SEL: AOL Plans Personalization But No Search Engine of Its Own

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Search marketing in the new media era.

November 02, 2004

AOL Plans Personalization But No Search Engine of Its Own

According to The Industry Standard, AOL is moving forward with plans to introduce personalization options for its search.

According to Gerry Campbell, vice president and general manager of AOL Search. "We're very focused on search as a company," Campbell said. "We're moving very aggressively in defining new ways for people to search...personalization is on the horizon. That's a given."

Yet, AOL is reluctant to create its own crawler and index, claiming its happy with the partnership with Google.

AOL is currently very happy with its arrangement with competitor Google to use Google's search technology to power AOL Web searches, Campbell said. Google is the best at crawling and indexing the Web, and AOL doesn't see any value for itself in trying to duplicate what Google does so well already, he said. However, AOL is continually improving and expanding its own search technologies that it uses to package and add value to the results it gets from Google, he said. "We're applying for (search) patents at almost blinding rates," he said. AOL also displays sponsored-search ads from the Google ad network.

If AOL wants to increase its search market share, they'll need to create their own index. Meta-crawlers have all tried to challenge for market share, but they all fail because of the lack of their own unique search results. AOL's search engine market share will be tied to the number of subscribers it maintains and with subscribers down from 26+ million in Q3 2003 to 23+ million last quarter, they'll need to capitalize on those search patents, if they want to grow their search business.

Andy Beal | permalink | +marktd |

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