We gotta keep searchin' searchin'

Never the greatest master of timing, Microsoft is looking to launch their "more focused" search engine (Kumo?) this summer. After trying to acquire or partner with Yahoo! last year, the strategy seems to have become "let's throw money at another agency and see what happens."

Microsoft Looks to JWT to Market New Search Engine - Agency News - Advertising Age

. . .the forthcoming campaign will be careful to not position "Kumo" as a competitor to Yahoo or Google and instead cast it as a reimagined search engine that ups the game by yielding fewer but more-focused results. The proposed strategy is probably a good -- if not the only -- way to go.

Microsoft search is languishing in third place, declining 15 percent from February 2008 to February 2009. During this time, Google grew in share of consumer searches by 7 percent to 63.3 percent and Yahoo gained 5 percent to 20.6 percent share of consumer searches.

More here: A Sneak Peek Look at Microsoft’s New Kumo: A Spidery Cloud? A Cloudy Spider? | Kara Swisher | BoomTown | AllThingsD

On AllThingsD, there is an internal memo from Microsoft's search guru, Satya Nadella, urging all company employees to try the new search engine and provide feedback for improvement or bugs.

Nothing earth-shaking, but the memo contained these statistics:

• 40% of queries go unanswered;
• 50% of queries are about searchers returning to previous tasks; and,
  
• 46% of search sessions are longer than 20 minutes.

This is sad. If we phrase our search query correctly, we should see pages of relevant search engine results. We do not. Instead we are shown the paid ads, then the organic results from the "professional" sites, then the blog results. Down the side column, we have news stories, videos and images that may or may not be related to our query.

So, I guess we gotta keep searchin' searchin' . . . (Del Shannon lyrics)

Tags: search engine marketing, kumo search engine, microsoft