Monday, February 28, 2005

Happy Birthday Yahoo! 10yo today

Forbes.com: What Has Been Yahoo!'s Greatest Achievement?

"Since its inception, Yahoo! (nasdaq: YHOO - news - people ) has weathered the Internet bubble's boom and bust, emerging as an industry leader despite facing increased competition in recent years. With annual sales upwards of $1 billion and market value of more than $120 billion, the company has certainly come a long way since Filo and Yang turned a student hobby into a legitimate business ten years ago. "

Google

Saturday, February 26, 2005

SE-Rank : Tools

SE-Rank : Which site is the best ranked on search engines for your keywords?

Google

Friday, February 25, 2005

AOL local search reviewed

CNET News.com
"America Online on Thursday began featuring a new Web site for finding local services, in a further bid to win back Web searchers from rivals....

(AOL) plans to introduce a travel search site in partnership with Kayak.com. It also plans to introduce improved local shopping tools in partnership with Bizrate.com. The local search site unveiled Thursday is powered by technology from Fast Search & Transfer. It also features local news aggregated by Topix.net.

Advertising also plays a big role in AOL's new local service. The company has partnered with Ingenio to display "pay-per-call" ads related to local search results."

Google

Google adds movie search - give em what they want

CNET News.com
"Google has added a feature that allows people to search for movies playing in their city and find other film-related information.
The new feature, announced Wednesday, is available on the company's search site and can be accessed with a computer, cell phone or other wireless devices that use SMS (short message service)"

Google

Search Engines & Directories sites

Hitwise
Search engines and directories of Internet content. Sites in this category usually act as gateways with links to the broader worldwide web, not just the content of the site. The data below is based on Weekly rankings for the week ending 02/19/2005 » Ranks by 'Visits'.

Top 10 - Search Engines & Directories sites
Google
Yahoo! Search
MSN Search
Google Image Search
Ask.com
Yahoo! Image Search
My Web Search
Dogpile
Yahoo! Directory
AltaVista

Google

The search relationship

DMNews.com
"Consumers who end up purchasing products search an average of 12 key phrases before buying.

That’s a lot of searches. Yet, if you catch a searcher early on in his/her search and your listing answers his/her query, you have established a connection. If it happens a few more times, the bond strengthens. If you reach a searcher more than a few times and the searcher ends up buying from you, that’s the beginning of a relationship. Of course, odds are that a given advertiser is only showing up a few out of the 12 times, unless it has made a great effort to reach more.

When advertising with search, you should have a number of opportunities to reach prospective customers. The questions are, when do you try to reach them, and what impact will you have?...

You also should seek visibility across the full range of searches, from the most general to the most directed. Ideally, your listings will appear at various points in the search process with appropriate ad creative at the ready and will direct him/her to landing page content that is relevant to his/her current state of mind. Those initial impressions can determine whether there’s hope for the start of a relationship."

This underlines the importance of being in search results across types of search query, commercial and non-commercial.

Google

Search shares price & growth slowdown

The Ratings Game: Google, Yahoo end lower on downgrades, competition - Internet Services - Internet - Analyst
"Google, Yahoo fall after downgrades:: America Online launches local search service"

Bambi Francisco comments: Net Stocks: Paid-search blues hint eBay was rightCompany Announcements

"earlier in the year, eBay,likely the largest buyer of keyword terms, said that experimenting by merchants sent paid-search pricing to what appeared to be bubble levels, suggesting prices would eventually come down.

'It appears that cost-per-click prices are coming down a bit,' said Michael Jones of Channel Advisor, which helps merchants sell goods on either eBay or via search and shopping engines."

On AOL and local search: "Merchants and local professionals spend $478 million a year on Internet yellow pages and $160 million in local search, according to The Kelsey Group. Local search dollars are expected to grow to $3.4 billion by 2009."

Google

Thursday, February 24, 2005

Yahoo, Rackspace and new IP addresses

e-marketing-news.co.uk

Article gives full explanation.

Bogons Ate My Web Site By Ian McAnerin and Mike Churchill: "if you are given an IP address that was a bogon until recently, you may find your website blocked from various ISP's and networks. "

Google

Is 2005 the year of organic search?

Welcome to BtoBOnline.com

"Organic search grows"

Three main factors: cost, reach and branding

"Marketers are also realizing that they aren't reaching everyone unless they own both the paid and organic listings. Google searchers click on organic results 72% of the time, while 60% of all clicks on Yahoo! originate on the organic side. That means that paid search is only garnering 28% and 40% of the eyes, respectively, according to a report from iProspect..."If your site comes up on the first two pages on major organic search and there's a link to a paid search, it gives the user more confidence. That visitor may feel more comfortable and have a higher level of trust." "

Google

Mike Grehan Interviews Apostolos Gerasoulis and Jim Lanzone of Ask Jeeves and Teoma

e-marketing-news.co.uk

"'Mike Grehan in conversation with...' Jim Lanzone & Apostolos Gerasoulis of Ask Jeeves/Teoma"

Discussion focuses on Google PageRank and HITS (Hyperlink Induced Topic Search) by Kleinberg

Grehan explains HITS here http://www.search-engine-book.co.uk/LinkEquityExplained.pdf

The conversation proper opens with the shock* answer to "Does Google use PageRank? No says Apostolos. Have they created some kind of local implementation based on anchor text? Yes says Apostolos.

Grehan reckons that the future of search "is more about data on users. Find out about the web-galaxy developed by us (the web page makers) and the user-web-galaxy controlled by the search engines. And the link we need to create between them. "

Apostolos on PageRank: The ranking algorithm is so much more complex now. And PageRank is just used when they want to break ties.I'm sure that they've not implemented Kleinberg's algorithm. But I'm also sure that they have created some kind of local implementation based on anchor text...I think the biggest improvement they've made is anti-spam inclusion and consistency. But what surprises me is that they haven't used subject specific popularity..."
we're still at the beginning of search.

