5 Benefits of a STC to Microsoft and to Search Marketing

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June 20th, 2008 by Geoff

Speaking to Mel Carson, European Community Manager, Microsoft are opening a Search Technology Centre in European sometime soon (I would hazard a guess at 6 – 12 months). Mel confirmed that the location had not been confirmed yet, but what does this mean for Search? What does it mean for improving Microsoft and the Windows Live performance? Hear are the top 5 changes:

1. Speed – search engines pride themselves on how quickly they produce search results, not just on how many they can produce. When you next do a search on Google (apologies for swearing if you are like me and are an MSN enthusiast) but it gives a time of how long it takes to pull the information from the central database and present in on the SERPs. For Google it is normally below 1 second, but MSN doesn’t give this info. Maybe when they are proud of it they will publish it.
2. Relevance – to improve on the speed, the relevance of what is being brought back has got to improve. There is a massive difference between the relevance of the results on Google and MSN natural listings, which is why the PPC on MSN is probably so good.
3. Increased reach – already at 68% for Microsoft, but wants more
4. Increased spending on Windows Live PPC. With more relevance on natural listings it will bring more traffic to PPC and therefore more revenue for Microsoft (not that it lacks financial backing!)
5. TRAFFIC – to increase the percentage of online searchers from its current 5%. It has the potential, it just needs step 2 to be fulfilled successfully and this will follow.

Eric Schmidt said when he took over as CEO at Google that you need to have a successful algorithm for your SEO and a relevant PPC platform in order to be a successful search engine– at the moment Microsoft is lacking on the SEO front. With more relevant SEO listings it will create more trust and higher usability of the search engine, attracting more users and higher ad spends. This is a positive move for Microsoft on all fronts. Lets close that gap!

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