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Search Engine Olympics - a Gold Medal for ?

Barry Welford — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 22:12:53 +0000

Which Search Engine wins the Medals?

Today’s headline suggests that Yahoo Wins Gold Medal for Online Olympic Traffic.

As U.S. workers continue to check out the Olympics online during the work week, Yahoo is beating the competition in drawing eyes to its Olympic content. But if you are in management, don’t freak out. Peak time for your employees’ daily Olympic fix is lunch time.

That can hardly be regarded as a complete answer to the question that David “Doc” Searls posed, “Is Yahoo a better search engine than Google?”

One of the commenters pointed out that Jeff Jonas had already suggested How to Beat Google! (At Search). Another contender was said to be Clusty.

Clusty got its start in Pittsburgh, PA in 2004 when the search software company Vivísimo decided to take its award-winning search technology to the web.

Vivísimo was founded in 2000 by three Carnegie Mellon University scientists who decided to tackle the problem of information overload in web search. Rather than focusing just on search engine result ranking, we realized that grouping results into topics, or “clustering,” made for better search and discovery. As search became a necessity for web users, Vivísimo developed a service robust enough to handle the variety of information the everyday web user was after. The result was Clusty: an innovative way to get more out of every search.

Doc Searls had checked a few searches for old blog items in affirming the superiority of Yahoo. It is an intriguing question. Clearly a well-founded answer would require much testing. However a quick check might confirm whether he was on to something. I therefore checked out the performance of the three, Yahoo, Google and Clusty, on some of my old blog posts. The blog posts were all present in the databases for Yahoo and Google, so this was a measure of how well they could deliver results from their databases.

To provide a topical summary measure, I decided to award gold, silver and bronze medals in each event. The gold medal was worth three points, the silver medal two points and the bronze one point. Here are the detailed results for searches for these phrases. They were done without quotes. The phrases were chosen at random so although the sample is small, it should be representative. NF indicates that the blog post was not found in the first 100 results

Performance has a whole host of associations that work well, particularly considering the sports analogy.: #1 Yahoo #1 Clusty #4 Google (61,000 entries)
Does UPS own Brown as part of its brand?: NF Yahoo #6 Clusty #3 Google (365,000 entries)
This is because the use of Frames in web design causes all sorts of problems so that most savvy web designers do not use them.: NF Yahoo #1 Clusty #3 Google (314,000 entries)
They’re even talking about a place for bludgers.: #7 Yahoo #1 Clusty NF Google (65,500 entries)
It’s intriguing to think of the Internet as an Open Space as in Open Space Technology.: NF Yahoo NF Clusty #8 Google (87,100 entries)
ReCellular has more than half the U.S. phone recycling business.: #23 Yahoo #23 Clusty NF Google (714 entries)

Which search engine had the best medal standing? As mentioned, Medal Scores were assigned as follows:
3 for Gold, 2 for Silver, 1 for Bronze.
This gave the following results.
Yahoo 10.5 | Clusty 14.5 | Google 11
The minimum medal score would be 6 and the maximum 18.

… and the winner is Clusty. If these results were substantiated in more extensive testing, then the major search engines might have to take Clusty seriously. Google of course has a huge advance on the rest of the field. However if Yahoo’s possible superiority opens up the question, then questioners may possibly become aware of the little search engine that could.

If you would like to see a short video summary of this, then you can play the following:

The video itself, Is Yahoo Beating Google, can be found on YouTube.

DMOZ Descriptions Do Not Work For Google

Barry Welford — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 18:55:29 +0000

Human beings sometimes work with concepts and may use different words to express the same idea. This human intelligence is not easily mimicked by a computer which is digital. True or false, that is the way the computer sees it. For example the Title and the Heading of a blog are two distinct entities. People sometimes get confused between the two and call the headline the title of the blog post. This is incorrect. The title is what appears at the top of the screen: the heading is the headline that appears in the view window of the browser. As is discussed elsewhere, the simplest explanation is that Headlines are for humans, while titles are for robots.

Where it can get really complicated is where the same word is used with two quite distinct meanings. Unfortunately this has happened to one of the most important words relating to a web page: the description. One place the word description is used extensively is in the Open Directory Project or DMOZ. This site started off just over 10 years ago as GnuHoo, switching to NewHoo, before being acquired by Netscape. Being featured in the Open Directory Project provides a useful link for any site in gaining search engine visibility. In consequence many people have gone through the DMOZ submission process.

The Open Directory Project has human editors who prepare descriptions for all web pages. However a submitter can offer a description, which may be used or may be slightly modified. The guidance given for such a description includes the following:

Keep the description of your site brief - no longer than 25-30 words. A well-written, objective description will make listing your site easier.

Write in complete sentences and/or descriptive phrases using proper grammar, punctuation and correct spelling.

Avoid using promotional language and strings of key words and search terms.

Another place where this word Description is used is in the Description Meta tag, which is part of the Head section of any web page. If the Description Meta tag is provided then this will often be used by Google in preparing the explanatory snippet, which is provided in any keyword query report page. Since a good snippet may channel prospects to your website, it is worth putting a little effort into getting it right.

Google in its Webmaster Help Center offers the following advice on creating effective Description Meta tags.

Include clearly tagged facts in the description.
The meta description doesn’t just have to be in sentence format; it’s also a great place to include structured data about the page. For example, news or blog postings can list the author, date of publication, or byline information. This can give potential visitors very relevant information that might not be displayed in the snippet otherwise. Similarly, product pages might have the key bits of information - price, age, manufacturer - scattered throughout a page. A good meta description can bring all this data together. For example, the following meta description provides detailed information about a book.

In this example, information is clearly tagged and separated.

This clearly shows the conflict. DMOZ requires sentences. Google prefers tagged information. The content of the description meta tag should be written the way Google prefers it. To be absolutely sure that Google uses what is offered in the meta tag rather than the description that may exist in the Open Directory Project, the following meta tag can be used:

This prevents all search engines (that support the meta tag) from using the Open Directory Project information in any way.
To specifically prevent Google from using that information as a page’s description, you can use the following:

Other Related Posts
March 31, 2008 -- Google Blog Post Snippets Are Now Dated Just For You
March 25, 2008 -- Do Google Snippets Work Better Than Twitter?
August 1, 2008 -- Ideal Google Snippets To Target Your Prospects

Ideal Google Snippets To Target Your Prospects

Barry Welford — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 00:13:47 +0000

The NUB Of Getting More Internet Sales, as described in a recent SMM newsletter, is to make sure that you provide the very best solution for those prospects in your niche who are feeling pain, in other words who are extremely dissatisfied with their current condition. Of course if that Google I’m Feeling Lucky button worked properly, then prospects could Google what they were looking for, and click on the I’m Feeling Lucky button. Few do, since presumably they are not convinced that Google will get it right.

