Google Commerce Search
Google recently announced its new search technology for e-commerce websites. Google Commerce Search allows visitors on online retail sites to search for specific products in much the same way they would on a search engine, with sorting of results, stemming, spell check and suggested synonyms. Google Commerce Search also gives users the ability to customize their search experiences as well as business owners the capability to promote specific products or connect certain products to specific searches. The new technology has been released just in time for the holiday rush and is aimed at increasing customer conversion rates on e-commerce sites and reducing bounce rates. Google has stated that since the new search feature was designed to be hosted on the Google platform, online retailers should have no problem using Google Commerce Search during high-traffic periods throughout the holidays.
Google Music Search
Google has partnered with MySpace, Lala, Pandora, imeem, and Rhapsody to improve search results for music queries. The new search feature, which Google deployed at the end of October, provides users with a link to an audio preview of the song, artist, or album you are searching for. For queries where you can't remember the song title, artist, or album title, you can type in a lyric and Google will match the lyric to the artist and provide the same audio preview. Here's a sample query for Bon Jovi. The feature seemed to work pretty well in the limited testing I did--even suggesting corrections to my spellings of the lyrics. However, there were a few lyrics missing audio previews and seeing how this is a new service, that's to be expected. Over at Yahoo!, they've also enhanced music search capabilities. However, the upgrade appears to be limited to artists' names and some changes to video search that allows users to explore the artists' catalog of work.
Yahoo! Phases Out Paid Inclusion
On December 31, 2009, Yahoo! will discontinue its controversial paid inclusion service know as Yahoo! Search Submit. The service ensured advertisers' websites would appear in Yahoo! search results for a fee that ranged from $49 for a single URL to several thousand dollars per month using a cost per click pricing format. The fee did not, however, guarantee any kind of rankings; just inclusion in Yahoo! search index. Yahoo! is the last of the major search engines to discontinue this service--MSN/Bing and Ask discontinued the service in 2004; Google never offered a paid inclusion service. There is speculation that this decision by Yahoo! is related to its agreement with Microsoft since Microsoft will own the Yahoo! search index once its agreement with Yahoo! receives regulatory approval. The deal is expected to be approved in early 2010.
MSN Rolls out New Homepage
MSN has unveiled a new home page this week, complete with the integration of Bing search technology. MSN has streamlined the page in order to simplify the user experience and reduce some of the clutter found in the existing design. Users are now able to more easily navigate to their preferred service/information portals using Bing search technology and are also able to view social networking updates from sites such as Twitter or Facebook without leaving the home page. Additionally, MSN Local Edition will now be using Bing search to offer pertinent information based on the user's zip code. While the preview is available now, the new MSN page will be available to everyone in early 2010.