Apostolos says of the development of search: "in 2000 we were at level one. In 2004 we were at level three, and we need to get to level ten...(it is )not about the algorithm alone, it's about building the infrastructure to be able to deliver 24/7never going down"

Jim makes an interesting observation: "SEMs [search engine marketers]are only really looking at queries that are commercial. Because that's who their clients are. And they're not looking at the vast query stream where we don't have that issue.

On the majority of queries on our site there are no ads at all."

The nitty gritty question from mike: "what we need to do to build the perfect Jeeves/Teoma web site? What do we need to do to rank well?
Apostolos:

Well, build a great page which is recognised by the web. The only problem you have is how quickly this page will be recognised by the web, but Teoma, I don't know if you're aware has recently improved the crawling speed dramatically. So, it's basically building a great page which will be recognised within its community.

Don't try to build your own community and say: "I'm the one who recognises myself" though!

Now, with Teoma, as I mentioned before, we're going into the next generation. I want to get you excited because 2005 is going to be the most exciting year for search engines.

Now it's not just about communities, it's about the users. There are new technologies coming in which will change the way that people access information.

I don't know if you saw BBC news in the UK? There was an article where they had a competition with Teoma Vs all the major search engines and we came at the top. I don't know if you read that?

Like I said there are two galaxies. One is the user galaxy which you guys don't know about. And the other is the web galaxy which you guys work with every day.

The lucky ones, really, are the search engines because they own the user galaxy. We were talking about personalisation, let's touch on that again. It's not the individual who is important, it's the group.

We belong to groups and we have group behaviour. And this to me, going back to the subject specific popularity and the clusters we have created on the web... Well just imagine if we can create clusters of user behaviours!"

Grehan concludes: "it's a very fine line, but the methods and the efforts that people put into spamming may be better spent just creating some great content instead of crappy spam. You may have somebody linking to you and end up just doing well naturally!"










* see PageRank is dead, long live PageRank

Google

MSN Viral campaign

MediaPost

"MSN apparently has released a viral campaign, MSN Found, to promote the search site...

The ad features six fictional characters, each with their own Web log. They are Reggie, a DJ from London; Tad, a surfer from Venice Beach; Karen, a dog breeder from Sandusky, Ohio; Swing, a hotel concierge from Tokyo; Cy a security guard and conspiracy theorist from Chicago; and Denise, the owner of the new True dating service. The viral’s main site, www.msnfound.com, collects all the blogs together, along with pictures of the authors."

Google

Paid search growth may depend on verticals

DMNews.com

"Paid search spending in the United States is concentrated in the four categories of retail, financial services, media/entertainment and travel, according to a report released yesterday by JupiterResearch...

The report, "Vertical Search: Early Marketers Will Reap Rewards of Low Pricing," said this finding means the search industry will develop much the same way historical media markets before it have, with the broad-based search engines spawning a raft of vertical engines dedicated to specific categories.

"If vertically focused media firms do not seize this opportunity, search engines like Yahoo and Google, as well as a number of established and startup vertical search engines like Shopping.com and Sidestep, will enter to satisfy the market demand." "

Google

become.com launch beta shopping search

DMNews.com

Christine Blank of dmnews.com reports that:

"Become.com, a new search engine focusing on shopping-related information, launched in beta form yesterday....Become.com's Affinity Index Ranking technology produces more relevant results than other search engines, the company said, because it delivers comparison information beyond price, including reviews, buying advice and articles."

Formed by Michael Yang and Yeogirl Yun - whose previous enterprises include the comparison shopping site mySimon.com.

Google Search Listing: Become.com
"Become: Be Smart. Be Thrifty. Just Be.
Next Generation Search Engine for Shopping."

Lean home page declares (as above) Become: Be Smart. Be Thrifty. Just Be. "The beta program is now open. You are invited to try our search engine for your shopping research."

Registration is required and the following stipulations apply:

"While we are in beta, we have the following limitations:

Each beta tester is limited to 50 queries per day.
You must be able to accept cookies.

Additionally, to participate in our beta program, you must agree to the following:

I will not use any automated systems to send queries to Become.com, nor will I use any means to scrape the Become.com site. "

Become: Site Owners: "BecomeBot is the user-agent for Become.com's web crawler... to prevent the BecomeBot from crawling everything in the /cgi-bin directory of your site, simply add two lines that say:

User-agent: BecomeBot
Disallow: /cgi-bin/ "

So far I cannot see evidence of a comparison facility...miss-spelt limosine churns up barrow loads of spam - irrelevent results...

Google

Wednesday, February 23, 2005

Interesting SEO site

iMediaConnection

Report re "New Search Engine Tracker Launches...Engine Tracker enables clients to view website rankings of competitors and aggregates the data in a single location. The service also tracks those values over time and identifies significant changes in any of the criteria to aid online marketing initiatives...Engine Tracker also allows subscribers to create customized email alerts informing them of changes that meet user-defined thresholds. For example, if a client's Google links fall to a certain number, the client will be notified and advised by Search Engine Optimization."

So like the PageRAnk sceptic I am I immediatly Googled them and find a PR of 8...and the following....

Search Engine Optimization Search Engine Placement: "Search Engine Optimization Inc is the FIRST and Only search engine marketing firm to become a member of the (W3C) World Wide Web Consortium..."

Need I say that I will be looking further at this?

Google

What to optimise for before JAnuary 2006

iMediaConnection: Taxes, Diets and Vacations on the Mind

"Analysis of January consumer activity by comScore Media Metrix reveals people are using the net to achieve New Year's resolutions. With 2005 upon them, Americans in January turned to tax, diet, careers and travel sites to begin planning the year ahead, according to comScore Media Metrix' monthly analysis of consumer activity"

Reckon a similar picture would apply across most western cultures...

