meantime, employees are waiting anxiously to see if the widely rumoured job cuts are coming their way.

All is quiet in the UK. Tim Frankcom, who used to run travel for Yahoo and Kelkoo across Europe, has moved upwards in the Yahoo foodchain and has not been replaced.

Any questions about Yahoo and the fate of Kelkoo - a hot topic considering that Yahoo in the US has recently intergrated its highly rated Farechase into its travel channel - are met with a line about no comments ahead of financials.

Fair enough. The problem with not saying anything is that speculation mounts. And the market is talking a plenty...

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: yahoo google zdnet

The travel conference of the year!

Big day today. We are officially launching our Travolution European Summit 2008, produced in association with PhoCusWright.

We have started assembling what we believe will be the best line-up of participants from the online travel industry you are likely to find anywhere in the UK in 2007.

Confirmed so far:

• Caroline Cartellieri, Expedia UK (managing director)
• Graham Donoghue, TUI UK (new media director)
• Steve Hafner, Kayak (chief executive)
• Adam Healy, VibeAgent (chief executive)
• Brent Hoberman, Mydeco.com (executive chairman)
• Chris Lee, Barclays Commercial Bank (head of travel sector)
• Yen Lee, Kango (president)
• James Lohan, Mr and Mrs Smith (managing director)
• Ian McCaig, Lastminute.com (chief executive)
• Chris Nixon, Travelsupermarket.com (acting managing director)
• Andrew Owen Jones, Amadeus (director, travel distribution solutions)
• Jeff Revoy, Yahoo (Europe vice president, search and social media)
• David Soskin, Cheapflights (chief executive)
• Robert Torres, Google (managing director, travel advertising and marketing– North America)
• Gareth Williams, Skyscanner (chief executive)
• Philip Wolf, PhoCusWright (president and chief executive)

More names will be added in the coming weeks.

Delegates places, more information, programme, and the rest, available from the conference website.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Predictions from around the web

Ahead of our own crystal ball gazing post (currently being written), check out the predictions from the Travolution RSS reader.

Guardian's John Naughton - Internet's own 9/11.

Drama 2.0 - The lighter side of the tech world.

Mashable's Adam Ostrow - News Corp to sell MySpace. Mobile social networking. Blogs become acquisition targets. Facebook goes truly mainstream. Start-up consolidation. Microsoft buys Yahoo. Email lives.

Mashable's Mark Hopkins - Battle between apps. Intellectual property. Rise of Green Tech. No bubble bursts.

ZDNet's Dana Blankenhorn & Paula Rooney - Battle for the network.

Computerworld's Stacy Collett - Google in 2008.

Struan & Associates Tourism Destination Crisis's David Beirman - Gulf states growth. Eco tourism. Eastern Europe. Stopover in Asia.

ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley - Microsoft in 2008.

Guardian Travel Section - Destinations aplenty.

We will add more as they come in during the next few days.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Ten Ways to Handle Google If You Work in Travel

Google brings out bitter strong emotions in anyone connected with new media - and certainly most working in the travel industry.

So interesting to hear a discussion about the Search Engine Daddy and its hold on the industry at this week's TTI Open Space event in Windsor.

Led by Stella Travel’s Gordon Maynard, the debate was titled ‘What will Google do to the Travel Industry?’ - but it quickly morphed into 'What can the industry do about Google?'.

Here are some suggestions from the assembled brains, including Dermot McNally (Directski), Carlos Pereira (Ceejay Travel) and Bill Taylor (Advantage Travel Centres):

• Get together and propose how travel product search could develop. Try and work with them rather than working against them.
• Sit down with Google and have a sensible discussion with them and use collective power to influence them.
• Ensure Google remains an information medium, which of course they say they will, and not a selling medium.
• A blank boycott – take your money elsewhere and pursue better deals on other sites.
• Develop a more optimised service with other platforms.
• Concentrate on natural search.
• Measure the real returns you are getting and make sure there is no wastage.
• Build a competing travel search engine.
• Forget about Google and concentrate on your website because search engines are driving traffic to it that is often lost.
• And, finally, persuade Google to buy Expedia because its search engine is a lot better than anyone elses.

Why so much concern about Google?

Because the industry feels it must participate but there is a lack of control. Many also feel there is no real middle ground.

As Anite’s Ed Spiers put it: “There was a gap for more flexible travel and the need to get a structured view on an essentially unstructured market.”

Linda Fox, freelance journalist

Technorati tags: google expedia search

FireEagle is good news for travel experience sites

Rather interesting piece about Yahoo!'s new geo tool on TechCrunch.

