Bing Ads Gains Ground Against Google AdWords
May 6, 2013
A recent report from AdGooRoo highlights the ongoing Bing-Google faceoff, revealing some surprises alongside results we could have anticipated. Search Engine Journal informs us, “AddGooRoo Report Pits Bing Ads Against Google AdWords in Six U.S. Verticals.” The study compared 2012-third-quarter results of Google‘s AdWords with those of Bing Ads offered by the hybrid Yahoo-Bing network, and shows Google’s competition gaining ground. The article tells us:
“It is a given in 21st century America that web surfers are going to use Google’s high powered, ever present search engine to look for something on the internet. Web surfers at home and SEO professionals in the workplace know this fact, and the statistics prove it. Google handles two-thirds of search queries in the U.S. each year, but there is competition that could be growing.
“A recent report from AdGooRoo sought to gauge the success of the Yahoo! Bing network in gaining market share against Google. Few web users even realize that the Yahoo! Bing network accounts for nearly one-third of the search queries in the U.S., representing the next largest share of the market behind Google.”
AdGooRoo compared the performance of paid search in six areas (aka verticals): retail, financial services, travel, education, computer/internet, and business to business. In the realm of ad impressions (how often an ad is displayed), BingAds actually outperformed AdWords in the financial-services vertical. Analysts suspect the popularity of that topic at Yahoo‘s and MSDN‘s sites, both of which redirect to Bing, boosted the numbers. It is no surprise that Google still leads handily in retail, but BingAds came close in the remaining verticals.
The picture changes when we consider the all-important click-through rate, however. AdWords still crushes the competition there in every column. Writer Federico Einhorn says analysts attribute the lead to a superior ad-serving system, but notes it could also have to do with Google’s enhanced customization controls, implemented earlier this year. Whatever the case, this is an exercise in “you get what you pay for;” the study found that advertisers pay more per click with AdWords than with Bing Ads. Not surprisingly, many advertisers subscribe to both systems. That is probably a good call.
Cynthia Murrell, May 06, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Comperio 2013 SharePoint Seminar to Charge Extra for No Shows
April 17, 2013
Held in Oslo, Norway, this year’s Enterprise Social and Search with SharePoint seminar promises its usual diverse audience and tech-based discussions. It will take place on May 14, 2013 from 9:00-11:30. Although official events begin at 9:00, show up early for breakfast and networking at 8:30.
The seminar is free, unless, of course you do not show up without providing advanced notice.
According to the seminars registration page, the audience will include the following:
“CIOs, IT Directors, Collaboration Leads, SharePoint Leads, Social Networking Leads, Enterprise Search Leads, Big Data Leads, Business Intelligence Leads, Communication Directors, HR Directors.”
Technology discussed includes SharePoint 2010 and 2013, FAST Search for SharePoint, Comperio FRONT, Hadoop, HD Insight, and Yammer.
Not a bad line up for a free seminar in Oslo. However, those who register but do not attend (and do not provide notice) will be charged a fee of kr. 200, or about $30 US dollars. Considering the expenses Comperio will shell out for each attendee, this no-show charge is an interesting approach to guaranteeing attendance and accounting for wasted expenses.
Samantha Plappert, April 17, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
GitHub Gets Some Love from Microsoft
March 29, 2013
GitHub is a big deal, the best possible brand of social media for developers, enabling open source code sharing and collaboration. Mac and Linux operating systems have long embraced GitHub, but acceptance by Microsoft has been a bit more reticent. However, Wired shares some good news in their article, “Microsoft Windows Gets More Love From Git.”
The article has this to say about the changes toward GitHub by Microsoft:
“The site is the home to more than 4.5 million open source projects, letting software coders share and collaborate on software code, and sometimes, people share other stuff too. But Atlassian — the Australian company behind popular developer tools like JIRA — . . . is rolling out a tool that will compete with GitHub’s Windows client: SourceTree, a visual tool for working with GitHub, BitBucket, Stash or any other code repository based on the code-management tools Git or Mercurial. SourceTree has long been available for Macintosh OS X, but as of Tuesday, Windows developers can download the public beta.”
This is the most recent example of the softening of relations between the two. A few months ago, Microsoft integrated support for GitHub into their Microsoft Visual Studio. So what does this mean? Open source is here to stay and Microsoft is scrambling to get on board. It also means that Microsoft is likely to start losing ground quickly in the enterprise search arena to smart open source or open core solutions like LucidWorks. Microsoft has never really been a leader in innovation, but it seems like now they are just hoping to stay in the game.
Emily Rae Aldridge, March 29, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Hortonworks Brings Big Data to Microsoft
March 7, 2013
Open source and Microsoft are fairly strange bedfellows. It is not often that readers would find the two mentioned in the same headline. However, what is a common headline these days is Big Data. For readers looking for headlines surrounding that term, there is no shortage. All of the themes above come together in one of the latest CMS Wire stories, “Hortonworks Brings Open Source Big Data Hadoop Platform To Microsoft’s Windows.”
