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.
Of COURSE the engines are ignoring the others! The trains did not support the production of rubber for auto tires. The auto giants didn't support the development of the Boeing company and McDonald Douglas.
ReplyDeleteAll I'm saying is that the Search Engines are doing what every business does - they built their business in their own language. They were and are good at what they do, so the world has flocked to them, learned their language and made use of them. No problem there.
Does it create barriers to entry? Sure thing. Is it insurmountable? Of course not. The very fact that they are not adopting multiple languages (Yahoo Japan, as you point out isn't even Yahoo) is their Achilles Heel. It's the break in the barrier to entry that Baidu and others will use to gain access to the monster market that is growing now.
China is the only country with a growing middle class. Gonna be interesting, folks. Not that I'm recommending selling your google stock short just yet, but it's definitely gonna be interesting......
A great point of view... the interesting thing is there are areas where conversion is possible for the engines to make more money but the language barriers are not being met fast enough... Arabic being a big one.
ReplyDeleteThe Arabic countries have a large amount of money to spend but Yahoo and Microsoft both do not support it.
Google is slowly getting there but it is very limited.
Bingo! Excellent case in point. The first company into that market will clean up big time.
ReplyDeleteI think you are mistaken. It's not that the big US 3 are keen on ignoring the Asian market, they've failed compared to home-grown startups. Google's results in China, Korea and Japan are terrible, they're toward the bottom of the ranked seach engines. The search results are even worse comapred to what is available in other countries.
ReplyDeleteThe open secret amongst Asian portal users is that Yahoo, Google, MSN pale in comparison to the results you get from yahoo.co.kr or Naver. Asian portals don't work like they do in the US, no US company has had great success in building websites in Asia. Not eBay, not Amazon, not a single search engine.
Your claim of Xenophobic is utterly mistaken, why on earth do you think they wouldn't try?
How horribly uninformed and ignorant of you.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, just because the first page of results for "pokemon" are in English, doesn't mean that search engines aren't incorporating other languages into the process.
If you had done any research at all, you would realize there are language-specific versions of every major search engine. But instead, you apparently felt the need to show everyone that you learned a new word with more than 2 syllables that starts with an x. Congratulations, we're all proud of you.
As for including multiple languages in a single search, the technology just isn't there yet. It's impossibly difficult to determine the relevance of websites in relation to a search word or phrase when there are just two languages involved, much less all of them.
So instead of being critical of the search engines just for the sake of being critical, why don't you offer the algorithmic solution to the problem? I'm sure Google would happily put you on the payroll for a proof of concept.
You've got to be kidding me!
ReplyDelete"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."
A) eBay has been around longer than that. I've been an eBay member since March of '97 at least (first feedback on my account).
B) Debit cards have been around at least 20 years, not 7: http://www.apacs.org.uk/media_centre/press/documents/20yearsofDebitCardFINAL.pdf
The companies do have a hesitancy to move into the foreign markets... the language barriers, economies of the countries etc. have had an impact.
ReplyDeleteI know people at the engines that have told me they want to push into new countries but are on a limited growth plan - the US market still needs the bulk of the attention.
"First of all, just because the first page of results for "pokemon" are in English, doesn't mean that search engines aren't incorporating other languages into the process."
You can usually find English pages in foreign language searches higher in the results than in an English search.... obviously there are more English pages in the databases, but this is fast changing yet not reflected accurately in the SERPs.
If you had done any research at all, you would realize there are language-specific versions of every major search engine. But instead, you apparently felt the need to show everyone that you learned a new word with more than 2 syllables that starts with an x. Congratulations, we're all proud of you.
I think it is hilarious that you make that assumption... it reflects one of the biggest barriers to multilingual search - linguist miscommunication. I know you are trying to be sarcastic but you missed the intent and meaning of my words.... I was not talking about an absence of language versions of the major search engines - though look a little deeper into the Middle Eastern languages and you will find them lacking. And even in the areas where they do have a language specific search engine - a few of them still lack any PPC for advertisers to take advantage of and this is the critical element to a SEM. And thanks for the praise of my vocabulary - Mum would be proud.
As for including multiple languages in a single search, the technology just isn't there yet. It's impossibly difficult to determine the relevance of websites in relation to a search word or phrase when there are just two languages involved, much less all of them.
I was not trying to have them all integrated... I just want some PPC in the Middle East and better expanded match in most foreign languages.
Google does not need to move as they do everything from home base. Yahoo has the excuse that they separate every country and offer accounts that way. But whichever method all three are sadly lacking in efforts into foreign countries - IMO they are leaving a lot on the table.