Google seems to be undergoing another major update again. Resembling the famous Florida update of November, this update looks as comprehensive and possibly as destabilizing for many small businesses.
There is a great deal of discussion in the general SEO forums right now but nothing pointing to a cause or solution. StepForth does not have an analytical opinion to share just yet but we are working on understanding the what, where, who, how and why’s of the situation.
The search engine environment continues to evolve rapidly, easily outpacing the ability of consumers and SEO practitioners to quickly adapt to the new landscape. With the ascension of Inktomi to the level of importance that until recently was held solely by Google, SEO practitioners need to rethink several strategies, tactics and, perhaps even the ethics of technique. Assuming this debate will unfold over the coming months, how does an "ethical SEO firm" work to optimize websites for two remarkably unique search engines without falling back on old-fashioned spammy tactics of leader-pages or portal-sites? Recently, another SEO unrelated to StepForth told me that he was starting to re-optimize his websites to meet what he thought were Inktomi's standards as a way of beating his competition to what looks to be the new main driver. That shouldn't be necessary if you are careful and follow all the "best practices" developed over the years.
The answer to our puzzle is less than obvious but it lies in the typical behaviors of the two search tools. While there are a number of similarities between the two engines, most notably in behaviors of their spiders, there are also significant differences in the way each engine treats websites. For the most part, Google and Inktomi place the greatest weight on radically different site elements when determining eventual site placement. For Google, strong and relevant link-popularity is still one of the most important factors in achieving strong placements. For Inktomi, titles, meta tags and text are the most important factors in getting good rankings. Both engines consider the number and arrangement of keywords, incoming links, and the anchor text used in links (though Google puts far more weight on anchor text than Inktomi tends to). That seems to be where the similarities end and, the point where SEO tactics need revision. Once Inktomi is adopted as Yahoo's main listing provider, both Google and Inktomi will drive relativity similar levels of search engine traffic. Each will be as important as the other with the caveat that Inktomi powers two of the big three while Google will only power itself.
2004 - The Year of the Spider-Monkey The first important factor to think about is how does each spider work?
Entry to Inktomi does not mean full-indexing Getting your site spidered by Inktomi's bot "Slurp" is essential. Like "Google-bot", "Slurp" will follow every link it comes across, reading and recording all information. A major difference between Google and Inktomi is that, when Google spiders a new site, there is a good chance of getting placements for an internal page without paying for that specific page to appear in the index. As far as we can tell, that inexpensive rule of thumb does not apply to Inktomi. While it is entirely possible to get entire sites indexed by Inktomi, we have yet to determine if Inktomi will allow all pages within a site to achieve placements without paying for these sites to appear in the search engine returns pages, (SERPs). Remember, Inktomi is a paid-inclusion service which charges webmasters an admission fee based on the number of pages in a site they wish to have spidered. From the information we have gathered, Slurp will follow each link in a site and, if provided a clear path, will spider every page in the site but, pages within that site that are paid-for during the submission will be spidered far more frequently and will appear in the indexes months before non-paid pages. We noted this when examining how many pages Inktomi lists from newer clients versus how many from old clients. We have noticed the older the site, the more pages appear in Inktomi's database and on SERPs on search engines using the Inktomi database. (This is assuming the webmaster only paid for inclusion of their INDEX page) Based on Inktomi's pricing, an average sized site of 50 pages could cost up to $1289 per year to have each page added to the paid-inclusion database so it is safer then not to assume that most small-business webmasters won't want to pay that much.
Google's Gonna Get You Google-bot is like the Borg in Star Trek. If you exist on the web and have a link coming to your site from another site in Google's index, Google-bot will find you and assimilate all your information. As the best known and most prolific spider on the web, Google-bot and its cousin Fresh-bot visit sites extremely frequently. This means that most websites with effective links will get into Google's database without needing to manually submit the site. As Google currently does not have a paid-inclusion model, every page in a site can be expected to appear somewhere on Google produced SERPs. By providing a way of finding each page in the site (effective internal links), website designers should see their sites appearing in Google's database within two months of publishing.
