The Seattle-Search.com Blog

Microsoft Corp. and the SEMPO Institute have announced an education alliance in which personnel from 20,000 affiliates of the MSN search engine will have access to SEMPO Institute’s online learning program designed to provide in-depth knowledge of best-practices in search engine marketing.As part of the new alliance, personnel from the MSN affiliates will be able to take SEMPO Institute’s Fundamentals of Search Marketing class. SEMPO Institute also offers online classes in Advanced Search Engine Optimization and Advanced Search Advertising. Fundamentals consists of 14 lessons intended to give the student a high level understanding of the essentials of search engine marketing.

Since SEMPO Institute launched in early 2007, the student feedback has been very positive – 80% say they would recommend the Fundamentals course. “All companies need the fundamentals of search marketing in order to implement an e-marketing strategy,” says SEMPO President Jeffrey Pruitt. [24x7]

Google’s stock will top $900 next year. Online voting won’t happen in our lifetime. And Microsoft Corp. will make a big push into virtualization, possibly buying Citrix.

Those were among the forecasts Tuesday night at the WSA annual predictions dinner as five panelists from the Pacific Northwest technology industry — Matt McIlwain of Madrona Venture Group; Kelly Smith of Curious Office Partners; Jonathan Sposato of Picnik; Enrique Godreau of Voyager Capital; and Steve Lidberg of Pacific Crest Securities — fielded a variety of questions about the future of the industry.

Moderator and P-I columnist, John Cook, has the story.

Yahoo is staking its claim to an expanded role in the Puget Sound thanks to former Microsoft Windows GM David Sobeski, a Yahoo senior VP, who is playing a formative role in formation of the new Yahoo office.

Sobeski disclosed to the Seattle P-I’s Todd Bishop the basics of the new office — 115,000 square feet at Bellevue’s One Twelfth @ Twelfth, enough space for 500 to 600 people — but declined to talk in detail about hiring plans or the work that will take place there.

Sobeski’s remarks on the region were particularly trenchant: “”You’ve got Microsoft, you’ve got Amazon, you’ve got Google, you’ve got Adobe. You’ve got all these guys up here. Now you have us, and you have a pretty good talent pool. You’ve got the University of Washington. … The Pacific Northwest actually has a huge concentration of engineers, of technical people. And it’s not the old COBOL kind of guys. It’s the guys who can go figure out these hard algorithms, be it search, be it contextual advertising, be it data mining, be it any of these things. Because what you really want are just smart algorithmic people. That’s what you’re going for. Is there any difference between writing Windows kernel and writing a great data algorithm? Well, yeah, I get that there’s a difference, but you know what? It’s those smart guys who can build those algorithms, who can do it efficiently, that you want.”

Making the first acquisition in its 11-year history, MSNBC.com, a joint venture between Microsoft and the NBC Universal division of GE, is diving into citizen journalism and social media by acquiring Newsvine.com, a six-employee startup that has helped pave the way in what is known as “participatory journalism.”

Newsvine CEO Mike Davidson will report to Charlie Tillinghast, president of MSNBC Interactive News and publisher of msnbc.com, but otherwise, Newsvine will continue to operate independently.

Tillinghast said msnbc.com was racing to foster a community among its readers and to exploit the power of unmoderated user commentary and ranking of the news. Ideally, he said in an interview, the site would design and build its own tools, but Newsvine, headquartered in downtown Seattle a few minutes from msnbc.com’s newsroom, “is just a great fit.”

At the Search Engine Strategies Travel Show held last week, Microsoft Search Media Analyst Janine Patrick, reminded those assembled at the Marriott Waterfront from Hilton Hotels to TripAdvisor, that adCenter demographics can allow advertisers to target age, gender, and geographic location in their search campaigns — something Google and Yahoo! have yet to touch.

I could not resist asking the obvious follow-on, at least obvious to me as one of the first certified MSN adExcellence members in the the Pacific Northwest, why the demographic features have not been tied to MIcrosoft parameters.

Imagine, for example, if you could use adCenter demographic targeting and incremental bidding, and that the system would allow you to customize the parameters of your MSN-Live Search ad so that it displayed a customized message tailored exclusively for the user profile being targeted. Such is the power of demgraphic mining IF the result can be combined with targeted message delivery. “An excellent idea!” Janine praised, and she will see that it finds it way to the product develpment team. [24x7]

Details are beginning to emerge on Microsoft’s upcoming Google Analytics challenger. Gatineau will launch in beta later this summer to compete with Google and give AdCenter advertisers detailed stats on their campaigns.

Gatineau promises to take analytics one step further with the addition of demographic data. Beta 1 will include the ability to segment data by both age and gender buckets, so you can get more of an idea of what kind of visitors you have.
Google Analytics has already had a major face lift this summer, but Gatineau should provide enough competition to keep the improvements coming.

A Sneak Peek: <http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/want-to-see-gatineau.html>

digg has decided to drop Google in favor of a 3-year exclusive deal with Microsoft.
The diggsters have signed on Microsoft as our new partner to sell and serve the ads on Digg. It’s a deal similar to the one Facebook signed with Microsoft last year. The move gives digg an advertising partner with a larger organization and a more scalable technology platform to keep pace with their growth. Best of all, it lets the digg team completely focus on new feature development.
Microsoft will provide display and contextual advertising on digg, with Federated Media filling in the blanks. Any doubts that Microsoft dangled a revenue share that was too tempting to turn down? If Microsoft can announce a few big deals like this - even if they don’t make a dime on them - other networks will take notice and come knocking.

During the recent Search Marketing Expo (SMX) Advanced conference, I got a chance to ask new Microsoft Search GM Satya Nadella whether Microsoft might follow suit with the corporate incentives it was offering to enterprise customers who chose to use Live Search and win rewards. Those search incentives came in the form of discounts on Microsoft software and other products.

Apparently, someone at MSN was listening, and thinking along the very same lines. MSN and Microsoft Live’s U.S. search query volume showed a 67% increase from May to June, according to Internet metrics company Compete, Inc. at least partially attributable to a prize award program.

“A good portion of the additional Live searches are coming from the Live Search Club, where you can apparently play games for points which you can redeem for fine Microsoft products,” said Steve Willis, a Compete analyst, in a blog post Monday. “All of the games involve using Live’s search engine — to get the points, you have to search with Live.”

Google saw its search query volume drop from 67% in May to 62.7% in June, a 6.5% decline. Yahoo’s search query share stood at 19.6% in June, down from 19.7% in May and from 26.7% in June 2006. Ask.com’s search query share declined to 3.3% in June, down 3.5% in May and 4.1% from June 2006.

Internet metrics company comScore published its take on U.S. search market share numbers for May: Google (50.7%), Yahoo sites (26.4%), Microsoft sites (10.3%), and Ask (5%).