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August 30, 2007
New MSN Tools Coming Includes Sitemaps
Back in April, I updated Wagon readers on the latest in Sitemap and Sitemap Protocol news and now it's time for a quick update.
Last week on MSN Live Search's blog, MSN trumpeted their new Webmaster Portal that will allow sitemap creation and submission. A beta program has been started and the Wagon has applied for a test drive.
Along with these sitemap features, MSN also announced that the Webmaster Portal will also include crawling and indexing tools as well as statistics about web sites. As we've said in the past, these statistics can be very helpful.
Stay tuned for news on the beta program. Official launch of the Webmaster Portal is expected in early Q4.
Posted by doug at 09:15 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 21, 2007
Microsoft Talking Points Parroted: Day II
It's always seemed strange to look for information on a brand, and to see it appear both in the organic search results and at or near the top of the paid listings. Why spend money on a brand term that's going to deliver a top five organic result for the same query anyway?
If this sounds eerily similar to what many Wagon Riders thought yesterday was a lede of questionable intelligence, then your parotid attention may have kept you from swallowing full gulp. For those caught in the act of mastication, though, it's good to know that the above meme is being pushed by Atlas, owned by Microsoft, neither of which are owned or own or like Google, beneficiary of the great majority of the branded ad spend currently under PR assault.
Here at The Wagon we get the same strange feeling the Talking Point pushes in the quote above when we fix our eyes on a graph like the below:
With search behavior like that, why in the world would you want your brand to appear more than once, let alone a single time, in the same screen space above the fold? Good advice from the originator of democracy of screen space.
Posted by john at 10:56 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
August 20, 2007
New SEM Industry Term Coined: Disposable Clicks
We sure did have fun with this Quote of the Month while taking The Wagon for a spin this morning. From the magazine that takes itself so seriously it demands all caps, ADWEEK, we are treated to this breathless lede:
New research by Microsoft suggests a big chunk of search ad spending is wasted because advertisers pay top dollar for high ad placements clicked by consumers who are en route to their sites anyway. Listings tied to such "branded" keywords, typically a company's name or products, eat up about half of search budgets, Atlas estimates.
Wasted, indeed. Heard while The Wagon pulled up to fill itself up with coffee:
It's like saying Applebee's doesn't need specific signage or identifiable markings on its building to show out-of-towners where it is, because people are going to go there for dinner anyway. That is exactly how stupid this is.
Isn't this also an argument against any brand advertising of any kind?
Posted by john at 02:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 16, 2007
IAB, DMA, and SEO: WTF?
I just noticed this posted by Barry Schwartz over at SEL: The UK flavors of the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB UK) and the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) have joined forces "to establish industry-wide search standards", as they put it in their release on the IAB's UK web site.
Every few years I see this stuff and I try -- really, I do try -- not to by cynical. But trying to qualify and quantify best practices is like sprinting like hell to get to the end of a Mobius strip. Historically, any efforts to define acceptable and unacceptable practices in SEO have been either so rigidly prescriptive as to except significant portions of successful (and lauded) SEO companies, or they've been so toothlessly vague as to allow access to anyone who can forge a backstage pass.
To which of these camps does the IAB/DMA "charter" belong? Judge for yourself: Following (in bold) are the minimum corporate qualifications found in the IAB's charter document (MS Word, 238K), with a little commentary (mine) in italic.
Many -- many -- of the industry's best SEOs are one-(wo)man shops.
That's actually not a bad benchmark. For PPC. How about the other 80% of clicks?
I'm not exactly sure what "trading" means, but I think it's a UKism for "having been in business." I certainly concede that most good SEOs have been in business for more than 6 months. But most of the lousy ones have been too.
Now we're getting somewhere. Explore the links to the membership pricing levels of the IAB UK, IAB Europe (PDF), DMA, and SEMPO.
I have nothing personally against any of these organizations, but answer this question honestly: With mass adoption of this charter by SEO companies, who benefits more -- these four membership organizations, or companies in search of a reputable SEO firm?
And in case you're still reading, thanks. Here's your reward, pulled from the original charter Word document, and delivered in the world's most accepted currency -- laughter:
Monitoring compliance
The charter will be self-policed by the SEM industry.
Posted by erik at 10:08 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
Link Building in the Google Supplemental Aftermath
Having gone to play basketball with Chuck Cunningham, Google Supplemental enjoyed a stint just long enough to present questions that shouldn’t go away. Although we no longer see the GSI tag identifying the doghouse inhabitant, does it not behoove us to believe that, like Tiger, that dog still exists? We must continue to ask ourselves what places a page in the doghouse, and more importantly, what pulls that page out of the doghouse.
