Tag: Search Engine

  • The Ultimate Guide to Cross-Platform Link Building: Tips, Strategies, and Benefits

    Today, the world has 6.93 billion smartphone users. You’d agree that content served through social platforms on your phone is something you consume the most. Sharing valuable content on social apps to make connections helps develop a robust online presence.

    This cross-platform practice helps build links for your website. It involves content sharing on different platforms and collaborating with workgroups to gain traction on your site. Let’s dive deeper into how cross-platform link-building works and how you can make it successful.

    How Cross-Platform Link Building Works?
    Linking Building Through Directories and Forums
    7 Strategies for Successful Cross-Platform Link Building
    5 Advantages of Cross-Platform Link Building

    Creating connections across platforms extends beyond the boundaries of a website encompassing diverse sources from various locations. It involves placing links to websites to redirect users back to your site. This approach does not enhance search engine optimization (SEO). It also fortifies the overall strength of your website.

    Social media platforms provide an opportunity to establish connections across networks. Marketers can enhance the visibility of their content by incorporating links from these platforms. Strategically placing links in both bios and posts can significantly drive traffic from media to websites.

    Linking Building Through Directories and Forums

    As per Reports Published by Authority Hacker, 93.8% of Link builders Believe Link Quality is More Important Than Link Quantity
    As per Reports Published by Authority Hacker, 93.8% of Link builders Believe Link Quality is More Important Than Link Quantity

    It is considered that building links through online directories and forums is a better option than guest posts in 2024. But you need to be consistent and legitimate. Joining talks, groups and lists while quietly adding links can help build trust and bring in visitors naturally.

    Suppose you have a travelling blog. By putting your blog on TripAdvisor in groups or places, you will get seen by travellers searching for facts. Add a link to your blog in the listing. This will bring users who want tips and suggestions into it. Get involved with people by answering reviews or asking questions gently. 

    Similarly, for forums, Reddit is a great example. If you choose a subject like AI and marketing, you can join niche groups called subreddits. You share your valuable information related to the niche and even chat with people of similar interests.

    How to do it right?

    • Do not spam or impose your blog. Rather, try to give hints that answer questions. Add links where they help the talk or provide useful details. This method helps create trust, draws visitors and creates a reputation on these platforms.
    • Focus more on the quality of those connections than just their quantity. Search engines have changed over time to spot and give more importance to good links instead of sneaky tricks. So focus on making content that can naturally get links from platforms.

    Top 10 SEO Link-Building Methods That Work for 2022
    Link building is an essential SEO activity to receive more visitors to a website. Read to know top link-building methods for creating quality links.


    1. Use the Power of Social Media Sites Like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook

    Share interesting stuff with built-in links that take users back to your website or other helpful things. Good headlines and pretty pictures can make these links more interesting, encouraging people to click on them and share.

    2. Collaborate and Create With Other Writers and Creators

    People love something extra and different every time. Working with other creators to create content that holds the audience is a walking trend. Also, you gain traction from the other creator’s audience and vice versa. It benefits both parties.

    3. Be Active on Websites and Communities in Your Niche

    Participate in discussions, share knowledge, go live and subtly incorporate resources or tools. This way you contribute to community conversations while gaining backlinks well. LinkedIn’s top voices are the best example of how this strategy can be worked with. 

    They comment on other posts, create posts and redirect readers to their newsletter and from there find the ones who buy their products and services.

    4. Offer Exclusive Information (For Free)

    We all love freebies. Whether a product or a piece of information, free feels like we’re gifted. You might have attended several webinars in your niche to gain that one gift (PDF or doc) by glowing your Gmail box. Similarly, make your audience feel special and offer them exclusive value. (PS: Don’t forget to tell them—It’s FREE!)

    5. Employ Email Strategies to Connect With Other Websites

    Be great with your email marketing skills. Drop emails for collaboration, resource sharing, or guest posting opportunities for potential backlinks.

    6. Repurpose Your Content According to Analytics

    Optimize your content according to the search analytics. See which topic needs a new visual, and infographics according to the updates. Consider creating YouTube videos and podcasts around that topic to offer fresh content to engage people while providing opportunities for link sharing and connection building.

    7. Include Links to Your Newsletters and Emails

    These links serve as invitations to the traffic on your site to explore and visit your website. Newsletters and emails are the best way to redirect your viewers to your website or certain blog posts.   

    As per Authority Hacker, 79.7% SEO Strategist Consider Link Building as an Important Part of Their SEO Strategy
    As per Authority Hacker, 79.7% SEO Strategist Consider Link Building as an Important Part of Their SEO Strategy

    Content marketing is incomplete without social marketing in this era, where mobile screen time is higher than any other medium.

    1. Multiple Sources of Traffic

    Connecting between different platforms helps increase traffic. Like, sharing links on social media sites and industry-focused forums plus niche directories helps bring visitors to your website. This mix helps expand your web horizon.

    You can relate well with image posts and charts on Pinterest that redirect to a related blog post which draws in users who want to know more about it.

    2. Increase Brand Visibility and Recognition

    Using platforms to spread the word about your brand will make it better known. This can be done by helping out as a visitor, on sites that team up with people or being written about in business newsletters. These placement spots assist in showing your brand to audiences, leaving a long-lasting effect.

    Talking about your product in a newsletter for the business world can help more people know who you are from an audience they want.

    3. Improve User Experience

    Putting links to extra information or resources on different platforms makes the user experience better. This engagement does not increase satisfaction. It also gets people to spend more time with your content or brand.

    Think of how links in the description of a YouTube video take you to resources or products and you end up at some other platform buying their product. We call it a smooth user experience.

    4. Increase Content Syndication

    Building connections across different platforms lets your content reach more people by helping them share it with others. When you change your content for different places and add links back to where it came from, the chance of more people sharing your stuff goes up. This makes it go viral.

    For example, turning a blog post into a SlideShare presentation that includes links pointing back to your website makes people interested in knowing more details by visiting your site.

    5. Establishment of Trustworthiness

    Putting links to websites or working with others makes you a familiar face. By giving input and adding related links, you show yourself as a knowledgeable person. This helps gain respect and trust from the people who listen to you.

    To make yourself better known and gain trust in your trade, a good way is to tell people about yourself. Make your profile on your blog and other social platforms about what you do. You can show your skills by including links to your website. 


    Should you Outsource your Link Building Campaign? – A Guide
    Do you want to outsource your link building campaign for better results? Here is a guide from an expert telling you everything you need to know.


    Conclusion

    Cross-platform links have left a deep imprint in the fast-paced world of social media marketing. This involves going beyond the traditional and primary techniques and focusing primarily on quality. The advantages are numerous.

    Businesses and content creators may broaden their reach with the help of diversifying traffic sources and by improving brand awareness by linking across platforms.

    This strategy is not only about the collection of links but also about developing a network of connections that enriches user experiences, which is a major source of growth in the fast-growing social market.

    FAQs

    Generally, there are three types of links, Internal links, External links and Backlinks.

    Yes, even in 2024, link building is still relevant to SEO because link building is still considered an important ranking factor.

    Backlinks are typically external links to a website or webpage that are crucial for SEO while also indicating to Google the quality of your content.

  • In a US Antitrust Case, the Judge Has Ruled That Google “Is a Monopolist”

    The first major victory for federal authorities challenging Big Tech’s market dominance came on Monday when a U.S. judge determined that Google broke antitrust laws by spending billions of dollars to establish an illegal monopoly and become the default search engine worldwide.

