MSN Articles by SEO Speedwagon

May 03, 2008

Breaking: Yang Googles Ballmer

Just when it seemed the twain might soon be making their way down the aisle, arm-in-arm, the mere spectre of Google is enough to call off the nuptials: Mashable has the goods, including Balmer's e-mail that is really more about Google than Yahoo:

We regard with particular concern your apparent planning to respond to a “hostile” bid by pursuing a new arrangement that would involve or lead to the outsourcing to Google of key paid Internet search terms offered by Yahoo! today. In our view, such an arrangement with the dominant search provider would make an acquisition of Yahoo! undesirable to us for a number of reasons:

He goes on to devote almost half of his e-mail to explaining how bad an idea Yang's Google threat is. I caught this on my Mashable feed as I began watching the original Frankenstein movie with my kids. No kidding.

Breaking: Yang Googles Ballmer
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March 04, 2008

SEO Success Factors

I was recently asked about the success factors of an SEO campaign. There are many, but let's take a look at three of what we consider the most important success factors:

1) Knowledge Is Power

It's very important for us to know what prior SEO activities have been conducted on a site. This can make or break the campaign. On a few occasions, our team of site analyzers have uncovered controversial techniques that even our client didn't know had been performed!

It's also very important for us to have access and learn from your web site analytics data. SEO is about getting the right people to your site from search engines. Your analytics data prior to SEO and after SEO is a constant gauge to see if your SEO company is traffic-focused, not just placement-focused.

Finally, the knowledge of understanding how your target audience is searching for your offerings allows an SEO best practices firm to shoot for the bullseye where visitors convert, not the outer rings of the target where visitors are "just browsing". Since the early days of SEO, this has not changed.

2) Link Popularity

With the significant weighting of link popularity in Google's algorithm, there are very few sites that can ignore link building. Now crucial to your site's success at major search engines is the continual effort of adding quality, relevant third party links to your site. Trust me, most of your competitors are doing just that.

3) Flexibility To Site Changes

We always make sure to take the temperature of potential clients as to their flexibility to make changes to their site that will make the site more search-engine-friendly. If you are considering SEO, I would suggest you rate your flexibility to site changes on a scale of 1-10. Bottom line, if you are below a 5, you may want to consider Paid Search along with Natural SEO.

SEO Success Factors
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February 18, 2008

MSN's Berkowitz Pulled from the Index

I haven't seen this anywhere except ClickZ and I thought you might be interested. As of last Thursday, Steve Berkowitz, the SVP of Microsoft's Online Services Group, is out. He'll be staying through August "to ensure a smooth transition."

In the big picture, two years doesn't seem like quite enough time to have turned the MSN Search ocean liner around, despite the fact that Berkowitz is credited with Ask's financial turnaround during his tenure there. But someone has to fall on the sword in situations like this, and it looks like he was the logical choice. One wonders whether a simple management shuffle will have a significant effect, or whether it's merely bringing a sharper knife to the gunfight.

Further reading:

• MSN plucks Berkowitz from Ask/IAC (2006)
  
• Berkowitz out in MSN reorg
  
• Berkowitz bio on Microsoft site

MSN's Berkowitz Pulled from the Index
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February 01, 2008

When In Doubt, Buy Them Out!

Here I am yet again on a Friday morning enjoying a fine cup o' Joe and reading world news. Its a typical Friday morning for me as I gain my caffeine energy boost; that is until I read one of today's headlines "Microsoft bids $45 billion for Yahoo" on CNNMoney.com.

Seriously? Does Microsoft really want to play this game? I thought they learned their lesson well over a decade ago about monopolizing a market but I guess some companies are natural inclined to repeat mistakes like some governments I know.

If Yahoo! bites on the lucrative $45 billion dollar bid from Microshaft, what will this mean to the SEO community and to search in general? What will happen to MSN Search & Yahoo! Search? Will the two entities become one or just share algorithm components on the backend? Will one of the two search engines disappear like Teoma or DirectHit when they were bought out by Ask.com?

Well, I’m doubting the two companies would consolidate the two engines into one. There’s just too many loyal users of each to play that card. I actually envision the two entities just sharing backend technology such as Yahoo!’s Inktomi to increase relevancy of MSN Search & Live.com both of which have been struggling of late to increase their meager search market shares.

It should be VERY interesting to see what transpires in the event Yahoo! accepts the bid.

There you go again Microsoft! If you can’t beat ‘em, buy ‘em!!!

When In Doubt, Buy Them Out!
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October 16, 2007

MSN's Hotmail Now Offers 5 Gigs Of Storage

Just last week I noticed my Hotmail account had undergone a complete makeover. Not only does Hotmail now offer 5 Gigs of email space but the interface itself seems less arduous to use than its biggest rival, GMail.

