Business, Technology, & Inovation news

• More Bullish predictions for Search Advertising – Continuing a trend from the first half of 2006, reports were released throughout the rest of the year trumpeting the increasing adoption of Search Advertising.  According to Click Z and JupiterResearch, by 2011 overall Online Advertising will account for 9% of all ad spend, with 43% of that ($11.1 Billion) going to Search.  The IAB reported that “Internet advertising revenues (U.S.) for the first six months of 2006 were approximately $7.9 billion, a new record and a 37% increase over the first half of 2005.”

• Google continued to dominate worldwide, reaching a 60% market share in July in the United States, according to Hitwise.  ComScore released a report which showed the Google number to be closer to its traditional 45%. Danny Sullivan had an interesting series on the disparity between these (3 links) types of statistical reports.  Also, eMarketer reported in October that Google will account for 25% of all online ad revenue in 2006.  Danny again dissected the numbers in November.

• Meanwhile, major newspapers began to cover Paid and Organic Search more often, including USA Today and Newsweek via MSNBC.  Danny Sullivan made big news in the Search industry when he announced he was leaving Search Engine Watch in December to start Search Engine Land.  

• Google increases interaction with SEO’s – Building off the popular Sitemaps system introduced in 2005, Google formally launched Google Webmaster Central, housing a suite of tools for webmasters and marketers to use to help ensure that Google indexes pages on websites.  The system has grown in popularity throughout the rest of 2006, and is used in each SEO engagement that Avenue A | Razorfish participates in.  Additional players beyond the well-known Matt Cutts were also introduced and have been a helpful addition.

• Google also introduced “Sitelinks,” which display additional links below branded search results for the top result in each query.  An example can be found in this search for aQuantive.
• In November, Google announced that Yahoo! and MSN plan to cooperate on a unified Sitemaps Protocol. 

• Mobile Search grows in popularity – Yahoo!, Ask.com, and others released upgraded Mobile search platforms in the latter half of 2006, indicating an important trend to watch in 2007.  Yahoo! added a Mobile Search Pay-per-Click product to compete with Google’s. Google’s Mobile Search product and MSN’s also saw improvements.  The topic of Mobile Search was covered in SMTrends Issue #22.

Top Searches for 2006 - Paris Hilton and Britney Spears led the way for top searches conducted in the U.S. in 2006.  Each major engine released a list of its top searches: Google, Yahoo!, AOL, Ask, Lycos and MSN Live.