In consequence, Google presents a list of possible website link titles and adds a snippet of information on each. Google describes the snippet process as follows:

Google’s creation of sites’ titles and descriptions (or “snippets”) is completely automated and takes into account both the content of a page as well as references to it that appear on the web.

We use a number of different sources for this information, including descriptive information in the META tag for each page. Where this information isn’t available, we may use publicly available information from DMOZ. While accurate meta descriptions can improve clickthrough, they won’t impact your ranking within search results. We frequently prefer to display meta descriptions of pages (when available) because it gives users a clear idea of the URL’s content. This directs them to good results faster and reduces the click-and-backtrack behavior that frustrates visitors and inflates web traffic metrics.

If your website is the one that prospect really should be finding, then both you and Google are hoping the snippet will encourage them to click on your link. The only information Google has on the prospect’s needs are what was put into the keyword query. If different prospects describe their identical need with different keywords, then the Google automatic snippet mechanism may create different snippets. To maximize your chances of getting those clicks (and thus the visitor website traffic), you must try to identify the most likely keyword query your prospects might use.

The Google Adwords Keyword Tool has recently had search data added to it and is particularly useful here. By checking the search data for possible keyword queries, one of the more popular can be selected. Writing the snippet is then an exercise in getting the essence into as short a body of text as can be used by Google. If the web page is a regular website page, then 155 characters and spaces are available. It is now Google practice for blog posts to use the date at the start of the snippet, so this reduces the available space to 138 characters and spaces for a blog post description.

Whatever text is used does not need to be in sentence format as the earlier Google reference mentions:

Include clearly tagged facts in the description.
The meta description doesn’t just have to be in sentence format; it’s also a great place to include structured data about the page. For example, news or blog postings can list the author, date of publication, or byline information. This can give potential visitors very relevant information that might not be displayed in the snippet otherwise. Similarly, product pages might have the key bits of information - price, age, manufacturer - scattered throughout a page. A good meta description can bring all this data together.

Although it has often been the practice to write sentences for descriptions, Google seems to be recommending putting in only the meat. That could certainly include Calls To Action or telephone numbers. Whether Google’s automatic snippet mechanism will use such information can only be confirmed by trial and error.

Related:
SEO Those Meta Descriptions For More Google Visitors 23 Mar 2008

Knols, Knols, Decisions, Decisions

Barry Welford — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 20:09:29 +0000

.. or as Tiffany Monhollon so deftly put it in the words of the bard, To Knol or Not to Knol? Her post is well worth reading since it summarizes much of the present decision problem many of us are facing:

That is the question of the day, isn’t it? With so much talk about whether or not this new service is the Wikipedia-killer or a threat to Squidoo, thought-leaders (and potential experts) everywhere have to be turning that question over in their minds.

The problem is, Knol is such a new tool, even though Google’s done an admirable job trying to define how the process works and what a good product looks like, no one really knows what to do with it yet, much less what to think of it. That’s because what will really define Knol is user involvement. And you better believe Google knows that.

In a world where content is king, Google’s new service simply can’t survive much less become a threat to anything without thoughtful participation from a crowd of established experts. The reason for this is simple: That’s the added value Knol supposedly brings to users - expertise.

If you take what Google is saying at face value, that is certainly a fair assessment. However I believe the reality is very much simpler. Knol will never be a place to go to check out information. Google has now already in the Beta phase created a mountain of lucrative web pages that will bring appreciable Adword revenues as these web pages turn up in keyword searches.

If you are surprised by that just check out some of the topics in the Plain old bag o’ knols section of the Knol home page.

Multiple Myeloma, Normal Pregnancy, Interstitial Lung Disease and Pulmonary Fibrosis, Conjunctivitis, Abdominoplasty (Tummy Tuck), Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease, Diverticulitis, Libido Problems in Women, Seasonal Allergies, Liposuction, Hypothyroidism, Anxiety Disorders, An Overview of Rectal Surgery, Osteoarthritis, Basal Cell Carcinoma, AIDS, Family Planning with Hormonal Contraception, Urticaria, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Patient Safety, High Risk Pregnancy, Hemorrhoids, Decreased Hearing, Specific Information about the Four Major Leukemias, HDL-Cholesterol, Dyslexia, Croup, Coronary Bypass Surgery, Central Sleep Apnea, Malaria, Female Sexual Function and Dysfunction, The Quality of Healthcare, Hematuria, Tinea Versicolor (Pityriasis Versicolor), Prostate Cancer, Menopause - What Is It?, Perioral Dermatitis (Periorificial Dermatitis), Common Cold, Obstructive Sleep Apnea, Acute Renal Failure, Nasal Polyps

Since these topics are on the Knol homepage, which is now receiving an incredible number of links from everyone trying to understand the Knol, it is quite clear that these Knol pages will naturally dominate the keyword query search pages. Although some question whether Google will wish to continue with Knols, they will probably find it too attractive in revenue terms to kill off.

For others of us dealing with topics which are less ad-rich, Knol presents a real dilemma. Will Knol become the place to be seen? That will be true only if regular Knol pages turn out to have natural high rankings in keyword query searches. Although a Knol page gives only minor returns to its author, if you are number one in a marketplace, can you afford to let your competitor be the one who writes the important Knol page in your field.

On present indications, you probably can let the competitor do the work. It seems quite clear that Google cannot give an unnatural advantage to its Knol pages in its search algorithms. If it did, the distinction between its natural listings and its paid advertising would become very fuzzy. That would be something that many would certainly encourage the FTC to check out with vigor.

.. and of course if the competitor does write a knol that seems to be gaining traction, your choice is clear. Just go out and write a better Knol on the same subject. If yours gets better reviews then presumably like cream it will float to the top.

Google Cannot Do All Internet Advertising

Barry Welford — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 00:18:53 +0000

Last week saw the launch of Google’s Knol, a sort of Wikipedia With Ads. This is a major event, which will impact most Internet stakeholders in very significant ways. It had been running in a Beta version since December 2007 but now is open to all.

There were many at its start who questioned the wisdom of such an online property. Richard Ball set out the counter arguments well in his post, Google Knol Signals the Apogee of Google’s Hegemony. Nevertheless Google has pressed ahead and we must all learn to live with the consequences. There are many weighty questions to consider such as that posed by Darren Rowse. Is Google’s Knol A Wikipedia Killer or a Blog Killer?. The implications for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) are even more unclear.