The article begins:
“Further evidence that big data is going mainstream is the announcement from Hortonworks that its Hortonworks Data Platform for Windows (HDPW) is available in beta, making it the first Apache Hadoop distribution that is available for both Windows and Linux . . . HDPW should be on general releases as early as the second quarter. Using it, Hortonworks continues its mission to extend Apache Hadoop to every corner of the enterprise. With this release, users will be able to capture any amount of data and share it in any format, scaled to any size.”
So open source is on the move and no one can stop it, leaving the proprietary giants to get out of the way or adopt. It seems that Microsoft has chosen the latter. But just because everyone is scrambling to offer an open source based Big Data solution, it does not mean that they are all created equal. Take LucidWorks for example. Their LucidWorks Big Data rests on the power of Lucene and Solr and builds on years of industry experience. Plus, it is backed up by industry-leading support and training.
Emily Rae Aldridge, March 7, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
BI Magic Quadrant Casting a Spell Over Visionary BI Leaders
March 7, 2013
Gartner’s business intelligence software Magic Quadrant has some big players chomping at the bit. Oracle, Microsoft, and IBM are all major forces in the business intelligence arena and they all want a piece of MQ.
In ZDnet’s “Gartner Releases 2013 BI Magic Quadrant” we get a look at those big fish and why they’re interested in this new Magic Quadrant. One thing to keep at the forefront is that Microsoft, IBM, SAP, and Oracle figure prominently into both business intelligence and data warehousing; which is why they all want a piece of MQ, it has both BI and DW capabilities.
“…And speaking of the Big Data world, you will see in the BI MQ report, as you did in the DW MQ, that partnerships and connectors to major Hadoop distributions, and the beginnings of standardization on the R programming language for statistics and predictive analytics, is starting to take place. In fact, in the near future, we may find that distinguishing between DW, BI and Big Data markets will be a contrived endeavor. These worlds will likely become like neighborhoods in the same city…”
Microsoft is a leader in the ability to execute and it has more than a little BI experience but IBM is really the frontrunner in the completeness of its vision. It is a master of acquisition and it is those planned and executed acquisitions that have propelled IBM forward in the era of Microsoft.
That Gartner has been able to develop a system that has excited the Big Four and created a veritable “arms” race is something to smile about.
Leslie Radcliff, March 07, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Yandex Outpaces Microsoft in Search Traffic
February 27, 2013
We knew Yandex was one to keep an eye on. Now, Search Engine Watch announces, “Yandex Just Passed Bing to Become 4thLargest Global Search Engine.” According to comScore‘s recent qSearch report analyzing traffic from last November and December, Yandex processed 4.844 billion queries to Microsoft’s 4.477 billion. This despite the fact that the report lumps together traffic from Bing with that of other Microsoft properties like MSN and Windows Live. (Google, of course, is still way, way, way ahead with 114.73 billion search queries.)
Writer Michael Bonfils notes that we cannot be sure what drives this Yandex lead. He observes, though, that the pool of Russian users is still growing and evolving, while the Western markets where Microsoft processes the most traffic seem to be approaching saturation. The article concludes:
“You can speculate all day about what’s happening here. Do Russians just search more? Are Russians searching more because they don’t like the results? Are they gaining market share in countries like Turkey or the Ukraine? Who wins with unique users?
“Regardless of all that, I wasn’t expecting to see Yandex, which doesn’t have nearly the marketing budgets of Microsoft, surpass them in global search queries by the end of 2012. Nothing better than seeing incredibly talented underdogs race past one of the biggies.”
Though we find this development less of a surprise, we join Bonfils in cheering for the underdog. What will the future bring for the formidable Yandex?
Cynthia Murrell, February 27, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Creating Search Based Apps in SharePoint Simple and Effective
February 20, 2013
New SharePoint users can often benefit from a hands on learning tutorial that lays out step by step how to get things done accurately and well, accurately. Let’s face it, in this fast paced world of ever evolving technology it is important to not waste time. Time is MONEY and money is the business.
Ontolica has done it again. With “Building Search Based Applications with SharePoint,” author Robert Piddocke walks users through an easy and effective way to create a search based application.
“Creating Search Based Applications in SharePoint is an easy and effective way to drive contextually valuable information to users without the limitations of having the documents in a specific library. Search can surface content from not just SharePoint but even from File Shares or other document management systems. All you need is the content crawled and you can create a document display mechanism based on search.”
The first step is to identify what metadata you want to use and if custom columns on SharePoint lists exist and can be used for your search. You must make a metadata mapping in the search service application for each piece of metadata you want to use. Run a full crawl.
