webqem blog

May was a big month for partnerships and new products in the search engine industry.

Yahoo! And eBay announced an exclusive advertising partnership, where Yahoo will be the exclusive provider of graphical and sponsored search ads for eBay – customers famously in the mood for shopping. The eBay-owned PayPal payment service will be the third-party provider for Yahoo Wallet and be heavily promoted on Yahoo.

<>The next day Google and Dell announced that new Dell systems will be preloaded with Google’s desktop search software.Amazon moved from Google to Microsoft early in May, with their A9 search now using results from MSN search and Windows Live search.

Google Maps arrived (unofficially) in Australia. See how webqem has used it on our contact page. Or try a search for “Sydney Australia”, choose the Hybrid map, and zoom in using the controls on the left of the screen.

Google Trends allows you to analyse searches over time, by region, city and language. Great for detecting seasonal behaviour, and comparing results for two search phrases.

Google Coop allows you to share your favourite searches, and could be a new way of establishing yourself as an authority in your niche, with corresponding SEO benefits, allowing people to subscribe to your links.

Search is no longer solely a competition to see who can produce the best search engine results (index the most sites, with the fastest, freshest and most relevant results). It is increasing about branding, breadth of services, information, innovation and participation to gain user allegiance.