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October 31, 2005

Where is my Data Point Ceiling?

Furthering what I hoped was a Big Thought last week, that search visibilty means that anything digital is suddenly available to the whole world, we have more news this morning about Search as excavation tool, uncovering and re-discovering data points that heretofore, in conversations, meetings, and even solitary ponderings, from the stone age to our very recent history as a paper-bound people, would just never have been able to become visible enough to bring weight to a decision:

IBM and Google Inc. are collaborating to make it easier for office workers not only to search for local documents and personal e-mail but to delve deep into corporate databases, the companies said on Friday.

I don't think anyone would ever argue that one shouldn't assemble all the information and weigh it before making a decision. I just think that with news like this we are getting closer to the first time in human history where such a conception is actually moving from aphorism to reality, and not just for the elite. We have to consider that search technology is evolving in the direction allowing everyone, everywhere, at any time to fully be able to say any decision has indeed, and quite literally, been made with all things considered.

We will still make bad decisions, and often. But how will a more informed people alter the course of human history and, at what point in that history will humans have reached the ceiling above which no further data can be weighed in a given decision?

This is the departure point for worry about the implications of artificial intelligence, as the artificial part of that phrase will likely include the ability simply to weigh more data points, and more quickly, than humans in a given decision. Search can be the equalizer bewteen the two, because we will both receive the same outputs, yet one not need be a science fiction buff nor Vegas oddsmaker to realize one team will be heavily favored...

Posted by john at 12:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Looking through Googled colored glasses

The certainty of financial security is only as good as the paper this blog is printed on. Keep that in mind as you read on.

I’m going to be posting over the next few weeks on the financial aspects of search engines. Much ballyhoo has been made about Google and their “world domination plans�.

I for one believe two things when it comes to Google:
1) I should have bought their stock last year.
2) They are sincere when they say they will live up to their “Don’t be evil� pledge.

I also believe in a universal truth about money:
1) That money (or the lust for it rather) can do a lot of evil.

***DISCLAIMER, I DO NOT BELIEVE THAT GOOGLE IS EVIL, WILL BE EVIL, WILL DO EVIL, OR LUSTS FOR MONEY.***

Sorry about that, legal gets all over us sometimes. Anyway, here is how this all is supposed to come together.

About Google going public…
Google is like any other company, they need to make money to stay in business. Google was unfairly in the shadow of the dot-com bubble fiasco. In order to further their business plans they went public. In the business world you either continually evolve or you die, or worse – become irrelevant. That is why I feel they went public.

About Google’s financial strength…
As the opening line suggests there is no such thing as financial certainty, but there is no doubt that as of this posting Google is strong. They may be strong but they need to diversify their revenue stream. That is why I believe we see them making alliances like the recent one with Sun. Search itself is not going away, and paid search is only going to grow, but putting all of your eggs in one basket is just not good business, and Google knows this.

Just plain about Google…
There are many things that to some make Google a tough entity to predict. They pledge “Don’t be evil�, they keep introducing free products, they are popping up everywhere, in Wi-Fi, in open source software, in email. I think the opposite however, I think it makes them easier to predict. You see I automatically assume that Google isn’t going to do things just like every other business does them. Why? Because they wouldn’t be where they are at today if they did. Over the last 7 years they’ve basically made us all begin to look through Google colored glasses whenever we think about search. So I think that they will continue to suprise us all and do what they do best, innovate. And investors love innovation.

That earlier stuff about money and evil…
Unfortunately I have seen, as we all probably have, that money can change things. The other thing that can change things is people. If you ask your boss what they look for the most in the people they hire it probably is an overall quality person. If not you may want to think about changing jobs. Anyway, I would guess that the hardest thing for Larry and Sergey to find is people who are like them. Not in technical issues etc, but in their “Don’t be evil� pledge. People can say it, but is it really in them? Only time sheds light on the true character of a person. I believe that as Google grows the key to keeping their corporate soul pure, and therefore set them apart from the pack, is not what products they offer, but rather who they turn the reigns over to.

Some numbers…
-Google went public in August 2004 at $85/share
-They are currently trading at $357.17/share
Need I dig up any more?

In conclusion I am impressed with Google so far. They have continued to come out with innovative products and have changed the way that all of search the digital world. The jury will be out for a while longer though on the money side of things. It’s nothing they’ve done, or haven’t done for that matter, but rather the fact that time will reveal whether they can keep their original motto alive in the hearts and minds of everyone as the Googler’s multiply.

Posted by brent at 10:53 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Happy Halloween Google Logo

Google kicks off Halloween 2005 with a spooky logo:

I find the whole thing rather frightening, and I'm not sure what bothers me more: the first "o" - with its corpus nearly drained of blood, or the second "g" - just sitting there, luring us in, acting like everything's okay...
Still feeling lucky?

Posted by erik at 06:53 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 28, 2005

The Search Engine Hot Dog Derby

I've always wondered why Major League Baseball teams can't come up with better between-inning entertainment for fans. Each Spring and Summer I spend a lot of time at Jacob's Field in Cleveland and even the folks that organize the breaks in action for my beloved Tribe bat about .125 in the entertainment category.