I have had my Hotmail account for about thirteen years now and just can't let it go for some reason. I think it may be because it's one of those comfort zones I just can't let go nor want to get out of for whatever reason. And with the new facelift, it has solidified my resolve to continue to use it for a looooong time to come.

Some of the new features are VERY Google-esque. A good example of this would be MSN's Calendar which like Google, allows you to jot down your to-do list for whatever it is ya got planned. Also similar to Google's GMail, you can search your emails and/or Live.com with MSN's own search technology via the hotmail interface.

There's a ton of other new features with Hotmail but I just don't have the time to list them all here.

I see solid progress for Microsoft with their Hotmail relaunch, but still see room for improvement, and of course, room for intrusion. Like GMail, I anticipate seeing content-matched ads appearing in Hotmail emails sometime soon.

MSN's Hotmail Now Offers 5 Gigs Of Storage
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September 28, 2007

The Emergence of Universal Search Engine Optimization

In May of this year, Google announced its new Universal Search System which blended traditional search results with news, video, music, images, local and book search engine portals, as well as Blogs on a single page to help users find information with greater ease. Universal Search, a new platform which represents a major shift in information display and retrieval, is causing search engine optimization companies to rethink how they conduct service offerings. So what does this mean for SEO professionals?

For those who conduct Search Engine Optimization services for clients, “Universal Search” is yet another marketing opportunity worth considering. Our industry is already known for dealing with extreme change on a monthly basis, and as a result of being able to adapt to this ever-changing market, this has enabled us to thrive in the industry. With these changes, we must re-invent or enhance our offering to meet the growing changes presented by Google in order to stay ahead of the curve. The emergence of Google’s Universal Search now forces SEO professionals to look outside the box for providing their customers with bleeding edge Internet marketing solutions.

To be able to help our clients rank in the top Google search results, we now have to look towards creating effective SEO strategies that involve RSS, news, videos, audio files, images, local and book search engine portals, and Blogs. With so many new things being displayed in Google’s search results it will be much harder to attain a top ten search engine listings for clients. However, this doesn’t mean that the world is coming to an end for SEO’ers. Nevertheless, it means that we must look towards existing Google search platforms and integrate them into a new strategy called “Universal Search Engine Optimization.”

Universal Search Engine Optimization encompasses traditional SEO (on-site & off-site) methodologies as well as combines Web 2.0 marketing tactics, i.e., RSS, Online Optimized Press Releases, Podcasts, Vodcasts, Blogs, Social Bookmarking, Social News sites, Image and Book listing optimization, as well as Local Search, that aids clients in gaining a greater market share within Google’s Universal Search results.

The following Internet marketing activities make up a large part of Universal SEO:

"Definitions in parenthesis taken from Wikipedia"

RSS -- “RSS is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts.”

Online Optimized Press Releases -- Tailoring a company’s news in such a manner to gain greater visibility online through optimizing elements within the press release.

Podcasts -- “A podcast is a digital media file, or a series of such files, that is distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds for playback on portable media players and personal computers.”

Vodcasts -- "Video podcast (sometimes shortened to vidcast or vodcast) is a term used for the online delivery of video on demand or video clip content via Atom or RSS enclosures.”

Blogs -- “Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject such as food, politics, or local news; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic.”

Social Bookmarking -- “A way for Internet users to store, organize, share, and search bookmarks of web pages. In a social bookmarking system, users save links to web pages that they want to remember and/or share.”

Social News Sites -- News aggregation (social network) sites that gain stories from community members online.

Image Optimization -- Effectively optimizing image file names, alternate text, and the utilization of photo sharing sites such as Flickr, Picasa, Photobucket, etc.

Book Listing Optimization -- Optimize Book company Web site pages to enhance placement in search engines for the titles of books for sale.

Local Search Listings -- Create local business listings and optimize Web sites to better perform amongst local search engine (Google Local, Yahoo Local, etc) listings.

To stay competitive in the ever-changing SEO industry, we need to create strategies for our clients that focus on all aspects of Universal Search. I believe this new form of search results presented by Google will open many doors for companies seeking to embrace the evolution of search.

The Emergence of Universal Search Engine Optimization
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September 18, 2007

Search Tearing Down Walls Like It's 1989

We knew it was coming and we tried to bake a cake for Maureen Dowd more than a Month ago, yet we are still surprised at how search-friendly they are being in their explanation today:

What changed, The Times said, was that many more readers started coming to the site from search engines and links on other sites instead of coming directly to NYTimes.com. These indirect readers, unable to get access to articles behind the pay wall and less likely to pay subscription fees than the more loyal direct users, were seen as opportunities for more page views and increased advertising revenue.

