A New Search Engine (And Why You Should Care)
- By Michael Stillman
The beta (test) version of the new MSN search
By Michael Stillman
There's a new search engine on the block. Some of you will be saying, "who is it?" Others will say, "why should I care? Isn't this a site about books?" This is addressed to the former. Those who do not see the connection are probably deeply rooted in the past, living in the present, and not seeing the future. Online sales, or at least online introductions, are an important and growing part of the book business. And, online bookselling is quickly requiring more than having your books listed on an online site, with thousands of other booksellers. Those who take charge of their own futures are the ones most likely to prosper. That's why you need to keep up with what is going on around you.
This is not to demean the importance of the online bookselling sites. They are a great place to sell books. They place your books in front of millions of eyes all around the world, potential buyers who otherwise never would have seen what you have to offer. They build sales. However, they do not build relationships. You can sell your books, but they make it hard to sell yourself. In fact, they would just as soon you remain anonymous, hidden behind their own brand name. You are almost like the companies which manufacture the products Wal-Mart slaps their house brand on. Who are these people, anyway?
Is there a problem with this? Not necessarily. As long as you have a mutually beneficial relationship with your retailer, be it Wal-Mart or Abe, Target or Amazon, these can be profitable ventures for all involved. The way these sites bring millions of listings from all over the world together is of enormous convenience to the buyer. You can expect they will continue to sell millions of books for people like you for many years to come.
However, this does leave a couple of gaps in the way you are able to conduct business. As an anonymous, or virtually anonymous seller, you are not able to build relationships with your customers. "Relationship," of course, is a synonym for "repeat business." Repeat sales to established customers has long been the backbone of the bookselling business. Now in the internet era, it may not be quite as important, but it is hardly unimportant if you are looking to build a successful business. The other issue with the internet sites is that you have no way to make your business stand out. The most successful booksellers have traditionally had their own styles, their own personalities, their own specialties; something to make them stand out. The anonymous seller behind the Amazon listing has none of this, and the smartest, most knowledgeable bookseller behind the Amazon listing looks no different from the dumbest one. One of the greatest keys to success is standing out from the crowd. The book sites make that difficult.
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A New Search Engine (And Why You Should Care)
- By Michael Stillman
Results from the new MSN search don't carry many ads ... yet
All of this brings us full circle back to where we started, with the search engines. Here is why the search engines are so important: in the internet age, they are a direct connection between you and your customers. The book sites will connect your books to your customers, but they won't connect you. If you believe this connection is still important, and you believe it is important for you to be able to establish your own image for the world to see, then you need to understand the search engines, because without them, you are invisible to most of the world.
Obviously, the first thing you need to be visible is a website. And, you need your own, not a derivative site, such as a page on the Abebooks or other website. You need your own web address. Then you need two more things: content, and some books to sell. Content simply means information. Tell them about yourself, your specialty, about books. Tell them something! People like sites that inform them, and will be far more impressed with a bookseller who appears knowledgeable than with one who has nothing to share. Search engines feel the same. They will reward you with better placement if they find you informative. But, this is an issue for another day. Right now we want to focus on listings.
In the past, no one could find your listings (on your own website) unless they first came to your site. They had to find you first, and then search your site for specific titles. It couldn't happen the other way around. People couldn't find you as a result of finding your listings in a web search. So, it really didn't matter whether your "listings" were just a link to the books you were selling on Abe or somewhere else. People weren't going to find you through your book listings anyway.
No more. In the past few years, we have seen the search business concentrated in a few hands, and by far the largest pair of hands belongs to Google. One of the things Google has done is expand the reach of their searches. They don't just find your home page, or the pages that link to it with just a click or two anymore. Now they dig deeply into your site. You can list thousands of individual titles, and as long as the structure of your site allows Google to reach them, they can be available for searches.
What does this mean? What it means is that people can now find your books (again, if your site structure is correct) through an internet search. Just as they can find the book you listed on Abe or Alibris or Amazon by doing a search of those sites, they can find the books you have listed on your own site with an internet search. There is no middleman to go through. No one structures your listing, decides what it looks like, prevents you from providing information about yourself, or stops the customer from contacting you directly. You are there for the whole world to see and you get to choose exactly how you look. And for this, you don't even pay a commission! You get to control your own destiny, so to speak.