But rather than focus on the negative, I must tip my cap for the Kiss Cam where random, generally unsuspecting couples are selected and urged to smooch. At least watching the awkwardness between complete strangers who are being coerced by thousands, nearly obligated to kiss is interesting and somewhat entertaining.

Beyond the tip of the cap, I tip my cap and dramatically salute the Hot Dog Derby! I'm not sure exactly why the hot dog derby is so fun. Perhaps it's just me, but there's something exhilarating about three hot dogs up on a huge LCD screen racing around the bases - one with ketchup, one with mustard, and one with onion.

As derby announcer Frank Furter calls the race, the fans go wild picking a dog and urging it on, hopefully, to a victory. Some people I know, not me of course, have been known to call out, "Run Mustard Run!", "Onion Sucks!", and various other wiener chants. No one seems to care that it's just a computer program with a predetermined winner.

So I'm sitting on a plane heading to L.A. and my mind wanders to my place of tranquility, Jacob's Field, where I'm enjoying the hot dog derby. I guess it was the transition from there to listening to Danny Sullivan's Daily SearchCast that made me realize that the search engine race between Google, Yahoo, and MSN is a lot like the hot dog derby.

In the Search Engine Marketing business, especially those of us that were bit by the SEO bug back in the 90's (a.k.a., the old folks), we're constantly watching, intensely monitoring ... weekly, daily, even by the minute ... this race between the search engines. We can be a bit like search engine paparazzi or search engine groupies.

Let's take this one step further. C'mon. Oblige me...

Google is definitely the dog with Ketchup. Ketchup has an impressive track record, is the fan favorite, is almost always out in front and wins consistently. It’s name alone is in the Brand Eponym Hall of Fame with the likes of Kleenex, Xerox, Coke, and Band-Aid.

Yahoo is definitely covered in Mustard. A tenured dog with a loyal fan base, if Yahoo buys AOL, it becomes Spicy Brown.

MSN is the dog smothered in Onion. Leaky eyed fans of this dog rarely select it without Ketchup or Mustard. Certainly the "underdog", I must admit I have a hard time not rooting for Onion -- which comes natural to an Indians fan.

So who's your dog?

I find myself still using 'ole reliable Ketchup, but recently I've found myself sampling more Mustard and some occasional Onion.

And who ultimately wins this derby?

None of our three main Condiments are going away anytime soon. And who knows, 2006 may be the year Relish joins the race. Likely, no one wins all the customers in the end. We'll just stay right here on the edges of our seats enjoying the race.

"Go Onion!"

Posted by doug at 05:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

InfoSpace embraces Pay Per Call Model

Pay Per Phone Call seems to be gaining in popularity these days. First there was Miva & AOL that opted-in to embrace pay per call on search. Then there was the acquisition of Skype by EBay. Now, the latest news on the PPP front is a deal between InfoSpace and Jambo where Jambo will be the PPP provider for search which will also include mobile applications.

It really doesn't surprise me at all that pay per call is gaining traction at a break neck speed. Lets face it, PPC and Natural SEO require advertisers to have a web presence where as pay per phone call is an open advertising platform for any and all businesses regardless of a web presence.

It’s things like pay per call that make this industry (SEO/SEM) so exciting. I am looking forward to seeing ppp continue to grow and can’t help but think to myself “what’s next?�

Posted by sean at 03:46 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Scanning The Future of Copyright

In our insulated SEM world, we often forget that search extends beyond appearing on page one of results. Clicking to page two, three, or forty-three, for that matter, digs into index matter unknown to all but the few tortured, brave souls who venture into the great beyond (page one).

Yet the fact that this deep index matter is available, even at these rarely clicked latter pages, means that it is indeed visible, and can be made visible by anyone with a scanner. This is quite an exponential leap from the days when librarians first had to worry about whether or not a given page from a book could be photocopied. Quaint times indeed.

It's search visibility that forces the intensity of copyright squeamishness. Coming on the heels of Google's blowback from publishers, MSN's similar book scanning project was announced with an important copyright caveat:

MSN is hoping to avoid similar problems by only targeting works in the public domain or uncopyrighted material. The company said in a statement that it would respect all copyrights and work with rights holders to agree upon protections for copyrights.

Search visibilty means that anything digital is suddenly available to the whole world. This was true in theory from the start, but as relevancy continues to improve the challenge to conceptions about copyright becomes greater and greater.

What did the xerox machine say to the search engine?

You've come a long way, baby.

Posted by john at 01:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 27, 2005

Intrapromote to Sell SEO Speedwagon Box Set

This limited-edition set brought to you by Intrapromote is the perfect way to commemorate the 100th Speedwagon post! Now you can relive your favorite moments from the first 100 episodes with friends and family members, at an affordable price! Bonus features include editor’s notes from the original airdates, rare behind the blog footage, alternate endings, deleted posts, and rough drafts. The commentary track provides insightful tidbits from the Speedwagon players, and the zany bloopers and site gags are chock-full of joyful exuberance!

Some of the Classic Episodes You will Find in the SEO Speedwagon Box Set:

• Baseball's Magic Number
• So You Want To Be A Search Engine Marketer?
• SEO Consultants Convert Sherpa SEO Buying Guide into Laughter
• SEO Ponderings: To H1 or Not To H1
• Implementing a 301 Server-Side Redirect
• Pay-Per-Call Frenzy

The SEO Speedwagon Box Set, a collector's item due to hit stores just in time for the holidays, will be this year's perfect stocking stuffer. Reserve your set today and also receive a *free SEO Speedwagon shirt!

