The death of Michael Jackson in June launched a frenzy of Web activity and propelled the late pop star to the top of the search charts for 2009.
That's the word from Google, Yahoo, and Bing, all of which have revealed their popular search terms for the past year.
It's not too shocking to see Jackson leading the searches for the year. Following the pop star's death in June, Akamai found that worldwide Web traffic had surged 11 percent over normal levels. Even Google--which in the initial going thought the Jackson-related traffic was an attack of some sort--was briefly sent staggering.
Searches for Michael Jackson songs spiked in late June when news broke about the pop star's death.
(Credit: Google)According to Google's Zeitgeist findings, "Michael Jackson" was the "fastest rising" worldwide search term of 2009. In the U.S., "Michael Jackson" placed second behind "Twitter." Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of search products and user experience, in a blog post also pointed to an up-and-coming music sensation:
As millions of fans said goodbye to the King of Pop, Michael Jackson led the list of our top 10 fastest rising queries across the globe. And a new star was born, too--quirky pop singer Lady Gaga became a search sensation the world over. In addition to appearing on many regional fastest-rising search term lists, from the Czech Republic to Switzerland and Kenya to the United Kingdom, Lady Gaga also landed in the #9 spot on the global fastest rising list.
On the social side, Google monitored whose Twitter accounts were the most searched for. According to the company, Miley Cyrus' Twitter account was the most sought after, followed by those of Lance Armstrong and Taylor Swift. Khloe Kardashian's marriage to basketball player Lamar Odom was the most-Googled wedding of the year.
"Michael Jackson" was the top Yahoo search term for the year. He was followed by a who's who (and a what's what) of the U.S. entertainment scene. "Twilight" was the second most-popular search term, followed by wrestling organization "WWE," starlet "Megan Fox," singer "Britney Spears," and manga series "Naruto." Filling out the top 10 were "American Idol," "Kim Kardashian," "Nascar," and "Runescape."
Microsoft's Bing, which debuted in late May, had similar results. Once again, "Michael Jackson" was the top "trending topic," followed by "Twitter" and "swine flu." "Stock market" and "Farrah Fawcett" rounded out Bing's top five.
Of course, 2009 was also marked by continued concern over the state of the economy. According to Yahoo, "coupons," "unemployment," and "stimulus plan" were the most-numerous queries related to the economy. By contrast, Google's most-searched economy-related terms were "crisis," "cash for clunkers," and "Iceland."
Google also followed queries related to celebrity deaths in 2009. Users searched for "Michael Jackson" the most, followed by "Billy Mays" and "Steve McNair." Yahoo's data revealed that Michael Jackson's death was the most-searched term, but unlike Google's data, the pop star was followed by "Farrah Fawcett" and "Patrick Swayze."
See also:
• Google Zeitgeist 2009
• Yahoo Year in Review 2009
• Top Bing searches in 2009
Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and posts at The Digital Home. He is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
SAN FRANCISCO--He wasn't on the program, but nobody was disappointed that Google co-founder Sergey Brin showed up at the Web 2.0 Summit on Thursday afternoon and agreed to sit down for an onstage chat with conference organizer John Battelle.
Sergey Brin, Google co-founder
(Credit: Google)Battelle said Brin had been extended an invitation to speak but turned it down, to which Brin joked, "I didn't say no, I just never responded."
But it was an appropriate time to hear from one of the minds behind Google because one of the most evident trends at the conference is that the search market is heating back up. On Wednesday alone, Microsoft announced a partnership with Twitter and Facebook for real-time search results, Google announced a similar deal with Twitter, and Google executive Marissa Mayer previewed a new "social search" feature in Google Labs.
Brin talked about the new competition with a "bring it on" attitude. "I think what Bing has reminded us is that search is a very competitive market," he said. "There are many interesting companies out there." He said he's disappointed that Yahoo is retreating from the fight and planning to strike a deal with Microsoft instead.
"I think Yahoo had a number of innovations there, and I wish they would continue to innovate in search," Brin said. He didn't go into specifics.
Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz had been slated to speak at the conference on Wednesday but canceled at the last minute, citing a bad case of the flu.
