Over the past few months, search engines have been doing more than just parse links and display the content that surrounds them. Most online search websites are focusing on search engine optimization and search engine marketing. Therefore, they have made a conscious effort in integrating various elements such as pictures and videos into their search websites, and have launched special products catering specifically to the advertising community.

According to Nielsen Online, Google has a 56% share of the search market in the US, compared to 18% for Yahoo! and 14% for Microsofts Live facility. In India too the order of the market share between the top three prominent players is similar. JuxtConsults Indiaonline report states that 81% of all Internet users in India prefer Google English for information search and 65% of the users prefer Google local language search for looking up local information.

Search Revamped
Google has recently unveiled some opt-in experimental search features such as alternate view for search results: keyword suggestions, keyboard shortcuts, left-hand search navigation, and right-hand contextual search navigation that allow users to find and reorganize different kinds of search results. Google has also revealed in a blog post that they are working on a new Internet encyclopaedia project codenamed Knol. This year, Google also moved to its own statistical translation system and launched the Google Translate service in Hindi, to tap the large non-English literate audience in India.

Creating a whole new search experience, Yahoo! India has also launched a new search product called Glue that yields results with visual information. Glue Pages Beta slaps together normal search results, Google Blog Search results, Yahoo Answers results, HowStuffWorks articles, Wikipedia entries, Flickr images, and YouTube videos all in one place.

The third largest player, MSN has also made significant improvements to its Windows Live Search platform and has localized content in about six languages.

Rediff.com has introduced a new toolbar for Firefox 3 that also allows users to use the search bar as an address bar, where the toolbar intelligently identifies the url keywords and directs the user to the website instead of displaying search results.

In a dramatic about-face, Ask.com, the fifth largest player in the search space, is abandoning its effort to outshine Internet search leader Google and has also bought a stable of Internet reference sites that includes Dictionary.com, Thesaurus.com, and Reference.com to distinguish itself from Google.

Apart from Googles local language search services, local Indian websites such as Webduniya, 123 Khoj, Raftaar have made significant inroads as far as regional language information search and localization of content is concerned. For the moment, these search sites produce very few results as not many websites are built in regional languages.

Mobile Search Market
Indias budding mobile market is the next in line that search engine service providers are eyeing. The latest development is the OneSearch SMS service from Yahoo! and recent additions to its OneSearch WAP product.Google also recently launched an SMS Search service offering local info like restaurant location, movie timings, business listing, etc. Microsoft has also added new features to its Live Search for Windows Mobile and BlackBerry.

Tapping the Ad Community
Google Custom Search Engine recently announced that they will now power AdSense (ad-serving program) for search. Besides, Google also has AdWords (ad purchase and budgeting service) that are displayed along with search results on Google, as well as on content sites. Not far behind, Yahoo! India has also launched its new Yahoo! Search Marketing platform, enabling advertisers to get more from their search marketing campaigns.

Priya Kekre
priyak@cybermedia.co.in

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