If you have any doubt that this is the SEO equivalent of 1989 scroll a bit further down the page for this money quote:

The Wall Street Journal, published by Dow Jones & Company, is the only major newspaper in the country to charge for access to most of its Web site, which it began doing in 1996. The Journal has nearly one million paying online readers, generating about $65 million in revenue.

Dow Jones and the company that is about to take it over, the News Corporation, are discussing whether to continue that practice, according to people briefed on those talks. Rupert Murdoch, the News Corporation chairman, has talked of the possibility of making access to The Journal free online.

Mr. Murdoch, tear down that wall!

Search Tearing Down Walls Like It's 1989
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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.

New MSN Tools Coming Includes Sitemaps
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August 21, 2007

Microsoft Talking Points Parroted: Day II

Article or Press Release?:

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.

Microsoft Talking Points Parroted: Day II
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May 08, 2007

SEO Best Practices - International or Region-Specific Sites and Domain Issues

Suggested Best Practices:

A good first question to ask is “Who exactly are we targeting?�? If you are targeting a specific country, targeting a specific language-speaking audience, or your web site copy is specifically for a country or language-specific audience, use a ccTLD (country code top level domain) that relates to your target country rather than a general .com domain. For example, a ccTLD would look like www.domain.fr, www.domain.ca, www.domain.jp, or www.domain.co.uk. Always use ccTLDs for each language of your site.

Avoid having multiple language sites on the same domain, e.g., www.domain.com for English language content and www.domain.com/fr/ for French language content.

Make sure that there is not any duplicate content on your .com and any other sites.

Make sure your pages identify what language they are in, e.g., meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="jp"

If you cannot use a ccTLD, use a subdomain, e.g., fr.domain.com. Google views a subdomain as a separate site.

Benefits Of Best Practices:

A ccTLD communicates to search engines the focus of your site.

A ccTLD is the quickest and most accurate way to communicate regionality to the search engines.

A ccTLD assigns more weight for local search. It allows your site to be more easily included in Google Canada, Google Mexico, etc.

Search engines tend to have higher confidence and often give a ranking boost to a ccTLD site for local searches. For example, Google France may give a more favorable ranking to a France-specific (.fr) site.

FAQ:

Q: What about using subdirectories such as www.domain.com/fr/? Can we do a 301 redirect from a subdirectory to a ccTLD, e.g., from www.domain.com/fr/ to www.domain.fr?

A: From a search engine perspective, it is always best to use a ccTLD. If a ccTLD is not possible, then consider using a subdomain. We do not recommend using subdirectories for international sites or language-specific sites.

Q: What does Google say about the use of TLDs, ccTLDs, subdomains, etc.?

A: “Use TLDs. To help us serve the most appropriate version of a document, use top level domains whenever possible to handle country-specific content. We're more likely to know that www.domain.de indicates Germany-focused content, for instance, than www.domain.com/de/." (Source: Google Blog)

SEO Best Practices - International or Region-Specific Sites and Domain Issues
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April 25, 2007

MSN Link Search Still Not Working

For weeks now, I've noticed that MSN's [link:www.domain.com] search operator hasn't been working. Not only does it not pull up a list of results for links, but the stupid thing isn't even set up as a custom 404 page!!! Did you get that? MSN doesn't have custom 404's!!!!

I don't know about y'all, but I think MSN REALLY needs to get their act together with items such as the ones listed above if they're ever looking to grab at market share the likes of Yahoo! and Google. But for some reason, I'm doubting MSN is going to take away any competitors user base if their search engine continues to disappoint.

Happy hump day, my fellow SEO geeks!!!

MSN Link Search Still Not Working
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April 13, 2007

Sitemaps Protocol News / SEO Humor

If you've had a backstage pass to the SEO Speedwagon for the last few months, you should know by now that we are official groupies for the Sitemaps Protocol. In fact, if we ever take SEO Speedwagon on tour, Sitemaps Protocol would open up for us.

There actually was some interesting news this week re: the Sitemap Protocol.

1. Ask.com has drank the kool-aid so you can now share your sitemap with them.

2. Although MSN isn't "...ready to consume sitemaps just yet", all three major engines announced the sitemap protocol will now include Autodiscovery.

Autodiscovery allows site owners to add a link to their sitemap within their robots.txt file. Here is what it should look like:

Sitemap: [sitemap URL here]

We highly recommend that you add this line to your robots.txt, especially since you will not have to resubmit your sitemap file when it is updated (which should be often if your site content is dynamic).