The only ones who are clearly advantaged are the advertisers with more advertising vehicles to consider. Google’s competitors will clearly not take this lying down. Many new opportunities will likely arise other than Adwords. For example Performancing is putting an extra push behind its Targeted Blog Advertising.

We are certainly living through interesting times.

Business Strategy Reality Check With Google Adwords Keyword Tool

Barry Welford — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 20:48:55 +0000

Some might find the title somewhat oxymoronic, given that the words Business Strategy are coupled with the notion of a Keyword Tool. However the linkage will become clear later.

Recently Trevor Claiborne of the Inside AdWords crew at Google informed us all that the Keyword Tool is now Updated With Search Volume Data. He illustrated this with the image shown below:

If you are not familiar with the Google Adwords Keyword Tool, it would be worth your while to check out. This latest change provides for free what many expensive keyword tracking services had been providing. It’s no surprise that AdWords professionals, such as Xurxo Vidal, Bloom Search Services, are enamored by this new Search Volume Data service.

As Tamar Weinberg of Search Engine Roundtable pointed out, some other experts are questioning its usefulness. Michael VanDeMar believes that the tool is useless for SEO, even though it shows exact numbers. Certainly the source of the numbers needs to be considered carefully. It may not provide an exact indication of the clicks your own particular AdWords campaign might produce. However for comparative purposes the figures would seem to be useful and clearly Google itself is the best source for Google click data.

The other advantage of the data is that you can download the figures into an Excel spreadsheet. Previously for all results, an indication of the search volume was presented as small histogram bars and only a rough visual comparison was possible. These quantitative results allow more intensive analysis, which is why it can provide a reality check for your business strategy. To explain this requires a short background review of Internet marketing.

Challenging Business Realities

An increasing number of businesses are realizing that the Internet is the primary way many prospects and clients will be communicating with them. Of course the Internet has a major weakness. That is because the Internet is a really, really crowded scene. It’s hardly surprising to hear that Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the Internet, is working on tags to help find online information.

At the same time the Internet has a major strength. That is because the Internet is a really, really crowded scene. That means that for any product or service, however specialized, there will be a very large number of prospects who are active on the Internet. Since the Internet is a superb way of communicating, which is independent of geography, this gives great opportunities in Internet marketing.

Given that the Internet has changed the way the business world functions, clearly a business strategy must make sense in this modern reality. As Michael Porter has said,”Of course strategy is hard - it’s about making tough choices.” In other words you must decide what you will do and what you will not do.

The best reality check for your business strategy would really be provided by the views of those prospects you are aiming to persuade to become customers. One indicator of the prospects needs is how they go looking for solutions. What keywords might they use in searching for solutions? The Adwords Keyword Tool provides such data. Of course it is mixed in with keyword data for non-prospects who happened to be looking for somewhat related products or information. Nevertheless the Tool can help in confirming or rejecting a particular strategy.

Doing The Reality Check

The following is very much a Big Picture approach and cannot be pushed to the nth degree. It only confirms that a particular strategy has the necessary characteristics to allow success. It does not go beyond that to check that it has sufficient characteristics to actually be successful. However by applying the check, it may give insights into how a strategy can be tuned to improve the chances of success.

Step 1 - Determine the characteristics of your most typical preferred prospect and their needs.

Step 2 - Determine the most likely keyword phrase that would be included in a Google search for a solution

Step 3 - Use the Keyword Tool on that phrase in the following way. Insert the words of the phrase on a single line without quotes and allow synonyms to be included. What the Tool does is to explore the concept that is behind that keyword phrase and show you what closely related keyword searches are being done.

Step 4 - Download CSV files of the two lists of keywords developed by the Tool into Excel spreadsheets. The data should be combined into one spreadsheet of adjacent rows. Sort the rows based on the values in the 4th column in descending order. The fourth column contains the annual monthly average searches for the particular keyword or keyword phrase. Sometimes you will find a large number of closely similar keyword phrases that have high search rates measured in the tens of thousands. This may either mean trouble or opportunity. In other cases, very many fewer keyword phrases are listed. Provided the search rates are measured in the thousands, then you likely are looking at a potentially interesting strategic niche.

Step 5 - After comparing a number of different businesses and the key words that might be appropriate, one can develop a sense of what this analysis suggests for the corresponding strategy.

Step 6 - (optional in some cases) Repeat the analysis with the keyword phrase in quotes to produce a tighter comparison of what may be competition.

Possible Outcomes From The Reality Check

This approach is very much a work in progress. Accordingly it is not yet possible to produce a taxonomy of all the different patterns and what they may imply for a given strategy. The following represent examples of what we have seen in practice. Repeating the cycle and refining the ideas is often beneficial. Readers who try out this approach are encouraged to add their own experiences in the comments.

Case A - A Strategy Lost In The General Noise
Findings - The words with high search numbers clearly represented much more than just searches by the prospect niche. Clearly there would be many other online properties that such searches were accessing. A website focused on the keyword phrase would probably never stand out in this very crowded space.

Case B - Too Much Competition
Findings - There is only minimal information on the advertising competition for certain phrases (a scale from 0 to 100%). Nevertheless, if many of the keyword phrases have 100% competition, then clearly this is a market with a large number of competitors who are willing to spend money on PPC advertising. This undoubtedly translates into equal competition in organic search as well. Using that keyword phrase to define your target prospect may well be very weak strategy.

Case C - Prospects Don’t Use That Keyword Phrase
Findings - One analysis showed that surprisingly there were no searches at all for the assumed best keyword phrase. Prospects were likely using some synonyms that did have high search results. The strategy was refined using one of these alternate phrases.

Case D - Several Keyword Phrases All Somewhat Strong
Findings - In this case, a number of alternate keyword phrases had somewhat comparable search rates. The advertising competition for some of these was strong whereas for others there was little competition. One of the alternates with little competition was selected to define the ideal prospect and therefore the best approach.

A Robust Strategy - Focus, Focus, Focus

The common thread that often runs through these strategy check cases is that focusing on a tightly defined niche is often the best policy. The overall measure that counts is the size of the niche multiplied by the small percentage who will convert into purchasers. The advantage here is that by targeting a tighter niche, it is more likely that the prospect will be aware of the company and more likely that they will find that what the company offers is attractive. Given the crowded Internet, even what might be thought of as a micro-niche can be preferred. This will be more fully explored in an upcoming SMM Newsletter.

Website Signposts To Help Visitors Find Their Way Around

Barry Welford — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 19:34:47 +0000

Introduction

Where can I find what I’m looking for?

Website visitors can be either humans or robots / spiders from the search engines. Although human visitors are what you are seeking, those robots are important since their efforts will result in many other human visitors coming to your website. Many websites find that more than two thirds of the traffic may well come from Google. Luckily what works for humans usually works well for robots too.