Google

Search Engine Spam Techniques That Aren't Needed

searchengineguide.com

Jill Whalen reiterates the basics of seo techniques to avoid which she summarises as "if any given strategy has to do with trying to trick the search engines, it's probably a bad technique. Some of these tricks involve keyword stuffing, hidden text, doorway pages and numerous other dubious techniques."

Relevent to a site I looked at yesterday is this common misconception about keywords:

"One of the reasons people stuff keywords all over a page is that they think they have to put every single keyword that might relate to their site, right there on the home page. This is one of the most common misconceptions that people have. Your home page is not the be-all-end-all of your site. It doesn't have to list every product or service imaginable that might relate to it. In fact, if it does it could send up a red flag to the engines that something fishy is going on."

Jill's advice is to select:

"perhaps 3 related phrases that describe what your site is all about, and use these on your home page in a judicious manner. Be sure to put them in your Title tag, as well as visibly in the copy on the page that your site visitors will read. By that I mean to write or rewrite your page copy based on the phrases you choose. Once you do this, it can be extremely powerful for your search engine rankings."

Jill concludes:

"SEO isn't rocket science; nor is it magic or deception. Like most things, it takes time and/or money for it to be successful. If you hear about some sort of quick-fix method for getting your site found in the engines, you can pretty much bet that it's something the search engines are actively seeking to penalize....If you're lucky, you'll find another technique that will work until the next big shakeup; however, you may find that the search engines have had enough of your shenanigans, and your site may get knocked out for good."

And we all know that Yahoo in particular does pick up and penalise "shenanigans"...

Google

Tuesday, February 22, 2005

Four Word Search Query Convert Best

Search Query Keyword Insight

emarketer.com report: "Looking at data from high-traffic keyword phrases for sites that were optimized by Oneupweb, the search engine optimization firm found that conversion rates grew the longer the keyword string, peaking at four words. The results were the same in all three months studied. "

Google

Saturday, February 19, 2005

Small Business Approach to Integrated Search Engine Marketing

searchengineguide.com

"Search combined with marketing equals SEM or Search Engine Marketing. SEM is a combination of the following tactics: natural search engine optimization, pay per click advertising and paid inclusion..."

A few points of interest:

"Natural SEO – Ah, the natural way. Do not place all of your attention on paid search just because your search engine optimization efforts have not succeeded as you’d like. Go back, discover your customers through web analytic tools like Urchin or Clicktracks. Find out how they came to your site. What terms did they use? What terms converted to a sale? What terms are you not currently optimizing for? Then create topical pages specific to these terms. Natural SEO should be your long-term goal; it is free leads."

"In terms of the search cycle, it is best to focus on the linguistics logic of the early-stage compared to the late-stage as in the following example:

Laptop – Discovery stage
Laptop Reviews – Researching and exposed to advertising
Cheap Laptop – Closer to buying stage and focused on pricing as purchasing factor
Apple iBook 12” $999 – Focused search, ready to buy "

" Pay Per Call – Supporting your local search advertising campaign will be Pay Per Call. This tactic, developed by Ingenio and provided by Findwhat and soon to be AOL, offers the ability to target ads to business-specific categories, exposing searchers to your ad with a 1-800 telephone number. Potential customers’ calls are redirected through the Ingenio hardware and software to your business. The average Pay Per Call will be around $2.00, but the interactive nature will offer smaller businesses a better sales opportunity. Look for this to grow in 2005."

BJ Cook Concludes: "Search can no longer exist alone. Understand the dynamics of search, email, display media and your customers. Use your website as a valuable tool for understanding your customers and potential customers. Are they in the discovery phase or buying phase? Natural SEO is your long-term goal for search engine marketing. Use PPC and online press releases to highlight promotions and offline advertising. Think of it as one unit, providing you with the most cost-effective means to an end."

Google

Getting an Education in Search Engine Marketing

searchengineguide.com
"The search marketing industry changes at such a fast pace that even if a university were to offer a degree in search marketing, the information they taught would be out of date before the graduate could even put it into practice."

Laycock recommends various resources in the following categories:
Search Engine Marketing News Sites
Discussion Boards
Newsletters & E-books
Conferences and Seminars

Google

Friday, February 18, 2005

redirects and blogs

Hosting a Search Engine Friendly Site: "ways to implement the 301 redirect: "

Google

Thursday, February 17, 2005

What, Exactly, is Search Engine Spam?

SEW By Bill Hunt, February 16, 2005: "Thurow next presented a slide that contained a comprehensive list of sixteen tactics that are considered search engine spam. These techniques include:

Keywords unrelated to site
Redirects
Keyword stuffing
Mirror/duplicate content
Tiny Text
Doorway pages
Link Farms
Cloaking
Keyword stacking
Gibberish
Hidden text
Domain Spam
Hidden links
Mini/micro-sites
Page Swapping (bait &switch)
Typo spam and cyber squatting

Yahoo's Mayer echoed Thurow's warnings about spamming the engines. He explained that Yahoo! (and the other engines) take spam very seriously and spend a great deal of time and effort trying to eliminate spam techniques...

Bottom line: A spam site is one which uses techniques in a determined manner to subvert the search engine's algorithms, to artificially inflate their search engine rankings. And if they catch you, expect no mercy."