    A second trial might be held to evaluate possible remedies, such as the dissolution of Alphabet (GOOGL.O), Google’s parent company, which would alter the internet advertising landscape that Google has controlled for many years (opens a new tab).

    Also, it gives the go-ahead for the United States antitrust enforcers to crack down on Big Tech, a sector that has received criticism from all sides of the political aisle.

    The court has concluded that Google is a monopolist and has behaved in a monopolistic manner to preserve its monopoly, according to U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta of the Washington, D.C., court. Nearly 90% of all web searches and 95% of all smartphone searches are controlled by Google.

    Google’s Take Against the Ruling

    Despite Mehta’s decision, Alphabet intends to appeal. “This decision recognises that Google offers the best search engine, but concludes that we shouldn’t be allowed to make it easily available,” according to a statement from Google.

    Attorney General Garland praised the decision, saying it was “a historic win for the American people,” and that “no company – no matter how large or influential – is above the law.”

    With the “pro-competition ruling being a victory for the American people,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre proclaimed, “Americans deserve an internet that is free, fair, and open for competition.”

    Spending Billions to Be a Frontrunner

    To maintain its strong market dominance and make its search engine the default on smartphones and browsers, Google spent $26.3 billion in 2021 alone, as pointed out by Mehta.

    “The default is extremely valuable real estate,” Mehta described in the paper he wrote. “Even if a new entrant were positioned from a quality standpoint to bid for the default when an agreement expires, such a firm could compete only if it were prepared to pay partners upwards of billions of dollars in revenue share and make them whole for any revenue shortfalls resulting from the change.”

    The loss of defaults would have a devastating effect on Google’s financial line, he continued. As an example, Google has calculated that if Safari were to no longer be the default browser, it would lead to an enormous drop in search volume and a loss of billions of dollars in income.

    This decision marks a watershed moment in a string of lawsuits challenging purported monopolies in the technology sector. The Trump administration took this matter up with a judge from September through November of last year.


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  • Is ChatGPT a Threat to Search Engines?

    The simplest yet most obvious conclusion would be that it is too early to say whether ChatGPT is a threat to search engines or not. However, we’ll admit that ChatGPT is a powerful tool that has the potential to revolutionize the way we interact with computers. In fact, with the launch of GPT-4, it has done the unimaginable— and, if it delivers on its generative AI capabilities, as promised, it will transform the job market, as reported by Goldman Sachs, an investment bank in the United States.

    ChatGPT And The Hypothesis
    Why Isn’t ChatGPT A Threat To Search Engines?
    The Hegemony of Google Search

    ChatGPT And The Hypothesis

    ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI, is a gigantic language model (LLM) chatbot. It is trained on a massive dataset of text and code and can generate text, translate languages, and write different kinds of creative content. It can answer your questions in an informative way with more context.

    With the creation of ChatGPT and seeing its potential to answer people’s questions in a humanized way, some people now believe that ChatGPT could pose a threat to search engines like Google, Bing, and others. The premise is that ChatGPT can generate text that is indistinguishable from human-written text, and it can answer questions more quickly and accurately than search engines, so what is stopping people from not ever going back to the primitive search engines?

    Another premise is the fact that ChatGPT can create longer, human-like text and that it could be used to create fake news articles, blog posts, and other forms of content that could be used to deceive people on search engines. This is quite true as there was a case of CNET, a prominent technical news website that wrote some AI-generated articles and published them. Google search engine also approved and ranked these articles like it usually does. The problem, however, was that these articles were full of inaccuracies, and most of them had to be revised by human beings.

    One more premise is that ChatGPT can answer questions more quickly and accurately than search engines. This means that it could provide users with the information they need faster and more easily. Moreover, it is still under development— having the potential to become even more influential in the future, it could eventually become an even more reliable and efficient way to find information than search engines.

    If you think about it, many of these premises are quite founded and make a good case. ChatGPT is quite good, and soon in the future, will be even better with its responses. However, there are still a few good reasons to conclude that ChatGPT is not a threat to Search Engines.

    Why Isn’t ChatGPT A Threat To Search Engines?

    Now that we have seen some premises on how ChatGPT can be a threat to Search Engines, let me explain how it is not happening, at least not soon.

    Firstly, ChatGPT is trained on a restricted dataset of text and code, meaning it may not be able to answer questions about topics that are not covered in its training data. After all, it only knows what it has been trained on so far. Even though it is self-learning and it can improve its responses, its training is primitive in comparison to Google Search Engine (or Bing, for that matter). Google has had the hegemony in the web search area for years now and it has access to a massive dataset of text and code, including books, research papers, articles, websites, and other forms of data, which is constantly being updated.

    Secondly, ChatGPT cannot understand the context of a question many times. Although GPT-4 now supports more extended context and can consider about 25000 words as input, it still may not be able to provide the most relevant or helpful answer to a question. Search engines, on the other hand, have access to a much broader range of information than ChatGPT and are better at understanding the nuances of human language. So, a search engine can provide more relevant and helpful search results than ChatGPT.

    And lastly, search engines are pervasive. With smartphone penetration at 70.95% in 2023 in India and 72.17% in the USA in 2021, and 67% in 2021 globally, search engines (especially Google Search) have become the go-to option for searching anything and everything online, like it is natural. Google Search engine has a market share of 93.18%, as per Statcounter. This enormous number tells the story of Google’s hegemony over other search engines. Google launched its Android platform in 2007 and quickly gained traction with smartphone manufacturers willing to use the Android operating system. And now, Google is the most used search engine owing to the widespread use of the Android operating system in most developing countries and the most populous countries.

    Google's Market Share
    Google’s Market Share

    The reason why search engines will remain pervasive and, ChatGPT will not pose a threat is the fact that using search engines comes naturally to people. Every smartphone user, even with little technical knowledge, knows how to use it. Frankly, that is not the case with ChatGPT.

    Google Search Engine
    Google Search Engine

    Besides, the use of search engines and even preference for search engines also got to do with trust. Search engines like Google Search and Bing Search have been around for quite some time and have gained people’s trust. People can effortlessly look for things they need to look for and even verify that from multiple sources on the internet. ChatGPT is relatively new, and most people do not even know about it.

    The last straw is that Google Search and Bing Search are attempting to incorporate AI to help users with better results. Microsoft’s Bing Search is already using GPT-4 LLM in the form of Bing Chat, and Google is launching its AI chatbot named Bard, currently available for use in a few selected countries.

    So, search engines are not going anywhere and will remain the first choice for connecting people worldwide to the internet– as always. Sure, ChatGPT is quite helpful and fascinating to use. It is also quite creative with its responses and will complement many people’s works, but it is not a threat to search engines.

    FAQs

    What are the few premises that people have started to believe that ChatGPT might be a threat to search engines like Google, Bing, etc.?

    Below are a few premises that people have started to believe that ChatGPT might be a threat to search engines like Google, Bing, etc. –

    • ChatGPT can generate text that is indistinguishable from human-written text, and it can answer questions more quickly and accurately than search engines
    • ChatGPT can create longer, human-like text, and it could be used to create fake news articles, blog posts, and other forms of content that could be used to deceive people on search engines
    • ChatGPT can answer questions more quickly and accurately than search engines

    Why isn’t ChatGPT a threat to search engines?

    • ChatGPT is trained on a restricted dataset of text and code, meaning it may not be able to answer questions about topics that are not covered in its training data
    • ChatGPT cannot understand the context of a question many times
    • Search engines are pervasive

  • AlphaSense: A Market Intelligence Platform to Make Smarter Business Decisions

    Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by AlphaSense.