The Website Structure

Having appropriate webpages that people may wish to visit is clearly important. The rules to follow are clearly laid out in an article by Dr. Mani Sivasubramanian entitled Navigation - Make it Easy to Get Around.

Although written in 2000, the principles are still the same:

It isn’t difficult if you put yourself in your customer’s position and think about the things you would like best on a site like this. Here are some essential questions to answer:

Where am I? - an aid to one’s present location on the site

Where do I go next? - a roadmap or directory of the entire site

How do I get there? - an intuitive or descriptive system of navigation

Am I still on this site? - a consistent look-and-feel across different sections of the site

The Scent Of Information

In some cases particularly with larger sites, the human visitor may get slightly confused. He or she may have only a general notion of what they are looking for. Jared Spool has introduced the concept of the Scent Of Information. Just as a tracker dog may follow the scent to find their objective, your human website visitor needs some confirmation that they are heading in the right direction. Spool and his team at User Interface Engineering have refined these notions and a summary of their findings is available in their report summary at Designing for the Scent of Information

Conclusion

Getting a human visitor to a web page of your website is a challenge. Once they have arrived, you hope that your website will be ’sticky’ enough that they stay around. A big part of that is achieved by ensuring there are highly visible signposts to other web pages they might like to visit. Tags and categories are second lines of defense to ensure they do not click away.

Posts You May Like From The Archives

January 27, 2007 -- Removing Spam From The Web
June 1, 2005 -- Another eminence in the blogosphere - Carnival of the Vanities
February 4, 2005 -- Association Or Organization - Well It’s Only Semantics - Part One

Advanced SEO - A High-Level Overview

Barry Welford — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 00:52:15 +0000

SEO is good. Advanced SEO must be better.

The level of chatter on the Internet about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is at an extraordinary level following the SMX Advanced Conference in Seattle on June 3-4, 2008. It dealt with Advanced SEO. Given that so many business owners and Internet marketers are critically affected by how Google ranks their websites, this naturally is a topic of wide interest.

To help those who do not have the time to read all the chatter, we here offer a helicopter vision of what is going on at such a session. Indeed that is all that is possible currently, since there is a 30 day publicity blackout on the detailed contents of some sessions

What exactly is advanced SEO? Apparently it does not include enough Enterprise SEO as Brent D. Payne defines it:

Enterprise SEO: It’s SMX Advanced talk about how to do SEO from within an enterprise level company. I personally met with people from Time Interactive, Viacom, NPR, etc. and things are different for inhouse people at large companies. An advanced SEO seminar should tailor to some extent to the larger companies out there that are trying to accomplish big wins like capturing keyphrases such as britney spears, george w. bush, etc. How to work to rally hundreds of internal employees around SEO. How to build a proper presentation for niche audiences that are internal yet consist of 50 attendees per session. How to work with multiple CMS systems, inhouse CMS, etc.

Lisa Barone suggested that the conference content indicated that SMX Advanced Goes To The Dark Side. In other words, advanced SEO is more Black and Grey Hat than simple SEO. She cited some of the “advanced search engine optimization” techniques she had picked up during her time in Seattle.

There are lots of old sites lying around on the Interwebz with great link juice. Buy them and capitalize on that. But do it carefully or Google will pick up on it and reset the score.

Conditional redirects are awesome.

Search marketers don’t need ethics. They’re marketers. Check the ethics at the door.

You can never have too many .edu links.

I need to grow some balls, stop fearing Matt Cutts and start buying links.

Her post has a daunting number of comments from many of the luminaries in the SEO world. Whatever Advanced SEO may be, it is clearly highly contentious.

Given the furor, Danny Sullivan, the conference organizer, has tried to clarify matters by affirming that Advanced SEO Does Not Mean Spamming. In his post although he regrets some of the conference items, on balance he feels that progress is being made.

Indeed, I feel like search engines and SEOs have made great, huge strides coming together. Things like Google Webmaster Central, Yahoo Site Explorer, and Live Search Webmaster Center - all offer tools and support that were hard for some, including myself, to ever believe would appear. At the same time, I feel like things are getting even more adversarial on other respects, most especially in the area of links and Google’s perceived domination of the web. And how to solve that, I really don’t know.

Meanwhile, if you can’t buy and sell links, even more attention is now focused on link baiting. Link baiting is all good, as Google itself has said on numerous occasions. But now look what’s happening. We have fake link bait — and then Google has to decide if those links can be “allowed” to count. In turn, that causes some people to think Google’s going too far. And when you have people feel one party is stepping over a line, it makes it easier for others to ponder why they’re following rules at all.

Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s web spam team, was one of the keynote speakers and he has some interesting reflections on the conference:

So I did feel that the black hat material was a mismatch for much of the audience (inhouse SEOs and people doing their first search conference). At one point I felt like I’d stumbled back into 2003, when the search conferences had official panels about topics like cloaking. From that perspective, several panels of the conference felt like a step backwards.

So what lessons can those for whom even simple SEO is a challenge draw from all this? The only obvious one at the moment is the link bait topic that Danny Sullivan refers to. If your business can use as a hook something that is shady and of wide interest, then you can get the eyes and the links and in turn Google will send you the visitors. For SEO, that link bait hook is clearly the Black Hat version of SEO.

Posts You May Like From The Archives

January 21, 2007 -- Has Wikipedia gone “No Follow”?
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Someone is wrong on the Internet

Barry Welford — Sat, 24 May 2008 17:54:04 +0000

Matt Cutts of Google has an intriguing slip in his post, Something is wrong on the internet!. He is referring to this cartoon by xkcd.

Matt Cutts said something rather than someone. He went on to say:

That comic sums up the internet in one sentence: the scrum of jostling opinions on the web and the optimism that truth can still win out. I was reminded of that comic when someone asked me about a particular way that someone recently tried to get links.

His spam group is perhaps one key way human intervention comes into the Google search process. So his comments later in the post are particularly interesting.

If a website claims to have high-quality information and then deceives the user and serves up malware or off-topic porn, Google considers that spam and takes action on it. Likewise, if a site says that they completely made up a story to get links, Google doesn’t have to trust the links to that site as much.

I really don’t view Google’s role as judging the truthiness of the web. … But if someone is sloppy enough to get caught (or to admit!) making up a fake story, I don’t think Google has to blindly trust those links, either.

It sounds very much as though Google will be acting as the judge. This prompted me to add the following comment to his blog post.

This all seems to be shaking out as it should, Matt. It raised one question in my mind. You did say I don’t think Google has to blindly trust those links, either. I believe Google’s policy is to try to do everything in its search process by computer algorithms since this is scalable. Human intervention should therefore be very limited. Your spam group does that human intervention with an on/off button, I presume, as it applies to clear spam content.

