Thursday, June 17, 2004

Are Blogs Ready for Prime-Time?

Are Blogs Ready for Prime-Time?: "A Blogads survey claims that blog readers are more mature and affluent than expected and more prone to click on ads and buy online"

Google

Britain cracks down on paid search | CNET News.com

Britain cracks down on paid search | CNET News.com: "British regulators have asked an Internet service provider to make clearer that some of its Web search results are paid advertisements, saying pay-for-placement listings from search provider Overture could confuse consumers.
The British ISP Wanadoo, a unit of its namesake French parent company, displays a light-gray hyperlink against a white background to explain that search results from Overture are ranked according to the highest bidder instead of by relevance. "

Google

Yahoo! Reawakens the Paid Inclusion Debate

Yahoo! Reawakens the Paid Inclusion Debate: "

Google

Google Gains in Popularity, Though the big three dominate vertical search sites

Google Gains in Popularity, But Will It Last?: "Though the big three dominate search market share now, vertical search sites experienced strong growth over the past year, most notably in the shopping, classifieds and travel categories. This growth is correlated with a concurrent decrease in referral visits from search engines."

http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=255

Google

Wednesday, June 16, 2004

A Closer Look at Microsoft's MSNBot

A Closer Look at Microsoft's MSNBot: "Towards the end of February of this year a new search engine spider began showing up in server logs everywhere. 'MSNBot' had made its first appearance, and quickly became the topic of discussion. Just as some webmasters became excited to see those first few traces of MSNBot, others became a bit curious as they found evidence of the deepest crawl cycles in months by any engine...

In a surprising maneuver though, a MSN Search representative (under the alias of "msndude") informed webmasters that as of June 11th, MSNBot was able to review what your preferences were for crawling time. Using the massively popular Webmaster World forum system, the following discussion had begun:


Webmasterworld forum Microsoft Introduces new Robots.txt Cmds

Google

Saturday, June 12, 2004

Ask Jeeves Trials Graphic Preview in Search Results

Ask Jeeves Trials Graphic Preview in Search Results: "A graphic preview such as that being tested by Ask Jeeves offers users the benefit of no-click peek at the Web content that lies beyond a search engine's results page. Catching such a glimpse into landing pages could shorten the time it takes searchers to find relevant results, as they wouldn't have to load an entire page's content to assess its relevancy. The method would also decrease surfers' reliance on the back button when they encounter non-relevant content.
New York-based Viewpoint Corporation is offering similar 'graphically enhanced search' technology in the form of a toolbar plug-in. It launched in March 2004, and uses search results from Yahoo! Canada's Smartdevil has long been pushing graphical previews, which it calls Thumbshots, in Web search results. "

Google

Friday, June 11, 2004

travellers research: use of web

Internet users are so hooked on the technology that they can't go without it for even a week. That's what Nielsen/Net Ratings says, based on a survey of 500 households with online access.

Seven out of every ten respondents said they're bringing a laptop or other Net enabled device along on their next vacation. Many are doing so because they're also bringing digital cameras on the trip, or plan to send e-mails instead of postcards.

Half of the surveyed people said they based their choice of hotels on the availability of high-speed connectivity.

The Web is also an essential outlet for travel planning: two thirds of travelers say they will check the Web while they are on vacation, and three fourths say they plan to do at least some of their vacation research online -- especially price comparisons and maps.

Google

Thursday, June 10, 2004

SEO spammers

MediaDailyNews 06-10-04: "Cloaking, creating shadow domains, and link farms are common techniques employed by fraudulent search engine optimization (SEO) firms. Range Online Media says it knows how to identify SEO fraud. Legitimate companies are getting bumped from Google and Yahoo! for illegal search engine optimization (SEO) practices, and most don't know why...

"Muller acknowledges that several big name brands have been banned by Google and Yahoo!, although he would not disclose any names. "The travel industry is huge with it," he says, adding that e-commerce, pharmaceuticals, porn, and gambling companies have also been major perpetrators.