    The term ‘big data’ has become a buzzword in recent times. Businesses can confidently make informed decisions by leveraging the wealth of digital insights and embracing the power of business intelligence.

    Improved performance, commercial growth, evolution, and a healthier bottom line depend on data-driven smart business decisions. According to Mckinsey Global Institute’s survey, data-driven organizations are 23 times more likely to get and retain customers.

    But the question here is how to search through the extensive volume of data and access quick insights. It’s when AphaSense comes in handy. It is an AI-driven search engine that helps companies extract valuable insights from the enormous volume of data to make informed business decisions.

    Let’s learn more about AlphaSense- its startup story, mission, founders, funding, investors, partners, plans, and more.

    AlphaSense – Company Highlights

    Company Name AlphaSense
    Headquarters New York City, New York, United States
    Sector Search Engines
    Founders Jack Kokko, Raj Neervannan
    Founded In 2011
    Revenue $1.7B (2022)
    Website Alpha-sense.com

    AlphaSense – About
    AlphaSense – Founders and Team
    AlphaSense – Startup Story
    AlphaSense – Mission and Vision
    AlphaSense – Business Model
    AlphaSense – Revenue Model
    AlphaSense – Products and Services
    AlphaSense – Funding and Investors
    AlphaSense – Mergers and Acquisitions
    AlphaSense – Growth
    AlphaSense – Partners
    AlphaSense – Awards and Achievements
    AlphaSense – Competitors
    AlphaSense – Future Plans

    AlphaSense – About

    AlphaSense is a market intelligence and search platform that leverages machine learning (ML) and natural language processing (NLP) technology and is used by leading companies and financial institutions.

    Founded in 2011, the AI-based technology enables clients to make smarter business decisions by delivering insights from the extensive volume of public and private content, including news, equity research, transcripts, and trade journals.

    Headquartered in New York City, AlphaSense has a presence in the U.S., Germany, the U.K., India, and Finland. The company delivers services to multiple industries, including Consulting, Consumer/CPG, Energy, Financial Services, Life Sciences, Tech, Media, and Telecom, by providing access to 10,000+ premium data sources.

    AlphaSense – Founders and Team

    Jack Kokko and Raj Neervannan co-founded AlphaSense.

    Jack Kokko

    Graduated from Helsingin Kauppakorkeakoulu in B.Sc. Finance and The Wharton School in MBA, Jack Kokko is the co-founder and CEO of AlphaSense. Previously, he was co-founder and CEO of Silecs, Inc and Founding Chairman of BetterDoctor.

    Jack Kokko - Co-Founder and CEO, AlphaSense
    Jack Kokko – Co-Founder and CEO, AlphaSense

    Raj Neervannan

    Completed an M.S. in Computer Science from Bowling Green State University and MBA from The Wharton School, Raj Neervannan is the co-founder and CTO of AlphaSense. Moreover, he previously worked as CTO at ePolicy Solutions, ChoicePoint, Inc, and MajescoMastek.

    Raj Neervannan - Co-founder and CTO, AlphaSense
    Raj Neervannan – Co-founder and CTO, AlphaSense

    AphaSense employs more than 1,000 candidates across its offices in different countries.

    AlphaSense – Startup Story

    CEO and Founder, Jack Kokko, realized the inconvenience of manual research early on. He commenced his career as an investment banking analyst in Silicon Valley, and there he spent hours CTRL+Fing thousands of PDFs, a single keyword at a time to find a single insight.

    After a few years, Jack met his co-founder and CTO, Raj Neervannan, at The Wharton School. They both were in disbelief that the research process and tools available had not advanced all these years. It’s in 2011, both Jack and Raj sought to solve this issue by launching AlphaSense- a new type of search engine driven by ML and NLP, enabling companies to cut through the noise and quickly extract insights from thousands of resources and billions of data points.

    AlphaSense – Mission and Vision

    The company aims to empower professionals to make smarter business decisions with confidence and speed.

    AlphaSense – Business Model

    With AlphaSense, companies run a search as they do on Google. But the results that come back are relevant information for their business use case. This AI-driven platform not only searches for users’ exact search terms but also for business or financial synonyms. So, users need not have to think about what words their executives use when discussing the concept they are searching for.

    AlphaSense uses hundreds of algorithms to read every line of text and categorize information. So, it knows what organization or organizations are being discussed in a given document, what industry it’s operating in based on the language, and other factors that help users quickly narrow their search to a given industry and specific set of enterprises.

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    AlphaSense – Revenue Model

    AlphaSense offers flexible subscriptions for accommodating team sizes, content needs, and more, ranging from pre-seat options to enterprise packages. ‘Pre-Seat Options’ are for small and medium-sized teams, and ‘Enterprise’ packages are for large teams and global companies.

    AlphaSense – Products and Services

    The solutions offered by AlphaSense are categorized into ‘Corporate’ and ‘Financial Services.’ It enables to track, monitor, and share insights related to the following:

    • Corporate – Competitive Intelligence, Investor Relations, Corporate Strategy, Corporate Development
    • Financial Services – Asset Management, Private Equity & Venture Capital, Corporate Finance & Investment Banking, Hedge Funds, Sell-Side Research
    AlphaSense - Products and Services
    AlphaSense – Products and Services

    AlphaSense – Funding and Investors

    AlphaSense has undertaken 10 funding rounds and raised $620.1 million. Its latest funding round – Series D Round, was conducted on April 11, 2023, and raised $100 million. 24 investors back the company; the main ones are Viking Global Investors, Goldman Sachs Asset Management, CapitalG, BlackRock, and GrowthX Accelerator.

    Date Round Number of Investors Money Raised Lead Investor
    April 11, 2023 Series D 3 $100 million Capital G
    June 15, 2022 Series D 2 $225 million Viking Global Investors, Goldman Sachs Asset Management
    June 15, 2022 Debt Financing 1 BlackRock
    January 12, 2022 Non-Equity Assistance 1 GrowthX Accelerator
    September 30, 2021 Series C 11 $180 million Viking Global Investors, Goldman Sachs Asset Management
    January 1, 2020 Debt Financing 1 $28 million
    July 17, 2019 Series B 4 $50 million Innovation Endeavors
    March 6, 2016 Series A 6 $33 million Quantum Strategic Partners, Tribeca Venture Partners
    September 1, 2015 Grant 1 $1.9 million
    January 13, 2013 Seed Round 1 $1.6 million

    AlphaSense – Mergers and Acquisitions

    AlphaSense acquired 2 companies – Sentieo on May 11, 2022, and Stream by AlphaSense on October 25, 2021.

    AlphaSense – Growth

    The estimated annual revenue of AlphaSense in 2022 is $111.6 million per year, with its current valuation standing at 1.7 billion. Moreover, the monthly web visits grew by 65.27%, with 255,417 visits. Moreover, AphaSense’s customers grew to 3,500 in 2022 from 1,000 in 2019.

    AlphaSense – Partners

    AphaSense has partnered with the following:

    AlphaSense – Awards and Achievements

    AphaSense garnered many prestigious awards, and some of these are:

    • Leader Winter 2023 by g2
    • Best of 2023 by TrustRadius
    • 2023 Best Places to Work by BuiltIn
    • Best Software 2022 by TrustRadius
    • Fintech Breakthrough Award 2021
    • Best A.I./Machine Learning Data Initiative Award winner 2021
    AlphaSense: For Decisions That Matter

    AlphaSense – Competitors

    Some of its main competitors are:

    • Wolfram Alpha
    • LexisNexis
    • Algolia
    • Elastic
    • CI Radar
    • M-Brain
    • TechnoMile
    • Wide Narrow
    • Comintelli

    AlphaSense – Future Plans

    AlphaSense wants to focus more on its internal company search to help companies better organize and access their data.

