The Google Gap!

In the UK Google represents more than 80% of all searches performed according to the stats we see across a wide customer base. MSN and Yahoo are fighting it out for less than 5% but can they close the Gap?

Over the past 12 months its become increasingly difficult to get great results in seriously competitive markets like finance and travel through Google AdWords campaigns. More advertisers means higher costs per click and therefore more expensive enquiries. But are things set to change?

Until recently, the high quality enquiries and sheer volume have been attached to Google searches but there have been some developments that may change this.

Microsoft have launched Live.com, their new search engine along with AdCenter, there new back end advert management system set to rival Google. Previously this was powered by Yahoo based technology which did not reward how well your advert is received and therefore was not as popular as Google.

Yahoo! this week have also launched “Panama”, their new system, designed to work much more like Googles. With competition being so fierce on Googles network, this is sure to spark interest from agencies trying to squeeze more profit out of their clients budgets.

One other HUGE factor in Googles UK dominance will be Windows Vista. This new operating system from Microsoft has started rolling out this month and with it their search engine, live.com, will doubtlessly be embedded in most of the standard applications like Word, Excel etc.

This means that millions of people will have quicker, easier access to Microsoft’s search engine. If you are writing an article in Word and want to get some stats from the Internet, are you going to search from Live.com that is built into Word or go the long way round and leave Word, find Internet Explorer, power up Google and then Search? I think this will result in a large chunk of Googles market share disappearing over night.

The next six months are going to be truly monumental for search dominance and I’m looking forward to it. Competition is a good thing and hopefully we can get a little more bang for our buck!