"[Search engine optimization] is easier to do the right way, but it's more intimidating," says Muller. "If there wasn't a need for this 'quick fix,' then [fraudulent search engine optimization] wouldn't exist--you wouldn't believe how many hotel agencies aren't around anymore."

The best way to protect yourself is to RFP [request for proposal] at least five SEOs," Muller says. Prospective clients should also be wary of any company that claims "proprietary" SEO methods or that refuses to disclose its methodology. "

Google

eyefortravel Passenger Transportation Europe 2004 Conference

eyefortravel Passenger Transportation Europe 2004 Conference
NB harvest contacts.

Google

WSG Search Guides yahoo Google Teoma

WSG Search Guides: "syntax rules and features of the leading search engines" good on basics, not writen from SEO perspective but as searchers...

Google

Ask Jeeves taps into desktop search | CNET News.com

Ask Jeeves taps into desktop search | CNET News.com: is acquiring Tukaroo, which offers search and file management software for desktop computers.

Google

Google loses to Yahoo in Australia (June 10, 2004)

NEWS.com.au | Google loses to Yahoo (June 10, 2004): "GOOGLE'S efforts in the Australian market have taken a body blow as News Interactive yesterday became the third major online publisher to sign a search marketing distribution agreement with Yahoo's subsidiary Overture.

The News Corporation Ltd's online arm joined Fairfax's F2 and CNN in ditching Google in favour of Overture...The News deal was Overture's most comprehensive to date, as Overture would also provide search functionality within NI websites and contextual advertisements alongside content services, which NI managing director Nic Jones said Google had been unable to offer in Australia. But there was general dissatisfaction with Google's service.

"The reality is they haven't committed that much resources and time to Australia because they've worried more about other areas," he said. "We've had six different account managers within Google in a very short space of time, and getting them to concentrate has been pretty tough...

Overture's Australian managing director, Mel Bohse, said that, unlike Google, her company did not have its own high-profile web presence, which meant there was less risk to publishers of their readers being diverted to another search destination. Ms Bohse said that the agreement took Overture's distribution reach to 85 per cent of Australia's online population....

unlike its competitors, Overture employed editorial staff to ensure the keyword placements were being bought by companies with a legitimate link to the word.

She pointed to the Jetstar launch, when Flight Centre bought advertising links on Google so that web users searching for "Jetstar" were served up sponsored links to the travel agency.

"That would never happen on Overture. It's not a good experience for consumers to be taken somewhere they don't want to go," Ms Bohse said.

"And it's not good for advertisers, they're looking for qualified leads."

Google

The Art and Science of an Effective Link Building Campaign

The Art and Science of an Effective Link Building Campaign: "Is it wrong to buy or sell links? How far is too far in optimizing your internal link structure? If you operate a network of sites, can natural interlinking be perceived as link spam?
A special report from the Search Engine Strategies 2004 Conference, March 1-4, New York."
Covers Google, Ask Jeeves (Teoma)


"Start any link building campaign with a trip to your stats to find out where your traffic is coming from," she said. "Armed with this information, you'll have an easier time maximizing your linking efforts in the right markets."

She begins by using her keywords and the keywords she's gleaned from reading stats. She runs those through Gigablast, Teoma and Google and reviews the top 30 sites she finds.

"By submitting or swapping links, I try to get my site added to as many of the top 30 results sites as possible because 'supposedly' the top sites returned are authority sites," says Mastaler. "They are there because of text and link analysis and are grouped according to topic. We want links from these sites...

"There are additional ways of securing links -- submitting articles for publication, creating an on-site library and asking for content in exchange for a link, back linking your competition, offering link incentives, hiring a link building firm, etc."

"Don't forget to search and find your industry and geographic specific directories and blogs to add your optimized link to," she advised. "A lot of the specialty directories will let you add your business twice, once topically and again geographically. This is where I strongly advocate paying for a link. There are a number of directories I think it's worth paying to be listed in, with Business.com heading the list."

