There is a soap opera playing out right now between the major search engine providers. Google, who has been the king of the playground for the past few years is finding that the other kids don’t want to play nice. Apple has decided to replace Google Maps with its own mapping app and if you are looking for the YouTube app on the new iOS 6 operating system, don’t bother. Apple is further separating itself from Google and why shouldn’t it? Eric Jackson, a contributor for Forbes.com recently wrote a great article on why Apple should partner with Yahoo (click here to read the article). He pointed out that since Yahoo doesn’t have a mobile operating system that they wouldn’t be a competitor and therefore would be the perfect search engine solution for Apple. He also suggested that Yahoo should take back control of its back end search from Microsoft since their new mobile search application Axis is doing so well and will continue to improve. Marissa Mayer, the new CEO of Yahoo seems to be the kind of person that would pull the trigger on such a proposal. She also seems like she might be the first CEO Yahoo has had in a while that will bring the company back to dominance.
In other search engine news Facebook has just announced its new Graph Search. No longer will you need to post on your timeline questions to friends like, “Where is a good Sushi restaurant?” These kind of posts usually solicit a few answers, but then you still end up going to Google or Yahoo anyway. With Facebook’s new Graph Search, it will scour your friends likes and give you all the answers you need. It will be very interesting to see how that affects Google’s saturation.
So how does this affect your SEO? A good search engine optimization company stays on top of the drama. Here at Impact Media we are keeping a very close eye on how the Apple/Google drama plays out because it will affect how we optimize. If Apple did utilize Yahoo then it would place a much higher value on the time we spend optimizing for the Yahoo search engine. Right now Google has a 70% share of the search engine market so most of our time is concentrated on optimizing for that particular engine. Now with Facebook’s new Graph Search, there is a new wrinkle that has been thrown in. As an SEO company at the top of our game, we have to reformulate our process to include the new Graph Search for the appropriate clients. This is part of the reason why SEO isn’t a cheap marketing strategy, but when you are using the services of a good company who understands the ever changing landscape of the search engine universe, you will get a much higher return on your investment.
