Local search, Amazon & Google:
Snuggled inside the large press release about AOL and Google
renewing their loving partnership vows, was this gem of
information....
"Among the enhancements to AOL Search are enhanced local
searching capabilities, allowing members to quickly find local
businesses, services or national chain stores. At the top of
the results page, they will get a personalized list of the
relevant businesses closest to them based on the zip code they
have on file with AOL."
So yes, if you have a service based business and you want more
local customers to find you, join AOL. Not for the dial up
account, but so you can be part of their directory. They have
35 million members and at only 10 bucks a month, if you're a
realtor in Florida or a baker in Chicago, it might just be the
best advertising bang for the buck, that your money can buy.
(Now just imagine if AOL sold or gave all those Zip codes to
Google.... imagine how "suddenly accurate" their "search by
location" Geosearching engine would become. Hmmm, one can
only wonder.)
Might be worth getting - in adobe format ($49 full price)
Goodman report teaches 21 ways to optimize a Google Adwords pay-per-click advertising campaign: "Unleash the Power of Google AdWords
(2003 Edition)
By Andrew Goodman "
Seven Illegal Search Engine Optimization Techniques: "In this article I discuss seven illegal, or almost illegal, search engine optimization and related techniques."
News & views:
So what's next for Google besides more contextual search and
targeted ads? How about pay per click? They recently acquired
Sprinks, one of the oldest pay per click services. And, there's
rumblings on Reuters news service that Google will go public
in the first half of next year. The company could be aiming for
a market value of $14-16 billion, putting it in the same ballpark
as Yahoo and Amazon.
Google's also been experimenting with Search by Location,
or GeoSearch, which will restrict your search to a particular
geographic area. The service is still in beta, but it could
become more powerful in the near future. According to Google,
they determine geographic nature by analyzing "all"
information on a page, including, but not limited to, mailing
addresses and phone numbers.
So now it's more important than ever, to put your dirt world
address on every important web page. Be sure to include your
zip code and phone number. along with your area code. Plus
don't forget to include little helpers, like anything that
will help the robots determine your physical location. Stuff
like, autobody repair shop "near Seattle."
So what's new in search? Personally, my money's on Amazon.
As Google sits perched, synonymous with generic search, they
are like a sitting duck if Microsoft's marketing machine guns for
them. Amazon however, has quietly slipped into first place,
when it comes to product search.
And very quietly, shhhh, in the dark shadows of Silicon
Valley, Amazon has started their own search engine.... rumored
to be secret project A9. A new search engine designed to kick
b*tt when it comes to online commerce and product search.
So not only does Amazon have money, it's run by very smart
people. It is the grandfather of affiliate marketing. It's
also one of the most established and recognized internet
brands. So if my money is riding on the future of search, the
hearts and minds of the millions of shoppers may soon be
switching to Amazon
THE Tool for aggressive full on linking campaign for GB
OptiLink Link Analysis Software: "Download OptiLink FREE Trial"
Full upgrade price: $149
"OptiLink will tell you... who is linking to you, and what those links are saying about you, so you can optimize your own internal links, and contact the sites with the 'bad' links and get them fixed so they'll work for you and not against you! "
the main variables used by a search engine to determine its rankings.
These include:
Incoming link popularity.
Link text (keyword ratio).
Keyword density ratio on the web page.
Keyword density ratio in the title tag.
Google PageRank rating (if Google is the selected search engine).
Who is feature: right-mouse-click and up pops a Whois option that delivers the contact information for any site. This is great for checking ownership as well as obtaining the email address of linking sites that you need to contact to correct (or obtain), links.
Full review
OptiLink Review: "OptiLink is a link analysis tool for checking, monitoring, analyzing, predicting, and spying on your competitors' web page links to reveal how web pages achieved their high search engine rankings, and find Super Affiliates and link exchange partners"
Wired News: Spammers Clog Up the Blogs: "Across the Web, spambots were churning through bloggers' comment threads, leaving behind dozens of links embedded in key phrases like 'buy viagra' or 'diet pills.' Others, more deviously, posted innocuous blurbs like, 'Nice site you have here!' and embedded the spammer's URL in the comment signature, under fake names like 'underage,' 'cheap shoes' or 'phentermine.'
