Google Gains on Bing-Yahoo in September, According to Experian Hitwise

Recent statistics from Experian Hitwise reports that search giant Google received nearly 75% of all searches in the U.S. in September. This is a full 1% gain from the previous month, and is remarkable in that the gain was made in the same month that Bing was hoping to cut into Google’s share by adapting its search engine to its new partner, Yahoo!

International Business Times writer Surojit Chatterjee, in his article “Google Rules Online Search Market in September,” says that Google’s gain was substantial, given that searches on Bing gained 2% when the search was conducted on Bing.com. However, Chatterjee says that Bing/Yahoo searches reported a 5% loss. That more than cancels out any gains that Bing.com may have made on searches made to its home site during September.

64 other surveyed search engines split the remaining 4% of the search pie not already taken by Google or “Bing-Hoo.” According to Chatterjee, Bing can be encouraged by the sites intellectual growth. For example, he says that in September, Bing saw its first double-digit sequential growth in the four major categories of Automotive, Health, Shopping and Travel.

Chatterjee could not say whether Google’s release of its Google Instant service helped the company’s growth in September. However, Google stock prices rose steadily throughout the month after Instant’s release.

Several Articles Point Out Google Instant’s Somewhat Fickle Blacklisting System

Now that the hubbub about the SEO effects of Google Instant has quieted down to almost nothing, a sudden flurry of articles has appeared, centered around a list of blacklisted keywords published by 2600.com. The “Google Blacklist,” as they call it, is a list of several hundred terms which, when searched, will turn off the Google Instant feature for that search.

Google says this is specifically to keep porn, violence and hate speech results from appearing in front of people who aren’t specifically looking for those things. However, both Matt McGee at SearchEngineLand.com and Samuel Axon at Mashable.com see some strange anomalies in Google’s word choices.

For example, McGee says, one of the terms that Google Instant blacklists is “Pamela Anderson.” This means you can’t use Google Instant to help you search for anybody named Pamela Anderson, of which there are surely thousands.

Since all variations of the word “Porn” are blacklisted, McGee reports that you can’t use Instant Search to find specific information on the popular indie band New Pornographers. And if you’re a rap fan, simply typing the phrase “rapping women” turns Google Instant off as well.

Axon admits that while most of the blacklist consists of words that many people find offensive, there are others that simply seem out of place on the list. As an example, he points out the fact that “bisexual” and “lesbian” are on the list, while “heterosexual,” “asexual” and “homosexual” or not. He guesses that the offending words are probably the ones most likely followed in searches by the word “porn,” so Google Instant simply assumes the search outcome and shuts off. (That’s not good news for people looking for “lesbian health services” or “bisexual counseling,” for example, but there it is.)

A Google Rep told Axon that they are constantly trying to improve the system. What they mean by “improve” remains to be seen.

As usual, Latest Google Innovation Causes Great Commotion; Affects Almost Nothing, PCMag.com Says

Within 24 hours of Google releasing its Google Instant search capability, industry pundits, almost predictably, went into the usual “man your battle stations” mode, saying yet again that this latest change would affect the importance of SEO as we all know it.

Not so fast, says Mark Hachman at PCmag.com in his article “SEO Not Affected by Partial ‘Google Instant’ Keywords”. Not 48 hours after Google Instant hit the streets, Google put out an announcement that internet marketers shouldn’t start jumping to conclusions and change any of their SEO strategies.

The commotion, Hachman says, comes from many marketers believing that now, with Google making suggestions on partially typed searches, you need to optimize your search capabilities to rank for these partial searches. However, Alden DeSoto of the Google Analytics team says that’s not necessary, and rather silly. “This is not a productive strategy,” DeSoto explains. “”Ads are triggered based on the ‘predicted query,’ not the stem that users type in.”

As an example, DeSoto says the partial query “flow” would provide results for the predicted query “flowers.” The only way people would see an ad optimized for “flow” would be if they were specifically searching for the word “flow.”

Desoto added that Google Instant doesn’t change search rankings, either, because the predicted query still wins out over the actual query.