Yahoo is going to unveil FireEagle tonight, apparently. Essentially it is an online product which identifies a user's location if they are transmitting files online.

So what? Well just think of the automatic photo uploading capabilities for trip sharing travel sites, for starters.

TechCruncher Michael Arrington says: "I think I can safely say that there are a ton of developers who are going to be extremely excited about FireEagle."

Yes, and travel companies looking for a way to make it easier for users to publish their travel experience in a neat way. At the moment it is somewhat laborious for the user if they have to geo-tag everything.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: fireeagle fire eagle yahoo

Selling text links is bad for travel sites - official

A string of websites and blogs are up in arms over what are some rather fundamental changes to the Google algorithm, which in turn has hit website Page Ranks.

The crux of the issue is this: Google is understood to be punishing websites that sell text-based links to third parties by reducing their relevancy or authority mark, or Page Rank.

This in turn affects their position of keyword search results.

Full coverage of the issue on SearchEngineLand and SEOMoz.

A few emails into Travolution today asking about the impact, if any, on travel sites.

Well at first glance it looks like some blogs (the legendary John Chow, for one) and a number of media sites (including the Washington Post, Chicago Sun-Times and Forbes) are nursing some pretty serious wounds to their Page Rank.

We have only learnt so far of two travel-related sites affected: World66.com (PR7 to PR4) and Beachhouse.com (also PR7 to PR4).

The chief operations officer of a leading SEO agency told us a number of travel sites could find themselves with a “bit of a situation” on their hands if Google continues its crackdown.

The problem, however, is that there is a huge “grey area” in what Google is doing.

If a website is selling a text link to a third party and the ad copy is relevant to the content, why - asks our correspondent - should the site be punished?

Indeed, a site which has a landing page about Paris may well be penalised simply because it has sold some text links on the same page to, say, a group of city break operators?

On the other hand, the opposite scenario is where some education sites (mainly US universities, which typically have a high authority ranking) have sold links to sites selling Viagra, simply because they know the ad can command a high price.

Either way, Google is cracking down. The short term answer is to probably to stop selling any text ads, if possible.

Another emailer asked: "So what about affiliates?"

We spoke to Commission Junction, part of the ValueClick empire, asking whether as a network it would purchase text links on behalf of clients.

The worry here, email to us by one SME tour operator, is that if Google reduces the page rank of sites containing links bought by affiliate networks, then the number of leads will fall, sales may fall, etc.

The network does not purchase text links, it said, and therefore those using its platform as affiliate merchants will not be affected directly. Of course the host site may well be flogging text ads to others and they will be hit by association.

One mildly amusing irony of all this is that, despite Google’s attempts to crack down on those selling text link ads, type “text link ads” into its search engine and the world’s biggest search engine is happily taking pay-per-click advertising from the likes of TextLinksAds.com, Onewaytextlinks.com and Textlinkbrokers.com. [We did not sell these links!!]

A quick call to Google this afternoon revealed nothing apart from a very carefully worded statement, emailed back a few hours later:

"Google is always working to improve the ways that we generate relevant search results and update our opinions of sites' reputations across the web.

"The Google Toolbar shows an indicator of PageRank, which is Google's opinion of the reputation of a webpage.

"Values in the Google Toolbar can fluctuate for a number of normal reasons, including changes in how we crawl or index the web, or changes in the link structure of the web itself.

"In addition, Google may update the visible PageRank indicator in the Google Toolbar to incorporate not only our view on the backlinks to a page or site, but also to incorporate our opinion of the forward links for a site."

This is clearly going to rumble on and on. Any comments from SEO agencies or other victims?

[ProBlogger has some good analysis and advice for bloggers]

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: page rank SEO affiliate text link

Google Page Rank - anyone hit?

Full post coming later on - just trying to get to the bottom of this story in terms of travel.

Have any readers seen their Google Page Rank plummet in the last few days?

Lots of theories being banded around. We've spoken to an SEO agency and an affiliate network and will report back later.

Leave a message in the comments section or email me.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: page rank

We all love search

ComScore data released today reveals a massive 61 billion searches were carried out globally in August this year.

The survey is the first time (apparently) that a worldwide figure has been produced and illustrates the continued dominance of Google in the search market.

The top five search engines:

Google - 37.1 billion
Yahoo! - 8.5 billion
Baidu - 3.2 billion
Microsoft - 2.2 billion
NHN - 2 billion

Here in Europe we average around 85 searches a month, compared to 96 in Latin America, 77 in North America and 70 in the Middle East and Africa.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: comscore search