Comments for Competing With Google Search

Competing With Google Search

2007-07-18T11:00:35Z

In a previous article, we explained that the pivot of the internet is shifting from search to social interactions. But this doesn't necessarily mean that search is losing its value. After all, don't we still live with previous paradigms like single sign-on and e-commerce? Search is still a crucial paradigm and so all the Internet bigcos continue fighting for position - and some of them ultimately aim to usurp the search leader, Google. In this article, we take a closer look at the competitive advantages of Google Search and try to find out whether Google is really beatable.

]]>

Google's Competitive Advantages

1. Free SEO Labor

Google's work force is not limited to their PhDs and 15,000 talented employees in Mountain View, New York and Dublin. SEOs from all around the world can be considered a free labor force for Google. In order to get their sites promoted on the world's number one search engine, SEOs optimize their sites according to Google's rules, register their sitemaps and ping Google's services whenever a new page is created. This gives Google a huge advantage over the other search engines, because other engines don't have the same level of feedback. Google caters to this crowd very well too, because it offers SEO friendly tools and advise.

2. Extra data - Google Co-op, Image Labeler, etc

With its customized search service, Google Co-op, users don't only create vertical a search engine - they also give Google very valuable domain-specific information.

Also, by tagging images on Image Labeler and Picasa, you help perfect Google's Image Search.

3. Google knows everything about your site

Google made a very smart acquisition back in 2004. They bought Urchin and converted it to a free traffic analysis add-on for your site, Google Analytics. Today many sites use it to get a better understanding of their traffic. But a side effect of this tool is that it potentially gives Google access to important data about your site. Indeed if all sites had Urchin installed, Google would no longer need to compute pageranks, as it would have the most accurate access to site popularity possible! Obviously not all sites use Google Analytics, but still it is not an insignificant amount that do.

The recently acquired FeedBurner also serves the same purpose. It's not only a great advertising channel for Google, but yet another way of measuring site popularity.

4. Google knows a lot about you - Personalization

Gmail, Google Toolbar, Google Docs and others. They all give clues about your personality, your interests, likes and dislikes. Consequently, you end up with more personalized search results. For example: if you are the type of person who searches for programming info in Google Search, discuss KDE's latest bugs on GTalk and Gmail, visit Freshmeat and Sourceforge all day and long with your Google Toolbar-powered Firefox -- well then Google will not consider your Python, Tomcat, Apache queries as zoological, but programming related :-)

5. Google offers UNIVERSAL search

Google does not only crawl the Web, blogosphere, press releases and books. It also crawls the real world with Google Earth. And Google Map's Street View lets you drive around big cities like New York and San Francisco, from your browser. Now with Universal Search, you can reach all of these services with a simple Google search.

6. Google has psychological dominance

The fact that Google is such a widely discussed topic makes you think that it is indispensable. Psychologically, you feel that you lack it when you try other search engines. Especially if your query is indefinitely motivated - e.g your purpose is more about researching than finding - then you always want to try your search on Google as well, even if you were already satisfied with other results elsewhere.

7. Google is everywhere

OK, let's say you decided to switch search engines. You still have obstacles, such as:

If you use one of the Google network services, like Gmail, you always have Google top of mind;
If you go to CNN.com, you have Google in the toolbar (on the US version at least); so why bother with entering a new URL for search?
If you use Firefox, Safari or Opera, then Google is your default search provider, home page and feed subscriber.

I could go on, but the point is - there's no escape from Google. This is not merely the success of algorithms, but also the success of Omid Kordestani and the whole business development team.

8. Google has looooooots of ca$h

As of today, Google's market valuation is more than $150 Billion. They have lots of cash reserves (although not as much as Microsoft) and their profit margins are very high. In other words, Google is financially very healthy and they have the power to snap up any innovation developed externally. Just as they did with FeedBurner, Kaltix and Urchin.

Competitive Landscape

In summary, competition in the search arena is not limited to algorithms only. You have a lot of obstacles before you can take on Google.

The real question is: does this all mean that Google is unbeatable in terms of market share? Even though Microsoft's Don Dodge said that even a 1% share in search market is very valuable, the fact is that Google dominates search. And that dominance brings monopoly and privacy issues to the fore.