    FAQs

    Who founded AlphaSense and when?

    Jack Kokko and Raj Neervannan co-founded AlphaSense in 2011.

    What does AlphaSense do?

    AlphaSense is a market intelligence and search platform that leverages machine learning (ML) and natural language processing (NLP) technology and is used by leading companies and financial institutions. It is an AI-driven search engine that helps companies extract valuable insights from the enormous volume of data to make informed business decisions.

    Who are the main competitors of Alphasense?

    Some of its main competitors are:

    • Wolfram Alpha
    • LexisNexis
    • Algolia
    • Elastic
    • CI Radar
    • M-Brain
    • TechnoMile
    • Wide Narrow
    • Comintelli

    What is the pricing offered by AlphaSense?

    AlphaSense offers flexible subscriptions for accommodating team sizes, content needs, and more, ranging from pre-seat options to enterprise packages. ‘Pre-Seat Options’ are for small and medium-sized teams, and ‘Enterprise’ packages are for large teams and global companies.

  • Algolia: Building Impactful Search Experiences

    Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by Algolia.

    In this digital age, the fastest way to promote business is to have a well-functioning website. But you can hear many companies complaining about their website’s search.

    According to statistics, there are 3.5 billion daily searches and 1.2 trillion searches per year. You can improve your site’s search capabilities with the help of a reliable search-as-a-service platform.

    Algolia is at the top of the heap when it comes to search and discovery APIs for web and mobile applications. Let us dig into more details about the company, like how it started, the competition it faces, its market value, and so on.

    Algolia – Company Highlights

    Company Name Algolia
    Headquarters San Francisco, California, United States
    Sector Search Engines
    Founders Nicolas Dessaigne, Julien Lemoine
    Founded In 2012
    Revenue $2.3B (2022)
    Website Algolia.com

    Algolia – About
    Algolia – Founders and Team
    Algolia – Startup Story
    Algolia – Mission and Vision
    Algolia – Business Model
    Algolia – Revenue Model
    Algolia – Products and Services
    Algolia – Funding and Investors
    Algolia – Mergers and Acquisitions
    Algolia – Growth
    Algolia – Partners
    Algolia – Awards and Achievements
    Algolia – Competitors

    Algolia – About

    Algolia is the AI-powered, search-as-a-service platform that allows companies to provide an instant, relevant, and impactful customer experience. Moreover, it developed dynamic experiences that let companies immediately anticipate visitors’ intentions on their web or mobile application.

    Millions of developers use the platform globally to distribute their content efficiently over digital media. Algolia is API-first and handles 40 million search queries monthly for over 5,000 firms, including big names such as Periscope, Medium, Twitch, Under Armour, and Strip.

    Algolia – Founders and Team

    Julien Lemoine and Nicolas Dessaigne founded Algolia in 2012.

    Julien Lemoine

    Julian Lemoine originally belonged to Paris, France, and graduated in Computer Engineering, Specialization in Cognitive Science and Advanced Algorithms from EPITA. He has over ten years of experience in the search industry.

    Before co-founding Algolia and working as the company’s Advisor and Board Member, Julien was CTO of MASA Group.

    Julien Lemoine - Co-founder, Advisor, and Board Member, Algolia
    Julien Lemoine – Co-founder, Advisor, and Board Member, Algolia

    Nicolas Dessaigne

    Nicolas Dessaigne completed his M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Sciences and is the co-founder and Board Member of Algolia. He also worked as CTO at Arisem and VP of R&D at Exalead. Moreover, currently, he is the Independent Board Member of Artifakt and a Group Partner of Y Combinator.

    Nicolas Dessaigne - Co-founder and Board Member, Algolia
    Nicolas Dessaigne – Co-founder and Board Member, Algolia

    Presently, Algolia has over 800 listed employees, including Bernadette Nixon, CEO, and Board Member.

    Algolia – Startup Story

    Before the establishment of Algolia, Nicolas, and Julien thought about what sort of product or business they could develop after having experience working in all sorts of firms. It made them create something unique, i.e., a search engine offering through the SaaS model.

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    Initially, they had an ambitious yet straightforward goal: to revolutionize how people used to get information when looking for something online. It gave birth to Algolia in 2012. Initially, the company was focused on offline search using mobile phones.

    The company commenced with two data centers in Europe, and in 2014, it opened a third center in Singapore. In 2019, Algolio claimed a global presence with 70+ data centers across 16 countries.

    Algolia – Mission and Vision

    Algolia aims to empower every enterprise to create delightful Search and Discovery experiences for users.

    Algolia – Business Model

    The Algolia model provides search-as-a-service with which the client’s entire website can be searched via a third-party-hosted search engine. Search engines such as Google and Yahoo crawl the whole web, including the client’s web, and then tailor the information according to the search query.

    However, Algolia made the search process easier as it exclusively crawls the customer’s website. By bringing the results the client seeks, the platform drastically cuts down the time the customer spends seeking information.

    With its RESTful JSON API model, once the data is passed from the client to Algolia, the search box is integrated into the client’s website. The model is intended to offer the advantages of a full in-house search engine by using a more manageable infrastructure.

    What is Algolia

    Algolia – Revenue Model

    The company has three pricing plans- Build, Grow, and Premium.

    Plan Pricing
    Build Free, 10,000 search requests/mo
    Grow $0.50 /1000 search requests/mo
    Premium Customized Pricing

    Algolia – Products and Services

    The Alogolio platform is the company’s primary offering. Moreover, it offers multiple solutions, like Enterprise Search, Headless e-Commerce, Mobile & App Search, and Voice Search.

    Algolia - Products and Services
    Algolia – Products and Services

    Algolia – Funding and Investors

    Algolia has undertaken 8 funding rounds and has raised $334.2 million. Series D is the latest funding round conducted on July 28, 2021, and raised $150 million. 40 investors back Aloglia; some big names are Lone Pine Capital, Accel Partners, and Alven Capital.

    Date Round Number of Investors Money Raised Lead Investor
    July 28, 2021 Series D 12 $150 million Lone Pine Capital
    October 15, 2019 Series C 10 $110 million Accel
    September 1, 2017 Secondary Market 1 Aglae Ventures
    June 7, 2017 Series B 10 $53 million Accel
    May 20, 2015 Series A 9 $18.3 million Accel
    June 19, 2014 Seed Round 8 $1.3 million Storm Ventures
    March 25, 2014 Pre Seed Round 2 $120k
    October 1, 2013 Seed Round 8 $1.5 million

    Algolia – Mergers and Acquisitions

    Algolia has acquired 3 companies and these are:

    Company Announced Date
    Search.io September 12, 2022
    MorphL January 26, 2021
    SearUrchin.IO March 14, 2018

    Algolia – Growth

    Algolia is responsible for 1.5 trillion searches a year, 16 times more than Yahoo and 6 times more than Bing. Now, one out of every eight online users uses this technology.

    Moreover, its estimated annual revenue in 2022 is $152.8 million per year ($184,707 revenue per employee). Algolia was valued at $2.3 billion in 2022. Its website growth rate is 14.63%, and employees increased by 26%.