From a Link Building perspective, we know a deep page with no links is likely to be tagged. Search engines will consider a page important (read as not supplemental) if it is linked well throughout the site. All pages cannot be linked from every page, obviously, but a site’s structure must both allow and encourage spiders to get deep into a site to deem those pages as important.
Also, an external link building campaign must add links into a site, not just to a site. We have found that applying this slightly adjusted preposition to a site generates a huge impact on that site. Links pointing to deep pages indicate to the search engines that those pages are important, push the spiders farther into the site, and indicate to the search engines that the pages linked from that entry are also important. Deep links are necessary for better indexation as a whole, and they are necessary for greater importance at the page level.
Thankfully, Google took the high road with the disappearing character. I’m not sure there would have been anything to gain from the replacement of Google Supplemental Index with an adorable child or a farm boy from back in Hanover . . . although there still is time for Google to wake up and realize it was all a dream . . .
Posted by tom at 12:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 15, 2007
NY Times Select(s) Death over Charade
As you probably know, the NY Times has been the most prominent experiment in the paid content-behind-a-firewall-yet-at-least-partially-indexable model, and they are indeed now, finally, announcing via trial ballooning they are no longer going to put their most popular columnists behind that magic curtain one has to pay to sweep aside. After the magic show ends and the same fingers which initially drew the curtain are finished being pointed this way and that, this failed experiment will have had much to do with the principles of Link Building.
A party-goer cloaks her content as Maureen Dowd. Found on Flickr. Copyright 485i
First a great quote that helps explain the decision's relevance to our industry:
But the truth of the matter is that you get far more eyeballs when you're not locking away your content from the general public. The reality of Web 2.0 news is that people a rising tide raises all the ships. If you've got good content, and the Times does, people will link to it. When people read a technology blog like Engadget or a political blog like Daily Kos and find links to articles at the New York Times, everybody wins. Keeping your archives, op-eds, and other content locked up means that blogs and news sites won't link to you, won't give you credit for finding a story first, and won't drive up your traffic.
This lack of inbound links to the content-behind-the-firewall damaged traffic to the site not only through a paucity of visitors being able to click on these links to the columns themselves...:
...the share of traffic that the NY Times sends to NY Times Select has been decreasing over the past year – down by 16% year-on-year in July. With NY Times Select receiving more than two thirds (67%) of its US traffic from NYTimes.com, the decline had an impact with US visits to NY Select down 22% in the past year.
...in having to rely far too heavily on the parent site rather than third party links for traffic, but also in the residual effect such had in these columns' search engine visibility. With few third party inbound links accumulating with each new column, in fact from a deliberate online community decision not to link to content-behind-a-firewall, it is also very difficult for each new column to be judged more relevant than similarly themed columns emerging on the same topic that immediately acquire inbound links in the form of the same online community recommending them. It's no wonder the Times Select had to rely so heavily on clicks from the parent site for visits, as a great many of those visits were likely already subscribers. In that situation it is difficult to grow at the rate of the internet. Try these two simple searches for Frank and Maureen alone: nary a column to be found. Haven't they written quite a few?
I think everyone likely to read this blog knew this would happen. But to say we knew it would happen ultimately is not to say we are not happy to see even giants felled by an algorthm rejected, not select(ed).
Posted by john at 03:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 14, 2007
Speedwagon Rolls Out Category Feeds
In an effort to thrust ourselves into 2005, we're happy to announce the rollout of category-specific feeds in addition to our blog's regular "global" XML feed. In other words, if you're completely addicted to corporate reputation management (feed) and Wikipedia (feed) articles but simply can't fathom suffering through another crawling and indexing (feed) lecture, you're in luck.
At the left, you'll see a portion of our list of categories. The full list is always in the left column of the site. As usual, clicking the text itself takes you to all posts in that category. But what's new is the little green RSS button to the left of the text. That takes you to the feed for that category. So to subscribe to a particular category feed, just right-click the button next to your favorite category, copy the link location, and paste it into your feed reader/aggregator.
Big thanks to an old but very effective tutorial that made it very easy to do in Movable Type.
The next step would probably be offering the ability to create "combination" feeds that let users select categories a la carte and merge the selected feeds into one master feed. I'm not quite ready to tackle that yet on an automated scale, but you could certainly set up a Yahoo Pipe and accomplish the same thing.