I don't think Google is unbeatable (although you may think I'm completely biased, as I work for Hakia!). Google can be beat. On the algorithm side we are seeing intensive semantic methods emerge, which may in time challenge statistical methods like pagerank. But even outside the algorithm, bigcos continue to fight Google - especially Microsoft, which has the necessary cash and single sign-on power to potentially win the search space.

Moreover, vertical search engines may come to the rescue in solving most of the domain specific problems. In the same way, innovations in user interface and other areas continue to flourish.

Conclusion

Beating conventional wisdom is not so unusual. Commodore, Lotus, AOL are examples of previously dominant tech companies that eventually fell by the wayside. So even though Google looks very strong and rock solid to many of us, it can be beat. But it will take more than technology and marketing alone, because as the above points show - Google is strong in a lot of different ways.

Disclosure: Emre Sokullu works for Hakia, an alternative search engine to Google

Comment from bisnis internet on 2011-02-14

2011-02-14T13:58:31Z

Nice Info... Thank You

Comment from tripl3x on 2011-01-07

2011-01-07T17:34:00Z

Good to know

Comment from lamer40 on 2011-01-07

2011-01-07T17:33:08Z

Nice Article

Comment from Jalaj P. Jha on 2007-08-17

2007-08-17T14:27:31Z

These days, anyone can create a search engine, and in fact, computer science graduate students do this for fun all the time. Google is successful because they happened to be at the right place at the right time. Google does, however, have two very real non-technical competitive advantages - cash and brainshare.

I tend to differ. Is Search Engine just about an SQL query in the database to search for keywords. No! that's what Google taught the world. Do a practical. Try searching for "VB" in Google, Yahoo & MSN and you will see the difference. Google identifies Synonyms as well but Yahoo and MSN don't. Do you mean to say Yahoo & MSN don't have the two very real non-technical competitive advantages - cash and brainshare

Comment from eileen on 2007-07-28

2007-07-28T23:09:59Z

kudos to google for brainy biz dev plan they follow. they sure have their act together and deserve their success.

as an advertising business they do a great job as well- no one comes close to adwords- the great market research tool- and the ease with which they enable advertisers to set up a campaign, collect vital data.

sure it's a worry how much personal and biz info they capture and hold. however, they are not alone, merely more comprehensive in scope.
it's mostly a worry, since they are usa/eu based instead of being offshore, as these greedy tax regimes will eventually be the big brothers- only takes a few new legislations or more self-induced terror scares to invoke a consensus for such privacy-canceling laws.

a good feature as a search tool would be to color-code organic search results according to categories, for easy fast identification: what's an ecomerce site, value info, directory with crap adsense for content ("moneysite"), socialnetworking site etc.

Comment from eileen on 2007-07-28

2007-07-28T23:09:02Z

kudos to google for brainy biz dev plan they follow. they sure have their act together and deserve their success.

Comment from Anselm on 2007-07-19

2007-07-20T05:55:43Z

In response to Ed's post, Google does an excellent job at indexing things, this is at least what we find at searchCrystal - http://www.searchcrystal.com - which lets you visualize the overlap between search engines in real-time.
In response to Daniel's post, Google is making its money from its ad network, which is based deep know-how in terms of managing huge amounts of data. I think Google is not that easily to be displaced in the short-term, since they seem to have a laser-focus on managing and analyzing huge amounts of data. This expertise can not be duplicated overnight. Google is a great technology company.
I think it is a question of "as well as" and alternative search engines can provide complementary services.
I also feel that the power of meta search has not been fully tapped.
Emere mentions that "pivot of the internet is shifting from search to social interactions" ... what if searching can have an element of "entertainment" and then sharing with others what you found? That's what we are trying to explore with searchCrystal, which lets you remix and share results from web, image, video, blog, tagging, news engines as well as Flickr images or RSS feeds.
You can then embed searchCrystal as a Widget on your site or blog to share personalized crystals with your friends or readers. For example, Howard Rheingold, the author of "Smart Mobs", did this on his blog: http://www.smartmobs.com/2007/07/16/search-crystal-visualizes-smart-mobs/

Comment from Ed on 2007-07-19

2007-07-19T18:02:10Z

I didn't find it on Hakia, unfortunately, but the search worked on Google, apparently, they index "Digg" rather quickly. As you've probably gathered, I have checked out Hakia and am still learning it (as with most search engines, different methods of search bring up different types of results).