"

Google

'nigritude ultramarine 1st round results : A Contest to Outwit Google

Wired News: A Contest to Outwit Google: "'nigritude ultramarine.' SEO Challenge entrants were allowed to do anything to win, even things that some might consider underhanded.

"If the point of the competition is to prove which methods work and don't work, then it's silly to place rules that say you can't use such and such a technique," Ridings said. "If they really can't use it then the assumption is that Google would boot them out of the index, so they wouldn't win."

Suit, whose online community was judged the first-round winner, said that his success was based largely on backlinks -- a technique in which the required words on other people's sites are hyperlinked back to Suit's site. nigritude ultramarine forums for nigritude ultramarine in nigritude ultramarine (merkey.net) (Powered by Invision Power Board)

Lenssen, who writes a blog about Google, just missed winning the first round. He used a combination of three optimization methods, but according to Ridings, Lenssen's entry slipped into the second spot just at the moment of judging. Lenssen said his main strategy, too, was building a tremendous number of backlinks.

Google Blogoscoped - The Nigritude Ultramarine of the 21st Century: "I could not hold my weekend number one position, and now it's official. The Nigritude Ultramarine iPod goes to... Forums.merkey.net. Congratulations.
Nigritude Ultramarine in the meantime went up in Blogdex as fastest spreading Meme on the Web....

Google Blogoscoped - The Nigritude Ultramarine of the 21st Century: "The current events again prove three points:

1) Google is heavily defending itself against any type of spamming mechanism or single-page optimization, or even closely-related linkfarms. That is why real links to real pages matter, and not a gazillion repeated variations of the keyword.

2) Content still rules. Most other pages have nothing but nonsense text stuffed with the competition phrase. (The Nigritude Ultramarine FAQ being a noteworthy exception, and the only competing site I linked to.)

3) Nothing counts as much as a bunch of single, high-quality backlinks from high-quality pages. This includes news coverage as well as blogs by friends (helping me out in this competition were Philipp Henkel, Dominik Schwind, Markus Renschler, Alexander Svensson, Paul, Maurice, Sebastian, David, Karthy and many others � thanks again).

So what's the secret of Nigritude Ultramarine, and good rankings in general? The secret is that there is no secret... and realizing that is the best way to get you focus on providing good content, good products, good service, and whatever it is which drives visitors to your site."

Google

Wednesday, June 09, 2004

Spam, spam, spam, spammmmmm Google Reinclusion Service -> High Rankings Search Engine Optimization Forum

Google Reinclusion Service -> High Rankings Search Engine Optimization Forum: "Here is a list of typical spam tactics I have seen:
keyword stuffing
text the same color as the background
1px wide marquees
javascript (nothing else needs to be said)
doorway pages
nonsense text such as 'this page is optimized for the keyword phrases widgets (yes, widgets), blue widgets (blue widgets), red widgets (all about red widgets), etc., etc.
and a bunch of other more sophisticated spamming techniques, to say nothing about the usual keyword stuffing of the page. A common way to tell if you are spamming is to read the text on your page. If it sounds like spam, then it is spam. "

Google

Yahoo tests new home page | http://news.com.com/Yahoo+tests+new+home+page/2100-1038_3-5228698.html

Yahoo tests new home page | CNET News.com: "Yahoo has begun quietly testing a makeover of its home page, as evidenced by trial mock-ups seen by some Web users over the past few weeks when they accessed the portal... Yahoo's home page changes are few and far between. The company has long remained militant about maintaining the site's speedy load time and visual style, resisting a heavy use of graphics and animation. Before its 2002 makeover, Yahoo's home page had maintained its basic framework since 1995. "

Yahoo email: The e-mail revamp, slated to launch this summer, will include a boost in memory to 100MB for free users and "virtually unlimited" storage for its paid customers. The move is meant to counter archrival Google, which plans to launch a free e-mail service called Gmail that offers 1GB of storage.

Google

Search Engine Watch Forums Launched

Search Engine Watch Forums Launched: "Search Engine Watch Forums Launched By Danny Sullivan, Editor, June 8, 2004"

Search Engine Watch forums - Part of the ClickZ Network

Google

Hitwise demographic data

There are differences between visitors to the leading three search engines.

