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Can advertising alone bring success to Google's competition?

Following in the wake of Ask.com's aggressive marketing campaigns, it is now Microsoft's turn to promote its Live search service. On its recently launched Lice Search Club site (club.live.com), Microsoft gets users to play games and solve puzzles, awarding them points which they can later exchange for assorted goodies.

It sure sounds like a Pepsi campaign. The clincher here is this: while you solve word puzzles, Microsoft 'pushes' live search results related to the word, without you ever even asking for it. There is a hint a button which shows up further search results.

Can 'Push Search ' and Puzzles make die hard Live Search users out of us?

Producing search results for predefined/preset words are one thing, showing results based on context of the content of a document, that too, on-the-fly is another.

Even Google couldn't do detailed semantic search.

Besides, Search is about Intention, Relavancy and Discovery.
I am not sure Push Search is fit or ready for this.

On a happier note for Microsoft, since it pushes automatic search results as users play games and puzzles on club.live.com, Hitwise reports that Microsoft’s share of US searches shot up from 8.46% to 9.85%.

Compared to Google's strengths and reach, this is chump change.
Google did not need advertising to promote its search engine.

Labels: google, Microsoft, search

posted by Pramit Singh @ 12:32 PM