    Algolia – Partners

    Algolia has partnered with the following:

    • AKQA Denmark
    • Roswell
    • Amplience
    • Americaneagle.com
    • Thanx Media, Inc.
    • Supreme
    • Develo
    • Coexya
    • Xpediant Digital

    Algolia – Awards and Achievements

    Some of the awards it garnered are:

    • Gold Winner of the 2023 AVA Digital Awards in the “Digital Marketing” category
    • G2 Grid for Enterprise Search Software recognized Algolia as a leader for the 13th time
    • MarTech Breakthrough Awards in the “Best Overall Optimization Solution” category
    • Best Company Outlook
    • Best Placed to Work in the Bay Area
    • Best Product & Design Team

    Algolia – Competitors

    Some of its main competitors are:

    • MeiliSearch
    • Coveo
    • Yext
    • ESyte
    • AddSearch
    • Cludo

    FAQs

    What is Algolia and what does it do?

    Algolia is the AI-powered, search-as-a-service platform that allows companies to provide an instant, relevant, and impactful customer experience. It is API-first and handles 40 million search queries monthly.

    Who are the founders of Algolia?

    Julien Lemoine and Nicolas Dessaigne founded Algolia in 2012.

    What is the pricing offered by Algolia?

    The company has three pricing plans- Build, Grow, and Premium. The Build Plan is absolutely free. In the Grow plan the company charges $0.50 per 1000 search requests and in the Premium plan, the pricing can be customized as per the request.

    Who are the main competitors of Algolia?

    Some of its main competitors are:

    • MeiliSearch
    • Coveo
    • Yext
    • ESyte
    • AddSearch
    • Cludo
  • Comprehensive Guide to Analyse Your Competitor’s Marketing Strategy

    When you decide to begin with your own startup, there are a few things that cannot be avoided. You must have heard that there is a lot of competition when you thought of starting up your own business in that field. This is the time you need to realize that, you need to build up a new skill to land your startup in success.

    One of the skills is Analysis of your competitor’s marketing strategy is a skill which is extremely useful for any sort of business you might have entered. On the other hand, analysis of your competitor’s marketing strategy is a crucial step which if once analyzed, brings you halfway to your success. You need to make sure that you look outside the window and analyze what others are doing and know their strengths and weaknesses. In this article, we will provide you with a guideline on how to analyse your competitor’s marketing strategy. So let’s get started.

    What Is Competitor’s Marketing Strategy Analysis?
    What All Does This Analysis Comprise?
    Benefits of Competitor’s Marketing Strategy Analysis
    What Is the Process of Analyzing Competitor’s Marketing Strategy?

    What Is Competitor’s Marketing Strategy Analysis?

    Competitive analysis in simple words refers to– a well-structured evaluation of your business environment that includes the competitor’s company, it’s offering, and most importantly its marketing strategy. It is the art of knowing how well the other players of that particular field are doing in the market. Most importantly look for the spaces they are creating for you to grab the opportunity to dive into and come up better than them by providing something more valuable.

    What All Does This Analysis Comprise?

    Competitor’s marketing strategy analysis involves qualitative and quantitative data that is very crucial. The goals and missions of an organization depend upon it. Most importantly, how will the goals be achieved, i.e., what will be the strategy to effectively and efficiently achieve those goals is also formulated in accordance with the data collected. It involves answers to various questions like-

    • What are the competitors good at?
    • Where do the competitors lack?
    • How to make sure that they don’t steal away your customers?

    Benefits of Competitor’s Marketing Strategy Analysis

    Analysis of competitor’s marketing strategy is a crucial step for all businesses big or small. It must be done cautiously. As, it deals in the collection of the most important data, upon which the organization’s strategies are based upon. If done appropriately, it gives out plenty of qualitative and quantitative data that will help your own crucial business decisions. Analysis of Competitor’s Marketing strategy is important in many ways.

    Identify Opportunities

    Why choose your brand? This question plays a significant role in separating you from your competitors. A good analysis of a competitor’s marketing strategy gives you an insight into what unique would customers find in you. So that, they choose you over your competitors.

    Competitor’s marketing strategy analysis creates a significant opportunity to identify gaps through analyzing data. Create a new product category to bridge the gap between what your competitors offer and what the customers need.

    Know Strengths and Weaknesses

    You have a great opportunity to find out, where do the competitors lack by analyzing the collected data. Improve your product by capitalizing on competitors’ weaknesses customers complain about. It helps you create your own Unique Selling Proposition. You must learn from their mistakes and make sure that you do not repeat them at any cost. The focus must be on consistent learning and improvement simultaneously. By this, you can easily come up with a distinguishing identity in the market.

    Position of Your Business in the Long-Run

    As your brand expands, the expectations of your customers from you also increase. This opens up an opportunity for you to position your business in the long run. When you create a distinguishing identity. Through competitor marketing strategy analysis, you get a chance to get to know all their weaknesses of them, which is an edge for you over your competitors. You need to overcome all their mistakes that will help you position your business in the long run by creating a faithful image in the mind of the customers.

    You get to know what is going on in the market. It, therefore, helps you to keep with the pace and follow contemporary methods. You must eliminate the usage of obsolete and traditional marketing strategies. It helps you uncover market segments that aren’t fully served by competitors. You need to focus on that and work upon the loopholes of the competitors.

    Motivation

    By analyzing what your competitors are doing, you get to know their position in the market. They set a benchmark that helps you measure your standards and take corrective action wherever required. The presence of competition in the market gives the inspiration to work consistently. It gives a thrust to keep on striving to do better.

    What Is the Process of Analyzing Competitor’s Marketing Strategy?

    This guide on analyzing competitor’s marketing strategy works well for startup founders, entrepreneurs, business owners, marketers, etc. Including certain tips on where to look for data that isn’t publicly available, this guide consists of a step by step process of how to go about analyzing your competitor’s marketing strategy-

    Identify Competitors of Your Industry

    The first and foremost step is to determine who your competitors are. You need to pick the right competitors who are pitching similar products or services targeting a similar category of customers. To simplify, divide your competitors into two categories: direct and indirect.

    Direct competitors are those, who offer a product or service similar to that of yours who works as a substitute for yours operating in your same geographic area. Whereas, Indirect Competitors are those who provide dissimilar products that can be used as an alternative to satisfy the needs of the customer. You need to realize that Direct Competitors are to be paid more focused.

    Wondering how to identify direct competition? Here are the steps to follow-

    • Analyze search engine results (SERPs) for similar product queries.
    • Have a look at the market share analysis.
    • Have a check on who is sourcing products from the same suppliers/wholesalers as per your plan.
    • Keep a note of brands that use your target buyers the most.

    Determine What They Offer

    Product or services offered is where the heart of any business lies. Therefore, it is the best place to start with. A deep analysis of the competitor’s complete product line or services offered must be done. Along with this, there must be an eye upon attractive benefits that they offer along with the product and service which tends to attract their customers.

    Analyze Their Tactics

    Existence in this competitive market is quite difficult. Certain tactics are used by market leaders to achieve heights. Therefore, the focus must lie on the following questions-

    · What does the sale procedure look like?
    · What are the channels of distribution used by them?
    · What are the tactics that earn them the most advantages?
    · What are their customer relationship management techniques?
    · What are the lucrative offers they offer to their customers?
    · How do they manage interpersonal relations?

    These are a few helpful pieces of information that give you an idea of the tactics that the competitors apply. By knowing this, you can get an idea about how to go about to form own strategies.

    Analyze Their Pricing Strategy

    Price is the most important element. It is the value that the customer pays for the product or service. Pricing must be done very carefully as it depends upon certain major factors. Due care must be taken upon how the competitors tackle those factors and price the offerings.