- The most predominant demographic for Google users is male (53.42%) aged 35-44 (25.26%) earning an annual household income between $60,000 - $100,000.

- Both Yahoo! Search and MSN Search capture more of the lower income demographic of $30,000 - $60,000 annual household income. Yahoo! Search stands out in the younger age demographic of 25-34 (25.99%), while MSN Search is stronger with females (54.26%).


MSN Search has the highest percentage of downstream visits to the lucrative categories of Shopping and Classifieds, Business and Finance, and Travel. Google, given its genesis in higher education and its strong news service dominates the Education and News and Media categories, while Yahoo! dominates the Entertainment category.

The report concludes that 2004 brings the potential for a new type of disintermediation, the removal of search engines ("the middleman") between the end user and vertical search engines.
The study finds strong growth in market share of visits by three of the leading shopping search sites; Bizrate , NexTag, and Shopping.com. While these leading shopping search sites have experienced astronomical growth during the period of August 2003 to April 2004, the percentage of visits driven from search engines has decreased. The combination of overall strong growth and decreased visits driven from search indicates that users are going direct or finding other routes to comparison shopping sites.


Google

Blogs and Internet Directories: The Same and Different

Blogs and Internet Directories: The Same and Different: "As part of that Internet mainstream, blogs are now finding entry into most of the popular Internet directories. The Open Directory Project, better known as DMOZ, has a special category for weblogs. Topic specific blogs are found under traditional website categories as well. The Yahoo! Directory has also proven to be very receptive to adding blogs to its listings. Because blogs are mainly non-profit sites, bloggers are able to use Yahoo's free submission option.
Other smaller Internet directories, including JoeAnt, Skaffe, Zeal/Looksmart, GoGuides, and Gimpsy also have blogs in their regular category listings. Blogs are readily accepted into the major Internet directories alongside traditional websites."

free blog-specific directories

Blog Search Engine http://www.blogsearchengine.com

Blogwise http://www.blogwise.com

Eatonweb portal http://www.portal.eatonweb.com

Blog Universe http://www.bloguniverse.com

Popdex http://www.popdex.com

Blogarama http://www.blogarama.com

Blogdex http://www.blogdex.com

Blo.gs http://www.blo.gs/

Globe of Blogs http://www.globeofblogs.com

Blizg http://www.blizg.com

Online Marketing Links http://www.onlinemarketinglinks.com

As with DMOZ, the Yahoo! Directory includes a major section exclusively for blogs: http://dir.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/Internet/World_Wide_Web/Weblogs


Google

Tuesday, June 08, 2004

Search market share

As it stands now, 48 percent of search engine users tap Google as their first choice for Web searches, according to a survey conducted by Insight Express and commissioned by Standard & Poor's Equity Research.

Yahoo came in second at 20 percent, followed by MSN with 14 percent and AOL with 7 percent

Google

Monday, June 07, 2004

Photographymania.com - Photo search engine

Photographymania.com - Photo search engine: "New! Photographymania.com redesign.
Same great search with a new look."
Photography search engine: "PhotographyMania.com is a portal that offers its users the latest photography content from ALL of the major online sites. In addition, PhotographyMania.com offers users a highly rated photography search engine, and much more."

For "press release"?

Google

Yahoo UK News

News: "Fru Hazlitt, formerly Yahoo!'s sales and marketing director, replaced King as the managing director ( Yahoo! Europe director of country operations...UK MD of the portal")

Google

Friday, June 04, 2004

hosting..Too Many Links From The Same Server? -> High Rankings Search Engine Optimization Forum

Too Many Links From The Same Server? -> High Rankings Search Engine Optimization Forum: "'Purchasing and setting up multiple domains can be a great way to increase your visibility on the Web and if you cross-link your domains, you can improve your link popularity for each site. This can also enhance your 'theme' rating. However, it's best if you host the cross linked domains at separate Web hosts so that the first 3 blocks of the site's IP address (xxx.xxx.xxx) are different. Some engines may ignore link popularity if the IP addresses of the sites are too close together numerically. Warning: Make sure each new domain has unique content to avoid spamming!"