*while supplies last, shipping and handling not included

Posted by tom at 01:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 26, 2005

Google Organic Search: Will the Rich Get Richer?

One of this week's Google buzz topics is the testing of a new airline reservation interface, which appears when a query phrase contains iterations of two major cities:

Similar results appear for the queries [los angeles new york] or [flight from los angeles to new york], so Google is allowing some latitude in the required syntax.

This is almost certainly a UI experiment on Google's part, and will probably disappear without any notice and head back to the shop for retooling. For now, however, a few characteristics stand out:

• The links (as shown in the screen shot) appear organic, not paid. So the big question for now is, how does Google decide which three (in this case) sites will be featured?
  
• The main link, titled "Flights from Los Angeles, CA to New York Kennedy, NY" links to the same page as the Expedia link directly below the date box. That actual title, however, does not come from that Expedia page. I suspect it is a title formula created by Google for this specific type of search result, since the same format appears in searches for different cities.
  
• The pre-loaded depart/return dates (two weeks out - in this case, 11/10-11/17) appear to be random as none of the three sites listed below the date boxes have presumed dates of departure and return on their home pages. The presumed duration of the trip is one week, regardless of whether both points are intra- or intercontinental.
  
• It probably goes without saying, but clicking from this SERP over to Expedia, Hotwire, or Orbitz forces a search for the specified airports on the specified dates. Programmatically, linking to a dynamic, as-yet-uncreated page is a notch or two more complicated than simply showing additional links for a top result in other searches (which we've written about before), such as the following:

Study after study shows the benefits of a first-place listing on the Google results page - even without interface enhancements like these. When you throw additional links or an intuitive industry-specific feature into the equation, the benefits are exponential. It's useless to label this phenomenon "good" or "bad" because depending on your current positioning, you already know which one it is.

Posted by erik at 11:54 PM | Comments (1)

October 25, 2005

The Search for Lingua Franca: Engines, SEO, and Real People

Imagine walking into your local car dealership and hearing a conversation similar to this one. The salesman approaches a couple and begins to extol the virtues of the gleaming, midnight-blue sedan in front of them.

He covers all bases, making sure that no feature is left unexplained, no spec left unquoted:

• Horsepower
  
• Mileage
  
• Turning radius
  
• Cargo volume
  
• Passenger count
  
• and on and on...

When he finally takes a breath, the couple look at each other, then at the salesman.

"But what can I do with it?" the woman asks.

"Yeah," her husband adds, "do we sit in it? What does a car do?"

In this context, such a conversation is silly and impossible to fathom. But in SEO/SEM, growing evidence shows it happens all the time. Some recent examples:

• A forum at DigitalPoint describes the fallout of the current Google update, nicknamed Jagger. One specific post gives curious insight into the surfing habits - and search understanding - of a certain type of user:

  My customers are more elderly people and I found out they do not know how to bookmark a site for example so they are using Google like bookmarks in their browser. What is happening now is, these customers just keep browsing the search results until they find my site. I had 3 customers complaining as to why I have moved my site in Google, which they find very inconvenient.

  No search marketer, whether on the agency side or client side, who has explained his or her job to a befuddled friend or relative, should be surprised by that consumer behavior, yet I still was. To suggest that the 80/20 rule applies to search engines (i.e., that 80% of search engine users focus on [or even know about] only 20% of the engine's feature set) is likely a large understatement. It's probably closer to 98/2.
  

• ClickZ reports that few publishers or online agencies know about Google's ability to serve AdSense ads on RSS feeds, which comes as no surprise, the article points out, when you combine a topic the public knows little about (contextual advertising) with a topic they know nothing about (RSS).
  
• Yahoo's Jeremy Zawodney recently attended the Direct Marketing Association Convention and found out that many DM experts know little about search:
  

  In talking to some of the Search Engine Marketing folks that were in sessions on Saturday, I discovered that the vast majority of DMA folks are very, very, very new to Search Marketing. I'd go so far as to say many of them are incredibly clueless about the process, benefits, costs, etc.

So are engines getting ahead of themselves offering ads on RSS feeds when the vast majority of their users won't venture beyond the main search box?

Yes. Industry-wide, both engines and SEO companies need to engage in a massive program of search education. In our interaction with the public - whether we consider them potential searchers or potential clients - search engines and the tagalong search marketing agencies often commit the same big mistake: We're droning on about torque when we haven't adequately explained what a car is.

Once a critical mass of users understand and embrace the myriad ways that search results can appear, memories of a seven-fold increase in profits will seem like the "lean times."

add'l thanks to Threadwatch and SERoundtable

Posted by erik at 11:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 24, 2005

Google on Link Building

Normally, I post about something that I know about, something that I understand. There are some things however that are universally understood, and therefore easy to recognize the importance of.

Before I get tongue-tied, let me give you an example to set the stage. It doesn’t take an accountant to understand what Benjamin Franklin meant when he said “A penny saved is a penny earned�.

With that in mind, it is fairly safe to assume that there are certain things that fall under the general classification known as “common sense�.