Yahoo's deal with GroupM should produce more content designed specifically for advertisers, such as celebrity mom blog Spotlight to Nightlight, hosted by Ali Landry (right), shown interviewing Mayim Bialik.
(Credit: Screenshot by Tom Krazit/CNET)Yahoo's bid to expand the amount of original content it produces is about to get some help from an advertising agency.
CNBC reported Wednesday that Yahoo has signed an agreement with WPP's GroupM digital entertainment studio to co-produce original content that will likely highlight WPP's advertising clients in a significant way. Yahoo confirmed the deal has been signed, and it hopes to have the new shows ready to go by the end of this year or the beginning of 2010.
One of Yahoo's main priorities this year is building out its Media group, which is slated to receive the windfalls generated by Yahoo's ongoing plan to exit businesses it no longer considers to be at its core. The group already does a ton of traffic, but executives want to increase the amount of originally produced content on the site in hopes of luring advertisers with deep pockets.
One way to make that happen is to get the advertiser on board even before the content is created. Like any online media company, Yahoo tracks the activity of its readers and viewers to get a sense of what people are reading and watching, and can pitch advertisers with ideas for shows that target the people they want to reach. An early implementation of this strategy resulted in the development of a blog about celebrity moms called "Spotlight to Nightlight" hosted by Ali Landry and sponsored by State Farm, after Yahoo noticed a surge in searches for content related to celebrity parents.
Concepts that are being considered by GroupM and Yahoo include "Rock 'n Roll Jet Plane," a reality show billed as a "real-life 'Almost Famous,'" and "50 Jobs," a show patterned after The Discovery Channel's "Dirty Jobs" that follows unemployed job seekers. The shows could also include the types of scripted longer-form show that Yahoo is developing, if there's a match between concept and advertiser.
Whether or not any of this content will actually be watchable is another matter, of course. But the strategy is low-risk for Yahoo, in that the company can only develop programs that already have a sponsor and outsource much of the production work to GroupM.
There comes a time in the life of every yodel when it's time to try something different.
As you might have heard or seen if you've opened a computer, switched on a television, or walked down a city street over the last week, Yahoo has a new ad campaign.
As part of the $100 million effort, Yahoo sought out musicians to record the famous Yahoo yodel in just about every corporate-sanctioned niche musical category, and it released the results of the effort on Monday.
Like your yodel to sound like Coldplay? We recommend Modern Rock 2. Looking for more of a Slayer vibe? Metal 2 has you covered. And hip-hop fans can't go wrong with Old Skool 1 and the soon-to-be immortal line: "Some PC I prefer the Mac/But if you Yahoo then I got your back." Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between intentional and unintentional comedy.
If you can't find the yodel of your dreams among the 58 choices that Yahoo provided, you can also upload your own in the Yodel Studio. Results posted thus far are, um, mixed.
The original yodel dates back to 1996, when singer Wylie Gustafson was paid $590 to sing it in a television commercial. Hopefully, Yahoo did its due diligence this time around: Gustafson later sued the company for continuing to use the yodel--easily Yahoo's best-known trademark--for years without his permission. The parties later settled.
Updated September 18 at 10:40 a.m. PDT with Yahoo comment.
Having conquered the Web's text-based ad market, Google is setting its sights on graphical display ads--a market dominated by rival Yahoo.
The search giant on Thursday took the wraps off a revamped DoubleClick Ad Exchange, a public exchange that allows publishers to offer excess ad inventory they can't sell to advertisers looking for a bargain. Google said the exchange will meld DoubleClick's ad exchange with Google's own technology.
"Better technology can help make display advertising work better for all involved," Neal Mohan, Google's vice president of product management, said in a statement. "We're focused on growing the display advertising pie for everyone. The DoubleClick Ad Exchange is a major part of that goal."
The revamped exchange will incorporate Google's AdWords and AdSense programs, as well as feature real-time bidding and a new API (application programming interface) designed for ad networks.
Yahoo, which runs the largest online ad exchange through RightMedia, an exchange it purchased in 2007 for $680 million, said it expected the display market to have other exchanges.
"We welcome these exchanges, and look forward to working with them and integrating with them for our partners," Yahoo Marketplace chief Frank Weishaupt said in a statement. "The industry will be well served if all exchanges embrace the values we cherish, and will help promote rather than restrict the spirit of openness and the resulting transparency and liquidity of supply, demand and data in the industry."
Google's dominance of the search engine advertising market has been fueled by text ads. In 2008, it completed its $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick in hopes of expanding its presence in display ads. Display ads--banners or image-based advertisements--haven't produced the same return that search text ads have to this point but are still an important part of most Web sites.
Internet display advertising accounted for $7.6 billion in 2008, roughly a third of the $23.4 billion in revenue generated by all Internet ads for the year, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau.
Microsoft's new Bing search service is the fastest-growing U.S. search engine among the top 10, according to a Nielsen report released Monday.
The total amount of searches on Bing rang in at 1.1 billion for the month of August, a leap of 22.1 percent over July, winning Microsoft a 10.7 percent share of the search engine market.
Google remained in the top spot with a commanding 64.6 percent share, accounting for 7 billion searches in August, a gain of 2.6 percent over July. Yahoo saw its search results drop 4.2 percent for the month to 1.7 billion, earning it 16 percent of the market.
(Credit:
Nielsen)
Other players in the top 10 included AOL Search in fourth place with 333 million searches and Ask.com Search in fifth with 186 million searches.
Similar studies have also seen a boost in Microsoft's search business. An August report from ComScore discovered that Microsoft's share of the global search engine market lept 41 percent from July 2008 to July 2009. Bing was introduced in May, taking the place of Microsoft's Live Search.
Earlier this week, Microsoft showed off a "visual search" feature for Bing that returns thumbnail images for at least some search results. Microsoft reportedly will be debuting a Bing 2.0 sometime soon sporting a variety of new features.
A three-judge panel ruled Friday that Yahoo will not have to pay up every time it plays a song on its Internet radio service, affirming an earlier verdict.
In what is being seen as a defeat for the music industry, Yahoo Music was not deemed "interactive" enough to require the company to negotiate with record companies for the rights to play songs over the Internet. Instead, according to Reuters, it merely has to pay licensing fees to digital music rights organization SoundExchange.
The suit arose way back in 2001, when a division of Sony sued Launch Media claiming the service was bypassing a law that requires those who provide specific playlists of songs over the Internet to pay rights holders. Yahoo also acquired Launch Media that year, but has since turned over control of the service to CBS Radio, a division of the same corporation that publishes CNET News.
Yahoo won the case in 2007, but Sony appealed, resulting in Friday's decision.
With Bing, Microsoft is trying to reinvigorate its role in the search business. It has also inadvertently brought renewed attention to the problem of illicit pharmacies operating on the Internet.
The attention on Bing came earlier this month with the results of a study that examined Internet pharmacy ads (PDF) on Microsoft's revamped search engine. The study, conducted by LegitScript, an online pharmacy verification service, and KnujOn, an Internet compliance company, found that 90 percent of the reviewed Internet pharmacy advertisements were from fake or illegal Internet pharmacies. It also found that most of the Internet pharmacies reached through sponsored ads on Bing did not require a valid prescription.
Sponsored ads are links, paid for by companies hawking products and services, that turn up at the top of search results pages alongside noncommercial links.
A study by LegitScript and KnujOn takes Microsoft to task for sponsored search ads on its Bing site that lead to sketchy Internet pharmacies. (Click image to enlarge.)
(Credit: LegitScript)"We were able to purchase potentially addictive drugs without a prescription or any age verification via Bing.com ads," LegitScript President John Horton told CNET News. "We also received counterfeit medication. Microsoft profits from these illegal ads, which put Internet users at risk."
But the problem isn't confined to Bing. For all the buzz generated by Bing--which debuted in June, replacing Microsoft's Live Search--it's still only the third most-used search tool, dwarfed by first-place Google and also well behind Yahoo. And those search engines themselves are no strangers to ads for illicit pharmacies.
The problem has also been around since consumers began flocking to the Internet more than a decade ago. In 2003, for instance, Yahoo's Overture unit bowed to pressure from pharmacy groups and stopped selling search-related advertising to unlicensed online pharmacies. That also spelled an end to the troublesome ads on Microsoft's MSN portal, at that time a significant partner of Overture.
Over the last decade, the situation has evolved to bring new challenges.
"In the early years of the Internet, it was a case of entrepreneurs not understanding the legal requirements for the dispensing of drugs. Later, it was the push by senior citizens and public officials to obtain drugs that were cheaper than medications available in the U.S.," said Carmen Catizone, executive director of the trade group National Association of Boards of Pharmacies.
"At the present time," said Catizone, who vouched for the research by LegitScript, "the Internet has become a haven for drug seekers and abusers, particularly (regarding) controlled substances. It is a much more serious and dangerous phase of the Internet."
Rogue online pharmacies sell a wide range of medications, from the sleep aid Ambien to the muscle relaxant Soma and the erectile dysfunction treatments Viagra and Cialis. The NABP lists only 18 certified and recommended online drugstores at its Web site, while more than 3,800 are non-compliant and not recommended
The response from Redmond
Microsoft disputes LegitScript's claim that 90 percent of the sponsored Internet pharmacy ads on Bing are fake or illegal, adding that it is working to weed out the rogue advertisers that do slip through. The company uses an Internet pharmacy verification service called PharmacyChecker--a competitor of LegitScript--to ensure that its sponsored prescription drug advertisements are legitimate.
Investors panned Yahoo's search and advertising deal with Microsoft on Wednesday, sending Yahoo's stock down 12 percent. IDC's analysts called it a "strategic mistake."
But here's what's good about it: After a year and a half of public scrapping, behind-the-scenes drama, and dysfunctional communications through leaks to the press, Microsoft and Yahoo now can get back to business.
The Microhoo concept has been reduced from a giant cloud of uncertainty hanging over both companies to merely a complicated partnership between two rivals with Google as a common foe. The range of possibilities for Microsoft and Yahoo, which ran all the way from nothing to Yahoo disappearing altogether, has been pruned back to a much more manageable scope.
Nobody will notice any difference immediately from the outside. First comes regulatory scrutiny, with the companies hoping for approval in early 2010. But already, the deal provides a framework that should make it easier for the companies to establish their new identities.
With Microsoft acquiring license to Yahoo's search technology, applying its search-ad auction process to both companies' searches, and offering jobs to many Yahoo employees, it appears Redmond is carrying more of the Ph.D.-intensive fight to Google. Yahoo, keeping its display advertising business and focusing on its home page redesign, becomes more of a hub for people's online activity and platform for outside Web sites' developers.
Some awkwardness remains where those two visions overlap. One is the work Yahoo has done to augment search results through a program called SearchMonkey, which can interpret tags on others' Web sites so they can be spruced up with new information when those pages appear in search results. To work, it requires the cooperation of the Web crawlers that index the contents of Web pages and the servers that present the search results.
To me, that looks like the sort of chore that will require Microsoft and Yahoo to work together in search. Fortunately, Microsoft and Yahoo have a 100-page playbook that had better address such aspects, and Microsoft Senior Vice President Yusuf Mehdi declared Wednesday he likes the SearchMonkey approach.
The companies also gave themselves two full years to fully implement the deal, too, so there's time to work out such details. In the meantime, Yahoo can't afford to stand still. SearchMonkey is one element of a new hybrid search page that Yahoo said it will start testing with its users starting in August.
There's some important context for these changes and for the Microsoft-Yahoo deal: search results are growing beyond the plain list of 10 hyperlinks with accompanying snippets of text. Google, for example, blends in ever larger quantities of "universal" search results such as maps, YouTube videos, photos, and news.
Yahoo plans to make its search pages more like its main page.
(Credit: Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)Yahoo's new search results page include not only SearchMonkey, but also display advertising and the key element of its new home page, a customizable list of applications down the left side. The search results themselves become just part of a broader package, so Yahoo outsourcing the actual search engine duties to Microsoft isn't giving away as much of the core business.
Outsourcing search has a cost, of course. The partnership means Yahoo will get only 88 percent of search-ad revenue on its sites for the first five years, down from 100 percent today. Yahoo, though, also gets lower operational expenses and thus, it expects, greater profitability over the long term. Yahoo expects $275 million more each year in operating cash flow.
Carol Bartz, Yahoo's new chief executive, has shown herself to be a pragmatist who prefers picking her battles. With the Microsoft deal, she's chosen to sit a big one out, freeing the company from having to out-Google Google. What the company sacrifices in ambition it gets back in goals that are actually attainable.
For Microsoft, though, the struggle against Google becomes more intense. The combined search market share of Yahoo and Microsoft still is half what Google has, and the fact that Wednesday's Yahoo pact is smaller in scope than some earlier possible incarnations means Microsoft has that much more hard work before it.
The company clearly wants to make a third big business out of its online operations to complement its Windows and Office cash cows. Getting Yahoo's search technology and Web site traffic gives it a better stronghold but by no means a victory.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer uses a giant pen to sign the 10-year deal, alongside Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz, on Wednesday at Yahoo's headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif.
(Credit: Yahoo/Microsoft )After months of fits and starts, Microsoft and Yahoo on Wednesday announced a 10-year search deal that will see the two companies join forces to take on Google.
"In simple terms, Microsoft will now power Yahoo search while Yahoo will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies' premium search advertisers," the companies said in a joint statement. The deal is expected to go into effect in 2010 and improve Yahoo's profitability, though not its revenue, the companies said.
Less expansive than the all-out, $44 billion acquisition Microsoft proposed last year--and even than some of the search partnerships once discussed--the deal does allow the companies to share resources and combine their engineering efforts. Even together, however, the two companies have only about 30 percent of the search market compared to Google, which has more than twice that amount.
"This agreement gives us the scale and resources to create the future of search," Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said in a statement. "Success in search requires both innovation and scale. With our new Bing search platform, we've created breakthrough innovation and features. This agreement with Yahoo will provide the scale we need to deliver even more rapid advances in relevancy and usefulness."
Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz, meanwhile, said that the move will help Yahoo focus on other areas, also adding that the deal has the full support of the company's board (lest anyone wonder what Carl Icahn thinks about the more limited deal).
"This is a significant opportunity for us," Bartz said. "Microsoft is an industry innovator in search and it is a great opportunity for us to focus our investments in other areas critical to our future."
Editors' note: The two companies had a conference call Wednesday morning to discuss the deal. Click here for our live-blog coverage of that event.
The dollar value
As for the financial terms, there is not the large upfront payment once discussed. However, Microsoft will offer both revenue guarantees to Yahoo as well as the lion's share of the search-advertising revenue generated on Yahoo's site.
That apparently wasn't enough to satisfy investors. In trading before the market opened, Yahoo's stock dropped more than 7 percent, or $1.28, to $15.94. Microsoft rose 1 percent, or 24 cents, to $23.71.
Yahoo will get 88 percent of search revenue created by its sites during the first five years, while Microsoft will guarantee a certain level of search revenue for 18 months in each country. The companies expect it will take about two years after the deal is approved to fully get the partnership up and running.
Once fully in place, Yahoo said it expects the deal will boost its annual operating income by about $500 million, while reducing capital expenditure by $200 million and increasing operating cash flow by about $275 million per year.
Microsoft will be able to incorporate Yahoo's search technology, including its Panama ad-selling tool, but the companies will use Microsoft's AdCenter sales tool and Bing search engine to power both sites.
Aiming to head off privacy concerns, the two companies noted that "the agreement protects consumer privacy by limiting the data shared between the companies to the minimum necessary to operate and improve the combined search platform, and restricts the use of search data shared between the companies."
The deal must still pass regulatory muster and the two companies anticipate it will take several months to finalize. "Microsoft and Yahoo expect the agreement to be closely reviewed by the industry and government regulators, and welcome questions," the companies said. "The companies are hopeful that closing can occur in early 2010."
Microsoft and Yahoo are joining forces in search, but in a line clearly aimed at regulators, the companies take pains to note that their collaboration is limited to that arena.
"The agreement does not cover each company's Web properties and products, e-mail, instant messaging, display advertising, or any other aspect of the companies' businesses," they said. "In those areas, the companies will continue to compete vigorously."