Google

Tuesday, February 15, 2005

Big Four Confirmed For Indexing Summit

Big Four Confirmed For Indexing Summit: "All four major crawlers, Yahoo, MSN Search, Google and Ask Jeeves, will be taking part "

Google

Monday, February 14, 2005

Forbes.com: Update 2: Click Fraud Looms As Search-Engine Threat

Forbes.com: Update 2: Click Fraud Looms As Search-Engine Threat: "Update 2: Click Fraud Looms As Search-Engine Threat "

Google

Yahoo :: Nazi memorabilia dispute

Forbes.com: "Free speech activists and Yahoo Inc. declared a small victory Thursday in a dispute over whether the e-commerce giant can host auctions for Nazi memorabilia on its U.S. sites. "

Google

Ask Jeeves' branding campaign

MediaPost

"AS COMPANIES CONTINUE TO COMPETE for the growing online ad dollars spent on search marketing, search engine Ask Jeeves will this week join rival MSN on the air in a consumer branding campaign.
The effort marks Ask Jeeves' return to television advertising after a four-year absence. 'We really see this as a first step in a marketing program,' said Greg Ott, vice president of marketing. The campaign's goal, he said, is 'helping people re-engage with the Ask Jeeves brand.' "

Google

Saturday, February 12, 2005

Micro Persuasion: Yahoo May Have RSS Feed Search in the Works

Micro Persuasion: Yahoo May Have RSS Feed Search in the Works
"Yahoo May Have RSS Feed Search in the Works"

Google

Thursday, February 10, 2005

Bored With Seo?

High Rankings Search Engine Optimization Forum

Scottie posts the question: "I am amazed at the number of people I have talked to in the last 6 months or so who have said they are losing interest in SEO. Why is that?

Are we just a bunch of challenge seekers and the game isn't fun anymore? Has the SEO landscape changed so much that we aren't as fascinated by it as we once were? Has it become too hard/too easy? "

Jill Whalen writes: "It is certainly more interesting to start looking at and figuring out conversions rather than rankings. I'm glad that we're moving into that era. Still have a few of those clients that don't get it though..."

qwerty made me laugh... " Well, if you lot are all bored with the work on getting the code and content on a site right, feel free to send all those boring clients to me"

Raphael fumes: "The SEOs that come from a less technical direction are much more likely to succeeed at organic optimization, purely because they're more inclined to 'try it and see if it works' rather than spend 40 hours trying to figure out what algorithm google is using this week.....

People (who waste time) figure out what algorithm google is using this week annoy me. It's a pointless waste of energy, and IMO you'd simply be better off spending your time making sure your site is the best, the most comprehensive and the most informative in it's field.... Because at the end of the day, ranking actually doesn't count for crap - visitors and conversions do."

On the same topic Jill Whalen says " I do believe that the best SEOs (not for pills, porn casino, but "real" sites) are those who are somewhat technical, but not so geeky as to do things by the numbers. Plus, they have to be highly creative. It's quite a powerful combination when you put those 2 things together....I guess that's why those people trying to figure out LSI or whatever the geeky acronym of the month is just make me laugh and laugh"

Big Bill "I'm hugely frustrated at having a headful of specialist and very useful information that people don't want to know about."


Denyse "I still believe that SEO is an important tool, because its about making your site the best it can be, for the visitor and by extension the SE. But once you have done that you don't just sit on your laurels, you have to work hard at marketing that site. And that's what keeps it fresh for me."

Google

SEO and Your Web Site

Digital Web Magazine

"How to construct a user friendly and search engine friendly site

Optimizing your site and content for a search engine, for a better ranking in SERPs, is known as Search Engine Optimization (SEO), yet many Web developers/designers either don’t take time to code a site properly or don’t know how to do proper SEO. The basics of code optimization are just sound HTML coding practices; when followed, they go a long way toward SEO."

Google

Wednesday, February 09, 2005

Limos in Brighton, USA Yahoo! Local

Limos and Shuttles in Brighton, MI on Yahoo! Local

Google

Tuesday, February 08, 2005

Rackspace bans Yahoo! | Threadwatch.org

Rackspace bans Yahoo! | Threadwatch.org more interesting stuff on rackspace YahooHow funny is THAT? - Well, not very funny at all for anyone hosted on Rackspace i guess...

Yahoo's Tim Mayer said:A customer of a hosting company like rackspace may have a customer that is being hit by our crawler and not realize who it is so they report the IP to rackspace or another provider and they block the IP at the router level. This would cause other SE to have access and for us not to have access.....

This isn't the first time that RackSpace has jacked their customers like this. I seem to recall a ban on Gbot a couple years back or maybe it was Inktomi but either way - insanely stupid way to manage a data center like that...

... the more likely case is that they are in the DFW1 data center with the 72.x.x.x IPs, and it's still being filtered as a bogon by someone. While that entire IP block has been valid for many months now, some sites have not updated their filters, and will not communicate with it.

Are your servers located in the new Dallas data center or another one of Rackspaces data centers? So far, I have only heard about this kind of problem from people hosting in the new facility.
it's possible that Yahoo/Rackspace may have just been the first public victims of brand new IP's being used.

...I'll keep you guys posted on what's happening, but for now, when you are suggesting to your clients that they get a dedicated IP address on a different Class "C", you should probably make sure that the new IP isn't so new that it's being blocked.

I doubt Rackspace is the only one using brand new IP's.

Google

Bloggers won't keep a secret

Internet Daily By Frank Barnako, MarketWatch on Bloggers, Ask Jeeves

Barnako discusses blogs and business.

"If there's any question how Web logs and the Internet have changed the news business, talk with executives at Ask Jeeves Inc...

Chances are they spent the weekend trying to figure out how to stage their expected announcement that the company has acquired Bloglines, perhaps the most popular way to keep up with Web log postings and RSS feeds online."

Google

Monday, February 07, 2005

Google Search: Key Phrases

Google Search

First from 39th Google Search: Whiskey Tours of Scotland

• First from eighth Google Search: "the cafe" northallerton

First from 10th (was 10th with quotes, now 1st without) Google Search: travel around Britain

First from 51st Google Search: Hotels in Wales near Snowdon

• First from 3rd Google Search: Abseiling in Snowdonia

Inward bound links:

• UK: 2,180 up to 3,920
• AU: 3,370 up to 3,990

Google

Answers.com: The Best Internet Innovation In Years

Forbes.com

Lisa DiCarlo: "What's even cooler is GuruNet's one-click technology. It works like this: After downloading a tiny bit of software, users mouse over any word on any Web page, within any e-mail, within any document, hit the 'Alt' key and automatically get an Answers.com page with information described above.