Bloggers agreed that, unlike garden-variety e-mail spam, the comment spam they were receiving was not designed to attract click-throughs. Its primary audience wasn't human; it was the all-seeing search-engine robot...
By embedding URLs in hundreds of blog comments, spammers apparently think they can trick search engines -- particularly Google -- into believing that the blog community is abuzz with news of the latest cheap Viagra website. Since Google treats links as a measure of popularity, the thinking goes, a network of blog links pointing at the spammer's site will give it preferential placement in search-engine rankings.
Sullivan added that whatever effect comment spam had on search-engine results would be unlikely to last long. "All spamming types of things are failing strategies," he said. "They may work for a very short period of time, but search engines come back, and it's another step in the constant arms race between search engines and the people who optimize for them."
The Pareto Principle: Applying the 80/20 Rule to Your Business
1) Use best-seller lists.
Find the "vital few" and make them easy for your visitors to find
2. Find out what to optimize on your Web site.
Often, when we review a client's WebTrends report, we spend a lot of time analyzing where and how traffic flows through the site. Guess what?
About 80 percent of the traffic hits only 20 percent of the pages. We've found this to be true for both business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) sites (although it's not always true for content sites). Where do we focus our energy? Ideally, on those 20 percent of pages that are critical to the sales and buying processes and are required to maximize conversions. If users can't find those critical pages, we optimize the pages required to lead them there in the conversion process.
Take a look at Max-Effect.com, first the old site, then the redesigned one. When we analyzed how people bought yellow pages ad design from Max-Effect, we came to the conclusion they flowed through three pages: the home page, the samples page, then the contact page. So we spent time rewriting the copy on those pages and changing the samples page from a bunch of thumbnails to a couple of before-and-after ads with some copy. Bottom line: Max-Effect is generating four times more leads and closing more business with a third less traffic.
3. Fix or discontinue problematic products and services.
Stop wasting precious resources on products and services that drain energy, time, and money. Whatever the problem costs you today, when you redirect your efforts the return on investment will be much greater. Without negative baggage, you'll see real improvement in efficiency, morale, and productivity.
Why only three items, and not a top-10 list? You guessed it, the Pareto Principle. Again.
New search engine;
Mooter Search Engine: "Clusters for australia travel guide"
Mooter is an Australian search engine that is to be launched later this year. You may, however, test a beta version of the service right now (http://mooter.com:8080/moot).
Unlike other search engine, the goal of Mooter is apparently not to serve as many search results as possible. Instead the company is working on fine tuning the search algorithm, giving users more targeted and relevant results.
According to the company Mooter employs "unprecedented 'artificial intelligence' based on psychological modelling to process and understand the information users seek."
"Users shouldn't have to work hard to find what they want," Ms Liesl Capper, CEO of Mooter, says. "Mooter sets out to solve the problems of most search engines by understanding the psychology of how users interact with information." And yes, she has a bachelor degree in psychology.
Mooter presents results graphically, as a cluster of balls (i.e. targeted topics) that you may click on to get the most relevant results. A search for "pandia" will for instance bring up topics like "internet," "search engine," "news" and "resources". The same topics are listed in the left hand column of the result pages.
The database used by Mooter is mainly based on metasearching (results from other search engines), but the search engine is also using its own spiders (i.e. gathering data by crawling Web sites).
News: "The ruling is believed to be the first in which the owner of a trademarked term successfully sued an internet search service over the practice of allowing advertisers to use protected terms in text ads"
Geo search - the future?
The State of the Search Engine Industry: "Rashtschy theorized that someday it will be possible to transmit a user's location through a cell phone to Google automatically to take advantage of geo-search, to find relevant local information. Notess concurred, but said that for phones to really take off as a search device, other than to provide weather, directions and restaurant information, 'We really need to change the habits of users. We need to build demand for geo-search, to teach users to search that way,' he said."
Links Are All About Reputation - An Interview with Mike Grehan: "Scottie: What do you think is the biggest misunderstanding among webmasters/SEOs when it comes to link building?
Mike: People look at links as if they are all the same, and often they go for quantity over quality. That's not the way to do it.
Link analysis has its roots in citation analysis and social network analysis concepts. A couple of sharp scientists named Pinski and Narin found that by using these predictive methods it could be possible to determine the next winner of the Nobel prize. The guy who had the most papers citing his work was the guy most likely to get the nod...
