Australia & the search engines

Published by Pip Wilson on 30 May 2008

Where do you go to find Australian online content? The Australian National Library’s list of search engines is one place to start. The Australian Government’s online Culture and Recreation Portal is another, but I doubt that the verb ‘to google’ will ever be replaced by ‘to culture and recreation portal’, even in this Great South Land.

Anyway, here’s a way to choose the best search engine for your needs, if you’re not inclined just ‘to google’.

And, of course, the Australian public still scratches its collective head about Sensis. The chief executive of the company, Bruce Akhurst, appears now to be backing away from Telstra boss Sol Trujillo's promise, made three years ago, to make this directories business a $3 billion-plus cash cow by 2011. Many have always wondered why Telstra would try to beat Google at its own game – like trying to play tennis against a youthful John McEnroe, with your shoelaces tied together.

In June, Akhurst declined to say whether his aggressive growth target still stood, as he unveiled plans for Sensis's Trading Post to become an online auction house and to challenge eBay. One doubts that eBay is trembling.

"No, we're not talking about financial results or financial projections," Akhurst told the media. Any wonder?

Sensis, however, also publishes the Yellow Pages and White Pages, and increased its earnings by 7.2 per cent for the December half to $953 million. Better than Internet tennis or even a poke in the eye with a burnt stick.

Trujillo, it seems, sticks to his forecast, despite Sensis missing its fiscal 2007 revenue target of at least 10 per cent growth.

So, beyond Aussie shores, which search engine worldwide is getting the hits? The answer comes from Hitwise:

Rank	Search Engine	Volume
1.	www.google.com	67.90%
2.	search.yahoo.com	20.28%
3.	search.msn.com	4.52%
4.	www.ask.com	4.17%

Then there’s Brisbane-based Clickfind, another Australian search engine – actually a ‘listing for fee’ directory – that recently “launched a competitive attack on the established Yellow Pages Online and Microsoft's Mylocal business models offering advertising-free directory listings that help secure top Google rankings for Australian business owners” (says Computerworld), and is receiving mixed reviews from the punters for its design.

As in the case of Sensis, Clickfind is really a directory rather than a complete search engine, and it remains to be seen whether any of these services will pull the clicks like Google does. We know they won’t. Even the fact that advertisers can list 500 different services and/or products on separate pages, for a reasonable fee, is unlikely to draw the crowds, and crowds is what it’s all about as long as Google Goliath is on the scene. Clickfind can at least offer its advertisers that its pages are search engine optimised and therefore Google friendly.

Meanwhile, “Fairfax Media is hoping to snare a slice of the burgeoning internet search market by acting as a middleman between the search engine companies and small advertisers. The company, owner of The Age, has begun a joint venture with website domain name registrar Melbourne IT to resell pay-per-click advertising for searches done on Google, Yahoo! and other search engines …

“‘It gets us into the fastest-growing piece of the pie, which is search,’” Fairfax Digital chief executive Jack Matthews said.

Martin Kelly, the editor of Searchengineroom.com.au, estimates that Google is responsible for more than 60 per cent of internet searches globally – and more than 90 per cent in Australia.

At the same time, Google Maps Australia and its Local Business Centre function are making inroads into Australian search and advertise functions.

Google’s revenue in this year’s first quarter, came through the Net pipeline at more than $2 million an hour. Google ranks its ads based on a winning combination of bid price and click-through rate.

Yahoo keeps trying. As The New York Times wrote on June 2, “Yahoo tried to catch up by building a new search advertising system that works more like Google’s. It helped increase revenue, but by Yahoo’s own account, Google still earns 60 percent to 70 percent more on average than Yahoo on every search. Microsoft has also lagged, in part because it lacks enough advertisers. It acknowledged as much with its recent attempt to buy Yahoo.”

It’s a busy life for the search engine gurus.

Australia & the search engines

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