Next up is creating a new page for your search based app. Then you must configure th core search result web parts but don’t forget that each web part needs a unique setting in order to function properly. After you adjust the layout xalt on the resut web parts to exclude the description and display relevant metadata you then have to set the sort on the result web part for date to display the most recent items and ply a query hat will match what you need users to see.
For more detailed information and some ridiculously helpful screenshots as well as a download we suggest heading over to Piddocke’s article.
Leslie Radcliff, February 20, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Semaphore Improvements for SharePoint Adds Functionality and Organization
February 20, 2013
Smartlogic and SharePoint have long been synonymous with each other, never one without the other but they have decided to take that working relationship to the next level. Meet Semaphore for SharePoint 2013.
This is exciting news for all of us SharePoint lovers out there and according to the Smartlogic press release from last week, “Smartlogic Announces Semaphore for SharePoint 2013 as well as support for Microsoft Office 365,” we are going to see some added functionality from the already formidable Content Intelligence (CI) solution.
“The new Semaphore for SharePoint 2013 augments SharePoint 2013 to enhance the search experience, drive content management and workflow processes, standardize metadata across the enterprise, and eliminate the burden of manual classification of content. Overall, the enhancements onward develop the already deep integration with SharePoint and further extend Smartlogic’s ability to deliver enterprise grade Content Intelligence across an organization. The new Semaphore version also supports Microsoft’s Office 365, which adds equivalent functionality to the cloud-based solution.”
And how it does that is by enhancing the multi-farm support for larger scale deployments and multiple servers making CI available at the enterprise level; simplifying term synchronization and giving SharePoint users the benefit of metadata standards; more ontology related web parts to enable a better search and findability so users actually find what they’re looking for in a timely manner.
Smartlogic’s Semaphore is enabling users to turn the multitude of unstructured content into searchable and actionable information and turn it into plans, proposals, presentations, strategy documents, memos and much more. Semaphore will work to bridge that gap between SharePoint and other user applications that has proven frustrating in the past and will provide consistency and governance across the entire enterprise.
What’s not to love about that?
Leslie Radcliff, February 20, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Microsoft Moves Closer to Open Source
February 14, 2013
Git support has been added to Microsoft and the IT world is all atwitter. Microsoft has long stood directly opposite open source, but this move begins to bridge the gap. InfoWorld draws attention to the news with their story, “Has Microsoft Finally Embraced Open Source?”
The article begins:
“News broke Wednesday about Microsoft adding support for Git to Visual Studio, both in the client — so that it can be used to work against any Git DVCS (distributed version control system) such as Gitorious or GitHub — and on the server. The upshot is twofold: Those using Microsoft’s proprietary centralized version control have a new escape route, and GitHub has a new competitor.”
Microsoft has embarked on a warming trend toward open source. Git is experiencing popularity amongst the developer community. However, GitHub, a major Git repository, has experienced recent search problems. And while news of Microsoft warming toward open source is definitely good news, it may not make a practical difference to most small and medium enterprises. For those businesses, an industry trusted solution like LucidWorks is probably the best course of action.
Emily Rae Aldridge, February 14, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Microsoft Gets Closer to Open Source Goodness
February 13, 2013
Is that a pig I see flying by the window? Or, as Simon Phipps at InfoWorld puts it, “Has Microsoft Finally Embraced Open Source?” The company recently added support for the open-source version-control system Git to its developer tool Visual Studio. It looks to us like the Microsoft leopard may be changing its spots in order to follow in IBM‘s footprints.
Phipps notes that he has observed other positive signs, like changes to the developer terms for the Windows Phone that favor open-source licenses. At the same time, though, the company is still showing signs of hostility. It has accused the city of Munich, Germany, of under-reporting the costs of its Linux-based system, going so far as to commission a “secret report” to bolster its charges. The apparent contradiction, the article notes, stems from the fact that Microsoft (like any corporation) is actually a collection of divisions, teams, and individuals, some of which have different perspectives from others. Phipps writes:
“Microsoft is on a long march toward accepting the market inevitability of open source, but the right foot doesn’t always know what the left is doing. The company is still fighting open source on the desktop, while staying mostly silent about its taxation of open source usage (in the form of ‘royalties’ for supposed software patent infringements, in return for promising not to litigate). Other teams see the wisdom of nonconfrontation, while some —such as the developer tools team —seems to want to engage in a positive way.
“When corporations embark on such a journey, it remains smart and reasonable for communities to assume that previous behavior will continue until a clear pattern of experience shows otherwise.”
Good point; the open source community would be wise to keep its guard up until a company-wide shift in its favor has been unequivocally declared. However, there is nothing wrong with indulging in a little hope.
Cynthia Murrell, February 13, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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