Posted by erik at 07:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 08, 2007
Download all query stats for this site (including subfolders)
I get the feeling that most people, even in our industry, using Google Webmaster Tools for themselves or a client aren't scrolling far enough on the Query Stats page to reach this link:
What you get if you click is rather unwieldy, sure, especially if you are dealing with a very large site, but the payoff is simply as large by the same degree. We are beginning to view it more and more here as a kind of matrix for how Google views your site architecturally, especially in light of GSI now having been moved to an undisclosed location. Actually, now that I've said it I'm a bit afraid it, too, will be taken away...
Posted by john at 02:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 07, 2007
How To Search Google Like A CTU Agent
Jack Bauer: "Chloe I need to find out how where the terrorists are getting their information"
Chloe: "Jack, to do that I'd have to hack into the DoD subnet. I've been working on a program to decode their level 5 encryption for 3 months. I haven't figured it out yet. On top of that do you know how massive the database is that we're looking in? There's data in there for every known suspect for the last 15 years!"
Jack Bauer: "Chloe, thousands of people are going to die if I don't get me that information now!"
Chloe: "Okay Jack, let me open a secure subnet protocol and get back to you"
2 minutes pass...
Chloe: "Okay Jack, I'm in, where do you want me to send the information?"
If you're not a 24 fan then you won't find any humor in the above FICTIONAL scenario. If you are then you will recognize that script from numerous times its been used in the first 6 seasons. As corny as it sounds, the ability for the CTU agents to quickly and accurately locate any information is one of the big keys to their phenomenal, albeit unrealistic, success.
In SEO the ability to quickly and accurately find unique & specific information on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS) is integral to wrapping our brains around what the Search Engines are doing. I just came across a listing of some different search parameters that can be used to find various things in Google. I don't normally like to regurgitate information already posted in other blogs but this is too good to pass up. Try these out and you'll be searching Google like a CTU Agent in no time.
Posted by brent at 09:09 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 03, 2007
What Can YouTube Do For Me?
What can YouTube do for me?
With the passing of each YouTube phenomenon -- we've seen elections won, treadmills treaded, boxes boxed -- shouldn't we ask ourselves this question?
So who has most recently taken advantage of this tool capable of placing our media in front of millions? The answer is . . . Rhain Davis . . . or I should say his grandfather, who put together the four-minute clip of the 9 year-old showing completely incredible moves on the soccer field.
So, what did YouTube do for Rhain Davis? Got him a contract with Manchester United.
Posted by tom at 02:55 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 01, 2007
Happy Fourth Birthday, High Rankings Forum
Let us be one of the first "outside" sites to wish Jill Whalen and her High Rankings Forum a happy fourth birthday.
Here's a great quote from Jill from the announcement on July 30, 2003:
I know, I know. The last thing the world needs is another search engine marketing forum! But I like to think that this one will be unique because I've lined up some of the best and the brightest in the search engine marketing industry to be expert moderators. This means that people who are truly "in the know" will be answering your questions. I've met most of the moderators in person, as a good portion of them speak at the same conferences that I speak at. These guys and gals know their stuff!
I joined the forum a little "late" -- about a month after it launched. I visit the site pretty often, but I rarely contribute, for what I consider a couple good reasons. I simply don't have time to follow up on posts and join too many "conversations," and I don't want to be one of those "drive-by" posters that I find so annoying. Plus, it's not as if I have a ton to add: Jill has assembled a crack staff of moderators, and I rarely disagree with the consensus over there.
So congratulations Jill.
Posted by erik at 07:12 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Google Supplemental Index Label Formally Dropped
Yesterday's announcement from Google's Official Webmaster Central Blog represents a formal declaration of what Matt Cutts hinted at in a recent SEOMoz post: The "Supplemental Result" label that used to appear for pages in Google's "junior varsity" index will no longer appear.
Do not mininterpret this as "Supplemental Result pages no longer exist." They still do, if you read the Google post with subtlety. The gist of it is that Google crawlers are now able to cruise through these pages with more frequency and reliability. This apparently negates the need for a special label, as while these two indexes are certainly not treated the same, the differences appear to be waning.
Personally, I don't really mind that this is disappearing, because even in the best cases, it wasn't always easy to determine if pages were "really" in it, and people seldom agreed on what caused pages to be there (despite several Googlers saying exactly what got you there). Still, the presence of Supplemental pages forced webmasters to figure out some better ways to organize their sites, which is the silver lining.
With a good analytics program, you have the capability of seeing how many pages on your site are performing well or not performing at all. Seeing them labeled as "Supplemental" was a shortcut to diagnosis, but its absence is hardly cause for panic.
Posted by erik at 07:06 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack