i-level Search News - June 2007
Doubletake on DoubleClick
Some of the views on this subject may come as no surprise. Several members of our team, such as Search Planner Owen Jones picked up on the acquisitions of DoubleClick and aQuantive by Google and Microsoft respectively; sending waves through many online publications, Owen noted that several sources cited that the two companies would officially be able to integrate media and advertising.
Coffee Tables and Sandwiches
Over to Microsoft's latest offering: how about the buzz about the "surface computing" device that they released? Okay, yes it's just a coffee table that happens to interact with your digital devices such as your camera or mobile. Although it may look cool, it sure isn't cheap - it's expected to cost from £3,000 to £5,000. This and the recent Google Gears launch at gears.google.com - where "Google is pushing the Web into whole new spheres of activity and posing a challenge to rival Microsoft in the desktop software era - were among the "top news items" on Search Account Manager Francesca Gioia's list.
Recent Learnings and Old Lessons
The Sunday Times (3/06/2007) featured an article which, instead of asking how engines could improve their results, actually reminded us how people can get better results from search; by using techniques that Google, Yahoo! and other engines have had available for some time.
Mobile News
Some mobile search news captured the team's attention this month, with Search Co-ordinator Angus Wood looking at the recent growth of search mapping features on mobile phones.
Stats Rundown
In addition to the recent news and rumours, a couple of people were more interested in the statistical side of things; and so here is a dose of search engine statistics for you! Courtesy of Dogpile which, for those of you that don't know, is a search engine that combines results from the four major engines (Google, Yahoo!, MSN, ASK) in an effort to bring you an aggregate ranking of each site. Dogpile has released a new "search overlap" study that found only 0.6% of a search engines' first page results (top 10) matched across all engines (in a study of over 12,000 queries). This is lower than the 1.0% it reported in 2005 when it last did the research.