Reading Notes: Search Engines: Intense Competition Drives Better User Experiences

From: http://www.keynote.com/benchmark/new_media/article_intense_competition.shtml

* 85% of web traffic comes from search engines
* in Nov 2007, 10 billion queris in us alone
* avg user does 74 searches/month
* small companies can reap big profit by capturing a small slice
* google 57% of market, yahoo 20%, msn 10% - but competitors are improving
* yahoo still gets more eyes than anyone. 136m uniques, google is 131m
* trend in US for consumers to seek alternatives when there is a market leader
* drivers of search engine success are: home page appeal + search quality
* future is... more of the same, incremental improvements
** targeted search interfaces, satisfying smaller markets

Yahoo!’s Kronthal sees the search function expanding to include the vast sea of user-generated and shared information resources.
“In the future, people will be sharing information on a massive scale,” Kronthal points out, “and we believe that is the next chapter of growth for the Web. We’re looking to tap that valuable knowledge and integrate it into our Web search experience, so that Web search is not just searching Web sites for information, but also delivering the knowledge that individuals have through their collective experiences…We’ll actually be leveraging the knowledge that exists within the one giant social network.”