If you are a fan of the statistics, etc. provided by Google Webmaster Tools, then also be sure to submit your sitemap there. Along with statistics, you will also be able to see if there are any errors in your sitemap which can be very important, especially for large web sites (trust me.....been there).

SEO Humor:

An SEO guy walks into a bar and asks the bartender, "Can you submit a sitemap to MSN?" The bartender looks at him, scratches his head, and asks, "Why?"

Sitemaps Protocol News / SEO Humor
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September 15, 2006

Where's My MSN Traffic?

Just yesterday, MSN launched its new "Live" version of its search engine and of course, put it on an obligatory .NET platform.

There's one main problem with the recent relaunch of MSN Live however. It's not passing referrer data as discussed over at SERoundtable. So what are the implications you ask? Try, you won't have a clue what your traffic is looking like coming from MSN for the foreseeable future.

The good news is MSN is utilizing a 302 temporary redirect which provides hope that MSN is still working on some stuff prior to implementing a 301 permanent redirect that will hopefully include referral data for logs.

Where's My MSN Traffic?
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September 05, 2006

MSN Loves Blogs Too

We (and our ilk) often talk about how Google favors, at least algorithmically, the blog format. But MSN is right up there in terms of giving preferred treatment to blogs.

"Preferred treatment," of course, is a misnomer and a bit of a joke. After all, the preferential nature goes both ways. Well optimized blogs give engines what they like, and engines respond in kind.

A client started a blog recently that contains posts built of press releases, industry news, pointers to other articles across the web that highlight how his industry's technology is utilized around the world, and occasional links to new content on the main client site. All new material - nothing reprinted.

This client also retains the services of a very smart host/web dev consultant who wrote some nice code to query the blog database, pull the five most recent posts, and link to them statically from the main site's home page. (Often, a "syndication" technique like this would use scripted links to pull the blog's most recent entries.)

The blog began pulling long-tail Google queries within a couple weeks of its first post. But a month later, MSN was out-referring people to the blog. In fact, the blog had taken over MSN's very top spot for a two-word phrase that the client's main site had formerly held.

Too many times, site owners leave it at that - "Search engines love blogs" - and don't grasp that the logical next step is to treat all sites, not just blogs, like blogs. Constant content generation. Generous linking. Smart, keyword-based nomenclature. Be sure to give your "bread and butter" content - everything about your business - the benefit of an archetecture that gets the engines' attention.

MSN Loves Blogs Too
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August 02, 2006

Microsoft adCenter Goodwill Tour

Kudos are due when kudos are earned so here's just a quick update on my previous post about Xenophobia at MSN.

It seems that MS adCenter is now adding, among other things, support for Firefox!

Make sure you let them know how pleased you are by adding to their comment list and hopefully we can get more changes/updates in the future.

Cheers!

Microsoft adCenter Goodwill Tour
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July 28, 2006

Xenophobia at MSN

I had an interesting experience with MSN adCenter the other day that caused me to question the relevancy of MSN adCenter.
You see MSN has been on the fringe of paid search for quite some time but has recently made the bold move to jump in with both feet. Why??? is a question I frequently ask myself and here is how the conversation goes (and yes, I will admit that I have quite good conversations with myself ;).

Me: Why is Microsoft getting into the paid search arena? I mean with Google and Yahoo already dominating the paid search market....

Myself: It's all about the money stupid. With Google raking in over a billion dollars every quarter MSN just wants a piece of the pie.

I: I think it’s about money but I also think it’s about Microsoft trying to remain a legitimate player and not just fade away.

Me: Hmmmmmm.......both interesting arguments. Microsoft is sitting on a large pile o' cash aren't they? And open source seems the way everything is going?

Myself: Microsoft won't have much cash left if they keep ignoring the EU! Plus with Gates 'retiring' who is going to lead the traditionally xenophobic charge?

I: Personally, I was shocked that MSN AdCenter doesn’t support Firefox!

Me: You’ve got to be kidding me? Of course they wouldn’t support it.

Myself: Yeah, it doesn’t bear the ‘Microsoft Genuine Advantage’ digital license.

Me: No dummy, because instead of working with others MSN is playing the only game the only way they know how to.

I: And that is…….

Me: They make you work with them, that’s different then them working with you.

Myself: Ahhhh, I get it. And because they’ve got loads of cash they just try to do their own thing instead of work with others ala ‘open source’.

Me: Bingo.

I: I wish they would just keep their money out of developing a paid search engine and do something novel like try to make Windows actually work without crashing all the time.