I’m sure many would be interested to know how you treat websites you are no longer blindly trusting. Do you apply the off button for these with a reminder to check again in say six months? Or is it more like a volume control where you apply a down weighting factor? Or again, is it one of those minus X penalties in the SERPs that some talk about?

Since Google is now suggesting it will be more open than it has been in the past, I hope we will get some clarification on this.

Google Search Quality Lifts The Veil - A Little

Barry Welford — Thu, 22 May 2008 00:53:50 +0000

Google Search Confesses It Should Open Up More

Udi Manber, VP Engineering, Search Quality, acknowledges in the Official Google Blog that Google Search Quality is overly secretive.

Search Quality is the name of the team responsible for the ranking of Google search results. A few hundreds of millions of times a day people will ask Google questions, and within a fraction of a second Google needs to decide which among the billions of pages on the web to show them - and in what order. …

Surprisingly little is known about ranking at Google. This is entirely our fault, and it is by design. We are, to be honest, quite secretive about what we do. There are two reasons for it: competition and abuse. … Security by obscurity is never the strongest measure, and we do not rely on it exclusively, but it does prevent a lot of abuse. …

Being completely secretive isn’t ideal, and this blog post is part of a renewed effort to open up a bit more than we have in the past.

He then proceeded to give a few more details of what is done, but nothing to grab the headlines. Matt Cutts in another blog post gave us a little more information by revealing details of the Google organization chart.

We almost learn more from Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Roundtable, who wrote on a Webmaster View Of Google’s Latest Search Quality. At the end of the day, it all still seems somewhat shrouded in mist.

Posts You May Like From The Archives

May 7, 2005 -- Search Engine Optimization Or SEO With Blogger
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Will Google Find Waldo?

Barry Welford — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 19:24:07 +0000

Finding Waldo seems to be a hot item at the moment. The natural way to find anything now is to Google it. That’s the challenge that Melanie Cole, a Media Art student, has set Google Earth. The glasses-clad, lanky geek in the striped white and red tee, matching hat (complete with pom-pom), jeans and his trust cane has now been painted on Vancouver, BC rooftops, creating a larger-than-life game of Where’s Waldo!

The challenge is reasonable since according to Google, its mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. There would seem to be no limit to its ambitions. Perhaps not surprisingly, Google has just announced that it is crawling through HTML forms. This seems to be upsetting some website owners, but Google is unrepentant.

This experiment is part of Google’s broader effort to increase its coverage of the web. In fact, HTML forms have long been thought to be the gateway to large volumes of data beyond the normal scope of search engines. The terms Deep Web, Hidden Web, or Invisible Web have been used collectively to refer to such content that has so far been invisible to search engine users.

Perhaps it’s time for Google to revisit its mission statement. It is after all a publicly-owned company. It should endeavor to balance the interests of all its stakeholders. Perhaps some parts of the world’s information just aren’t worth accessing. At the very least it would be interesting to see a cost-benefit analysis done for all the different places it is seeking that information.

Footnote: if you want to know where to find Waldo, then Frank Taylor, who knows a bit about Google Earth, has some revelations for you.

Posts You May Like From The Archives

August 21, 2005 -- International Movers - That’s Cre8asite For You
December 11, 2005 -- Wikipedia and Daniel Brandt
November 18, 2006 -- Web Standards And Sitemaps

Ten Commandments For Google Links

Barry Welford — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 22:54:29 +0000

Some website owners seem to feel that there are three steps in creating a successful website. These are:

Design the website
Do on-page SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for the Web pages
Get links to the website from others.

That approach could certainly explain the following e-mail message I just received:

We are interested in the link building services you provide. We’ve got on-page optimization done in house.

What kind of link building services do you provide? We are interested in ALL types of link building services, the more the better.

Do you provide forum link building services?

Do you provide one-way link building services from high PR pages?

Do you provide any other link building services?

Since I offer a more holistic approach to making websites perform, I suggested a Google search might bring up names of people who could better meet their needs for this more limited service. I wondered at the time whether I could have offered some further advice to help the writer in his search. There are a lot of somewhat shady characters offering link creation services just as there similar individuals offering SEO services. Perhaps if I had been able to offer a simple 10 Commandments for Links, that might have been more helpful. A simple one page document with a list of things to avoid. Something like the Biblical 10 Commandments that gave unequivocal advice on what was not acceptable.

I looked around and thought perhaps The Ten Commandments of Link Building by Jai Nischal Verma might do the trick. However it’s not a list of things to avoid doing but rather some suggestions on possible ways of creating links.

Link Exchange
Social Bookmarking Websites
Link Baiting
Web Directory Submissions
Article Submissions
Press Releases
Blog Commenting
Forum Posts
Link Programs
Creating Contests

On further reading, I did not feel this was the solution I was looking for.

By chance I noticed a reference in Sphinn to a post on Defining Link Building Best Practices. The author’s nickname in the Sphinn discussion was LinkMoses. Surely he might have run across a suitable 10 Commandments if anyone has. The nickname is that of Eric Ward, who has been involved in Content Publicity & Link Building Strategies since 1994. Regrettably it seemed from his post that he was even reluctant to nominate Best Practices.

That’s hardly surprising. If everyone is made aware of Best Practices then everyone can use them and no one can stand out from the crowd. Perhaps defining 10 Commandments is easier. It’s a list of things to avoid doing, since they may almost guarantee failure. It’s a way of avoiding being grouped with the goats rather than the sheep. Perhaps just as for Moses, such a list is only available from on high.

As it happens, Google (Mountain View, CA) has almost developed this list for us. Just check out their Webmaster Guidelines. Most of the following are directly taken from those Guidelines with one or two additions. Some of these are more ‘evil’ than others.

Ten Commandments For Google Links

Avoid Me-too or irrelevant content that gives users no reason to visit your site.
Avoid broken links and incorrect HTML.
Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100)
Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
Avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines.
Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank.
Avoid valueless links from unrelated websites
Avoid links from low PageRank pages with many outgoing links
Avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web.

Obeying these 10 Commandments should keep you out of trouble, although Google does add the following:

Google may respond negatively to other misleading practices not listed here (e.g. tricking users by registering misspellings of well-known websites). Webmasters who spend their energies upholding the spirit of the basic principles will provide a much better user experience and subsequently enjoy better ranking than those who spend their time looking for loopholes they can exploit.

This is only a personal interpretation of the 10 Commandments and could undoubtedly be improved. If you think the list should be amended in any way then your comments would be most appreciated. Please add them below. Based on such feedback a more polished version of the 10 Commandments will be produced.