Comment from Daniel Luke on 2007-07-19

2007-07-19T16:59:09Z

The idea of search, as it now exists, is profoundly flawed. Unfortunately, people can only see Google's success so when search is talked about, all anyone ever does is talk about is making a better algorithm. Well, what if the algorithm is not where it's at? What if it really misses the point? I say it does, by a wide mark.

Google is an advertising company. Big deal. If you are looking for "Beach-front homes in Maine", and you do a search in Google or Yahoo, or MSN, you'll get search results of people who are selling beachfront homes in Maine. Is this information really all that useful? I personally don't think it is. Anyway, who provied this information in the first place? Sure wasn't Google. Google simply found it and ranked it. Of course the person who made the information did so with the intent of having it be findable. People simply churn out information, and then do the absurd Google dance, and then wait. That's very inefficient and flawed.

Google results are static text on a rather bland looking page which is kind of funny given that it is an advertising company. It's really quite horrible if you think about it. Also, and really more to the point, none of the algorithms they employ know anything about the quality of content. Although Google pays lips service to the quality of a site's content, this is only tangentially related to moving up the results hieararchy. I suppose Google would care about content if it could, but machines have no way of judging this. So all of these convoluted schemes are employed in an attempt to get at it. The problem is that the schemes don't really work. Google is in no small part responsible for the internet being awash in lots of useless information because people know that Google likes content (even though it can't really make sense of it), so people just manufacture the stuff. Google does happen to care about backlinks, so this is where the emphasis is placed. There might once have been a tenuous relationship between content and backlinks (no one will link to you if your content is absolute trash, for example), but now that people know that creating backlinks is how to get high rankings, it has virtually no value in determing relevance of content, etc. People who have the resources to game the system are always the ones who end up at the top of the search results page. It isn't the ones who necessarily have the best content. Again, I assert that Google has virtually no direct way of assessing this.

So, can Google be beat? If you decided to play the same game that they play, proabably not. If you happen to develop a better algorithm, they'll just buy you out. My point is, why play their game? Yes Google was a valuable idea eight or nine years ago. Yes, it is still useful, I don't deny this. But there are many other ways of thinking about the problem that Google is supposed to be solving. If you can avoid Google blindness, it shouldn't be that hard to come up with a fundamentally better idea.

The concept of Google was advanced by computer scientists. Many people in this discipline think that computers and math can solve everything. But communicating information is a fundamentally soical thing that we do. If I were going to try to compete with Google, I would leave to them the kind of informational searches that human mediation couldn't improve, the figure out a way (which I have, btw) to capture the rest.

Comment from subcorpus on 2007-07-19

2007-07-19T09:23:47Z

i dont think anyone has really beaten google yet ...
no search engine comes close ...
if you have anything better in mind ...
let us know ... and we'll give it a whirl ...
for now ... google is the best ...

Comment from Gurudatt Shenoy on 2007-07-19

2007-07-19T07:12:10Z

Hi,

This article is probably paid for by Microsoft to attack google.

Though media acts lame, I know that it is not and paid to write is rampant.

With regards to my comment on the content of the article, well what is wrong with what google is offering. If there were no google, we may have had to pay for many of these services. Even searching was not so much fun if Google wasn't around.

Now that we have Google, let us not crib and enjoy it.

Regarding challenge to Google Search, any new innovation can offer a challenge regardless of size of the company or its financial strength. Because just as people adopted Google in its early years, users may adopt the new technology.

I know atleast one company that is planning to offer a serious challenge to Google's dominance. I work there and know that once the product is out, people will have a fare superior alternative.

Called NetAlter, this system will offer highly relevant search such as when you search for "Deluxe condos in Maine", you will get all search results that list availability of deluxe condos on sale/rent in Maine. Today, if one does a google search, one also gets "country cottages", "deluxe cabins" and also results of old entries where the condos are already sold or not available for rent.

Also presently google only throws up links to other portals or web pages, from where one has to locate the detauls on how to buy stuff.