Myself: Yeah, or how about closing down all of the security holes? I think my computer downloads critical updates at least once a week.

I: I wish they would bring back ‘Bob’.
Now there was some useful software.

Me: Okay, Okay, that’s enough. As soon as the conversation degrades to ‘Bob’ it’s time to wrap it up.

Overall, Microsoft needs to do some serious core values analysis. I wonder if they’ve ever heard the saying ‘jack of all trades, master of none’. It sure seems to apply in this case. I think they would do themselves a favor to focus on their majors and forget about the minors. Then again, would we ever really trust Microsoft if they ‘took the red pill’?

Xenophobia at MSN
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July 18, 2006

NOODP = Yes!!!

I have no musical reference to my post this week other than to say that I find the instrumental gem called YYZ on Rush’s finest album, Moving Pictures, to be the perfect music to write a blog post to. I highly recommend it. And Neil Peart, I know you're reading this ..... you are the finest drummer on our planet.

Last Thursday, our fair-haired and highly regarded Erik Dafforn sent the Intrapromote staff an email with a Subject line that all IPers (Intrapromote staff) assumed was a bad joke.

The subject line you ask?

“Google now honors NOODP meta tag!�?

This would mean that our clients could include a tag on their web pages to tell Google not to pull the often ho hum titles from ODP and use them as the title in search results pages.

“Yeah right�?, was simultaneously (I like to think, harmoniously) uttered in our Ohio, Indiana, and Oregon offices as the email appeared in our collective In boxes. However, much to our surprise it is actually true!

Did Google finally get tired of people asking for this or did they quickly follow suit because MSN recently added support for the NOODP tag? Did Danny Sullivan finally get through to Google? Who knows, but my money is on keeping up with the competition.

It was good timing for me since one of the clients I work with needed to shake loose from a Google SERP that listed only their company name as the title. Clickability score? About a 2 out of 10.

If you’re in the same boat of folks disgusted by your ODP title and description and how it shows up upon searches at Google, simply add the following code to the source code of your page:

< META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOODP" >

NOODP = Yes!!!
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June 29, 2006

Bueller?... Bueller?... Google?... Google?...

This Speedwagon Presentation of Great 80's Moments in Film has been made possible by Peculiar Google Results.

Economics Teacher: Bueller?... Bueller?...

Simone: He's sick. My best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with a girl who saw Ferris pass-out at 31 Flavors last night. I guess it's pretty serious.

Economics Teacher: Thank you, Simone. Google?... Google?...

Simone: Oh. My sister's boyfriend's brother's best friend's girlfriend heard from this kid who knows this girl who's going with a guy who saw Google pass-out after searching for just 3 therapy products last night. I guess Yahoo took over at that point.

Economics Teacher: Thank you, Simone.

Simone: No problem whatsoever.

Economics Teacher: MSN?... MSN?...

Simone: I totally don't think MSN is in this class.

. . . And Scene.

Special thanks to Sean Bolton for discovering this peculiar Google result and to Ben Stein and Kristy Swanson for reprising their roles as Economics Teacher and Simone, respectively.

Bueller?... Bueller?... Google?... Google?...
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June 01, 2006

Maybe There's Something To Google

I'm starting to think maybe Google is on to something. It's still pretty early in the game, but this new search engine is pretty darn good. Not only does it appear to be offering more accurate results than the others, but it gives you more accurate information without having to click.

I know these are new concepts, so just bear with me. Let's take last weekend's race in Indianapolis. Lots of people seem to be interested in that event, so there's probably lots of information across the world wide web about it. And the race just happened, so it would be pretty impressive if these search engines could already give us information about this current event. I'm not interested in visiting any sites right now, but I'd like to see which search engine would be able to tell me who won that race. See, I think in the future people will not just use search engines to find web sites, but to find information in a hurry.

Anyway, who was the [2006 Indianapolis 500 Winner]?

Google's Answer:

And the other guys:

Google has my answer above the fold (twice). Yahoo came up with the answer further down the page (6th result), and MSN did not show the winner anywhere on the first page.

Like I said, maybe there's something to this Google!

Maybe There's Something To Google
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April 06, 2006

MSN Not Available for Interview, I Guess

Wooooooops!

The Wagon had planned an in-depth interview with MSN today. We were going to discuss their aggressive attempt to overtake Google as the premiere search engine.

Unfortunately, MSN grew pale after our first question, and could only repeat a strange, almost cryptic statement. Anyway, below is an excerpt from the interview:

I'm hearing much about your plans to compete with Google. Can we have a look at your future service?

I see. Well then, could we have a look at your present service?

How about your past service?

Sorry, I expected a little more from the interview. Boy, is my face red or what?