We Now Serve Two Masters; Google and Inktomi
OK, that said, how to optimize for both without risking placements at one over the other. The basic answer is to give each of them what they want. For almost a year, much of the SEO industry focused on linking strategies in order to please Google's PageRank. Such heavy reliance on linking is likely one of the reasons Google re-ordered its algorithm in November. Relevant incoming links are still be extremely important but can no longer be considered the "clincher" strategy for our clients. Getting back to the basics of site optimization and remembering the lessons learned over the past 12-months should produce Top10 placements. SEOs and webmasters should spend a lot of time thinking about titles, tags and text as well as thinking about linking strategies (both internal and external). Keyword arrangement and densities are back on the table and need to be examined by SEOs and their clients as the new backbone of effective site optimization. While the addition of a text-based sitemap has always been considered an SEO Best Practice, it should now be considered an essential practice. The same goes for unique titles and tags on each page of a site. Another essential practice SEOs will have to start harping on is to only work with sites that have unique, original content. I am willing to bet that within 12-months, Inktomi introduces a rule against duplicate content as a means of controlling both the SEO industry and the affiliate marketing industry. Sites with duplicate content are either mirrors, portals or affiliates, none of which should be necessary for the hard-working SEO. While there are exceptional circumstances where duplicate content is needed, more often than not dupe-content is a waste of bandwidth and will impede a SEO campaign more than it would help.
The last tip for this article is, don't be afraid to pass higher costs on to the clients because if your client wants those placements soon, paid-inclusion of internal pages will be expected. When one really examines the costs of paid inclusion it is not terribly different than other advertising costs, with one major exception. Most paid-advertising is regionally based (or is prohibitively expensive for smaller businesses). Search engine advertising is, by nature, international exposure and that is worth paying for.
Beginning today, more than a dozen Web sites, including MSN, ESPN, Lycos and iVillage, will run full-motion video commercials from Pepsi, AT&T, Honda, Vonage and Warner Brothers, in a six-week test that some analysts and online executives say could herald the start of a new era of Internet advertising. While the ads will allow viewers to close the window displaying the 30-second spots, Internet commercials may well herald a new era in online advertising. Chances are, online-video advertisements will be treated the same way folks treat TV commercials. At least geeks will have more time to eat properly from now on.
For a short time last week, both MSN and Yahoo were displaying results drawn from Inktomi. MSN continues to use results directly from the Inktomi database but it appears that Yahoo has reverted back to results from Google, for the time being. Last Thursday (Jan. 15), MSN dropped results from LookSmart and went pure Inktomi. Yahoo, on the other hand, has announced that by the end of March, they too will have switched over completely from Google to Inktomi generated results. In the meantime, Yahoo seems to be experimenting with results from Inktomi by bleeding them in at different times and in different locations.
Google Going Portal? That's how it looks from the outside as Google announced it is thinking about introducing a Google Email feature along the lines of Yahoo, MSN and Lycos. Google has taken the concept a step further however and will likely use the new offering as a delivery vehicle for paid advertisements. This move might disappoint long-term Google users who have become accustomed to the clean interface that characterizes Google for many. Given the battle between Google, MSN and Yahoo however, it should come as no surprise that Google is looking to ensure brand-loyalty from its users.
Everyone knows about PPC Advertising on Google and Overture. But what about the smaller second tier engines like FindWhat, Kanoodle, GoClick, or any of the other dozens out there? Is it worth your time and money to bother with any of these small fish?
For larger companies selling big-ticket items, or with sites focused towards corporate professionals, advertising on these smaller engines is probably not worth the time. If you are, however, selling smaller consumer products, the likelyhood of generating qualified traffic is much greater.
