It’s probably inevitable that Google’s meteoric rise—within search and, until CFO George Reyes’ latest bout of straight talk to analysts, on the stock exchange—would create intense speculation about where the next Google will come from. Of course, Ask.com made a strong bid to be the inside favorite with its impressive re-launch Monday. But in “The Search Landscape”, a continuing feature of Search Engine Strategies conferences, Hitwise general manager of global research Bill Tancer named his surprising choice for search’s leader-in-the-making. [For more on this story, go to the DirectBuzz SES blog.]
Before unveiling his dark-horse candidate, Tancer made a few points about the current leaders in the search industry. In terms of executed searches, Google would seem to have a commanding, almost insurmountable lead over its rivals, with 63.1% of all searches in December 2005—14% more than it had in January of last year.
But Tancer believes that the next development in the search industry will be the re-emergence of portals, sites that offer search but also capitalize on quick and easy access to the kind of content users want. Making this content available can be a powerful force in building Web traffic to a critical mass.
For example, Tancer pointed out, Google’s Book Search beta test—offering serch of digitized print content-- increased its market share of visits by 900% one day last November simply by placing a link to the feature on the Google home page. With that one link, Book Search rose to fourth position among Google’s properties in terms of traffic.
“This demonstrates the power that search engines have to distribute content,” Tancer said. Web video site YouTube took the lead from both Google and Yahoo! in the Internet video market over the course of two weeks this year, simply through the viral spread of the “Lazy Sunday” video.
As for who the most significant contender is today, and where the next challenge to Google’s dominance might come from, Tancer said he’s putting his money on social community site MySpace.com.
Admittedly, it’s a bold prediction—especially since MySpace doesn’t even offer search at this moment. But search functions can be bought. Meanwhile, its phenomenal and rapid growth indicates that MySpace is giving its users the content they want and has the raw potential to be a very, very big portal indeed.
Back in November 2004, MySpace had less than half a percentage point of market share among all the sites Hitwise tracked, Tancer pointed out. As of last week, the MySpace properties accounted for 5.25% of all Internet visits. That compares to 3.9% for Google in the same period, he said.
“If they incorporate search, they stand a chance to become the Next Big Thing,” Tancer said.
