Article on InfoSpace
msnbc.msn.com
By Jeff Meisner
Puget Sound Business Journal (Seattle)
Updated: 7:00 p.m. ET March 27, 2005InfoSpace Inc. is upping the ante in the nascent market for mobile search and directory services; a move that will bring it into even closer competition with industry giants such as Yahoo! Inc. and Google Inc.
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The Bellevue-based company's mobile unit, already a leader in the online directory market, has ambitious plans for 2005, most of which are aimed at serving users of cell phones, PDAs and other hand-held Internet devices.
InfoSpace will roll out a new mobile search engine designed for easier use than those offered by Google and Yahoo!, as well as new location-based services that use the company's massive library of local directory information.
The company compiled its directory information through partnerships with companies such as Dex Media and telephone carriers like BellSouth.
"The holy grail of InfoSpace Mobile over the next five years is to translate the search and directory services we have on the Web to the 170 million cell phone users in North America," said InfoSpace CEO Jim Voelker.
Last year was big for InfoSpace Mobile. Driven mainly by the sale of ringtones, annual revenue at the unit grew from $28 million in 2003 to $92 million in 2004, a 228 percent increase.
Yahoo! and Google already have mobile search engines available today. Yahoo's is available through Cingular Wireless, Sprint and T-Mobile.
One player in the mobile sector that doesn't yet have a wireless search engine available is Microsoft Corp. A spokesman for MSN Search said the company plans to use its current search technology to develop a mobile offering. No timetable for the service was given.
The problem with those search engines is that they can be unwieldy. Queries are answered with a long list of search results that require a great deal of scrolling up and down and going back and forth between Web pages on tiny cell-phone screens, Voelker said.
Within the next 12 months, InfoSpace Mobile will launch a wireless search engine that enables users to make natural language queries in two ways -- by speaking directly into the phone or typing them in.
Instead of getting back 20 results, InfoSpace Mobile's new search engine will bring back the two or three best results it can find, Voelker said.
The new service will have what Voelker describes as a "clean, uncluttered look."
Branding for the new engine is still up in the air -- Voelker would not say whether InfoSpace's flagship Web search site, Dogpile, will figure at all in the new initiative.
Chris Sherman, editor of Jupiter Media-owned site Search Engine Watch, said most wireless carriers don't want their brands diluted by popular Web sites such as Google and Yahoo!.
In a private-label strategy, InfoSpace would play a neutral role, supplying mobile search technology to wireless carriers that can call it whatever they want.
Like Yahoo! and Google, InfoSpace has long-standing relationships with the wireless carriers. Today, InfoSpace provides content and search and directory services through the American and European T-Mobile carriers, Orange SA of France, Vodafone of the United Kingdom, Cingular, Verizon Wireless and Virgin Mobile.
Sherman said mobile search and directory services are in their infancy and no one company is a clear leader -- not even Google.
Dogpile makes mark in search wars
Can a search engine with a name like Dogpile become a major player in the high-dollar Internet search wars?
Though tiny compared with Google, Yahoo! and MSN Search, data from Nielsen/NetRatings of New York shows Dogpile, owned by Bellevue-based InfoSpace Inc., is growing fast.
The number of Web-page views at Dogpile skyrocketed from about 62 million in September 2004 to 108 million in February, a 74 percent increase.
Dogpile is a metasearch engine, meaning it compiles search results from other search engines such as Google, Yahoo! Search and AskJeeves.
The site compares favorably in terms of the average time users spend there when compared with top search destinations Google, AOL Search and Yahoo! search. In February, users spent an average of 13 minutes at Dogpile, nearly twice as much as the average for Dogpile's much bigger neighbor in Redmond, MSN Search.
Paid search -- in which companies purchase advertising space that appears only on directly relevant search pages -- has proved to be a good business for InfoSpace, and for other search services.
Search and directory revenue at InfoSpace grew from about $94 million in 2003 to $156 million in 2004, a 62 percent increase mainly driven by paid search.
InfoSpace executive vice president of search and directory services Brian McManus said the company intends to continue pouring money into Dogpile to drive more traffic to the site and bring in more paid-search ad revenue.
McManus wants to expand the sheer number and diversity of search results, both paid and unpaid, at Dogpile. Despite its geographic proximity to Microsoft, InfoSpace hasn't been able to incorporate MSN search results into Dogpile.
"We'd like to," McManus said. "(MSN Search) has a valuable approach to the market. We've looked at results from MSN, and they have a different voice on the Web than Google and Yahoo! do."
McManus hinted that changes to the user interface at Dogpile are also on the horizon, but he was vague when it came to details.
"It will enable you to better experience metasearch," he said.
InfoSpace developers are also spending a great deal of time trying to sharpen the relevance of results that Dogpile brings up to its users.
"We're trying to better figure out what people are clicking on," McManus said. "Relevance changes as frequently as pop culture. We're developing software technology that monitors and analyzes what users find relevant."
Also worth noting: INSP received $83 million from Jain today. |