Scottie: Some people try to increase their link popularity by setting up multiple domains to link to their main site. Does this help?
Mike: Absolutely not. Those mini-networks are like spam islands if
they don't have quality links pointing into the satellites as well as the mother ship. They are easily detected
"
Stats & tools to get them...
The best tracking solution for online campaigns? : e-consultancy.com: "Subject: The best tracking solution for online campaigns?"
---------------------------------------------------------------
An excellent post from Dave Chaffey of Marketing Insights. He's
looking for tools that can provide measurement across the range of
online campaign activities - paid search, free search, online ads,
affiliates, e-mail etc. He suggests 10 criteria - can you add any?
Know of a tool that can deliver
Submit Ireland when ready..
Index Ireland: Add A Link: "Please note we only accept links which are related to Ireland.
Please fill out the form completely, and we'll add your site as soon as possible."
wonder why TT shows so many less on Google compared to close by sites by popularity?
Link Popularity Tool - Free Analysis Check: "free link popularity tool"
Not strictly SEO but following the rule of putting site visitors first it comes full circle back to SEO esp if search engines follow the same philosophy:
Information architecture: webpage mental maps emerge: October 13, 2003 issue of New Thinking by Gerry McGovern: "*
Information Architecture: Webpage mental maps emerge
"When people come to your website they have a mental map of how their 'ideal' webpage should be. They expect to see certain things in certain places. They expect to read certain killer words in your classification and content. The more you meet their mental map, the more successful your website will be"...
"If the vast majority of people expect to see a Home link in the top left, shouldn't you have it there on your webpages? It's not enough that your logo is a link to your homepage, as many people will not know this. An Australian lady told me recently that she had tested her corporate website with 64 people and that 64 out of 64 did not know that the logo linked to the homepage. So, you need to spell it out: Home."
The World Resource Center for Search Engine Marketers:
"Did you know that Yahoo! has its own SPIDER?? I caught that little
spider while running a Robot Manager Pro report. Its name is
YahooSeeker/1.0. It hasn't been setting world records on spidering,
but time will tell what Yahoo! has up its sleeves for this spider.
As you know Yahoo! now owns Inktomi, so we expect that Inktomi
results will be replacing Google results at Yahoo! in the very near
future. Yahoo! has also purchased Overture, which owns AltaVista
and Fast.
"
I really like this FAQ format - it allows you to use phrases (questions) which are likely to get an exact match to search strings...
: "When will be Castle of Mey be open to visitors?
The Castle of Mey, Her late Majesty the Queen Mother's residence in the north of Scotland."
a moralistic little story about becoming an "authority" by using links to give people what they want;
Links Are Good for Business: "The easiest way to improve your site, traffic, rankings, and business conversions is to simply give people what they are asking for. "
Lycos shows up the 2 urls with identical description etc...2 months in between
Lycos Search Results: web results for 1 thru 10 of 24,768: "
WEB RESULTS: Showing Results 1 thru 10 of 24,768 ()
1. Australia Total Travel
Australia travel guide covering accommodation and attractions with photos, maps, transport and more.
More results from: www.totaltravel.com October 5, 2003 - 21 KB
2. Australia Total Travel
Australia travel guide covering accommodation and attractions with photos, maps, transport and more.
More results from: www.totaltravel.com.au August 29, 2003 - 20 KB "
OJR article: Copyright Issues Present Ongoing Dilemma: To Link or Not To Link?
To some, ownership of intellectual property rights in cyberspace simply reflect corporate values that treat virtual space no differently than physical space, where private lots and businesses are protected by walls, fences and gates. This article was excerpted from the book, "Digital Dilemmas: Ethical Issues for Online Media Professionals."
Useful for an objective look at web page & word/phrase density.
Ranks.nl FREE Webmaster Tools:
"Keyword density analyzer
Shows your keyword density and placement (prominence). The tools features options to show the page's headers, page elements, outgoing links and more. It will warn you when it detects possible stopwords, adult words and 'poisonwords'."
Another long standing favourite tool:
Search Engine Spider Simulator: "Search Engine Spider Simulator Results"
Contextual Advertising What it is & why it is important:
Contextual Advertising, Part 1 of 2:
"Four hundred million user-initiated Internet searches each day -- 400 million questions, curiosities, investigations.