MSN Not Available for Interview, I Guess
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March 08, 2006

MSN Search Unveils New Features at Live.com

A post at Threadwatch yesterday noticed that MSN search results now stop at page 25. Additional results pages appear to exist, but when you click on results page 26, for example, nothing happens.

That curiousness was partly addressed later, as the Seattle Times pointed out that it's a feature, not a bug. The new MSN Search interface is in beta at Microsoft's live.com site.

The company is capping the maximum number of results at 250, or 1,000 for an image-based search, betting that no one really wants to sift through more than that. The move is risky in that it ratchets up the pressure for Microsoft to make sure those 250 results are the best and most relevant.

"We've made significant progress on the relevancy of our results and have to invest on improving that area," said Lisa Gurry, a product manager for the project. "The 250 number absolutely gives us the right level of depth."

The interface of the MSN Search beta is clean. One neat feature is a set of "slider" controls that enables you to efficiently skim results.

The small, horizontal slider controls the amount of information shown per result. At the minimal setting (far left), only a page title and URL are shown. The middle level shows those items plus a snippet of text from the page. The far right "maximum" setting shows an additional "Search within this site" feature, which, when clicked, opens up an additional search box enabling you to search within a site before even clicking over to that site. I like this capability, although I'm not sure how often the average user would use it.

The tall, vertical slider is also pretty cool. A click of the up or down arrow scrolls to the next pane of search results. You can also drag the slider up or down to move very rapidly through results. The big change here is that all search results are now shown on one page; you no longer need to click a new link to load the next 10 results. (Note to SEOs: Getting to the first "page" of MSN results just got a lot easier...)

As with all search engine interface changes, it's not necessarily how relevant the changes are, it's the combination of relevance, buzz, and adoption. MSN's Gurry is right when she says that average users probably don't need more than 250 results. The Times reporter is right that these 250 results need to be more relevant than ever.

By the way, I got the Live.com site to load correctly in IE, but not Firefox.

MSN Search Unveils New Features at Live.com
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February 15, 2006

An Open Letter to Search Engines

Dear Search Engines,

Here's a word for you: Relevance. I know you have it. And I know you know people want it. But here's some difficult news. They're not getting it, because you're making it too hard for them.

I know, I know. You're trying to get the word out. You have "advanced search" pages. You have APIs. You have tabbed searches for tiered results. You have these and a ton of other features that NO ONE USES, because despite more-or-less-accurate fantasies about how important you are to the world, you refuse to understand that people, while not exactly stupid, aren't exactly as "search literate" as you need them to be.

What's that, Google? You say you're getting the word out in the world's 8th most popular blog? I'm sorry, I guess I had trouble hearing that over the din of NO ONE KNOWING WHAT A BLOG IS. That's like saying your brand of calculator is the most popular among Hyperbolic Topology Ph.D. candidates. Woohoo!

Part of this isn't your fault; it's ours. We fill your comments and trackback sections. We write article after article about search engines. We spend days telling you what we think about preferential treatment of subdomains, or the mishandling of 302s, or how to measure effectiveness of site-wide links, and you start to believe that we represent a significant portion of potential users (we don't). Even the dreaded MSM is jumping in - a sure sign of the social dissemination of your technology, right? You can't even wend your way to the Times Op/Ed section without seeing half a dozen articles about how cool search is. But don't be misled: Most of these articles are mind-numbingly shallow, and they're mostly read by people who know thrice as much as the authors themselves. Not a lot of additional reach there, unfortunately.

Here's the bottom line. The most popular searches in your very own search boxes are actual URLs. Did you hear that? PEOPLE SEARCH FOR URLs IN YOUR SEARCH FIELDS SO THEY CAN SEE THEM IN YOUR SERPs AND THEN CLICK ON THEM. Does this sound like a group of people who are looking for a way to restrict search results to a specific TLD or find out how much they weigh in a popular British/Irish format? (By the way, would you call that "13 stone 8"?)

Search engines, here is the brutal reality: you're trying to get your message out in a world where 17% of HDTV owners mistakenly believe they're watching a high-def broadcast simply because they own a high-definition television. What's the moral here? YOU CANNOT MAKE THIS STUFF TOO SIMPLE FOR PEOPLE TO UNDERSTAND.

• Spend less time posting to your official blogs and more time putting your message on tray liners at fast-food restaurants.
• Spend less time speaking at tech conferences and more time buying a few TV spots to showcase your features. (When people see something on TV, they want to try it. When they see a tiny link to it pulling them away from a comfortable place, they don't. Pontiac should not understand this more than you do, but it does.
• Spend less time catering to corrupt governments and more time creating ad inserts for Sports Illustrated or Parenting or Marie Claire or whatever publications target the users who aren't fully exploiting your capabilities. Trust me, that's just about all of them.

