Google, Bing Both Win More Search Market Share

Another month and another new release of comScore search engine rankings for the U.S. for May 2013. Google and Bing are both up, while the other top search engines comScore tracks (Yahoo, Ask, AOL) were flat or saw declines.

Not surprisingly, Google led the way for search share in May, and grew its search market share to 66.7 percent, up from 66.5 percent in April. Google has the identical search share of 66.7 percent when comparing May 2012 and May 2013.

Bing grew to 17.4 percent in May, up from 17.3 percent in April. This is a significant increase from its 15.4 percent search market share in May 2012.

Meanwhile, Yahoo dropped slightly from 12 percent in April to 11.9 percent in May. Yahoo is down considerably from May 2012, when it had a 13.4 percent search market share.

This continues the trend of Microsoft’s Bing and Yahoo simply swapping search share rather than making inroads on Google’s massive search share.

Ask held steady at 2.7 percent from April to May, but AOL's search market share fell to 1.3 percent, down from 1.5 percent. AOL's search market share has only been this low one other time, when it previously hit this record low in August 2011.

When looking at the 20 billion search queries conducted in May specifically, Google remained static with 13.4 billion, while again Microsoft gained 1 percent to 3.5 billion searches, while Yahoo lost 1 percent to 2.4 billion. Interestingly, AOL lost 8 percent of search queries over the previous month.

Negative SEO Exists Confirms Google

For years, Google stood by the stance that there was little competitors could do to a website to negatively affect its search engine rankings. As natural links became more valuable and paid links were devalued or penalized, Google changed their stance slightly on the issue, but still maintained it wasn't a widespread issue, with Google's Matt Cutts admitting negative SEO isn't impossible, but it is difficult.

Then came the link disavow tool, which allows webmasters to disallow paid or low quality links and clean up their backlink profile, regardless of whether they or a competitor was responsible for pointing those backlinks at a website.

Now Google has changed their stance once again, simply saying that Google works hard to prevent competitors from utilizing negative SEO.

The change was noticed on the “Can Competitors harm ranking?” help page at Google Webmaster Tools.

When the page first went online, it simply stated “There’s nothing a competitor can do to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index.” Last year, when negative SEO became a lot more prevalent, the wording was changed to “There's almost nothing a competitor can do to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index.”

This week, webmasters noticed that the wording was changed once more, to “Google works hard to prevent other webmasters from being able to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index.”

This is a clear admission that yes, negative SEO does exist and it can result in third parties being able to remove competing sites from the Google search index, or at least negatively impact their search rankings.

While changing the wording is a confirmation for many webmasters that Google is finally acknowledging the problem, it could also tip off negative SEO wars between competitors. Some webmasters might not have engaged in negative SEO for the simple reason that so many people insisted the problem was next to nonexistent, although those who have been impacted by it know otherwise. So some unscrupulous webmasters might think nothing of link bombing competitors with one of those “10,000 backlinks for $20” deals that are advertised everywhere.

That said, webmasters who might not follow SEO news closely, or who haven’t had their sites impacted by negative SEO, might never visit that page and see confirmation that negative SEO is a potential problem. The change to the page reflecting Google’s new stance on the issue was made very quietly, and seems limited to just that single page.

It is a step moving forward that Google is acknowledging that negative SEO is a real problem, but it is also positive that they are also acknowledging that they are looking at ways to combat the issue.

Google Facing U.S. Antitrust Probe Over Display Ad Sales

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is on the brink of launching a fresh antitrust probe into Google, over alleged misconduct over how it handles its display advertising business, Reuters reported.

An unnamed source confirmed the news to Reuters late last week, adding that the investigation is still in its early stages and that the FTC had not yet sent out civil investigative demands ordering Google to hand over data.

The probe will focus on the tools Google purchased from display ad company Doubleclick in 2007. The FTC reportedly began the investigation following demands from a number of unnamed competing display advertising companies, which accused Google of using its position in the display ads market to favor its own services.

The FTC has mounted antitrust probes against Google in the past. The FTC previously mounted an investigation into whether Google was using its search dominance to promote its own services more than those of its competitors. That antitrust probe ended in January, with Google only making a couple of minor changes.

Elsewhere on the antitrust front, Google's business in Canada is also about to face a formal inquiry from Canada's Competition Bureau, the Financial Post reported May 17. The agency has yet to reveal the scope of the investigation or asked for any documentation from Google.

4 Google AdWords Updates You Might Have Missed

Google AdWords has launched a series of new changes for advertisers, including updates to AdWords Editor, a new Display Benchmarks Tool, and improvements to enhanced campaigns with flexible bid strategies. Here's a recap of the latest AdWords updates.

1. Google AdWords Keyword Planner

The biggest news from AdWords for many webmasters is the introduction of a brand new keyword tool combined with a traffic estimator, called the Keyword Planner.

The new tool allows you to find new keywords related to a keyword or keyword list, URL, or category, which can be very helpful for those trying to do keyword research or expand their targeting keywords.

You can also use it to get performance and cost estimates, which can be helpful for planning out potential budgets before actually putting it in action.

Lastly, you can import the data and use it in your account without having to manually enter it from other research tools.

2. Advertising on Google Maps

We saw the preview of new advertising on Google Maps when they showed it off at I/O, and now AdWords is updating information for advertisers wanting to target Google Maps locations for advertising. The new ads will show right on the location for those with on-page location extensions, or in a box below the search box.

It is worth noting that advertisers will need to do two things to ensure their ads are showing up on Google Maps. First, you need to run search ads with location extensions and also include search partners in your campaign network settings, since Google Maps is considered a search partner for AdWords campaigns.

3. AdWords Editor Changes

If you use Google’s AdWords Editor, they have made some updates in the new 10.1 version of the editor to include tools for making bulk changes on enhanced campaigns and to include performance stats and metrics.

Some of the new features for advertisers are:

• Set bid adjustments for placements, topics, and audiences.
• Set mobile bid adjustments at the ad group level.
• Upgrade campaigns in bulk using CSV import or the add/update multiple campaigns tool.
• Use the new ValueTrack {ifmobile}, {ifnotmobile} parameters.

4. Flexible Bid Strategies for Enhanced Campaigns

Google AdWords included flexible bidding options for advertisers when they upgrade to enhanced campaigns. This allows advertisers to manage different parts of campaigns or even cross campaigns with specific bid strategies, which is very useful for those wanting to promote certain keywords while leaving other keywords to the current bidding setup.

Flexible bid strategies will be available to advertisers in the next few weeks once those campaigns are upgraded to enhanced campaigns.