NetAlter search would offer results that link directly to an online sales/rental page/forms with maps, directions to locate the information and also info on who is the seller and their contact details.

Compared to this, present search engines are so Jurassic.

Comment from Blair on 2007-07-18

2007-07-19T04:24:05Z

Give me a better search, and I'll start using it tomorrow. How many search engines did you use before Google. Google's far too dependent on search to be considered unbeatable.

Comment from What is Google? on 2007-07-18

2007-07-19T04:20:09Z

Even if Google has lots of cash, all it will take is one brilliant engineer to develop a more reliable algorithm. Google changes their algorithm all the time. If one month they switch to a bad algorithm, and that same month a really good newcomer shows up, then I'm sure that people will switch.

Comment from DinoD on 2007-07-18

2007-07-19T03:16:15Z

Google has zero technical competitive advantage. These days, anyone can create a search engine, and in fact, computer science graduate students do this for fun all the time. Google is successful because they happened to be at the right place at the right time. Google does, however, have two very real non-technical competitive advantages - cash and brainshare. So google is absolutely defeatable, it's just going to take someone to come up with the right angle.

And by the way, the main reason google has been dominant for so long is simply because people like to say "google." I'm not kidding- you cannot discount the power of people talking to each other and mentioning this fun, silly name. There is really no discernable difference between google, yahoo, ask, and whatever else. All of them suck- there simply are not 100,000 pages about potato salad.

The internet is quickly becoming like hollywood - it's not about technology anymore, it's about fun names, leisure searches and consumption, and primary colors. The first company to do come up with this combination (and sorry, but it's not going to be Hakia, because the name is simply too hard to say and spell) will easily defeat google, and it's going to have noting whatsoever to do with superior search.

One more thing - google is not a search company, it's an advertising company. The one thing they have going for them is that they seem to know this. You never hear them talk about search anymore, it's always about some free thing like access to government satellite maps or free java software. They'll do anything to get eyes on their pages so they can sell ads.

One thing is certain, when they do fall, they won't just lose market share, they'll go the way of Lotus, i.e. most kids today don't even know what Lotus is.

Comment from Tandom on 2007-07-18

2007-07-19T02:54:12Z

Very interesting.
I've seen several articles about Google and the possible ways it could be out done or in ways is it so far ahead it seems impossible.
But there is one huge reason many people miss and it has to do with Google's international search presence. The real advantage google has, is its search abilities in foriegn languages and markets. If an american based search engine even out performs Google with better results they will still have a heck of a time toppleing google because of its presence in numerous countries around the world. I'm willing to bet that most of googles search queries and general traffic (gmail/maps/etc) is from outside the states.

Comment from News Writer on 2007-07-18

2007-07-19T01:58:52Z

I think Google is defeatable as well. I stand by a very common hopeful, perhaps philosophically or religiously based phrase, "where there's a will, there's a way."

I wrote a topic that I believe is related a few days ago...

Search for:
there's email, and then there's gmail

On the term I suggested to "Search for:" above - I touched on there why I think the Google eMail spam filter is best. Targeting the type of people who make better spam filters may be beneficial for other areas of technology as well.

Comment from lololol on 2007-07-18

2007-07-19T01:50:55Z

This was such a lame ass article.

"Emre Sokullu works for Hakia, an alternative search engine to Google"

There is no alternative to Google~

Comment from dxblogger on 2007-07-18

2007-07-19T01:47:16Z

hmm..most of our referral page..probably came from Google..

Comment from nay min thu on 2007-07-18

2007-07-19T01:28:13Z

Really thought-provoking post. I'm sure the way to organize and rank information will evolve over time. Who knows some guy in his garage might be working on it right now.

Comment from Live TV on 2007-07-18

2007-07-19T01:19:44Z

Don't forget Google is buying innovation left right and center, they're taking over any new company that shows promise. By doing this they literally suck up the competition and it soon becomes an 'affiliate'. Turning your enemy into a friend is their biggest tactic, they buy out new technology and search engines in a bid to incorporate that technology back in to itself.