Your employees have spent a lot of their time creating some very cool search features. It's time that some of them spent their hours thinking of innovative ways to educate searchers. And remember, counter to your intuition, "innovative" means "less technical." Users who know how to use search engines correctly better understand engines' potential for solving problems and are even more likely to associate specific engines with relevant results. And the managerial subset of that group will really understand how important it is to have a viable search engine presence. When that happens, everybody wins.

An Open Letter to Search Engines
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January 11, 2006

Same Subdomain Results in SERPs: What is Excessive?

Sean asked me how long Yahoo had been positioning more than two URLs from a given subdomain on its SERPs, and I didn't have a good answer.

In the Yahoo query for [apple], for example, eight of the ten results come from the www subdomain of apple.com. There's little doubt that Apple has earned a top placement for that search, but I believe that relevance is questionable when the algorithm shows links to the French, Japanese, and German home pages as well, from a computer with a US IP address, set to default English.

(And I'm not trying to be Americentric. If I were German, searching from www.yahoo.de, I wouldn't want a bunch of English-language results either.)

Where are the trade mags devoted to Apple technology? The blogs? The Apple section of Slashdot is the only non-apple.com URL listed. Is that enough?

MSN is similar, but with different apple.com URLs from the www subdomain. The only non-apple.com page is the Wikipedia page for Apple.

It's not confined to Apple. Try searches for other major brands and see what comes up.

Typically, Google doesn't place more than two pages from any given subdomain on one SERP. (You could argue, though, that there's little difference between Yahoo showing more than two instances of one subdomain and Google's habit of showing up to two instances per subdomain, but from multiple subdomains.) While I know that no single engine dictates the gold standard for "mix" of domains on a results page, I have become accustomed to Google's ratio. I'm not saying there's a right and wrong ratio, but the Yahoo/MSN situation seems unbalanced. What do you think?

Same Subdomain Results in SERPs: What is Excessive?
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January 09, 2006

Historical Search Traffic - Are You Missing The Boat?

In my last post, I asked the question: "Is your Search Traffic growing Big Time?"

Notice I didn't ask, "Are your search engine placements growing Big Time?" Why? Because your search engine placements are just a means to an end for what you should really be seeking ... target audience visits clicking through to your site from your search engine placements.

If you're not analyzing your search engine traffic at least monthly, the boat has left the dock without you. Make sure you have a web analytics program that provides search engine referrer data. This way you will always know exactly how many visitors find your site through each search engine. Then meticulously track your Search Traffic at least monthly over the long haul.

Here's an example from a client who fits my "7 Characteristics Of Companies That Have Committed To Ongoing SEO". Let's take a look at their Search Traffic for Google, Yahoo, and MSN in 2005:

If you're analyzing your Search Traffic monthly, then you have the advantage of being able to compare it to prior years. Here's what this client's search traffic looked like the prior year (2004):

Now let's go back another year and look at 2003:

There are many observations that can be made from analyzing three years of historical search traffic. Here are just a few:

* Google brings significantly more visitors to this site than Yahoo and MSN. In fact, currently Google traffic is approximately the equivalent of Yahoo and MSN combined.

* Since January 2003, traffic from Google has grown from under 50,000 to nearly 800,000 monthly visitors.

* This client definitely has a seasonal trend to it's Search Traffic with small decreases in search traffic in January and February that recover in March and April, flatten our over the early part of the Summer, then take off in the Fall and reach their peak in December.

The analysis and observations can go on and on. My main point is that we can use this data to make significant strategic decisions about our SEO efforts. And our client can use it to make meaningful e-business decisions that affect their bottom line.

Every site owner should be analyzing their Search Traffic and using whatever intelligence this brings to the table. Be happy about good search engine placements, but be excited about Search Traffic that is growing big time!

Historical Search Traffic - Are You Missing The Boat?
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December 13, 2005

Watching MSN's Algorithm at Work

I was all ready to bash MSN's search algorithm a week ago, and I'm glad I waited. Instead, I've grown more impressed with its self-governance and, I daresay, its audacity.

During a routine vanity search for [seo speedwagon] about two weeks ago, I was shocked at the top result - an actual results page from Google Blog Search. The following screen shot was snapped on 12/4 and shows the MSN results page for the query [seo speedwagon].

As you can see, the top result is a dynamic results page from Google's blog search engine. And that's my fault, I guess. Back in September I wrote about Google's new blog engine. In that post, I talked about (and linked to) various test searches I had run, including a search for our blog name. No big deal.