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A New Search Engine (And Why You Should Care)
- By Michael Stillman
Froogle provides book listings from many sites, including yours if you wish.
Of course this isn't a replacement for the book sites. They do an important job. Those sites have many regular buyers, and they place your books in front of their customers in return for the commission you pay. Most internet book sales happen this way. However, that should not stop you from directly approaching those collectors who are not customers of the book sites. There are plenty of them. Here at AE we constantly hear from people with questions about books, many of which could be answered by looking at listings on the websites, but they've never even heard of them. Just because you know Abebooks as well as Abe Lincoln doesn't mean everyone does. There are people searching the internet for books because they either don't know another way, or are not satisfied with the alternatives. They are looking for you.
Google has already taken a giant leap into this void. It's called Froogle. Froogle is simply an attempt to take product listings, including books, from anywhere on the 'net, group them together, and separate them from all the other listings on the web. It ends up looking almost like a bookselling site, except that the links go into others' sites (including yours, if you so choose) instead of their own. So now potential customers can search for books on your site either through Froogle, which separates them from library and other non-selling sites, or through Google, which includes them with all listings. Either way, people can now use the world's most popular and powerful search engine to find book listings on your site. All you have to do is let them.
Now, back to the beginning. We said there's a new search engine on the block. There is. Something old, something new. It's Microsoft. Oh, them. Yes, the folks who gave us Windows and Internet Explorer are in the process of creating their own search engine to go head-to-head with Google. Now Microsoft currently offers a search engine on its MSN website. However, that is not their search engine. They are obtaining their results from Yahoo and others. Microsoft, despite its size and dominance in so many areas of software, has never had its own search engine. Until now. As we all know, Microsoft can be a brutal competitor when it wants to dominate a market, and Microsoft has rarely been known to enter a market with intentions anything short of dominance. That said, I'm not sure they have ever run into a Google before. Google isn't Netscape or Lotus. This should be interesting.
My advice to booksellers is don't get in the middle of this competition. Just get the most you can out of both. And here is why Microsoft's new search should be of greater interest to you then their old one. The performance of the new MSN search is more reminiscent of Google than the old (and still current) MSN search. It too digs deeply into your site. Not as deeply as Google yet, as they are still building their list of sites to visit. But, it is finding things the old MSN search misses. This is one more opportunity to get your listings, as presented on your own site, out before the public.
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A New Search Engine (And Why You Should Care)
- By Michael Stillman
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As a test, I dug some phrases out of old articles that appeared in this publication ages ago, now buried deep within our archives. A Google search finds them on our site. An MSN search does not. But, a search on the new beta version MSN search does find them. Once MSN replaces its old search engine with the new, the deepest recesses of your website will be open to those who conduct their internet searches on MSN.
If you would like to try the beta (test) version of the new MSN search, here is the link: http://beta.search.msn.com
The next question for those interested in search engines is how to achieve better rankings with the new MSN. That's a topic beyond the scope of this article, but we would say that the criteria are probably quite similar to those for Google. Essentially, build a good, useful site, with plenty of information, and try to get as many links to your site as possible from other good and useful sites. A quick comparison of rankings indicates that, as compared to Google, Microsoft may put a little more emphasis on the content of your site, and less on the number of incoming links, but for the most part, a site that ranks well in Google will probably rank well in MSN. Build a good, easy to follow site, and the search engines will come. In time, we believe, so will the customers.
Here is one more piece of unrelated, web searching advice. If you have had problems with your Internet Explorer browser, there's a new alternative which, in my admittedly limited experience, works very well. It's Firefox 1.0, recently released by Mozilla. A few years ago, Microsoft crushed the pioneering browser put out by Netscape, raising their market share to something like 95%. There have been a few minor competitors since, such as Opera, but the browser business has been a virtual monopoly. However, some users have found IE to have its faults. Spyware or Adware can invade your computer through it, slowing its operation to a crawl, or generating annoying pop ups that seem to appear out of nowhere and won't go away. I cannot vouch for this, but some people have written that Firefox does a better job of protecting your computer, as well as offering various new features. If you would like to try it out, here's the link to the download: www.mozilla.org/products/firefox. It works on all major operating systems, Windows, Linux, and Mac.
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