What's better still is its ability to recognize context. If you mouse over the word 'Ford' in one paragraph containing three different references to Ford Motor (nyse: F - news - people ), Harrison Ford and Francis Ford Coppola, the system will process that and deliver information on cars, actors and directors respectively...

Answers.com is the most useful, smartest, coolest, easiest-to-use Web innovation to come around in years.

Answers.com is a new approach to Internet search, but make no mistake: It is not search. With one click Answers.com delivers instant information, not Web links, laid out cleanly on one page.

For example: Typing in Intel (nasdaq: INTC - news - people ) turns up a single page with a brief company history including pictures of the founders, a company profile, annual sales, employees, office phone numbers, executive's names, stock charts and recent news."

Google

Ask Jeeves reportedly to buy Bloglines

CNET News.com

"Bloggers are speculating that search site Ask Jeeves has acquired one of their own.

Ask Jeeves has bought Bloglines, a privately held start-up that aggregates personal Web sites, according to media blog Napsterization.org. Also, Ask Jeeves' Web site is pointing exclusively to Bloglines via several links for blogs.

A company representative reached Sunday declined to comment on an acquisition, nor on a partnership between the two companies. However, publicly traded Ask Jeeves has scheduled an announcement for Monday...

According to a recent study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 5 percent of Internet users in the United States used syndication technologies in 2004 to read news headlines and other content. Blog readership was up 58 percent, and more than 8 million Americans created blogs of their own."

Napsterization: "That's the scoop. Ask Jeeves is integrating Bloglines into their search system (it's not yet live on their main site, til Monday as reported).
Noted however that on Ask Jeeves new blog (it's a baby, three days old!) at the top, blog search, and the sidebar, Top Blogs and Most Popular Links go straight to Bloglines"

Google

Sunday, February 06, 2005

Discusses directory sites and Google - Great Googly Moogly!!

WebProWorld

Thread seems to indicate that many directories consisting mainly of links and adwords are dropping in Google rank....Jpipes posts about the zillions of scraper - "fake" to me - directory type sites:

"if you are a business that has structured their entire business model around getting 'picked up' well by a search engine and throwing junk advertising on your site to get revenue, it's not the search engine's fault, it's yours. You need to get back to basics.

I see an amazing abundance of these 'directory' sites which are basically a bunch of links with little to no substantive value to them. As more and more uncreative people copycat one another, the supply of these sites well overreaches the extent to which there was ever any demand for them, and they will see their advertising revenues shrink back to nothing. That is, until they shift their focus from copycatting and 'the quick buck', to developing a solid, grounded business model that a) provides a value or service to customers that they are willing to pay for, and b) distinguishes the company substantially from its competition. The greater the competition in the market or industry, the greater must be the distinction between the crowd and the business. "


Google

Yahoo! Contextual Search

Yahoo! Search: "Type in what you are looking for the way you think - or just copy/paste some text - Click on Y!Q Search and we do the rest..."

Google

PageRank less important

webpronews.com

"PR still has importance. However, it is also decreasing in value. PR is only based on the quantity and quality of links (both inbound and outbound) from the given web page. The most obvious reasoning for the declining importance theory is due to the fact that on any given search on Google, the PR of each page seems to have barely any correlation with it's place in the rankings. For all you PR lovers out there, hold on to your toolbar's tight, because this could be a bumpy ride."

Google

One-way links and triangle linking

webpronews.com

"Reciprocal links, while not becoming totally dead, are decreasing in value, and there will most likely be an algorithm update to lessen their importance...One-way links and triangle linking, though already quite popular, should explode over the course of 2005. Both are much harder to control and acquire, which makes Google happy. The triangle link 'ploy' makes links look like one-way links even though 'Site A' is returning the favor to 'Site B' through 'Site C'. There will be attempts to sell triangle linking programs and systems by SEO companies, however, the complexity, difficulty and time involved in this scheme will produce ridiculous prices. "

Google

Become: Be Smart. Be Thrifty. Just Be.

Become: Be Smart. Be Thrifty. Just Be.

5 Things to Keep an Eye on in the SEO World in 2005: "3) What this about a new search engine that is going to index every site on the internet, EVERY 10 seconds? Become.com has turned a few heads with it's claims. Site owners have reported Become Bots spidering 'like crazy'. It's all quite hush, hush, however and you need to have an invite in order to test it out. It should be interesting to see what they're capable of if and when they decide to go live. I'll go out on a limb and say that it's a household name by this time next year. "

Google

Can MSN search beat Google?

insider information

"As the veteran Microsoft enters the already flooded search engine industry, and Google still being fresh and refreshing to most people, it begs the question: can the old supplant the new?
After investing hundreds of millions of dollars into search technology and marketing, Microsoft definitely considers this a battle which can be won. "

Google

Zope - Lastminute.com

Google

Saturday, February 05, 2005

: Yahoo Launches Beta of 'Contextual Search' Feature

E-Commerce News: Software (Earlier this week)
"Bidding to keep its edge in the rapidly evolving search space, Yahoo has started to test what it calls a "contextual" search function aimed at
helping users find more relevant results. The service, known as Y!Q, is now available in beta form. Users can download a "demo bar" from Yahoo
and also use the feature on the Yahoo News site...

Analysts say that the new feature hints at where search is headed toward ever-tighter integration with the overall Web experience.

The goal is to make search second nature to users, Forrester Research analyst Charlene Li said, and in doing so to prompt them to seek out results, and the advertising that comes along with it, more readily."

