Autonomy Enters Search Engine Marketing
August 4, 2009
Search has become a commodity. Every SharePoint installation includes search. Content management systems have been struggling to bridge the gaps that exist among Web page output, eDiscovery, and repurposing of information for print. Search vendors have had to scramble to make sales as open source solutions like Lemur Consulting’s FLAX, lower cost solutions such as Gaviri, and marketing centric such as those introduced by Attensity have flowed into the marketplace.
Autonomy has been among the most agile search vendors I track. The company diversified into rich media before most organizations knew that video could be digitized. Then the company hopped into print-to-digital services with some key acquisitions. Most recently, Autonomy added to its Zantaz services with its acquisition of Interwoven, a content management company.
The most recent Autonomy innovation is a landing page service. The idea is that an organization buys a Google AdWord. The user clicking on the AdWord will be sent to the page that provides information referenced or promised in the ad. That page is a landing page and most content management systems don’t produce these without cartwheels, fireworks, and a brass band. In short, Autonomy’s announcement about a “hosted Web landing page” indicates that Autonomy is moving quickly again. The key for me is the word “hosted”. Autonomy is becoming a cloud-services company. Maybe the word “utility” is appropriate? I think landing pages are a new service for a search vendor. This is not a bad thing, just not a search thing. In my opinion, the market for one-size-fits all search seems to be softening.
Stephen Arnold, August 4, 2009
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3 Responses to “Autonomy Enters Search Engine Marketing”
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Hmm…Interesting… But isn’t is what any marketers can do with Google Site, Microsoft Live, WordPress.org (the SaaS offering) and hundreds of others?
I would prefer to see Autonomy leverage its search technology to compete with Google, Bing, Clusty or Exalead.fr…
I think that’s unlikely, Denis. Years ago, Autonomy had a web index (their desktop Kenjin tool talked to it I think), but it was never really public. Building a web-scale search engine is a very difficult and expensive job, and is more to do with scalability and redundancy than clever text processing. Don’t confuse enterprise search with web search, they’re really very different animals (geese? 😉
Charlie,
Thanks for making this point. Microsoft Fast was a Web search engine. Now it is the digital equivalent of one of those kitchen appliances that slices and dices. Lots of excitement in search and lots of confusion.
Stephen Arnold, August 4, 2009