In many cases you can get the number one spot for significantly less per click. For example, ‘Los Angeles Hotels’ on Overture is fetching $5 per click, but a quick check on ‘Kanoodle’ shows it at $0.14. This is a significant difference. Kanoodle also distributes results to CBS MarketWatch, Dogpile, WebCrawler, Metacrawler, and cnet search.
For sites with a low conversion rate, depending on the keywords, it may take months to generate any sales as a result of one of these PPC engines, however, if you have a relatively high conversion rate, starting with one or several of the smaller guys just may be worth it. Let it run for a month, and see what happens. If you are a smaller company with some extra time on your hands you really have nothing to lose.
When it comes down to it, there are many factors to consider and they can vary drastically from one business to another. Weigh the pros and cons; you might find that you can bump your sales enough to make it all worthwhile. The distribution of your ad with the second tier PPC engines may have less exposure, but the cost per click is also reduced drastically. While paying only pennies on the dollar (compared to the big guys) there could potentially be a significant impact on sales.
We've all known today was coming, the day MSN drops LookSmart listings in favour of listings from Inktomi. We are starting to see Inktomi listings appearing on MSN. Inktomi is owned by Yahoo! and will also be delivering results to Yahoo! in the coming months. Between MSN and Yahoo!, Inktomi has just become more important than Google as the major traffic driver on the web.
We knew the Google-slayer was coming in the future... With Google's recent upsets, it appears the future is happening now.
It is obvious the holidays are long over. While it is only the beginning of the third week of 2004, the ongoing battle between Google and Yahoo has heated up and is the most interesting subject in the search industry. Rumours about Google and Yahoo are abundant in the tech section of newspapers, in IT newsletters (the better ones anyway), daily articles and discussion forums. Behind those rumours stand literally tens of millions of hard-working people desperate to know which directions the industry will be going in over the next twelve months. Nobody wants another Christmas surprise like the one delivered by Google in 2003 and, given the sudden perception of volatility in the industry and the overall economy, nobody wants to make poor bets with their limited marketing budgets. As the gathering of as much information as possible allows advertisers, consumers and small businesses to make relativity informed decisions, it is in everyone's best interests to share as much information as possible. The search engine world went through monumental changes last year and looks as if it will go through even more this year. With 2004 being labeled the "year of search", a quick look at some of the anticipated changes is in order.
"Yah-Ink" The biggest rumour of the year, eclipsing speculation about Google's anticipated IPO, is the news that Yahoo! is likely to dump Google as their main listing provider in place of Inktomi. While the timing of this move has not been fully confirmed by Yahoo!,we expect it to come soon. Last week, Yahoo! CEO Terry Semel stated that, "Our short-term goal will be to have Yahoo throughout the entire world using our algorithmic search in Inktomi." That statement, combined with common sense has led most, including StepForth, to conclude that Yahoo! will be drawing listing information from their in-house database, Inktomi sooner than later. In other news this week, Yahoo! has displaced Google as the leading search engine of choice starting in November 2003, according to figures released by analytics firm Nielsen/NetRatings. Traffic on the Yahoo! network was measured at 86.8 million unique visits in November to the 53.3 million unique visits at Google. Coupled with Semel's pronouncements, the future does not look a certain for Google as it just eight short weeks ago. Today, Google continues to drive over 75% of all search traffic but when Yahoo! switches to Inktomi, that number will decrease to below 50%, a significant drop in daily viewers. This brings up the impact of MSN.com which is also displaying results from Inktomi.