Google

comScore Networks Acquires SurveySite

comScore Networks Acquires SurveySite: "SurveySite brings a 200,000-person survey panel under comScore's umbrella. The deal expands comScore's survey staff by 50 employees, for a total survey team of 80.
Effective immediately, SurveySite will operate as division of comScore Networks under the name comScore SurveySite. The acquired company's president, Jeff Hohner, was named president of the new division.
comScore acquired Q2 Brand Intelligence, which conducted surveys across a variety of categories, including retail, travel, and technology, in August 2004.
Together, the two acquisitions raise comScore's permanent staff to over 300 employees. "

Google

Rackspace hates Yahoo? Or Vice Versa? Hosting blocks slurp...

searchenginewatch.com
"Possibility 3: A router between all/some of Yahoo!'s spiders is blocking the traffic from a mistaken belief that the brand new IP address is still unallocated (and hence not valid).

If you look at the BOGON allocation list, it shows that 94% of the IP addresses in the 72.X.X.X range are NOT currently allocated. If the IP in question was really just recently allcoated, there may be some routers out there that are still blocking this traffic."

Google

Ask Jeeves, DoubleClick in Google Shadow

Forbes.com: Ask Jeeves, DoubleClick in Google Shadow

"'You really get a sense of who the major players are in the Internet space when someone like Google or Yahoo report their earnings,' said Michael Patterson, an analyst with BPC Investors in San Francisco. 'For the smaller players, it's a matter of if they can provide a niche that someone like Google might just overlook.' "

Google

Friday, February 04, 2005

Search to become the most successful marketing method for all businesses

MediaPost SearchInsider

Gord Hotchkiss uses the story of search revenue projections by Jaffray analyst Safa Rashtchy to illustrate his theory that " Search is likely to become the most successful marketing method for all businesses."

Hotchkiss reckons local search is going to be the huge growth area - I see this as having gigantic implications for the online travel industry...different to those for FMCGs and retailers in general

"ON NOVEMBER 9, 2004, PIPER Jaffray analyst Safa Rashtchy dropped a bombshell on a small handful of people at the New York Ad:Tech show. He doubled his search revenue projections for the next five years. And, he bumped these projections less than two years after they originally came out. "

Hotchkiss notes that earlier projections created huge buzz but the multi million $ figures barely caused a ripple either on or off line.

The
"high points of Rashtchy's announcement:

First of all, the growth numbers. In March 2003, Rashtchy estimated that worldwide search revenues would hit $7 billion by 2007. Just a few months later he was quoted as saying that these numbers are likely too conservative. With last November's presentation, he had the opportunity to bump those numbers up.

Rashtchy now feels we'll not only hit that target, but surpass the 2007 - $7 billion mark this year. Next year, he predicts search revenues to top $10 billion, and then hit $13.5 billion in 2007, $16.2 billion in 2008, $19.8 billion in 2009 and top $23 billion in 2010."

Hotchkiss summarises Rashtchy's on the main revenue drivers fueling the growth:

• The increasing use of search by big business
• A second wave of small business just discovering search
• The international growth of search
• Discovery of the branding value of search
• The growth of contextual search, with local search perhaps poised to take over


Rashtchy identifies four basic drivers of search growth - T.C.P.C.

• T Traffic - More people doing more searches, especially commercial searches
• C Coverage - Expansion of keyword baskets, monetizing more search terms
• P Price - Increasing prices per click
• C Conversion - As we get better at converting clicks to buyers, advertisers are willing to bid more

Hotchkiss sums up:

• Search is likely to become the most successful marketing method for all businesses
• Local search is a huge force that could change the dynamics of search for online-only merchants, putting them at a big disadvantage

• Concepts like broad match could make search an effective soft sell, suggestive advertising mechanism
• Merchants should focus on customer conversion and extending the customer life cycles
• Search providers should focus more on merchant conversion rates and offer lower charges for broad match and contextual search.
• Search providers should also focus heavily on local and international expansion

His conclusion about local search comes from a different angle to my travel centric POV - he reckons online merchant or retail sites could face stiff competition from "local" bricks and mortar businesses providing retail goods.

So what is the impact on online only travel sites likely to be?

The structure of the British and Australian Totaltravel sites - granular - is a match made in heaven
The industry in general may focus on geo-targetting all SEO and SEM campaigns to fit with local search a la Google or Yahoo
Destination marketing: geo keywords prices soar, taking over from cheap, cheapest - but how will users react?
What do search phrase trends show users are doing?

Google

Thursday, February 03, 2005

Landscape Stock Photos, North Yorkshire Moors, UK

Landscape Stock Photos, North Yorkshire Moors, UK by Mike Kipling

Google

Web Pages That Suck presents the biggest web design mistakes in 2004 learn usability and good Web design by looking at bad Web design NL

Thanks to Seth's Blog: I've been remiss: "I haven't told you about Vincent Flanders' funny and useful and free article on web design"

"Vincent Flanders Presents: Web Pages That Suck presents the biggest web design mistakes in 2004 learn usability and good Web design by looking at bad Web design The Biggest Web Design Mistakes of 2004 (Part 1 of 2) "

1. Believing people care about you and your web site
Remember to ask yourself webmaster:
* The only reason my web site exists is to solve my customers' problems.
* What problems does the page I'm looking at solve?

2. A man from Mars can't figure out what your web site is about in less than 4 seconds
3. Mystical belief in the power of Web Standards, Usability, and tableless CSS
4. Using design elements that get in the way of your visitors.

5. Navigational failure.
All web navigation must answer:

*Where am I?
*Where have I been?
*Where can I go next
*Where's the Home Page
*Where's the Home Home Page

6. Using Mystery Meat Navigation.


The Biggest Web Design Mistakes of 2004 (Part 2 of 2)

"7. Thinking your web site is your marketing strategy.
8. Site lacks Heroin Content.
In his classic book, Naked Lunch, William Burroughs described heroin as the ultimate product. Why? Because people would crawl through the sewers and beg to buy it. In the non-drug world, there are very few products that can be classified as having heroin's appeal.
9. Forgetting the purpose of text.
10. Too much material on one page.
11. Confusing web design with a magic trick.
12. Misusing Flash.
13. Misunderstanding graphics.
14. AFFrontPage."