Comment from Elwyn Jenkins on 2007-07-18

2007-07-19T01:06:25Z

Good analysis. However, there is an Achilles heel to the Google camp and that is online advertising. There will come a time when online advertising does not work so well because of some new zinger of an idea . . . and then Google earnings may be compromised. Already the rank and file are finding Google Advertising not to be as effective related to the cost of advertising on other people's sites. Perhaps Google thinks up the new revenue source itself . . . but maybe along comes an idea that Microsoft first tries and succeeds in using . . . and then Google might be in trouble.

Comment from apetrelli on 2007-07-18

2007-07-19T00:18:31Z

Boy, that comment about Google Analytics obviating PageRank shows very little insight into the factors at work here.

Comment from xnepali on 2007-07-18

2007-07-19T00:06:44Z

Nice analysis, Emre. One with might and money only can beat Google and all other better algorithms seem to be the prospective candidate for Google to acquire. I am just wondering about the might of Hakia (looks cool to me).

Comment from William Smith on 2007-07-18

2007-07-18T23:59:25Z

Great article! I actually tried recently to stop using Google -- go cold turkey and use Hotmail for my email service, Live.com and Yahoo for search, etc...

I lasted about 2 days.

Comment from Luke Metcalfe on 2007-07-18

2007-07-18T23:58:04Z

Another way Google benefits from SEO labour: All the SEO's dobbing their competitors in for the tactics they use.

Another thing about Google's dominance: people can go to another search engine straight away. There's no switching cost.

Comment from Tall Street on 2007-07-18

2007-07-18T23:39:25Z

Google have one way of ranking results, it might be a good way but it has limitations. Its not perfect. New innovative ways will be introduced in the future, weather its Google or someone else creating them its up for debate.

Just because Google have the predominate way of ranking results at the moment I don't think even google expects it'll be the same in 5-10 years time.

Comment from SearchEngineNews on 2007-07-18

2007-07-18T23:00:24Z

but how about: worldwebwall.com/search

it can be purchased by Google & then it will get more search leadership

Comment from Dmitri on 2007-07-18

2007-07-18T22:34:32Z

Great analysis, Emre. It does not look like a brand-new search engine could cover all the bases you've listed, starting from the ground up. But I think there will always be niches and inventions that will allow a newcomer to make a difference, and win the users. Google may know all about us; but we also know a lot about what they do, and can find a niche to do it better.

Comment from Baris on 2007-07-18

2007-07-18T20:51:33Z

Great insights, Emre! I wonder how many of the alternative search engines are building a technology/company to beat GOOG. As you mentioned it takes more than technology. I hear more and more that those engines are going after the famous 1% of the search market, hence not building a great enough company to beat GOOG. They will probably grab that share from the other top 3 engines (yahoo, msn, ask).

Any thoughts?

Comment from Charles Knight on 2007-07-18

2007-07-18T19:41:50Z

Great post, Emre! More and more I have noticed that some of the alternative search engines that we cover on AltSearchEngines perceive themselves as David facing off with Goliath. The slingshot is their superior technology, and we all know how the story ends.

Now, nobody, but nobody, believes that the future belongs to the alternative search engines more than I do. But the analogy is skewed. Back in February when GoshMe (www.goshme.com) was the Alternative Search Engine of the Month, Google had a 52% share of the search market, and GoshMe had .0004%.

The proper analogy based upon those figures is David with a pea shooter versus Goliath. Now, guess how *that* scenario would have played out!

But for a moment, just for a moment, picture Goliath encircled by 100 "Davids." One hundred! Would he have won?

Comment from DJBee on 2007-07-18

2007-07-18T16:55:08Z

Nice article!

w.r.t. your remark "I don't ... can be beat.", well it's too early to say anything. Web search is relatively new technology (w/ only 10-15 years of history) and the mass user base is still learning. In next 5-10 years scenario will change for sure (human nature:-p). New search startup needs "breakthrough technology" and "deep pockets" to stay alive for 10 years!!! I see Google as TUTOR from search world.

Comment from Marios Alexandrou on 2007-07-18

2007-07-18T16:48:15Z

I totally agree with the free SEO labor item. I pointed out 5 reasons myself recently in a post (link above) and argued that this free labor is part of why Google actually likes SEOs.

Beyond doing work improving web sites, we are also in a position to point out deficiencies in their algorithm because no other group pays attention to search results as closely.