    Determine Their Marketing Strategy

    The productivity of businesses depends upon the marketing strategy that is used. There must be knowledge of marketing strategies being applied by other players in the market. With the advent of technology, most businesses use the internet for marketing. The online world opens up the doors to meet a vast audience. Observe the competitor’s website, the way of content marketing, social media marketing, etc.

    Use Spying Tools to Know Your Competitor’s Strategies

    Various online tools and methods are available online which help you be aware of your competitor’s strategies. Spying tools can be of great help for this. One of the popular spying tools is AdSpyder. It helps you spy on your competitor’s ad strategies on different platforms. The platforms include Facebook Google, Youtube, and Instagram, and also search engines like Yahoo and Bing.

    AdSpyder – Spying Tool

    Perform a SWOT Analysis

    SWOT Analysis is a great tool to envision how to get an edge over other businesses. SWOT stands for Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. When you have an overview from all these perspectives, you are on the right path to success. The analysis must comprise of following areas which are not exhaustive-

    · Customer experience
    · Online marketing strategies
    · Pricing strategy
    · Content strategy
    · Promotion strategy

    Conclusion

    The main objective of this article is to pay attention to the opportunities that the competitors are missing. One must learn to take advantage of the competitor’s weaknesses through the strengths of own. The market is highly dynamic which demands routine running of the competitor’s marketing strategy analysis. Competitor’s analysis is a multi-facet process, which if well-executed can land you towards productivity.

    FAQs

    What is Competitor’s Marketing Strategy Analysis?

    It is the art of knowing how well the other players of that particular field are doing in the market.

    What is the importance of Competitor’s Marketing Strategy Analysis?

    Analysis of competitor’s marketing strategy is a crucial step for all businesses big or small. It is important in many ways.

    How to Position a business in the long run?

    Business need to overcome all their competitor’s mistakes that will help you position your business in the long run by creating a faithful image in the mind of the customers.

  • Anurag Acharya Success Story – The Man Behind Google Scholar

    Anurag Acharya is the key inventor of Google Scholar. He is an Indian-American engineer. He held the title of Distinguished Engineer at Google. Anurag and his colleague Alex Verstak founded Google Scholar.

    Google Scholar provides a simple approach to search for scholarly literature. It is a well-developed search engine for a wide variety of disciplines and sources: articles, books, theses, etc. Google Scholar was released in November 2004.

    Anurag Acharya- Biography

    Name Anurag Acharya
    Born 1966
    Born Place Bikaner
    Age 54 (2020)
    Nationality Indian
    Education IIT Kharagpur, Carnegie Mellon University
    Profession Computer Scientist
    Known for Key inventor of Google Scholar
    Books Instant Microsoft SQL ServerAnalysis Services 2012 Dimensions and Cube

    Anurag Acharya- Education
    Anurag Acharya- Professional Life
    Anurag Acharya- Journey to Google
    Anurag Acharya- Awards
    Anurag Acharya- Origin of Google Scholar
    Anurag Acharya- Google Scholar
    Google Scholar- User Base
    Google Scholar- Extra Services

    Anurag Acharya- Education

    Anurag Acharya completed his Bachelors in Computer Science from the Indian Institue of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur in 1987. He later did a PhD in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University.

    Anurag Acharya- Professional Life

    Anurag Acharya was a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Maryland, College Park. He was an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Saint Barbara. He successfully established his career as an Assistant Professor but he was partially satisfied. Anurag is currently positioned as a Distinguished Engineer at Google, USA and Key Founder of Google Scholar. Prior to that, he led the indexing group at Google.

    Anurag Acharya- Journey to Google

    Anurag joined Google in 2000, like a year off from his academic job at the University of California. He was then responsible to examine the technology of Google indexing. His job was to expand the index, significantly gathering all the contents and convincing web administrators as well as publishers, businesses, and government agencies to permit Google to crawl their data. He was subdued with a heavy-duty, which nearly burst him out. He has to keep the index fresh, a weighty job that involved coercing computer science to its limit.

    Anurag Acharya- Awards

    Anurag Acharya was awarded Distinguished Alumnus Award 2016 in the 62nd Convocation of IIT Kharagpur.

    Anurag Acharya- Co-creator of Google Scholar

    Anurag was at that point in time, where he would either quit or invent exceptional ideas to add more value to Google. He knew that he was unlikely to display a larger impact in academics than at Google. He gave up his job at academics and decided to continue his indexing job at Google. He further got permission to work with Alex Verstak, another computer engineer to create Google Scholar.

    The idea of Google Scholar originated when both the engineers were streaming on ranking websites according to their contents. It was then, they decided to establish a search engine specialized in discovering and blogging literary posts. It was not easy the way they thought it to be. They both faced various challenges from ranking signals that provided the best knowledge to the researchers.

    After a number of tests and tweaks, Anurag and Alex showed the prototype to the Co-founder, Larry Page. His instant reaction was “Why is this not live yet?” And the Scholar was live indeed from November 18, 2004.


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    Anurag Acharya- Google Scholar

    Google Scholar Logo
    Google Scholar Logo

    Google Scholar is an accessible search engine for scholarly literature. Google indexes determine what data should be a part of Google Scholar. It basically helps users to discover the text of millions of academic papers, including those behind publishers’ paywalls. It allows the users to find digital or physical copies of articles which includes, journal articles, technical reports, theses, and other documents.

    A survey reports that 60% of the scientists said that they use the service regularly. About 100 to 160 million literature queries have been estimated, thus the context is clearly large enough. Their work is basically, to help the users find well-researched articles across the web.

    Google Scholar- User Base

    It is a fact that Google Scholar does not make Google any money, this is because of the low user interface. However, Google does not pressurize Scholar to make money as most of the googlers are ex-academics themselves.

    Google is not killing Scholar any sooner. Instead, the Google Scholar team is expanding and building new features such as personal libraries, advanced features in getting papers to find the scholar. There are various tools available on the internet regarding literature but none of them is as worthy and intellectual as Google Scholar.

    Google Scholar- Extra Services

    Google Scholar has introduced a series of extra services, including author profile pages and a recommendations engine. These services rose speculations that the search engine is getting transformed into a bibliometrics tool. While Anurag has clearly mentioned that the purpose of adding profiles is to help the users find articles that they need. It is generally a crucial method to find related articles of authors.

    People usually learn the name of the authors and it becomes easier for them to find other related articles. An alternative way is to follow authors to access their blogs consistently. While the recommendations engine assists in suggesting topics to the authors.


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    FAQ

    Who is the owner of Google Scholar?

    Anurag Acharya, an Indian-American engineer created Google Scholar in 2004 with Alex Verstak.

    Who is Alex Verstak?

    Alex Verstak is a software engineer at Google who created Google Scholar with Anurag Acharya

    What is the net worth of Anurag Acharya?

    The net worth of Anurag Acharya is approximately $1 million.

  • What Is Backlink Profile and Why Is It So Important for SEO in 2022?

    We all have used the Google search engine. Where we just need to post our question and Google will point out all relevant information from its collection. The information received is in the form of multiple links given in a list form. Through which users can select anyone as per the criteria they want.

    But have you ever wondered what can be the thing that divides the information in such a manner and ranks them? Which source has to be placed at the number one position and which information has to be given the next position.

    For easy understanding, we can assume that all the process is based on a few different concepts such as SEO, Keywords, Backlinks, etc. In this article, we will be going through the concept of Backlink and its importance for SEO.

    What is Backlink?
    What is a Backlink Profile?
    Importance of Backlink Profile for SEO

    What is Backlink?