Google

World of James Herriot Centre

World of James Herriot Centre Thirsk Tourist Information Centre (TIC) is reported by the North Yorkshire news to be running a spring campaign with displays and hands on activities,. The Herriot center starts the campaign folowed by Thirsk Museum dedicated to cricket legend Thomas Lord.

Google

Corporate SEO Implementation: From the Inside Out

Recognise the dilemmas?
Corporate SEO Implementation: From the Inside Out: "The SEM responds with something like, 'Three months ago, this site wasn't assigned to me for SEO. Had I been involved in the CMS upgrade [or site redesign], we could've made these search-engine-friendly changes then. Sorry about that. So, when can this be done by?'
Right about then, the room goes silent. Next, the eye rolls begin. Heavy sighs are emitted from the IT group. They say they'll have to get back with an implementation timeline.
The IT stakeholders head back to their workstations and e-mail their boss about how redoing work is inefficient. The SEM goes back to her workstation and e-mails her boss an acceptable timeline for the SEO project's completion. "

Google

Meet the Local Search Engines: reviews and tests

searchenginewatch.com reviews Yahoo! local, Ask Jeeves,

Local search has been hot over the past year, with the major search engines jostling for eyeballs, offering new features for both searchers and advertisers alike.

A special report from the Search Engine Strategies 2004 Conference, December 13-16, Chicago.

Yahoo: "Business owners do not need to have a web site to be listed in Yahoo Local. The cost for an Enhanced Listing is a flat monthly fee. For more information about Yahoo Enhanced Listings, please visit http://listings.local.yahoo.com/. "

Ask Jeeves: has partnered with Citysearch for local information. "We have lots of descriptions from our editors. We have user-submitted content. And we have business-submitted content from our directory," said Palka. "So when you're in local search and those words are in the meta-data descriptions, you can be found in the natural results, too."

AOL: There are two ways a business can appear in AOL's local search results. Local content is pulled from AOL CityGuide and Yellow Pages. "If you represent a local business, we recommend going into the Yellow Pages listing and update your product there," said Pacsuzki. "We also do have an ambassador program to work with resellers and businesses having franchises in multiple locations. You can send us your data and we will integrate and distribute that data for free across all of our local properties."

Local Search ... Is your business ready?
forums.searchenginewatch.com local search forum thread. NB only one post, see above link for content and Google local discussed...

Chris Fillius blogs at The Search Lounge and looks "at each of the big four: Ask Jeeves, Google, MSN and Yahoo. A lot of the data these engines use comes from other sources, but I will focus on the user experience coming through each engine"

Fantastic review - works through each engines features for local searchresults, strengths and weakenesses...

Chris Fillius concludes: "Google and Yahoo are my preferred choices, with Google being the slight winner. Because I live in San Francisco and have so many other options for local information, MSN’s portal features, about which I will mention more later, are not particularly compelling. For other users, or for people from other cities, it very well may be different.

To provide more context, MSN is the only one of the four that is a full local portal. The other three are more search-based. So, depending on what you’re looking for you’ll want to use different ones (gee, what a surprise). I think Google offers the best search, but MSN’s browsing options could be useful. Yahoo stands out because they control their own data and in the long run that will set them apart. Ask didn’t really stand out to me in any significant way.

It’s interesting to think about the aforementioned strengths of each local engine because they accurately reflect each company as a whole. MSN is a destination company, Google is a search company, Yahoo is a destination/search/media company, and Ask is hanging with the others, but needs a little more oomph.

All four engines default to my saved search location, but Ask and Yahoo also keep a list of other recently searched locations for easy access. I find that feature useful because although I live in San Francisco, I also often search for information about Santa Cruz and San Diego, All four engines have useful help pages dedicated specifically to local."




Google

SEO Overlooked by Top E-Tailers

Still true....after all these years OSCommerce Experts Source: Oneupweb

"Site architecture, title tags, meta tags, keywords, and content were among the criteria in the study’s site evaluation. Basis also was whether the sites fell on Google and Yahoo!’s first, second, or third search results pages with the use of appropriate keywords.

67% of the 12 well-optimized sites appeared on Google’s first page while 58% maed it to Yahoo!’s first page. Overall, 75% showed up among the search results on Google’s first three pages, while Yahoo!’s first three pages carried 67%."

Oneupweb president Lisa Wehr "points out, ”… [The] site has more coverage on the page or a higher frequency of the message, natural results provide credibility (like editorial) and PPC communicates your promotional messages (like advertising) and finally, changing messages in natural results is a long-term action and PPC messages can change rapidly.”


Google

Higher not always Better in Paid Search Rank

OSCommerce Experts
Giselle reviews Atlas DMT's "latest Digital Marketing Insight (DMI) research. The conclusion: keyword volume influences rank effects on conversions from paid search listings."

"In Google’s corner of the search world for example, listings with low volume keywords ranked at 8 through 10 carried around 30% higher conversion rates than those with top rankings. On the end of Yahoo!’s Overture, the low volume keywords showed a steady, sustained pattern of conversion rates across all top 10 ranks.

”Every marketing medium has the fundamental trade-off between volume and efficiency and search is no exception, “ Song points out. ”Understanding factors such as rank on traffic and conversion provides marketers tools to better control costs, while maximizing targeted traffic and sales.”

Google

MSN Search Reviews

New MSN.com Homepage Insideer? Blog: "We released the new MSN.com Homepage yesterday to match the new MSN Search release. I work on the Homepage team and wanted to give my thoughts."

Review by G Sharma

Stopdesign "MSN goes CSS" From A UI Perspective

Google

Wednesday, February 02, 2005

Micro Persuasion: FT Columnist Says He Scans Blogs for Scoops

Steve Rubel Micro Persuasion: FT Columnist Says He Scans Blogs for Scoops: "FT Columnist Says He Scans Blogs for Scoops"

Google

Microsoft broadens launch of new search engine

Microsoft broadens launch of new search engine: "Beginning Tuesday, Microsoft's own search engine will permanently replace the Yahoo search technology that has been used on Microsoft's MSN Web site. But Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo's technology will be still be used for the 'sponsored' listings that companies pay for, and that appear separately alongside the main search results. "

Google

Parked Domains

Jill Whalen How To Redirect Multiple Parked Domains and Making Sense of Google AdSense

webpronews.com The Google Domain GameGary Price at ResourceShelf.com has compiled a list of domains that were either registered by Google or contain the Google name.

fantomaster the industrial strength pro-cloaking meister

webmaster world "Industrial Strength White Hat" Cloaking Questions

Host in Eastern bloque, never risk cloaking on main, corporate url...check out problems with redirects a la Yahoo saga...

Google AdSense for domains: FAQ

"How does AdSense for domains work?
AdSense for domains customers redirect traffic from parked domains to the AdSense for domains service. When Google receives the request, it processes the domain name and returns formatted HTML that includes contextual ads and related searches. Customers can either display the full page HTML or include it in a frame"

Approach with caution: Google Search: profit parked domains

Google

Tuesday, February 01, 2005

Consumer Reports research on search engines examines consumer behavior

Consumer Reports Web Watch -- Conferences: "Consumer Reports WebWatch's research on search engines examines consumer behavior in understanding the differences among paid listings, paid inclusion and advertising; and examines search engine business models, past, present and future. What should consumers be concerned about when using search engines? "

Google

Webmaster-Forums - Loquine Glupe Seo Contest :: Seo Contest'

Seo Contest

"Rules:

One prize per person
One prize per domain, if a domain has more then one entry in the Google rankings, all but the first entry shall be ignored.
The exact search term Google will be searched for on 1st March will be :- Loquine Glupe "

Google

Google's Top Brass Talk Search

blog.searchenginewatch.com

Links to :

1) " Google's VP of Engineering Adam Bosworth, spoke to The Gillmor Gang ( listen online) about future search engine architecture, personalization, and RSS. Findory's Greg Linden responds to some of Bosworth's comments with his take on the value of personalization.

2) Second, Google Blogoscoped points to a transcript of a presentation by Peter Norvig, Google's Director of Search Quality. Norvig discusses semantic web ontologies, automation, and other issues."

Google

Interview with a link spammer

The Register: "They're just exploiting a weakness in a system which blossomed just at the time that Google cracked down on the previous method that spammers used, where huge 'link farms' of their own web sites pointed circularly to each other to boost each others' ranking...

Why not just buy a Google ad, Sam? "You don't get anything like the same click-through ratio. Jakob Nielsen's studies and my own show you get six or seven times more click-throughs from 'organic' search results. And pay-per-click on search engines costs money! It can be £20 per click! We pay nothing to get an organic result."

"The hardest form to spam is that which requires manual authentication such as captchas. Or those where you have to reply to an email, click on a link in it; though that can be automated too. Those where you have to register and click on links, they're hard as well. And if you change the folder names where things usually reside, that's a challenge, because you just gather lists of installations' folder names.""

Google

MSN Search Stuff reviewed

Microsoft Ready to Prove Its Search Stuff: "While the search results MSN has previewed so far are competitive to those from rivals Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc., MSN still must prove that it can compete in emerging search areas such as local and video search and find ways to capture more search market share, analysts say."

Google

NoFollow & Blogs roundup article

searchenginewatch.com

Danny Sullivan takes Scoble on about "Anti-NoFollow & Blogs As Not Search Kryptonite"

Google

Black-Hat Myths About White-Hat SEO

www.clickz.com

Shari Thurow

"Black-hat SEOs often have different technical skills than white-hat SEOs. Some white-hat SEOs are actually Web developers (like myself). We create database-driven sites, write our own code and scripts, and have usability training and experience (for better sales conversions).

On the flip side, many black-hat SEOs have server maintenance, cloaking, and coding skills. Would you want a person with these skills to design a Web site? No, because this group probably lacks the artistic/design skills to make the best color selections and page layouts. Programmers tend to think like programmers, not like your target audience, meaning many black-hat SEOs have limited sales, marketing, and usability skills.

In the world of SEM, you encounter professionals with a wide variety of skills: design, development, copywriting, usability, programming, and so forth. Successful search engine optimization requires many skills. Make sure you hire a firm whose staff has all these skills. You never know what type of service your site will need."

Google

Beware when web services outpace consumer demand

Net Sense

B Francisco: "When company innovation is driven by the desire to keep up with rivals (and investors' high expectations) rather than what consumers need and demand, it's an invitation to trouble...

it appears to me that many companies -- in their effort to keep up their expected growth trajectory -- are throwing service upon service at consumers.

Some of these services are merely slight improvements over what's already out there. Some are services that consumers aren't even aware they need.

Unless these services are useful or differentiated enough, consumers won't pay for them. Nor will they stick around long enough for advertisers to pay to reach them."

Google

MSN official launch new search

Net Stocks
"MSN's official launch of its search business comes on the day that Google (GOOG: news, chart, profile) , the No. 1 search engine with 40-plus percent market share of all searches conducted in the U.S., is set to announce its fourth-quarter results, and its second quarter as a public company."

Google

Travel search engines

PCWorld.com

Travel "search engines don't handle booking; they simply query and point.
Bottom Line: From veteran Sidestep to Cheapflights, Mobissimo, Kayak, Qixo, Yahoo's FareChase, and others, the field is more crowded than JFK Airport on the day before Thanksgiving. Now all we need is a specialized search site we can use to help locate all of the travel search engines."

Google
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