Google

Thursday, June 03, 2004

How to win website awards

These following tips take into consideration many of the criteria that award-givers use to judge your site.

Before submitting, optimize your site design. See our reports on website design:
Site Design Part I

Site Design Part II

Make sure your website has a definite purpose that is communicated clearly to your visitors.
Use graphics effectively. Avoid stock clip-art and focus on original graphics that enhance the presentation of your site.
Make sure your site is easy to navigate for your visitors.
Check for broken links. The following websites will be helpful:
http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html
http://linkalarm.com/
http://www.netmechanic.com/

Validate your HTML code using one or more of these tools:
http://www2.imagiware.com/RxHTML/
http://www.htmlhelp.org/tools/validator/
http://validator.w3.org/

Check for browser compatibility using one of these tools:
http://bobby.watchfire.com/bobby/html/en/index.jsp
http://www.anybrowser.com/
http://www.delorie.com/web/wpbcv.html
See our report on this subject, Site Compatibility

Include a page on your site to display awards that you have

Google

Search Engine Mission Statements: Marketing Monitor - May. 6, 2004

Search Engine Mission Statements: Marketing Monitor - May. 6, 2004: " In Google's case, its mission statement is 'to make the world's information universally accessible and useful.'

AOL - AOL's Mission is to build a global medium as central to people's lives as the telephone or television... and even more valuable. (This is a pretty broad mission statement. My take on this is that AOL wants to do to the internet what RCA did to the television)

Yahoo! - Yahoo's mission is to be the most essential global Internet service for consumers and businesses. (Very similar to AOL: to become the most important internet service in the world; also very ambitious.)
?BR>Ask Jeeves - Ask Jeeves' mission is to deliver the most relevant answers to your everyday searches. (This is a very simple, clear mission - and it's strictly tied to search. The only one I've seen, from all the search engines, which explicitly says this.)

Altavista - AltaVista's mission is to provide access to information to the global community, and they are dedicated to setting the standard for search technology and how people find information. (Even though they are now part of the Yahoo! network, I thought it was worth mentioning. The line I like is "setting the standard for search technology. They can still do this for Yahoo! Altavista now becomes the breeding ground for new technology which then rolls over to Yahoo!)

Microsoft - Microsoft's mission: To enable people and businesses throughout the world to realize their full potential. (I looked for a mission statement for MSN but couldn't find one. I would think, however, that it would contribute and align to Microsoft's overall mission which is also broad - tying an individual's potential to a computer. A stretch in my view, but a worthy challenge.) "

Google

Google testing new spider?: Marketing Monitor - May. 27, 2004

Google testing new spider?: Marketing Monitor - May. 27, 2004: "With this new Googlebot crawler working using the 1.1 protocol, it is much faster than 'traditional' crawlers. Rather than requesting one page at a time, the new crawler can request multiple pages at one time. The new HTTP 1.1 protocol allows for multiple requests to be bundled and sent as one package. I won''t go into too many details here, but with HTTP 1.0, one request had to be made at a time, therefore a crawler could only really receive one page before requesting additional pages. With HTTP 1.1 the crawler can now request many pages which then are bundled together and sent.

And this is why it looked like the crawler wasn't following a path through the site - because it wasn't. This crawler was making multiple requests at one time. It likely had a cache of pages which another crawler had told it to get, so it was going out and retrieving those pages.