That is what compels me today to write about Link Building. As I was perusing one of many different blogs with my usual morning coffee, I came across this in the Official Google Blog.

“…Google's search results are generated by computer programs that rank web pages in large part by examining the number and relative popularity of the sites that link to them…� - Official Google Blog - Googlebombing

Now, at the risk of being redundant, it was a clear extrapolation to me (definitely no link building guru) that relevant links are very important to a comprehensive and well designed SEO campaign.

I am reminded of the old EF Hutton commercials that stated “When E.F. Hutton talks, people listen�. More than giving away my age, this phrase is definitely applicable to Google and search.

So when Google talks about link building, are you listening?

Posted by brent at 10:58 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Poetry

Hey all! It's a Monday morning and I'm feeling a wee bit geeky today. So, I decided to write some poetry about Natural SEO rankings. I hope everyone enjoys!

Here goes...

Ranking Lovin'

I'm getting some rankings now
titles and metas helped
content gave the message
but links had to be developed
external linking growing
I'm getting anxious and can wait no longer
two months have gone by now and finally the traffic is getting stronger
look at all these orders
it was all a matter of time
the search engines updated their index and the profit is all mine

I have several other poems I wrote as well, and of course, do intend on sharing them with y'all in due time. Yeah, I know I'm an SEO geek. But chances are so are most of you who are reading this entry. My next poem will be aptly named "Link Building Love." Let me know what y'all think

Peace!

Posted by sean at 10:50 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

October 21, 2005

So You Want To Be A Search Engine Marketer?

Clients, investors, analysts, acrobats, and dinner companions, I sense, don't quite fully believe I am not being somewhat hyperbolic and self-serving when I explain how rare a find the great Search Engine Marketer is. Robert Murray best explains the nature of the rara avis:

Qualified candidates require a variety of seemingly contradictory skills to be able to work effectively. One needs to be a marketer at heart, yet have client service (people) skills... possess copywriting abilities, yet have knowledge of HTML... understand Web site architecture, usability, and site navigation, and have the technical aptitude to employ sophisticated tools, while also possessing a keen linguistic sense. Overall, effective SEM requires the integration of many disciplines, and finding individuals that possess the right combination of all these qualities is as easy as scaling Mt. Everest in your pajamas.

As if scaling Mt. Everest weren't difficult enough sans pajamas.

Posted by john at 12:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 20, 2005

Vertically (Un)Challenged Link Building

I agree with Jim Boykin that 99.9% of link requests are worthless. As I have discussed in the past, a link builder’s greatest challenge is proving that his or her request represents the supplement. If you can accomplish this Sisyphean task, you will find recipients more receptive than ever.

The greater issue these days is the disparity between worthless and worthwhile links. As it becomes harder to find these worthwhile links, their value becomes greater. It is not until Google dances with your vertical, unfortunately, that this value is calculable. It is becoming more and more apparent that it is not a laissez faire algorithm that devalues links. If it were, we would not be discussing specific verticals impacted by Google updates. It is very specific attention that leads to serp eruption. It will benefit you sooner or later.

This is little solace if your competitors are beating you with links from payday loan sites. You can still beat them with good links, but you are looking at a long, constant battle. Keep building good links. One day we will be discussing a shake up in your vertical.

Posted by tom at 11:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 19, 2005

Firefox Tricks: Quick Searches for Maps, News, and Blog Search Engines

A few weeks ago, I wrote about some Firefox search tricks - how to turn your Firefox browser's address field into a search box for Yahoo, MSN, and Google. This post gives data for several more quick searches, focusing on news, blog search, and maps.

For the background of the Firefox Quick Search and instructions about how to create a Quick Search bookmark, see my previous post. If you're ready to add more quick searches, following are several good ones. Note that in each case, you must use a keyword, but the keyword you use is your choice. Just make sure it's intuitive for you, so that you'll instinctively use it and won't have to waste time trying to remember what it is.

In the following examples, I also added the Sample query line to show how an example query will look when you're done. You do not need to input this data anywhere.

Technorati (Blog Search):
Name: Technorati Blog Search
Location: http://www.technorati.com/search/%s
Keyword: tblog
Sample query: tblog supreme court

Technorati (Tag Search):
Name: Technorati Tag Search
Location: http://www.technorati.com/search/tag/%s
Keyword: ttag
Sample query: ttag supreme court

Google Blog Search:
Name: Google Blog Search
Location: http://www.google.com/blogsearch?q=%s
Keyword: gblog
Sample query: gblog supreme court

Yahoo Blog Search:
Name: Yahoo Blog Search
Location: http://blog.news.search.yahoo.com/blog/search?p=%s
Keyword: yblog
Sample query: yblog supreme court

Google Maps/Local:
Name: Google Maps Search
Location: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=%s
Keyword: gmaps
Sample query: gmaps iowa city ia
Sample query: gmaps restaurants near lax
Note that all of the typical Google Local search queries work here.

Google News:
Name: Google News Search
Location: http://news.google.com/news?q=%s
Keyword: gnews
Sample query: gnews hurricane wilma

Yahoo News:
Name: Yahoo News Search
Location: http://news.search.yahoo.com/news/search?p=%s
Keyword: ynews
Sample query: ynews hurricane wilma

MSN News:
Name: MSN News Search
Location: http://search.msn.com/news/results.aspx?q=%s
Keyword: mnews
Sample query: mnews hurricane wilma

Because of the URL output structure of Yahoo Maps, I couldn't find a universal URL that would work with Firefox Quick Searches. If you can derive one, let me know.

Posted by erik at 11:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 18, 2005

SEO Consultants Convert Sherpa SEO Buying Guide into Laughter

I'm going to talk about picking the right SEO consultant one more time, then I promise to let it go, for now at least.

A thread at Search Engine Watch called Reputable SEO Companies popped up about a week ago, just as I was talking about the same thing. A lot of the information in that thread echoes the caveat emptor philosophy, illustrating points like those that Todd Malicoat has mentioned in the past.

A recurring recommendation from the thread is to purchase the Marketing Sherpa Buyer's Guide to Search Engine Optimization Firms. We agree. It's a great publication, and it's well worth the small cost if you're looking for an island in a sea of confusion.

With a great deal of help, I've put together Intrapromote's Sherpa Guide application materials for the past several years. Their editors always boast that filling in the online questionnaire takes "about 45 minutes," but that's utter nonsense. To do it well takes the better part of a day, and I believe that prospective clients of all SEO companies benefit from that labor.

Each year we look very closely at the questions that Marketing Sherpa asks SEO companies, because the way various companies answer the questions makes up the core differentiation between them. That way, if you're looking for a very aggressive company that offers cloaking and doorway pages, or one that will not, it's easy to find.

So this year, as I filled out the application and looked through the questions about our methodologies and reporting capabilities, I stopped at the section that asked if we were able to report on the clicks, traffic, and conversions of our clients' competitors.

With the Alexa Toolbar or some other extrapolating tool, you could argue that you have a rough estimate of the traffic of a competing site. (You may not be right, but you could argue it.)

But competitors' conversions? Surely that's a joke - a tripwire carefully laid out by the ornery Sherpa editors to catch SEOs who aren't paying attention, and simply check every box they see. Right?

The stunning fact is that of the 126 SEO firms in the Buyers Guide to Search Engine Optimization Companies, 18 claimed the ability to offer clients a report of their competitors' conversions. Let me rephrase that. Nearly 15% of the surveyed SEO companies claim to be able to give you information about your competitors that can come only from the competitors' web analytics and ROI tracking software.

Forget white hat or black hat. If they can legally show competitors' conversions, that's a Technicolor Dream Hat.

But they can't.

Posted by erik at 11:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 17, 2005

Google Desktop & Short Term Memory Loss

I recently downloaded Google Desktop and the world has become a better place.

You see, I used to be one of The Others. One of the people who lived life being certain that I placed something in a specific place, only to find that it had been moved later by some mysterious force.

I will be the first to admit that my filing system is.....unique. I can usually locate anything that I need to within 2 minutes of beginning my search. That may be a great time for finding that screwdriver I used last week and now need, but for finding items on my hard drive, it's an eternity.

So until recently I have felt like a game show contestant who couldn't think of the answer that everyone in America knows, and who can hear the seconds ticking away until his chance at fame and glory have disappeared. Okay okay, maybe that's a bit of an overstatement, but there have definitely been times that I seriously questioned the health of my short-term memory.

That is until recently. For recently some blessed soul at Google decided to help all of us who struggle with "wheredidifileititis" by unveiling Google Desktop. This little gem from Google Labs has transformed my search for a file on my hard drive from a brow-sweat inducing task to a adrenaline filled gloatfest on my computer.

I can now search my hard drive for files, emails, chats, recent web searches, and more, with the most miniscule piece of search data. This has not only sped up my search for files etc., but it has sped up my time following email "conversations". (I'll save Gmail for another post) I can now find almost anything, instantly.

So thank you Google. Thank you for finally helping all of us who struggle with digital filing induced short-term memory loss. Thank you Google for validating and accommodating my place in the digital realm. Now I don't fear it anymore, I embrace it! I can live in my digital clutter, perfectly happy, and feeling good about myself.

So if there are those of you out there who are one of The Others, don't be ashamed anymore. Embrace it, and show the world that a new adage is true.......disorganization and laziness are the parents of digital innovation.

Posted by brent at 03:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 14, 2005

The Dawn of the Media Credibility Gap

Search friends frustrated by the media mix's slanted dollar bias toward TV will see the first sign of the windsock shifting finally away with the Yahoo study finding search results overwhelmingly the most credible among college students:

The findings, presented Tuesday in New York, included the conclusion that 81 percent of college students rated search engines as the best source of information; friends and family were rated best by 64 percent of students, while just 34 percent said traditional media was their best source of information.

The almost 50 point spread between search and traditional media portends the shakeup of the media mix to come for this next generation. Sure, TV will always offer the quick fix of tens of millions of eyeballs at a moments notice, but TIVO-related challenges aside, I think we are seeing in this surveyed generation quite a new phenomenon: the expectation of an algorithmic, non-human, objective element as the ultimate winnower of credibility that immediately discounts information sources not born of this component. Read: paid advertising.

Cynicism has and always will be the cherished rite of passage of attending university, yet we must not forget this is really the first generation to graduate having grown up on search. If the algorithm has been your standard of objectivity from the start it's difficult to suddenly fully trust the human, all-too-human element of pay-for-play. PPC separated to the right will become as figurative as it is now literal, I believe.