Footnote: Thomas Schmitz (SOEinSeattle) has pointed out to me that Link Moses has produced his version of the Ten Commandments in a slightly less serious vein. Jim Boykin has also recounted how The Google Gods (in our heads) Speak to Us about Link Building. I did not find these when I searched. Apologies. Perhaps the best of these can be combined.

Google Blog Post Snippets Are Now Dated Just For You

Barry Welford — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 03:18:44 +0000

Malte Landwehr commented on an earlier post on the changes in Google snippets for blog posts. He noted that the Google snippet dates on his blog posts appeared in a German format and therefore required more characters than the English version. He surmised that this meant that less of the Description meta tag could be used in creating the snippet.

As far as we can tell this does not seem to be the case. Below are shown the starting text in the SERP snippets for the same blog post in four different language versions of Google. In each case the date is shown in the language of the searcher. In each case also, the snippet used the same 138 characters from the Description meta tag.

Google - English - http://www.google.com

Google - French - http://www.google.fr/

Google - Finnish - http://www.google.com/ig?hl=fi

Google - Saudi Arabia - http://www.google.com/ig?hl=ar

Danny Sullivan has questioned in Sphinn whether this is a real phenomenon. However it seems to be the case for blog posts that appear in more popular searches. The posts on the same blog that preceded and followed this post, which are less popular, still currently come up in SERPs without dates. Whether this dating becomes the general rule or disappears at some time can only be a matter of conjecture at the moment.

If you have any views on what is happening here, then please add your comments.

Google Snippet Rules Change For Blogs

Barry Welford — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 17:40:03 +0000

A previous post discussed the importance of Google snippets in bringing visitors to your Web pages. It is of course important to rank towards the top or even #1 on a Google keyword Search Engine Report Page (SERP). However if the Google snippets for the items at #2 or #3 are much more engaging then perhaps the searcher will click there instead.

The creation of those Google snippets is an entirely automatic process. In other words it’s a computer-generated snippet. Google does try to help you to get better snippets. Matt Cutts has even made a short video about snippets (just over 8 minutes) - tip of the hat to Kathryn Katz. A key element in getting good snippets is the description meta tag. There is an interesting discussion currently going on in the Cre8asite Forums about that. One most useful piece of advice from Ron Carnell is to have a sentence of not more than 155 characters and spaces in that meta tag. Since this is the length of a typical Google snippet, then it is highly likely that your engaging sentence will be used as the snippet.

That was true until about four days ago. Suddenly there has been a switch in the automatic snippet creation process, at least for blog posts. It is not yet universal for all blog posts but seems to occur for ones that frequently come up in keyword searches. Here is an example:

The snippet for such blog posts now starts with the date of the post displayed in the language of the searcher. In English this uses up about 17 characters of the snippet including the ellipsis (…). Since the total length is still 155 characters and spaces, this leaves only 138 characters and spaces for you to write that engaging sentence.

It’s still early days so whether this change will be applied to all blog posts or will remain a permanent feature for Google is still in question. Yahoo! and MSN/Live still seem to be working with the longer 155 characters snippets. Anyone with a WordPress blog who uses the All-in-one-SEOpack plugin is faced with a dilemma. It suggests that descriptions should not be longer than 160 characters, but that number should now perhaps be reduced.

Do Google Snippets Work Better Than Twitter?

Barry Welford — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 23:29:11 +0000

Brevity is the soul of wit - Oscar Wilde

A surprising number of people, and indeed some surprising people, are now using Twitter to give status reports on what is happening in their corner of the universe. The strict imposition of no more than 140 characters and spaces seems to concentrate the mind most effectively. Tweats are of course produced by human writers. Twitter can certainly be rated a success.

Google snippets are those short pieces of text that appear under each item in a Google Search Engine Report Page (SERP). They too have a strict limit of 155 characters and spaces, just a little more than a Twitter tweat. Google snippets are produced by computers. Perhaps it’s time for Google to re-examine its snippets reasoning, because it is questionable how successful it is.

If you believed the Google documentation, you might believe that Web page Descriptions would be a key summary of the content of Web pages in their keyword search results:

We frequently prefer to display meta descriptions of pages (when available) because it gives users a clear idea of the URL’s content. This directs them to good results faster and reduces the click-and-backtrack behavior that frustrates visitors and inflates web traffic metrics.

They even go so far as to encourage you to Improve snippets with a meta description makeover:

The quality of your snippet — the short text preview we display for each web result — can have a direct impact on the chances of your site being clicked (i.e. the amount of traffic Google sends your way). We use a number of strategies for selecting snippets, and you can control one of them by writing an informative meta description for each URL.

In practice it doesn’t turn out exactly like that. You need to choose very carefully the exact words of your Descriptions if they are to be used at all, as you can see in (You Must) SEO Those Descriptions For More Google Visitors.

A post by William Slawski suggests why this is happening. It relates to Google’s fixation on inlinks to a Web page. So they may well Use Anchor Text to Determine the Relevance of a Web Page. In such a case, perhaps they wish to justify their reasoning by including it in the Snippet they construct to show the item is Relevant. Bill’s advice if this is affecting your Google appearances runs as follows:

If you run a web site, you may have visitors coming to your pages based upon the content anchor text in links pointing to your pages instead of the text upon your pages themselves. If the term is one that you want to be found for, you may want to consider adding some text to the page, if possible, using that query term, to provide a more persuasive snippet for the search results.

Perhaps if you put that persuasive language in the Description, it has a better chance of surviving that snippet creation process.

Standing well back, you might even question how customer-centric Google snippets are. Are they really the best way for searchers to find what they’re looking for? Perhaps they are motivated by a wish to prove that some apparently obscure item should logically appear in the SERP. Why else would you add in text taken from other related Web pages? The resulting snippets often seem much more attractive to computers than to the human readers they are intended for.

So do Google snippets work for you? Would you like to see Google change how it helps you to find what you’re looking for? Perhaps your comments here could trigger some rethinking.

Related: How to Optimize your Search Engine Snippets - Michael D Jensen

Headlines Are For Humans, Titles Are For Robots

Barry Welford — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 02:46:25 +0000

For good SEO, choose the right title.

As we all spend more time in social media, such as Facebook, Digg, StumbleUpon or Sphinn, the ability to write catchy headlines becomes as important as it ever was. If someone skimming through a list of possible topics is intrigued by your headline, then they may dip in to find out what it’s all about. That’s why Brian Clark suggested you should be writing Magnetic Headlines. If you were using WordPress to write your blog, then you would presumably put that catchy headline in that field labelled Title. It all seems so easy, but in fact it’s a little too easy. In what follows to avoid confusion, we’ll call what appears in that WordPress Title field the Headline.