The consumer is in control. Accept it.
Search marketing (SEM)"seeks to understand your audience's buying behavior and uses its query language as a proxy for purchase intent. Depending on the language, marketers infer differing degrees of purchase intent and make differing offers as a buyer moves through a qualification funnel.
"
Inquiry marketing addresses the new marketing reality. It's what Sergio Zyman, Coca-Cola's former CMO, calls 'consumer democracy.' It's the rise of choice, and the decline of mass marketing.
Inquiry marketing treats SEM as a single tactic in a broader marketing process and context. Inquiry marketing addresses buyers' behavior and individual buying cycles by the exact words used to construct a query. It considers the time of day and where a user queries, as well as any buyer behavior after initial interest and awareness have been generated.
Definition of an online contextual ad: It is the same ad Google or Overture displays at the top of search results. It's labeled "sponsored result" or "sponsored link." But this ad is instead displayed on a content page that contains relevant material. The ad serving is automated, based on algorithmic relevancy consideration.
Does this indicate that the whispers about MSN being near to launching their own paid inclusion, crawler & search engine results are true? Lycos provided their main search technology & results up till now.
UPDATE - LookSmart to lose key Microsoft deal, shares drop: "LookSmart to lose key Microsoft deal"
"MSN uses LookSmart's Directory products for the majority of its search results at MSN Search, then backfills with crawler results from search supplier Inktomi, Fetyko wrote in a recent report.
Kellerman said LookSmart just renewed its own distribution deal with Inktomi, which was recently purchased by MSN rival Yahoo."
"MSN is continuing to take paid listings from Overture and use Inktomi for some of its web search results."
Google adwords
Google to Expand Keyword Matching: "Google to Expand Keyword Matching
By Brian Morrissey
Google notified its 150,000 advertisers on Friday that it would expand its keyword matching to show paid listings on related search terms, while also increasing the performance standards for such ads. ...
Google's broad match takes things a step further than rival Overture Services, which uses a tool called Match Driver to take into account misspellings and other variations to match up queries with relevant keywords. Overture also introduced its own variants of phrase and broad matching in August"
Paid options - research:
BW Online | October 6, 2003 | Web Searches: The Fix Is In: "investigation by BusinessWeek, based on more than 30 interviews and analysis of dozens of Internet searches, suggests that paying customers frequently fare better. Indeed, out of 20 advertisers and online marketing pros interviewed by BusinessWeek, 10 had experienced firsthand a boost in search-engine rankings when they signed up for paid inclusion. Says James Taylor, CEO of AICompany.com, a search-marketing company, 'Paid inclusion dilutes the accuracy and relevance of a search engine.'"
Google gets heavy.. re a suspended adwords account after accusations of fraudulent clicks
The Register:
Google shafts blogger, adds gagging clause to Adsense
By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco
"'#17 Miscellaneous. Except as required by law, You may not, without Google's prior written consent, issue any press release or make any public statement about the subject matter of this Agreement or use or display any Google logo or trademark in any manner (except as otherwise provided to You by Google as part of an Ad Unit).' "
"If Google follows its own contract to the letter, we could start seeing mass expulsions from the program as users compare information, or even simply discuss the controversy. And surely that's the one thing Google doesn't want to happen.
The giant search engine - increasingly criticized for exercising power without responsibility - had not responded to our request for comment at press time"
Continued...
Features: "Consultant and author of 'Search Engine Marketing', Mike Grehan, said he believes that Espotting still remains the best option in Europe, giving the best results and best service. And apart from some recent complaints posted on the affiliates4u marketing forum by Espotting partners whose payments were delayed by up to two months - it is difficult to find anyone willing to say anything negative about Espotting. The company assures Netimperative that all the late cheques have now been paid, and admitted that it could have communicated better with the affiliates concerned over the delay...
In the space of three years, Espotting has grown from just a handful of staff based in the living room of one of the founding members, to about 180 employed across 10 European countries. It is one of very few UK businesses to have survived and thrived in the internet sector...
as the market consolidates and matures, it faces a huge battle to cling on to its European advantage. Google and Overture are now poised to dominate as their financial resources grow and as they push their ability to handle worldwide campaigns and accounts. Ask Jeeves ditched Espotting for Google AdWords in the UK earlier this year, primarily because it worked with Google in the US."
