SEO Marketing Boom

Search engine optimization (SEO) and Search engine marketing (SEM) are becoming more recognized form of online advertising for ever-growing number of companies. Over 12 billion dollars will be spent this year in the United States alone. In Australia this figure is close to 90 million dollars. Many big companies like for example Procter & Gamble are cutting back on their TV ad spending, and increasing funds for Internet brand building. The main challenge for SEO companies is to ensure that the websites of their customers are appearing first in the search engine results when certain keywords for products or services are requested. However this will become increasingly difficult as more companies will enhance their websites to compete for top search results.

MSN Book Search

According to internal Microsoft research over 50 percent of online queries go unanswered on search engines. To address this issue Microsoft intention is to to launch MSN Book Search. This will greatly improve finding the exact information including the content from the books, academic materials, periodicals and other print resources. The idea of a book search in not new, since Google started its own Google Book Search called Library Project many months ago. This has created already some controversy and has provoked lawsuits by publishers and writers. It will be a battle for Microsoft as well, to achive its goal in creating more relevent search results.