Although your Headline may be written to attract human beings, it may not work well in a search engine keyword ranking. Since the largest proportion of the traffic to your website will come via search engines, it may be worth using something that the search engine robots will find attractive. The problem is that WordPress uses the expression in that Title field in a number of different ways. It is of course used as the headline in the < H1 > heading for your blog. It is also used as the Title element in the head of your blog page. This is the text that appears in the bar across the top of the screen. If you have nominated Pretty Permalinks, then the WordPress will also use the same text to develop the URL for the post.

Creating Optimal Titles

This is where the dilemma arises. The Title in the head of the blog page is very important in search engine rankings. The URL may also have a slight effect on these rankings. Optimizing the text for search engine robots will likely produce something, which is not necessarily one of those Magnetic Headlines that was being suggested.

Luckily help is at hand from a variety of sources. For example, Stephan Spencer and his colleagues have developed SEO Title Tag 2.1.3, which allows you to specify a Title for the blog post, which can be different from the headline. A more complete solution is provided by the All in One SEO Pack PlugIn from Uberdose. This not only allows an independent title but also has a number of other useful features. Even used ‘out of the box’ with default settings the PlugIn will achieve a good part of what is needed to optimize your blog posts for the Search Engines. Katy Castro has a good description of how to use it.

Getting the Meta Description Right

An equally important element in getting search engine traffic to your blog post is the text in the Meta Description for the blog post. The All in One SEO Pack allows you to prepare a separate description for each page. If you don’t, the default is that it will take the first 155 or so characters from the start of the post and use that. That avoids a problem Google has in indexing blog posts that all have the same Meta Description. Checking your website with the Google Webmaster Tools website will tell you whether duplicate descriptions is a problem for your blog.

By writing the most engaging description of your blog post in 155 or less characters, you increase the chance that this is what Google will show in its search engine report pages (SERPs). Most such snippets are a jumble of words that Google selects to try to show that its selection may be relevant to the keyword search. A well-crafted sentence will encourage many more visitors to click through to your blog post.

Although the Keywords MetaTag is of limited value nowadays, the plug-in does allow you to specify what keywords are most appropriate. Again if you do not specify keywords, the plug-in will select keywords by default from either the categories or from any tags that post may have.

The URL Of The Blog Post

A secondary factor in the optimization of the blog post is the URL for the blog post. Selecting the Pretty Permalinks option is one important step here for a WordPress blog. Unfortunately as mentioned above, this is again derived from the Headline of the blog post. You will find the text used in the Post Slug element in the right hand column of the Edit screen. It is derived by taking the Headline of the Post, putting all letters in lower case and adding hyphens between the words. This is not something where the All in One SEO Pack PlugIn helps. However as the WordPress Codex recommends, if you want to create a more memorable URL, then you can create such a one using lower case words and hyphens. Often taking the Title you have derived for the All in One SEO Pack PlugIn and converting it will be a good way to go.

Conclusion

Users of the All in One SEO Pack PlugIn are effusive in their praise of how well it works, even using it ‘out of the box’. If at least for your more worthy blog posts, you go the extra mile by crafting individual entries for the PlugIn, then you will see a significant increase in your visitor traffic. If you want to see how such a post appears, you can check this post. The headline was of course, Headlines Are For Humans, Titles Are For Robots. However in the Title bar at the top of the screen, note the Title of the post, Write SEO Titles For High Rankings. A version of that also appears in the URL. Check the description by viewing the source code. It’s all extra effort but a very good use of your time.

How Wordpress Blogs Are Hacked

Barry Welford — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 01:27:15 +0000

Hacked WordPress Blogs can score well and fast in Google

The previous two articles in this series have suggested ways to combat the ever-increasing hack attacks that WordPress blogs are receiving. In this final article, we will discuss some real-life examples and what can be learned from them. As a disclaimer, it should be noted that some hackers are very skilled and are continually improving their methods. These are anecdotes from the past and the future will undoubtedly be very different.

Typical Hacking Exploits

For specific details of typical hacking exploits, the following accounts are particularly good:

Is your Wordpress Installation Compromised? Al Gore’s is - by Stuart McKeown (12. Nov 2007)
Matt Heaton (Bluehost and Hostmoster CEO) WordPress blog Hacked by Mick Jagger from Moscow - by Noah (3 Dec 2007)
Blackhat SEO Spammer targeting High PR WordPress Blog - by Noah (14 Feb 2008)

The methods used in these cases are probably all the work of one hacker, by nickname goro, who may well have been one of the commenters on the first of these three posts.

We will not go into the specific details here (since they will undoubtedly evolve), but rather discuss the bigger picture associated with these exploits. In the case of the hacking done on the SMM blogs, there were some clever refinements. The mechanism inserted on the domain generated hundreds of random, unique blog post web pages, which included links to online pharmaceutical web pages. Since the websites were well ranked in Google, many of these hundreds of blog posts were served to the search engine spiders as they made their visits. After a period of hours, the mechanism then stopped. This may have been to avoid a huge spike in traffic, which would have been more easily detected.

How Google May Have Rewarded Their Efforts

During the last two or three months, Google has been giving much more rapid visibility and higher ranking to blog posts in its regular web search. In the latter part of January, blog posts appropriate for particular keyword searches would appear within a small number of hours in the regular web search. The algorithm may well be using the RSS news feeds associated with the blogs. This gave particular prominence to the blog posts generated by the hacking mechanism. They would almost always appear among the top five positions on a search for particular online pharmaceuticals and often in the first position. Presumably this gave a significant economic advantage to the hacker.

Although the hacking mechanism was removed within 36 hours, the false and now non-existent blog posts still persist in the Google index over 3 weeks later. In some cases the cached versions of the false blog posts are still available.

An interesting parallel development during this time is that Google Blogsearch now has a delay of a few days in displaying new blog posts. Until recently such a new blog post might have appeared within an hour or two, since it was triggered by the pinging of the RSS news feed. Whether this is a reaction to a large volume of blog posts generated by hackers one can only surmise.

How To Repair The Damage

Hopefully this series of articles has sensitized you to the dangers of hacking. This should prompt you to maintain a constant vigil so that any hacker intrusions will be spotted rapidly. You should also as Wayne Liew suggests regard Wordpress Upgrades as a Must. The continuing improvement in security may not serve to keep out hackers but at least it may encourage them to attack an easier prey.