Features
by Susie Harwood
Up until a week ago, things were looking pretty rosy for European pay-per-click search network Espotting. It had just celebrated its third birthday as one of the UK's few internet success stories since the dotcom bust, and in June this year successfully negotiated a £100m deal to merge with US firm FindWhat.com.
But Espotting's run of good luck has hit a snag after its would-be suitor FindWhat released a statement saying that it is currently renegotiating the terms of the merger to try and reduce the purchase price, adding that it could walk away from the deal if "mutually agreeable" terms could not be reached.
Search Engine Showdown News: Punctuation at Google and Minor Site Updates: "
Punctuation at Google
October 01, 2003:
Usually, search engines will replace all punctuation marks with a space when they index Web pages. And if you use a punctuation mark between words in a query, the search becomes a phrase search. In other words, a search on import-export is the same as 'import export'. However, Google has a couple exceptions to this rule for two characters: the ampersand & and the underscore _. Both can be searched by themselves or as part of a character string. In other words, a search on adv_search gets different results than 'adv search' and &tc differs from tc. And for programmers, while it would not search # or in most cases, it does
differentiate c#, c , c , and c. It does not, however, differentiate c*, c @, or c -, interpreting c* as c and both c - and c @ as c . Other punctuation marks may change the sorting of results. So Google does some different treatment of punctuation marks, and it has changed over time as well."
InterActiveCorp is talking to Google about search - LOCAL 10/02/03: "InterActiveCorp Chief Executive Barry Diller said his company, which owns the Citysearch group of Internet sites, is in talks with Google Inc., the most-used Web search service, about collaborating to offer 'local' search. "
Travel Sites: How to Rank with the Majors: "Travel Sites: How to Rank with the Majors
1 October 2003Print This Article
E-Mail This Article
The latest ranking of travel Web sites from Nielsen//NetRatings indicates that MapQuest is the highest ranking travel site, in terms of unique audience, gaining over 4.7 million unique visitors during the week ending 24 August"
For 'using'...
Espotting Media: "Style Guide
How should you create the best possible advertiser listings? Find out here."
re Yahoo, totaltravel.com is listed here:
Yahoo! Directory Australia: "Total Travel Guide - directory of lodging accommodations, activities, tours, boating, and more. "
it may be possible to get this changed & moved when .com goes global.....might be worth a few emails etc
The E-commerce for the Travel Industry Forum: "Hostelworld.com Wins Entrepreneurial Award"
Comment: Tightly focused site - just one type of accommodation, with guides & transport & more. High Page Ranks despite titles & keywords being a mess...
Train tickets for travel throughout Europe on Eurail & Eurostar � Hostelworld.com: "Getting Around Getting There The main gateway to Cairns "
More dirty tactics:
TopSurfer: Scumbag #205: "Reposted Article from Gazette Issue #205 "
Apparently, the folks at TopSurfer thought it would
be a good idea to download all of our templates (for free, using our bandwidth)
and sell them as a part of their "service." This was done without our
permission and without the permission of the designers whose templates they
stole. In addition to this, TopSurfer, after having gotten their copy of The
Gazette (everyone that downloads a template is automatically subscribed to
receive at least one issue), they thought it would be a good idea to report us
to SpamCop. So, not only have they stolen our free material for retail sale,
they've taken steps to make sure that The Gazette cannot be sent out to our
loyal subscribers. As a result of this, until I can put some more rigid
controls on the downloading of templates, I've had to take the
freesitetemplates.com download area offline. This is hurting everyone. I'm
taking this one personally, folks.
Important issues for when other countries/offices come on board:
SEO Code of Ethics / Standards (2): "There's been lots and lots of talk, about the adoption of an agreed upon Standard of Ethics for SEOs to follow. With the search engines themselves changing their algorithm and techniques daily, it's nearly impossible to define a rigid set of standards. What is allowed today may not be tomorrow, and similarly, a technique that will get you banned today, might be perfectly 'legal' the next. In such an environment, can there actually be a hard and fast rule set laid out, that 'ethical' SEO's can follow?"