So what does this mean to you? Well, if Google continues to run these crawlers, then its index should start to refresh more often. Also, new sites should be indexed sooner. Plus, Google will be able to do the same amount of indexing with fewer crawlers (or conversely index more of the web with the same number of crawlers). "

Google

Track yahoo dir Is a Yahoo! Directory submission worth it?: Marketing Monitor - Jun. 1, 2004

Is a Yahoo! Directory submission worth it?: Marketing Monitor - Jun. 1, 2004: "First of all you, if you use a log analysis program you will need to define a filter which shows you the traffic generated by Yahoo Directory. Conversely if you use some form of real time tracking function such as WebTrends Live, or another form of visitor tracking, you will need to tell it some way to filter data based on a referrer.
In either case, you need to define a filter where the referrer is the Yahoo! directory (http://search.yahoo.com/search/dir). This is where the directory results are served from. To remove the '/dir' from the above string will return only organic search results. This is the key: defining the referrer."

Google

Searching for Search at Ad:Tech: NetProfit - May. 27, 2004

Searching for Search at Ad:Tech: NetProfit - May. 27, 2004: "Two things were consistently missed, however, that I believe are vital. First, none mentioned organic search and its importance until after I mentioned it in my presentation. Secondly, they fell into the trap that almost all search marketers do. They were thinking straight lines to conversion, and people tend to search in circles."

For most consumers, search is a circular funnel. We start with broad, generic phrases, and narrow down our search focus as we go. And as we do so, we interact with the search results we see and can be led in totally new directions based on those results. Most often, this all happens in one single search session. So to say that broad phrases don’t convert is wrong. They represent the beginning of a process that can eventually lead to a conversion, but ROI tracking only captures the end of the process, not the beginning.

Case study:Cruising on Search

We had a young female who was looking for information about a cruise. She started with the vague notion that she wanted to go to the Caribbean, but actually began her search process by just searching for “cruises”. When asked why, she said she wanted to keep her options open and just wanted to see what came up. What did come up were listings for major cruise lines, including Princess in a prominent organic position (she tended to look at organic listings first). She knew the brand and saw by the listing text that they offered cruises to the Caribbean. She didn’t actually click through to any site.

Her next search was for “Caribbean cruises”. Again, Princess’s site was prominently placed in the top organic listings. This time, she did click through to Princess and did some investigation of the Caribbean itineraries. One option that caught her eye was the Panama Canal Cruise. At this point, it was a few clicks on the back button to get back to the search engine results page.

From here, she searched for “Caribbean Cruise Reviews”. She wanted to get some objective third opinions. She found a site that offered this as the number one organic listing and read some encouraging reviews of Princess Cruises. At this point, she again backed up to the search engine results page and launched a new search for “princess panama canal cruises”. When asked why she did this, rather than just go directly to the Princess site and navigate to the appropriate page, she said she thought using the search engine to get there would just be faster and easier. She did find the page she wanted, and clicked through the listing to the site. This time, she spent a fair amount of time reading about the cruise and the ports of call. She was ready to convert, but she wouldn’t do it online. She would print off the page and take it to her local travel agent, because she wanted to finalize the purchase with a face to face interaction. When she got there, she would ask for more information about Princess Cruises through the Panama Canal.

Was this a successful search interaction for Princess? Absolutely. But what if we didn’t have the advantage of watching the searcher during the search process? From the ROI metrics used by most search marketers, this would have been a dismal failure. They would have never realized that their brand was introduced in the search for “cruises”. They would have recorded no conversions for the searches for either “Caribbean cruises” or “princess panama canal cruises”. It would have been recorded as a lost opportunity.

Google

Wednesday, June 02, 2004

Traffick: Minding the Search Engines' Business

Traffick: Minding the Search Engines' Business: "Ask Jeeves' stock valuation has risen more than tenfold over the past two years. Froth? Bubble? How does a company that was unprofitable and struggling two short years ago make it to a $2 billion market valuation?"

Google

Tuesday, June 01, 2004

"

DMNews.com | News | Article:

Yahoo's Overture Services sees its biggest growth
opportunity from large, traditional direct response
advertisers. David Karnstedt, general manager of direct
business at Overture, said the paid search provider's focus is
not on rising competition from Google but following its parent
company's lead and luring money from traditional direct
marketers. "Our real challenge is not necessarily the other
people that participating in the search space but shifting
dollars from other direct response advertisers, like direct
mail and yellow pages,"

Google
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