Google under attack

• Aug. 28, 2003

Who would have thought five years ago that this little Stanford University student project would grow to be so big? The project is so mainstream that even television shows are mentioning it. There's entire websites devoted to pro or against views of the project. Even heavyweights like Microsoft and Yahoo! are aiming for it.

The project is Google. The search engine that rose from the ashes of the dot com bust to become the biggest, fastest, most used search engine on the planet. You know you're successful when Microsoft does a double take and determines that you are their next target. (A few years back Microsoft announced that it would not enter into the web search market. This year they began testing their own search engine spider).

Even Overture, who is in search for the money, acquired organic search results providers Altavista and Alltheweb in an attempt to take some of Google's market share. Yahoo bought Inktomi so that they could compete with Google. Even smaller engines like Teoma appear to be attempting to cash in on Google's success by offering simpler, more streamlined user interfaces.

Overture has been actively targeting Google in a public way. A few days ago Alltheweb announced an increased index, pushing their number about 500 million pages above Google's. Google replied the following day, increasing their index about 500 million pages higher than Alltheweb. Now Overture announces a new project which also appears to target Google. Research.Overture.com is a publicly available site outlining some of Overture's own research projects. Some are search related, and some are not. The goal of Overture research is to "position Overture as a pioneer in the next online revolution."

So I guess the question is: How much pressure can Google take? Can they retain their crown in light of all the competition gunning for them?

I don't think that they are threatened any time in the near future, but their market share will begin to shrink, starting with when Yahoo! switches to Inktomi. You could see Google's effective traffic cut in ½, as Yahoo! does account for about that much of Google's total traffic.

That's not to say that your Google referrals will be cut in half. It just means that unless you're prepared, your Yahoo! traffic could drop off.

And there's still the whole perception issue. Even main stream web users find Google provides the most relevant results. That will be a hard image for others like Overture to overcome. Particularly when users flocked away in droves from Altavista because of their apparent lack of ability to keep fresh results. This deficiency of Altavista is going to be hard for Overture to overcome.

And although Alltheweb does have an impressive index, we've found the results can be a little flakey at times. I know they are working at improving the relevancy of the results, but again, Google beat them to it, and that's a big hurdle for any search engine to overcome.

So is Google threatened? I don't think so, at least until MSN Search version 2 comes out, or Yahoo vastly improves the Inktomi relevance.

Rob Sullivan
Production Supervisor
Searchengineposition.com
Search Engine Positioning
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