If your WordPress blog is hacked, it can be quite a challenge to find out what has been changed. Sometimes the hacker may have modified files deep within folders that are not normally touched in upgrading, such as the images folder or the wp-content folder. Checking the size in bytes of particular files compared with versions in the most recent backup will reveal suspicious differences. Sometimes the .htaccess file may have been modified to create additional and inappropriate mechanisms. In such cases, you’ve got to make sure that you eliminate all such additions to the website. If you have backed-up a clean version of the website recently, it might be better to take down the website and replace it with a clean version.

Previous articles in this series:
Wordpress Blog Hacked
Guarding Your Wordpress Blog

Blogs Take Center Stage For Marketers And For Google

Barry Welford — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 02:31:00 +0000

Blogs Move Into The Spotlight

Brian Solis has just published The Definitive Guide to Social Media Releases. It would appear that Social Media Releases are what Press Releases have morphed into in this new multimedia interconnected world. One quote brings out a key part of his message.

So again, we ask, what makes a Social Media Release Social?

Well, at the end of the day, if you’ve ever written a blog post, much of what I’m describing already exists. There’s nothing to say that you couldn’t do this right now simply by creating a customized blog that is an extension of your company’s online newsroom.

This marketer’s realization that blogs provide a powerful mechanism for communicating with the marketplace comes at an auspicious time. It would seem that Google also now strongly believes that blog posts often provide the most relevant information in keyword searches.

The speed at which Google is latching on to blog posts has been commented on very recently by a number of Internet marketing commentators, such as Search Engine Journal (Julie Kent), WebProNews (Doug Caverly) and Search Engine Roundtable (Tamar Weinberg). However a comment by Michael Martinez on the last item questions whether this is really new.

Indeed it is not new. It is just the latest step in a process that Marissa Mayer announced in May 2007 with a post on Universal search: The best answer is still the best answer. Universal search would provide the most relevant answers to keyword searches from all the search processes that Google did.

It has not been smooth and continuous improvement from that point onwards. Prior to that, Google had been indexing blog posts extremely well based on their RSS news feeds. It was rapid and it was relevant. Results could be accessed by using Google Blogsearch. By October inexplicably the results became somewhat chaotic, as we discussed in the Cre8asite Forums. By the end of November, curiouser and curiouser, blog posts were indexed better in the regular Web search than they were in the Blogsearch.

Since then the visibility of blog posts in the regular Web search has been even stronger. You can still find the Google Blogsearch if you look for it, but it clearly has lost star billing. The main choices on the regular Web search program are as follows:

Web Images Maps News Shopping Gmail more v

Video
Groups
Books
Scholar
Finance
Blogs

YouTube
Calendar
Photos
Documents
Reader

If you click on that ‘more’ then you will see the menu shown on the right. It’s probably only a matter of time before the option to search Blogs disappears entirely. However Google has always been notoriously slow at firing processes that are no longer seen as useful.

So the message is clear. Blog posts are just regular web pages like those to be found in any website. Indeed given Google’s fixation on inlinks (or back links as they somewhat confusingly describe them), it is not surprising that blog posts tend to be more visible than regular web pages.

Once the marketers really smell the coffee, we can expect to see many more Social Media Releases coming out as blogs.

Google Adsense Now Has Slideshows

Barry Welford — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 06:47:15 +0000

It would appear that Google has introduced a new feature in its Adsense process. If you check the image below, you will see outlined in red a small Previous and Next pair of buttons at the bottom left on the Adsense ads that were shown this evening.

For avid Google Ad fans by clicking on either of these buttons you can have a veritable horizontal slide show of other Adsense ads. That gives Google and Adsense advertisers many more kicks at the can. It does not appear too often but presumably is used when there are many more advertisers than can appear in one ad block. It would seem to be a win/win/win proposition for all.

Posts You May Like From The Archives

April 12, 2005 -- Bragadocchio tops 10,000 posts at the Cre8asite Forums
February 16, 2007 -- Newspapers And Walled Gardens
November 5, 2007 -- Google Alienates More Of Its Stakeholders

Where Do You Shop - MSN, Yahoo or Google?

Barry Welford — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 21:18:12 +0000

Which Store For You -
MSN, Yahoo or Google?

Back in 2004, Jakob Nielsen expressed concern that Search Engines were becoming Answer Engines. As a Pew Internet Report at the time confirmed, Internet users are very happy with their experiences searching the Internet, but many are naïve about how they search and the results they find. Nielsen was concerned that people would merely use the output from the search engines and not go back to the original sources of information.

Search Engines Or Selling Engines?

As we enter 2008, the world has moved on from the picture that Nielsen was seeing. You might almost feel that Search Engines have evolved to become Selling Engines. No longer does a search engine provide the most relevant information about products. By a series of small and not so small changes, the search engines have almost become like storefronts. The information provided to you will present the products on which they make money first in what they display.

If you doubt that, just check out the results you get if you are looking for say the Nokia 6131 cell phone. A search with MSN (or Live as they sometimes label it) shows the following:

First you have three sponsored ads. Then you see the results from MSN Shopping. Any other results are almost pushed off the bottom of the screen.

Yahoo! and Google have very similar layouts of information, but they are a little more subtle about it. The Yahoo! display looks like this:

Apart from the light blue color behind the first two items, you might almost think that all four items are responses to the search query. This effect has been heightened by Yahoo’s recent decision to no longer number the entries in its keyword search reports. As you might expect, the first two entries are sponsored ads. The third entry is a link to Yahoo! shopping. Only when you get to the fourth item are you getting outside of the Yahoo! space.

The Google display adopts a middle position between the MSN and Yahoo! versions.

In this case Google is showing two sponsored ads, which may or may not include the phone we are searching for. We then have a series of links to products in the Google Products Index. If this isn’t enough to entice you, they even give a link to products listed with Google Checkout. It’s only after you’ve passed through all of this Google (selling) space, that you can get to links from outsiders.

Searching or Shopping

If you were searching for information on the Nokia 6131 cell phone, you might be somewhat put out that these search engines are trying to sell you so hard. However some people like to shop. If you want to shop with Yahoo!, then shopping.yahoo.com shows you all that the Yahoo! store has to offer.

Equally if you want to shop with MSN, then shopping.msn.com brings you into the MSN store.

You can go shopping with Google at shopping.google.com, but surprisingly it still looks like a product search engine rather than a store.

It probably is only a matter of time before Google decides it should have a pleasing store front like the others. After all, if your mission is to sell products then you should do it the best way you can.

The Bottom Line for Suppliers

If you are trying to sell products on the Internet, what does this change mean for you. Search engines are widely used by prospects as they check out what is available. If the search engines are now behaving like storefronts, then you may need to pay their fees to get exposure on their “shelves”. It just means that organic or natural SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is now an even greater challenge than it ever was.

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