When you think about a search results page like this, it has several factors that, in a vacuum, should make it rank well:

• A succinct title with relevant keywords
• Loads of on-page instances of keywords
• At least 20 outbound links to related sites (Google Blog Search results pages link to both the specific post and to the blog's home page for each of the 10 positions.
• (In this case) four incoming links (albeit from the same domain) with targeted anchor text. Because of the way the Speedwagon is written and archived through Movable Type, each post tends to show up multiple times. MSN sees this specific post in four locations:
  • The post's individual archive
  • Our archive of blogging articles
  • Our monthly archives for September
  • Our archive of Google articles

So ironically, I created the very page that supplanted our own site in a vanity search. How poetic.

Now here it gets even more interesting. We can debate the merits of the Google Blog Search results page all day, but in truth, MSN never should have crawled and indexed it in the first place, because Google Blog Search results pages are specifically disallowed in the robots.txt file for that subdomain:

So let's sum up:

• MSN crawled and indexed a page from Google's blog search engine against Google's robots.txt exclusion.
• Its algorithm deemed that page worthy of ranking for a relatively uncompetitive term.
• A week after I noticed MSN ranking the Google page at position 1, it had dropped to position 2. Today, it doesn't rank anywhere.
• The Google Blog Search results page has dropped out of the MSN index.

I'd say that just about balances out right.

Watching MSN's Algorithm at Work
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November 14, 2005

Are You MSin or MSout?

I must admit that when I was approached about writing about the financial aspects of the "Big Three" (Google, Yahoo, & MSN), I was a bit leery about writing about MSN. Simply stated, I don't personally use it. I'm not a Microsoft "hater", but I have fallen out of lust with a lot of their products mainly because of security issues and their disdain for open source innovation. But putting that aside they are the third biggest search engine and worthy of a rundown.

Now on the financial side of things I'll have to focus on what they are doing business-wise instead of stock price etc. because they are apart of the Microsoft juggernaut, and therefore financial information is not easy to come by regarding their division.

The MSin'ers
They are currently ranked as having between 15.5% and 12.6% of the search market depending on which study you go by. That is not a number to be ignored. So my first question is why do those 15.5% to 12.6% of people use MSN? I found an interesting answer in an article by Danny Sullivan that basically states that users of MSN use it because they are there for other reasons.

What's ahead for MSN...
Well, from the recent hoopla it appears that "Windows Live" is what's ahead for MSN in articles that I read from Betanews.com and CNet. The basic rundown is that many of the services now offered through MSN will be moved to Windows Live, leaving MSN apparently more like its counterparts in search - that is relying on paid advertising for its revenues and focusing more on search. For a more detailed rundown of what Microsoft is actually talking about moving over to Windows Live start at this article; it will provide you a good starting point.

One final thing to consider about MSN is that its parent, Microsoft, controls the operating system market for desktops and based on a recent shopping adventure for a new PDA, they are striving for a similar dominance on handheld devices that are ever-increasingly becoming tied to the Internet.

Bottom Line...
MSN is not going anywhere. To ignore them is foolishness especially in light of the fact that they have a big following in Asia in particular. Right now the search world is focused on the U.S. market but this I'm sure will be changing as time goes on. Just look at all of the press that is being generated by Google, Yahoo, and MSN in the race for China's market. I'm not sure how to say "Have a Coke and a Smile" in Korean/Vietnamese/Thai/Chinese but I'm sure it's all of those places, and I'm sure the MSN Butterfly has migrated there as well.

Are You MSin or MSout?
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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!"

The Search Engine Hot Dog Derby
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September 20, 2005

AOL/MSN vs. Google and Yahoo?

The Associated Press today is reporting that MSN and Time Warner (AOL) are in discussions about a potential partnership "...that would help the two companies better compete against rivals Google and Yahoo".

Also, "...one aspect of the talks centered on using Microsoft's new MSN search engine on AOL, replacing AOL's current relationship with Google."

It is certainly interesting to hear about these two (formerly?) bitter rivals talking about becoming partners in the battle against the big boys, Yahoo and Google.

We'll have more to say about this if the partnership looks like it will become a reality.

AOL/MSN vs. Google and Yahoo?
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August 03, 2005

MSN to release their PPC tool

Next week, MSN will begin the roll out its own PPC tool. Initially limited to some 500 advertisers, it will compete against Google Adwords and Yahoo Overture. Currently, MSN accounts for 30% of Oveture's revenues, so when MSN's PPC is up and running, they will pull out of Overture, which will reduce Overture substantially.

MSN to release their PPC tool
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