Posted by john at 02:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 13, 2005

Hey MLB, Don’t 302 My White Sox!

With more than 2 million pages on its domain, Major League Baseball can write its own ticket for link popularity. Lauded as one of the great internet successes, they can establish important pages with little or no effort. In fact, they can establish pages with what seems like the opposite of effort.

Let’s take a look at the MLB domain. Note the relevant urls displayed in the bottom left hand corner when you mouse over the navigational links such as “Scoreboard� and “Standings.� If you can see where the link takes you without having to click, it is most likely that the search engines can also see the link. Compare that to the “Team Sites� box. A search engine spider cannot click on the box to display the links. And even then, note that the relevant urls do not show in the bottom left hand corner.

Now look at the first result when you search for [white sox], chicago.whitesox.mlb.com/ . This is also where you would expect the link at MLB.com to take you. Both links, however, use a 302 to redirect to http://chicago.whitesox.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/index.jsp?c_id=cws . A 302 is a temporary redirect that can be confusing to search engines when used in perpetuum. Because of its use here, google cannot figure out which page to index. These two pages combine to form the number one result for [white sox] which is cached, yet neither is actually indexed by google!

Huge sites have a much larger margin of error, so don’t try this at home. Your site would disappear from the rankings, and google does not seem to have such a lenient dropped 3rd strike rule to get you back in the game.

Posted by tom at 11:55 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Google Cache Limit

Has anyone else noticed Google has a VERY nice cache file limit these days? Well, I've noticed Google having increased cache file size for some time now and wanted to share the knowledge with those of you who may not be in the know.

Check this out! Here is an example of two pages from the same domain indexed at Google with file sizes of 2,661kb & 1,422kb!

What's really cool about increased cache limit at Google (I don't think Google even has one anymore) is that webmasters and site owners alike no longer have to worry about keeping their page file size under 101k in order to have their pages fully indexed at Google.

The days of 101k limits are dead and a new dawn of big files getting indexed at Google has already arrived.

Posted by sean at 09:39 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

October 12, 2005

A Universal Truth from Yahoo Site Explorer

In preparation for my earlier post describing Yahoo Site Explorer, I was playing around with some random domains that were sure to be well indexed by Yahoo, and I came across something quite interesting. It's far too late in the day to try to interpret it, but here it is:

Needless to say, that was one URL worth exploring. Some observations and questions:

• That specific URL is the only one in the YSE index for the whitehouse.gov root page. If you explore the URL without the anchor, the SERP reverts back to the anchor-containing address.
• Obviously, that anchor doesn't appear in the current or cached version of the White House home page.
• What is the intent here - some sort of post-modern engine bomb? While I found it via Yahoo, that doesn't mean it was intended to affect Yahoo SERPs.
• The inlink page for that URL shows some interesting variety: search results pages, blogs, wiki scrapers...
• Could this be spread via some sort of PPC scraping? No funky anchor text appears to accompany the inlinks; they often use the title of the whitehouse.gov root page, "Welcome to the White House."
• What is the desired effect? If its purpose is to distort SERPs, it doesn't appear to be working, at least not yet.

Feel free to fill in the blanks, even to the point of telling me that I missed an important memo about the latest link prank.

Posted by erik at 11:37 PM | Comments (0)

Diagnosing Crawling and Indexing Issues with Yahoo Site Explorer

Yahoo recently released the Yahoo Site Explorer, a very helpful way to diagnose issues that may be hampering your performance in Yahoo natural search.

Enter a URL in the Search box, and Yahoo returns two values: First, the number of indexed pages for a given site, and as a second option, the number of incoming links pointing at that site. The following image shows the location of the key data points.

Drilling down, you can select specific URLs from the results page, and "explore" those pages in depth - finding, for example, the number of pages from a specific section of your site that have been indexed, or the incoming links pointing to a specific page of your site. To find an index count for a specific site section, enter or click a URL such as http://www.site.com/press/. This returns indexing and linking results for this specific URL, as well as any pages in the /press/ directory.

Unlike Google, which purposely returns only a percentage of a site's incoming links, Yahoo Site Explorer claims to show all incoming links that it knows about. This can come in very handy when performing a competitive link analysis for sites in your industry.

One of Site Explorer's largest drawbacks is the ability to download only the first 50 results into TSV format, for import into programs like Excel. It would be wonderful to have an entire site's worth of data to sort and play with in a spreadsheet program, but it's unlikely that Yahoo is too eager to spend processing time creating TSV files with tens of thousands of rows. A resourceful programmer named John Mueller has used the Yahoo Search API to create a custom version of Yahoo Site Explorer that overcomes some of these common obstacles; it's worth a look.

If you find large blocks of URLs from your site that Yahoo has not indexed, it offers a submission system similar to that of Google Sitemaps. You can simply fill a text file (such as pages.txt) with the URLs you want Yahoo to index, separated by a hard return. Upload the text file to your web server, then submit the entire URL of the text file (such as http://www.site.com/pages.txt) to the Yahoo Free Submit page.

We don't yet have significant data on the crawl rate for URLs submitted via this method, but we'll be sure to publish any information we collect.

Posted by erik at 06:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 11, 2005

The Hunt for the Perfect SEO: Testing Knowledge vs. Testing Patience

Over at Stuntdubl SEO Consulting, Todd Malicoat put together an exceptional post about how to hire an SEO company. It's essential reading for companies trying to decide how or whether to proceed with the SEO hiring process; we fully advocate prospective clients putting us through our paces, because we're certainly eager to prove our worth.

For example, in an earlier post, Todd suggests asking questions like these:

• What type of techniques do you use to achieve rankings?
• What type of risk is involved with this method?
• What will happen if our relationship is dissolved?

Absolutely right. Things get tricky, though, when we feel like we're being played. There's a fine line between proving we know how to do the work, and doing the work itself. Following are some questions that make us feel like we're soon to be on the wrong end of a something-for-nothing arrangement, under the guise of due diligence:

• What title would you use for this page?
• What lines of code should I add to my .htaccess file?
• What is the best way to use ISAPI_Rewrite on a 5-argument ASP query string?
• Should I move to a subdomain structure?
• What's wrong with my current link request?

As I've talked about before, a lot of mistrust lives in the ether between SEOs and their prospective clients. Client referrals, word of mouth, and verifiable case studies are among the best ways to establish the trust required to build a strong relationship.

Posted by erik at 04:51 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

October 10, 2005

Summer Camp, Space Camp, Search Camp?

Some of my favorite memories as a kid were from summer camp. I looked forward to that week every summer because of the fun, the games, and my friends. As I look back I realize that what I really loved about it was the glimpse of freedom that it gave me. For a whole week I could be my own boss, (sort of), and make my own decisions, (kind of). It was pure heaven on earth for a week.

Now days, there are all kinds of themed camps, Space Camp, Band Camp, Baseball Camp, and on and on. But they are mostly for kids, or grown-ups who have a lot money. I for one would love to attend a baseball fantasy camp, but I digress. I came across a snippet of an idea, given in jest on the Daily SearchCast, that I thought was pretty good. Search Camp.

The premise would be this: A set aside time to teach the basics of “quality� Internet searching. Now I realize that a lot of kids (probably zero) would sign up for this fun-filled week of sitting indoors behind a computer monitor with no computer games. So my iteration of the idea would be to have the “camp� for adults. And as adults the closest we get to a “camp� is a 1-day seminar that work pays for us to go to. But what an idea, more importantly what a productivity enhancing idea.

Productivity, efficiency, and I’d like to add relevancy (I agree with Google, it’s important). All buzzwords, and all important. I wonder how much time is wasted by people doing valid Internet searches in an un-productive, in-efficient and irrelevant manner.

Let’s think of it in terms of how there is always one person in the office who can fix the paper jams in the copier. This poor person is always interrupted with requests to come fix the copier. Usually after the “jammer� has wasted 15 or so minutes trying to fix it themselves. I think the same is true for searching. In previous positions, I was known as “the searcher�. When people couldn’t find what they were looking for on the Internet, they asked me to search for it. Imagine if everyone, or even a few, had the ability to perform more productive, efficient, and relevant searches. It would be an exponential gain in productive office time.

So therefore, on behalf of all “the searchers� out there, I call for a “Search Camp�. You can change the name to “Search Seminar� if you must, but I guarantee that attendees would acquire valuable skills to harvest the incredible resource that is the internet, and leave us searchers alone to do our own searching, preferably on things that have to do with our weekend plans.

Posted by brent at 09:44 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 07, 2005

Hello Potential Customer, Please Call Back

I called a business today.

No human beings answered. However, the voice mail system was available to me...good thing eh?

The voice mail system went through it's robotic pleasantries, then told me:

"If you are calling about X, call back later."

Dang. I was calling about X. And I'm not going to call them back.

Later during the day, I was talking to a prospective client about their web site. They have a wonderful site full of great content. But, they were spending 100% of their marketing budget on email marketing.

Absolutely nothing had been done to their site to help it perform for natural search queries. Even their page titles were just their company name.

It reminded me of my call earlier in the day.

If you are putting all your internet marketing eggs in baskets other than natural SEO, when someone searches for your offerings at Google and your site isn't at least on page #1, in effect, you're telling that potential site visitor:

"Hello potential customer. I understand you are calling about my product or service."

And instead of providing them an open door to your site, you are really saying:

"Call back later." And like me, most of them won't be calling you back.

Posted by doug at 04:50 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

An August Google - Instead of Vacationing, We Search

We at The Speedwagon were not surprised by what should have been the
surprising NetRatings find that searches increased 10% from July to
August. We saw an early indication of this when our travel clients,
historically down in August in Search Visitors versus the rest of the
calender, all held steady or jumped. This after having prepared them,
as a good Search Marketing Agency should, for the coming downturn in
August for travel industry searches when people are traveling rather
than searching for travel. Don't fret and don't freak, you would have
heard us caution, let us look together and see how this has occurred
each of the last 5 years in your stats and understand it will bounce
back again in September just like it always has- it is a function of
culture, not on or off-page factors.

We were wrong, but wrong in the only way you want to be wrong in
client counsel- wrong with benefits. Consider it a major element of
our industry's Hippocratic Oath, if there were one: First, do no harm.
And if you do no harm first, not only will clients be prepared for
likely historical trends, but also pleasantly surprised when they do
not materialize.

Oh, and doing no harm would also make spamming virtually impossible...

Posted by john at 12:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 06, 2005

Link Text Leads to [Home] Field Advantage

Are these pages really about [home]? Was it their intention to tell the search engines that their sites are relevant to the search [home]? In most cases I doubt it, but that is exactly what they have done.

Realize that you send a message to search engines every time you link to a page using text. #7 Microsoft is not about home, but the site links to "home" in the header navigation on most of its pages (other than the homepage). Chances are, you are doing the same. You do not show on page one, however, because you do not have 22,000,000 pages indexed.

Realize your internal linking structure is essential to telling search engines what your site is about. Tell search engines on every page of your site that your main page is about your keywords. Do not waste this opportunity on words that do not drive relevant traffic.

Posted by tom at 08:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Blogging for Big (and Small) Brands a la Forrester

Last week, Mickey Khan at Direct Marketing News wrote a nice summary of a presentation by Forrester Research's Charlene Li at Forrester's Consumer Forum 2005.

The topic was what blogs, RSS feeds, and search engines mean to popular brands. The short answer is, "They require marketers to give up a degree of control."

No big surprise there, but Li gave a nice weather report for companies thinking about venturing out into RSS feeds or even a corporate blog presence, offering several tips. Note that these tips correspond to both blogging and/or RSS content distribution.

1. Open a dialog. Sounds simple, but you'd be surprised. Turn your comments feature on. Otherwise, it's just another web site.
2. Don't be fake. Be honest and open or don't even bother. This doesn't mean talk about things that "Legal" wouldn't want you to, but it's better to avoid a topic entirely than to pretend to discuss it and dance around it.
3. Give customers some control over content distribution. Li uses the example of Apple offering multiple feeds, based on niche interest.
4. Offer consumers some form of efficacy. Li's example of Burger King's Subservient Chicken was a bit extreme and probably irrelevant to most companies, but the point remains: Offer some gesture to show consumers that you're listing to them.
5. Admit mistakes. Well sure, it was bound to bleed over from politics. It's not the sin, it's the cover-up. Li's point is that consumers are surprisingly forgiving if companies approach a mistake with honesty and humility.

No rocket science anywhere up there, right? But that's Li's point. There are so many companies doing this wrong - by missing these simple points, thinking that the basic rules of communication don't apply to them - that the fundamentals need to be repeated.

The second half of the article is also worthwhile reading, as Li discusses how brands can get started if they're new to the concept of consumer dialog.

Posted by erik at 08:03 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 05, 2005

Pay Per Call Companies

So who are the players in the pay per phone call (PPP) advertising space? It’s time to spread the word on three major players in this market.

Ingenio - Ingenio has been around since the day the company co-founder, Scott Faber, took a cab ride in New York City and watched the cabbie have an animated cell phone conversation. It was then that Scott had the idea of marrying internet search and direct contact via telephone. Pay per call was conceived and Ingenio was born. Currently, Ingenio has clients such as Miva, AOL, and SmartPages.com using their pay per call services.

VoiceStar – Yet another big player in the pay per call marketplace. VoiceStar, like Ingenio, was founded in 1999. Their main offerings include Interactive Voice Response (IVR) & pay per phone call marketing solutions. VoiceStar’s client base includes business owners, agencies, network owners, and publishers, but doesn’t disclose any specific brands as clients on their website or in any press releases I've read.

eStara – Here’s a company that not only does pay per call, but also offers voice cards, classroom conferencing and many other cool applications. The company was founded in 2000 and has since brought on clients such as Verizon SuperPages, Amazon’s A9, HSBC, Gerber, and many other big brands as well.

I hope to have even more pay per call service providers posted in the future. I’ll keep diggin’ and report back with more ppp companies as they surface.

Posted by sean at 04:50 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

October 04, 2005

Hiring an SEO Company: We're Ready - Are You?

SEO clients, I don't envy you.

Everyone's out to get you, and I'm not kidding. Your competition is tough - almost as tough as your affiliates. Search engine optimization firms are full of worthless, shady criminals. Can you believe any of us when we talk about "SEO Ethics" when behind your back, you're the object of scorn and ridicule? And don't get me started on cost. We're either prohibitively expensive or suspiciously cheap.

Nervous laughter aside, once companies make it through the minefield of selecting a decent SEO firm, they often become their own worst enemies. Doug foreshadowed it a few weeks ago, but it was reinforced just last week as Chris Sherman summarized the iProspect Outsourced SEO Metrics & ROI Study (PDF):

Just over a third of respondents said that there were no obstacles to implementing search engine optimization. However, fully 64% of organizations outsourcing natural search engine optimization to an SEO firm encounter obstacles within their own organization that got in the way.
The two biggest obstacles were lack of human resources to implement changes (34%) and lack of outsourced IT budget (17%). However, this suggests that if a company lacks human resources to implement changes or a budget to outsource them, they are not being well-served by their current search marketing firm.

The emphasis in the last paragraph is mine. Notice the lack of judgment in Chris's use of passive voice. He's not saying that the SEO company is giving the shaft to the client - only that, empirically, when the client does not make the recommended changes (for any reason), it is not getting its money's worth.

The study itself ably points out why recommendations are