Friday, January 25, 2008

Marketing & Culture effects on Search Engines

The ComScore results are out for top-10 global search engines. Interesting results for Chinese search engine major "Baidu". The figure below tells the story.

But interestingly local search engines are doing very well w.r.t. their western counterparts, considering the fact that they don't use Roman alphabet.

Now the question is, shouldn’t the best search technology win no matter what the language? Yes it should, in a world where people are logical and not exposed to any sort of media. But humans are influenced by all sorts of media and their thinking & rationality is somewhat bounded around its contours.

So these figures tell a different story about human "online search" behavior. Marketing and to some extent culture is playing a big role in selecting an online search medium (unless it's Google).

Some of major reasons are:
  • Better content: Search engine fragmentation and that too localised search engines are providing better and relevant content than others.
  • The long tail becoming fatter: The long tail of search engines have started to grow longer & fatter. Think how many search engines we were exposed to a year back and how many now. More to that, better marketing of these niche yet mostly relevant sites is providing traction for them too.
  • The old population thing: Asian counterparts are generating increase in online users; e.g. China can boast highest online users as their base population is huge. So marketing along with whole culture is working for these sites.
Related Posts:

No comments:

Friday, January 25, 2008

Marketing & Culture effects on Search Engines

The ComScore results are out for top-10 global search engines. Interesting results for Chinese search engine major "Baidu". The figure below tells the story.

But interestingly local search engines are doing very well w.r.t. their western counterparts, considering the fact that they don't use Roman alphabet.

Now the question is, shouldn’t the best search technology win no matter what the language? Yes it should, in a world where people are logical and not exposed to any sort of media. But humans are influenced by all sorts of media and their thinking & rationality is somewhat bounded around its contours.

So these figures tell a different story about human "online search" behavior. Marketing and to some extent culture is playing a big role in selecting an online search medium (unless it's Google).

Some of major reasons are:
  • Better content: Search engine fragmentation and that too localised search engines are providing better and relevant content than others.
  • The long tail becoming fatter: The long tail of search engines have started to grow longer & fatter. Think how many search engines we were exposed to a year back and how many now. More to that, better marketing of these niche yet mostly relevant sites is providing traction for them too.
  • The old population thing: Asian counterparts are generating increase in online users; e.g. China can boast highest online users as their base population is huge. So marketing along with whole culture is working for these sites.
Related Posts:

No comments:

Friday, January 25, 2008

Marketing & Culture effects on Search Engines

The ComScore results are out for top-10 global search engines. Interesting results for Chinese search engine major "Baidu". The figure below tells the story.

But interestingly local search engines are doing very well w.r.t. their western counterparts, considering the fact that they don't use Roman alphabet.

Now the question is, shouldn’t the best search technology win no matter what the language? Yes it should, in a world where people are logical and not exposed to any sort of media. But humans are influenced by all sorts of media and their thinking & rationality is somewhat bounded around its contours.

So these figures tell a different story about human "online search" behavior. Marketing and to some extent culture is playing a big role in selecting an online search medium (unless it's Google).

Some of major reasons are:
  • Better content: Search engine fragmentation and that too localised search engines are providing better and relevant content than others.
  • The long tail becoming fatter: The long tail of search engines have started to grow longer & fatter. Think how many search engines we were exposed to a year back and how many now. More to that, better marketing of these niche yet mostly relevant sites is providing traction for them too.
  • The old population thing: Asian counterparts are generating increase in online users; e.g. China can boast highest online users as their base population is huge. So marketing along with whole culture is working for these sites.
Related Posts:

No comments: