Are The Big Three Search Engines Xenophobic

I was writing a thread post at Search Engine Watch about how Google, Yahoo and Microsoft have decided having any social event at the Latin SES in Miami is not worth the money, when I started to see a pattern.

I really think these engines are very xenophobic. Okay they have opened some other languages and countries to their mix, but they do not get any where near the attention that the US traffic does.

True, no other country spends as much online - but that is for the moment. The same could be said about the US only a few years ago. Back prior to 2000 the main flow of money on the web was in the porn industry. But buying anything else - by 'real' people - was not a trusted process, many people did not have credit cards and the debit card had not been invented.

The current state of things in most other countries is the same as back then in the US. In South America vendors are starting to add e commerce options for their businesses online. People are starting to get access to debit cards and are willing to buy stuff online. Now as salaries increase and access to the web becomes more prevalent, this swing in the buying power of non-US internet users will be very noticable.

China is a great example. Baidu and Sina have been the front runners and Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are in there trying to make partnership deals.

In Japan, Yahoo does not even own Yahoo Japan - that is part of Soft Bank. Yahoo rules in Japan.... just not the real Yahoo.

Meanwhile, Germany and France have started developing their own search engines... guess it is up to Brazil and one of the Spanish-speaking countries in South America to do the same. The big three are xenophobes... would love to know if Larry or Sergey , the Yahoo boys, or even Bill - a 2007 recipient of the Order of the Aztec Eagle condecoration from the Mexican President - have illegal workers doing their lawns or washing?

Hopefully someone with a deeper insight into the development of population groups and the preferred languages of future internet users will start developing better multilingual search tools and grab the attention of the internet marketing people who know the value of multilingual marketing already.

We are waiting for the rest of the industry to catch up. I attend the Miami SES for this reason.... I want to stay in front of the curve.

As any surfer will tell you that is where the best rides are.

Google's Handy MultiLingual Search Tool

I discovered this little gem while doing some research for my panel presentations for SES Miami in just over a week. This translation tool will be very helpful in some cases. But it also allows the trap many multilingual marketers seem to fall into, translating words from one langauge that may not really be the words used by the other language to describe the same topic.

Successful multilingual marketing takes a little more than direct translations. Now if they could combine this with a keyword suggestion tool so people could see the other possible ways of saying a phrase, then we would be able to do searches for these other terms and possibly find what keywords the locals are using to attract customers.

The Spanish market as I mentioned in the previous post is one to get involved in now. So I would recommend joining us in Miami to get some great insights.

SES Miami: Catch The Latin Heat

Amid all the competition in the search engine conference industry right now, many people are overlooking the growing value in Latin America.

The economies of the countries have stabilized. The use of the web has grown rapidly, as has the number of online buyers. Yet the push by the major engines into this space has been pretty lame.

Wake up Yahoo! and Microsoft it is far easier to compete in this market and grow into it. Don't give up the US market, just see beyond it.

Yahoo has the benefit of their purchase of Terespondo, but are slow to push the growth in the space.

Yahoo and Google will be exhibiting at SES Miami - Microsoft did not even think it worthwhile....

Guess the adTech event the following week is the play this year. Should be interesting to see who they have for the search portion... the press release says there are 120 speakers covering all areas of media.

Getting the people from the search engines as speakers is good when balanced by advertisers and agencies etc. - this does not seem to be the case at adTech, while SES provides an in depth look into the Latin search market as well as access to the people from South America who head many of the larger companies search programs.

It never ceases to amaze me when you see provincial behavior from companies that exist on the web, especially the search engines. No wonder you have the French and Germans building their own search engines....

Catch the heat baby. Join me in the debate about this at the bar of the Intercontinental June 17-19 (conference runs 18 and 19).

SalesForce, Google Partnership Missing The Boat?

Okay they have been talking... hell for that matter I have been talking about this partnership for over a month.

Smart move on the part of SalesForce CEO Marc Benioff I originally thought - he sees the future of Google Analytics and wants to integrate with them to provide the offline to online conversion metric. The integration of Visual Sciences - formerly known as WebSideStory - with SalesForce was one of the reasons we chose it. We can pass the lead level info into our CRM and when it converts we can make informed decisions on our marketing spends.

But it also gives us the ability once we have that information to make our sales process more efficient by giving the more valuable leads to the right sales people.

The marriage of two major players in the on demand space was ideal.

I had heard SalesForce was launching a Content Management part some time later this year that would help their users sell the content or network it or do whatever they need with it.

Plug AdWords into this and you can see why Google was ready - but when does SalesForce get the big return? It comes by being the CRM part of Google Analytics... it was why I thought they were talking in the first place.

But as the press release states:

Salesforce Group Edition featuring Google AdWords, is a robust offering that combines the power of Salesforce on-demand CRM applications with the Google AdWords™ platform to achieve integrated sales and marketing success. This joint solution provides businesses of all sizes with the same tools used by larger enterprises to successfully attract and retain customers.

Rand Versus Shoe

Funny I know both of these guys and always knew they did not have the same business model. Guess they thought there was only one so the other must be doing the same thing.

If you have not seen this I am amazed you found my blog - as theirs get much more traffic.

But for a summary of the Rand versus Shoe debate those links will help.

Where do I stand... funny I think both of them will think I am on the other side.

Personally I think there is some form of benefit from any blog. Whether it is ego stroking (mine) or altruism (Rand's) or monetization (Shoe's), there is an ultimate motivator. I have ignored my personal blog because I have been doing work for Search Engine Watch. I figured I would get more exposure - combine that with I am too lazy to do the post it here and then reference it there stuff that many others are famous for...

Should every blog have a prominent disclosure text on the homepage? Sure why not... I guess we could make the About Us link the "About our blogging motives" link.

Must admit both parties have had a fair amount of traffic from this little crossfire. If I didn't know better I would almost think it was staged.... but while both would have thought about it, only one of them would have gone for it! (at least in the harsh light of day)

If only disputes about algorithms or PPC methodology received as much debate.