    A backlink is a name given to those links that direct a user from one webpage to another. They can be the links of directing from one website to another also termed as external backlinks. Or they can be the links directing the user from one webpage to another webpage of the same website, also termed as Internal Backlink. The other common terms used for a backlink are an inbound link and an incoming link.

    Backlink has many roles when we talk about a website and its Google ranking. Google was launched in 1998. From then till now there are many changes made in it at every possible angle to provide better service.

    At the time of its initial launch, Google used to provide the results based on links attached with a web page. The original algorithm used for providing web page ranking was named “PageRank”.

    After many years, all basic things have evolved into better options. But the idea of a ranking webpage with the help of a backlink has still stayed at the same place with a minor change.

    Earlier pages were shown based on backlinks only. However now the results are based on multiple factors, with backlink considered as one of the key factors in determining the results. So with this theory, we can assume backlink is still a fundamental part of SEO.

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    Backlink profile in simple words can be said as the collection of all links directed to the particular website. Backlink profile is not just a simple collection of links, it stores all the information and characteristics of links such as types of links, anchor text, domain quality, relevance, link quality, page performance, etc.

    The prime work of backlink profiles is to enable easy and quick help in determining and achieving higher ranking, determining the tactics to increase traffic to the site, and many other similar services.


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    Making quality Backlinks is a crucial part of SEO. So, here’s a checklist that will help you evaluate the quality of your backlinks.


    Backlink has a simple concept. But the work it does and the importance it carries for SEO is a lot to consider.

    Each website is created with the purpose of the target to achieve the best Google rank. To fulfil the target, Backlink can be one of the key factors. When multiple websites provide the link of any single webpage, Google finds it trustworthy. Hence the results shown include the webpage in a good ranking position.

    It is not a mystery of using backlinks for increasing the traffic of a site. The main purpose of a backlink is to direct a user from one site to another or from one page to another. So when there are multiple backlinks given, there are more chances of driving traffic to the site.

    There is an abundance of content posted on Google each day. For the reason of finding new content, Google algorithm “spider” takes the help of backlinks provided by the trusted sites.

    If the backlinks are given by trustworthy platforms, Google gets the idea of content as useful information. The same mechanism is applicable for users also. When a user gets some backlink from their trusted source, the content from the link will also have a similar impression on the user. Hence it creates a good impression and increases the trust between both the user and search engine.

    Creates a Way for Initiating a Relationship Between Different Sites

    Having good relations with authentic sites can provide beneficial support. This can be done by using backlink as a conversation method. It is a good practice to use authentic sites for the promotion of our products and sites by the means of someone else’s way.


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    Conclusion

    Backlinks are an essential part of each website. They are responsible for ranking the site in Google and making an impression on Google. Good and authentic site backlink allows the site to be on a better side and having a backlink from spam creates the same impression as a spamming site.

    It is one of the major things to look at and has many roles attached. Some of the essential information has been shared in the above article related to backlink and backlink profiles.

    Frequently Asked Questions

    A backlink profile is a collection of links that stores all the information such as anchor text, domain quality, relevance, link quality, page performance, etc.

    Calculate the total number of links, Number of unique domains, Anchor text usage and variance, Fresh links, and Page performance.

    Backlinks create a good impression of your website. It also helps your website rank higher on Google.

  • Bing Marketing Strategy: All about Bing Ads

    Bing is a search engine which is owned and operated by Microsoft. It provides a space for people to search pictures, videos, websites, locations and many more.

    About Bing
    Bing Ads
    Conclusion
    FAQs

    About Bing

    Bing is an internet based search engine which was unveiled as a one stop platform of Microsoft after it compiled all its search engines into one namely MSN search, Windows live search, and Live search.

    market share of search engines worldwide
    market share of search engines worldwide

    ‌It can be inferred from the graph above that Bing is the second most used search engine worldwide. However, the share of the same is substantially low. Microsoft is working gradually and rigorously to capture the most part of the market.

    Bing Search Engine
    Bing Search Engine

    ‌‌‌‌With the monopoly of Google in the market, it becomes tougher for any new brand to attract the consumer base. And doing this would definitely have been a task for Bing. Bing’s marketing journey is a story to know. Let us see how Bing grew to earn billions of dollars working in a highly competitive space.

    ‌‌‌‌‌‌A decision engine: Microsoft Bing when launched was titled as a decision engine because of its efficiency and relevant search results for the query typed. It provided search results for the original query. It enabled the consumers to rather bing than google in the initial phase. Hence it definitely brought the users for Bing.

    ‌‌No Captcha: Many times we come across Google verifying if we are a robot which can be an advantage for Bing if a user is a compulsive search engine user. Bing allows users to search as many times as he/she want.

    ‌‌Related searches bar: It was Microsoft Bing that came up with the idea of displaying related searches when a user enters any query. It made tasks a lot easier for a user to surf through a list of search results and click on the most relevant one.

    ‌‌Microsoft-Yahoo tie up: In July 2009, Microsoft Bing came into an agreement with Yahoo where it allowed Bing to power search on Yahoo portal which was for 10 years. With the two giants tieing up to fight the monopoly of Google, it resulted in the favour for Microsoft as well as Yahoo.

    ‌‌Microsoft-Facebook collaboration: In the year 2012, Microsoft thought of partnering with Facebook which was the most used social networking site after Google with around 400 million user base to show Bing search results over world wide web (www) portal. It helped Microsoft Bing to acquire a decent percent of the market during that time. Google still remained the top player in search engines.

    ‌‌Microsoft-Apple partnership: In the next year, Microsoft Bing partnered with Apple and Apple decided to make Bing their search engine in apple products by nudging google out. It announced siri would leverage bing and not google in the year 2013.

    ‌‌Integrated windows search engine: Microsoft after launching its windows store to download apps, it integrated Bing as its search engine which again is a marketing strategy.

    ‌‌Option to personalize: Microsoft understands that people prefer to make their digital space personalised to get rich experiences and relatability. Bing allows a user to change the display, privacy, and suggestion settings to make them as his/her preference.

    ‌‌Bing ads service: Like Google, Microsoft Bing also provides the ad services on its search engine for people to market their products and services over the internet.

    Bing Ads

    ‌‌Similar to Google ads, Bing ads give businesses a platform to run their ad campaigns to attract traffic and generate sales. Bing ads are one of the many tools of digital marketing. When we compare the market share of Bing search engine, we tend to ignore the importance of advertising there. But Bing gets over a billion unique users every month. So it is a mistake to ignore the power of Bing. With Microsoft Bing providing its independent ad services to businesses is another pros for Bing as it is relatively cheaper than google ads. It apparently has higher conversion rates, lower cost per click, cheaper conversions, lesser competition and many more than that of Google. The ad services again makes it attractive for people who are earning through digital marketing, affiliate marketing etc. And digital marketing as we all know is a growing sector.

    ‌‌‌‌‌‌Good user interface/experience: Microsoft Bing has a better user interface than Google with more colorful wallpapers, vibrant visuals, quality display, and easy accessibility to those features. It provides good user experiences as

    • It has integrated other Microsoft applications like PowerPoint, MS office, MS excel, MS edge etc. within the search engine.
    • It has better images displayed with horizontal layout so that users do not have to visit the host website unnecessarily like in Google when he/she just wants to preview the image.
    • it has advanced video search options as it will not direct you to YouTube to watch a video. Instead, it will let you watch it then and there.
    • It has an option of ‘My saves’ which provides users with a dedicated tab of their favorite searches and results.