There is always the consern that some individual in a burst of enthusiasm & ignorance will use a technique which results in totaltravel getting penalised &/or dropped - especially from google. The following sounds reasonable:
"since there are no etched in stone regulations, or consistency between the search engines, this is next to impossible. What we can do, perhaps, is begin with a set of basics ... things that we know the search engines will not allow or tolerate, and build and modify that list as FACTS become evident. An SEO whose business is driven by their desire to "achieve results ethically" and therefore "do right" by their clients should agree, voluntarily to follow these guidelines"
Oh bugger, totaltravel.com is in DMOZ - took a bit of finding. This means that ideally a request will have to be made to change the url for this description to the au one and try submitting the global & gb - perhaps submit gb as soon as it is ready then go for changes...
It is at this url;
Open Directory - Search Results: "Open Directory Categories (1-3 of 3)
Regional: Oceania: Australia: Travel and Tourism: Travel Guides (1 match)
Regional: North America: United States: California: Recreation and Sports (1)
Regional: Europe: Ireland: Travel and Tourism: Travel Guides (1)
Open Directory Sites (1-3 of 3)
Total Travel.com - Covers all regions including Sydney, Queensland, Perth, Byron Bay and Melbourne. Discount accommodation, tours, transport, guides and local links.
-- http://www.totaltravel.com Regional: Oceania: Australia: Travel and Tourism: Travel Guides (1)"
Google going personal with latest acquisition?
BUSINESS WIRE: The Global Leader in News Distribution: "Kaltix Corp. was formed in June 2003 and focuses on developing personalized and context-sensitive search technologies that make it faster and easier for people to find information on the web. "
DMOZ
DMOZ is also the Google Directory, bear that in mind.
When was totaltravel.com submitted? What was the description? Which category was it submitted to? Are AU going to resubmit the .au home page & GB the GB home page & who is to eventually submit the "global" .com home page?
For DMOZ submitting:
Make sure that your _main_ page is clear about the content of your site. If you think it is, submit an "update URL" request with a concise description covering the essentials of
--> what someone would find on the site, and
--> what the business does
Dmoz -> High Rankings Search Engine Optimization Forum: "Try their mirror site at
http://ch.dmoz.org/ if you can't reach the first. "
QUOTE
If while looking around the public side you ever see "editors" in the URL, or a reference to port "8081" then it is never going to work. Close the browser, restart, and try again at dmoz.org (not any other subdomain), hit reload or refresh a few times too and see if it makes any difference. One of the public servers keeps getting a problem. If you hit that one then it simply doesn't work. This is being looked into. Several fixes have been applied to the original server bug, but each fix seems to reveal another problem, this being the later incarnation of it. We are well aware of the problem. Editors are not in any position to fix it. Staff are aware of the bug, and once the weather improves, will be back on the job. Expect "resolution within weeks" seems to have been hinted at elsewhere.
Future of search...
ZDNet UK - Insight - Boldly Googling into the future: "When search grows up, it will look like Star Trek: you talk into the air ('Computer! What's the situation down on the planet?') and the computer processes your question, figures out its context, figures out what response you're looking for, searches a giant database in who-knows-how-many languages, translates/analyses/summarises all the results, and presents them back to you in a pleasant voice. I think this technology is about, oh, 300 years off. Just getting the computer to understand your question, much less the context it's being asked in, is way beyond the state of the art in computer science right now."....
"Microsoft has publicly voiced its intentions to move into search in a bigger way with the eventual release of Longhorn, which will attempt to unify local and Internet searches."...
Keywords, keywords, keywords...not forgetting keyphrases...
Good idea....competition to ensure response maybe?
Inc.com | Finding the Right Keyword: "Ask your customers or vendors what words they'd use to describe your business or service."
Maybe for now as there is no purchased program on site for logging, tracking & compiling search terms i should learn to read the log files proper - if Mike can arrange access that is.....
Ironic...
Inc.com | Finding the Right Keyword: "Don't Forget Free Search: Paid search may be all the rage. But you can still get loads of traffic from free, so-called 'organic' searches--that is, by tweaking your website so that the various search engines find it and place it high on the list of results. Seattle-based Express Metrix uses search marketing to hawk its IT management software. But marketing manager Jenna Sytman says that only 25% of the company's traffic can be traced back to a keyword it actually paid for. The majority comes from people searching terms like 'tracking software' and following the results to Express Metrix's site."