    However, Bing lags in the areas where Google is way ahead of the league like quick loading, bug detecting,data loading etc. which directly hampers the user experience. Some digital marketers may get annoyed because it may lead them to lose their potential conversions.

    Conclusion

    ‌‌Microsoft Bing still has a task to do to compete with giants like Google. But because it is continuously working to make it more efficient in terms of user experience, advanced features, and ads services so that it can attract a good number of users in its basket, it has a bright future. It definitely has a decent share of the US market but it has a long way to travel to acquire decent global market share to become comparable with Google search engine. The innovative step of Microsoft Bing is being friends with the enemy’s enemy. It kept on partnering with the giants which were already in competition with Google which helped it to get the little exposure it currently has.

    FAQs

    What is Microsoft Bing used for?

    Microsoft Bing is a search engine used widely to search over network. It ranks second most widely user search engine.

    How effective is Bing advertising?

    Bing Ads reach more than 60 million searchers that aren’t reached with Google AdWords.

    What is Bing best used for?

    Bing has a significantly better video search.

  • Story of David Filo: Co-Founder Of Yahoo!

    If one considers the late nineties and early years of 21st century, one giant ruled the internet segment—Yahoo! Be it search engine, online tabloid, finance reports, or anything else, Yahoo! was the go-to solution for online needs, a powerful mega web service provider. While the brand may not be as powerful as it once was, it still wields influence even in the presence of competitors like Google, Facebook, Twitter, and others. 26 years and still counting!

    Yahoo! was founded in the year 1994 by Jerry Yang and David Filo. An electrical engineer by profession, Filo co-founded Yahoo! at Stanford University. Initially, the duo called their venture, “Jerry and David’s guide to the World Wide Web”.

    David Robert Filo – Biography

    Name David Robert Filo
    Born April 20, 1966 – Wisconsin, U.S.
    Age 55 years (2021)
    Nationality American
    Spouse Angela Buenning Filo
    Education Tulane University, Stanford University
    Occupation Co-founder and Chief Yahoo, Yahoo! Inc.
    Net worth 350 crores USD (Forbes, 2021)

    David Filo – Growth of Yahoo!
    David Filo – Problems With Stanford University
    David Filo’s Marketing Strategy
    David Filo – Simplicity
    Coming Up With The Name Yahoo!
    Yahoo’s Connection With Netscape
    Yahoo!’s Decline
    Why To Follow David Filo?
    David Filo – FAQs

    David Filo – Growth of Yahoo!

    Yahoo Logo
    Yahoo Logo

    After launching Yahoo!, Filo recognized the potential of this website and subsequently launched ‘Yahoo! Inc.’. What started out as a web portal soon turned into something larger. Yahoo! became popular and started acquiring online gaming websites like ClassicGames.com, thereby releasing Yahoo! Games. Due to its partnership with multiple websites, Yahoo! enjoys considerable web traffic. By November 1994, its popularity sky-rocketed and 170,000 unique visitors were accessing the site every day.

    Soon, more than a million web users were visiting Yahoo! daily. While David was operating Yahoo! alongside Jerry for enjoyment, they were revolutionizing the world wide web. Companies like Microsoft and Prodigy approached Jerry-David to buy Yahoo!, but they simply refused.

    David Filo – Problems With Stanford University

    Yahoo Founders- David Filo and Jerry Yang
    Yahoo Founders- David Filo and Jerry Yang

    Success stories and struggles go hand in hand. The story of Yahoo! was no different. While at Stanford, David and Jerry faced infrastructure issues. They were using the servers provided by Stanford and when the company was expanding, the systems regularly crashed. The Stanford University administration asked the duo to take their venture off-campus. However, this move encouraged the team at Yahoo! to take it to the next level, from a college experiment to the full-fledged business unit.

    After funding from known sources was secured, the pair of Filo and Yang took a leave of absence from Stanford. They then hired school friends and interns to work for their company. Tim Koogle, former president of Motorola Inc., was roped in to add experience to the emerging team.

    By 1995, Yahoo! had become a formidable company. An alliance with the famous Reuters boosted its popularity as users could access news headlines with a click.


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    David Filo’s Marketing Strategy

    A great entrepreneur knows how to pump customers with exciting offerings. Filo added new sections such as quotations, weather, and sports scores to the website. Extensions like ‘My Yahoo’ and ‘Yahooligans’, a special version of the website for children in the 8-14 age group, were released. By 1999, the company was making a profit from the advertisements displayed on the website and related pages. Yahoo! Inc. also made special co-op deals with online retailers all over the world.

    David Filo – Simplicity

    Even after achieving success and becoming a sensation, Filo’s lifestyle didn’t see changes. As usual, he went to office in a junk-filled Datsun, and his office desk was still surrounded by litter cans all around.

    Coming Up With The Name Yahoo!

    David Filo- Co-founder of Yahoo

    The name Yahoo! is an urban legend. It stands for ‘Yet Another Hierarchic Officious Oracle’. The name became popular overnight courtesy of Filo and Yang’s brilliance.

    Yahoo’s Connection With Netscape

    Yahoo! and Netscape, two of the most popular websites, have some common elements. In return for a graphical link on Yahoo!’s homepage, Netscape’s founder gave the required equipment to keep the website running. A directory button was later added on the Netscape website which led to Yahoo!’s homepage. However, this didn’t go on for long and Netscape ditched Yahoo! for another website which offered a larger sum. Betrayals are inevitable.

    Yahoo!’s Decline

    According to many sources, Yahoo!’s decline began in 2000 when its search engine was powered by Google. After an all-time low value of the stocks at 4.40 USD, its popularity decreased and Google took over as the dominant player. Yahoo!’s rigidness in keeping up with evolving trends (much like Nokia’s debacle) was the salt rubbed into the wound.


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    Why To Follow David Filo?

    Filo transformed his hobby into profession. His work went on to leave a drastic mark on the World Wide Web. Although it’s Google that is the big shot at present, one cannot overlook Yahoo!’s dominance in the 20thcentury and early 21st century.

    David Filo’s net worth is 350 crores USD as of 2021. Filo is one of the early men to have realized the potential of the world wide web. His initiative came at a time when the internet segment was in its infancy. Innovation drove Yahoo! to prominence. What started with providing weather forecasts, match scores, and quotations is a behemoth today.

    David Filo’s story should compel you to explore those untouched opportunities in the digital world and fill in gaps yet to be identified!

    Also Read: Sheryl Sandberg: The Inspirational Female Entrepreneur

    David Filo – FAQs

    Who is David filo?

    David Robert Filo is an American billionaire businessman and the co-founder of Yahoo! with Jerry Yang.

    What is David Filo famous for?

    David Filo is a tech entrepreneur and businessman who co-founded Yahoo! with Jerry Yang in the year 1994.

    What is Yahoo?

    Yahoo! is one of the Internet’s leading search engines and web portals.

    Who is the founder of yahoo?

    Jerry Yang and David Filo are the founders of Yahoo.

    What is Yahoo used for?

    It is a web portal that provides news, entertainment, and sports information. The portal also gives users access to other Yahoo services including Yahoo! Search, Yahoo! Mail, and Yahoo! Finance.

    What is Yahoo founders’ net worth?

    Jerry Yang’s net worth is $240 crores and David Filo’s net worth $350 crores.

    What is the difference between google and yahoo search engine?

    Google is a company with an array of products that all integrate with search, the search engine being the flagship product. And Yahoo is not a search engine at all, but a web portal with a search engine powered by Bing.


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