Google Google is facing some of its most difficult but hopeful times in the short history of the search-firm. Everyone who works at Google is dreaming of the riches they are soon to acquire when their employer goes public. Think about the thousands of "Microsoft millionaires" out there. If you were working at Google, chances are you too would be crunching personal financial numbers with a dreamy smile on your face. Nevertheless, the truism that "Money cannot buy happiness" comes into play here. Remember back in high-school how important it was to be popular? Imagine being the smartest, strongest and most popular person in the class and then making a couple huge mistakes that made you look foolish in front of your peers. All the positive work you did over the years suddenly goes out the window as the rest of the class, smelling a sudden weakness, turns on you. That must be how it feels to be working at Google these days. Google has made a few major mistakes recently and, as evidenced above, their numbers are starting to show it. With a difference of over 32Million visitors in Yahoo!'s favour, the folks at Google must be getting worried. One wouldn't know that when considering the four new, extremely useful features Google introduced this week. Through Google, users can now trace US Mail through the system, figure out a product by entering the UPC code, check into Vehicle ID numbers, and check out flight data for most major US airlines. All these features tie into paid services in one way or another and are seen by analysts as being introduced to increase the value of the coming IPO. Perhaps for the first time in its history, Google users are becoming acutely aware that Google's management has its eyes firmly focused on the bottom line.
MSN The odd-one out this week is MSN. There is very little new to report there today with one MAJOR exception. Tomorrow is the day that MSN fully adopts listings from Inktomi in place of LookSmart. We have seen Inktomi results bleeding into MSN in the past weeks but tomorrow's listings at MSN should look as different as the new INDEX page at msn.com. As we have not yet seen the full effect of the switch-over from LookSmart to Inktomi, we don't have enough information to build a solid article. I am looking forward to next week though...
Yahoo! has begun an intense advertising campaign for its newest service, Yahoo! YellowPages. Companies can list their business contact information on this new feature at a fraction of the cost of a traditional print Yellow Pages listing. The folks at Yahoo! believe they have a sure bet on their hands and they are likely correct. A quick poll in the StepForth office shows that 100% of the staff turn to the Internet before pulling out the phone directory when looking for local services and delivery food, likely because it is easier to find a computer in most of our homes then it is to find the phone book.
Yesterday's Toronto Star ran a story about the perils of being "Googled" before a romantic date. If there is any embarrassing information about you online and your real name is attached to it, chances are it can be found fairly easily in Google. As most people don't realize, information your put on the Internet or that is put on the Internet about you can stick around for years after it is posted. You will have likely forgotten about it, but it is still there waiting for someone to find it... The same phenomena can effect job interviews, media relationships and your child's perception of you as a responsible role-model. We at StepForth synopsize with people in this position as our names all all over the Internet and each of us get "Googled" fairly frequently in our interactions with potential clients and contacts.
Here is a quick tip on how to handle this potential time-bomb. Hire an SEO firm. Yeah, I know how self-serving the suggestion is but, in the long-run, it is the only way to have a chance on gaining control of your public-accessed image. A good personal SEO firm will create sites all about you, optimize them for optimal information, and make sure the information is updated enough times to fairly quickly displace the embarrassing information that might already be present on search engines. Unlike glancing at every mirror you pass, Googling oneself is not as narcissistic as it may appear. On the Internet, you are your image and you don't have the benefit of body language to augment the first impression.
Q. What is more annoying than hearing Wagner's Flight of the Valkyrie played in midi music style on a website over and over again?
A. Hearing it come from your friend's pocket over and over again.
In my mind, Ringtones are the Musak of the 2K's. With the rise in cell phone usage, there is a much larger market for the swinging sounds of Sony portable keyboards than there was for the light elevator music in the 1980's. According to London based telecommunications consultants the Arc Group, the worldwide sale of ringtones is a $3.5Billion dollar industry. With revenues split between the original artists, the recording industry and the telecommunications industry, that $3.5Billion made up approximately 10% of revenues for the music industry in 2003.
The following is an interview I had with Garrett French, Editor of WebProNews.com. The article is focused on the nuances of the Inktomi Database. Enjoy!
Inktomi Insight. I called Ross Dunn today, looking for some insight into Inktomi, Yahoo's search engine in waiting that they will pit against Google here in the next month or two. Ross is one of my favorite SEO experts and my favorite Canadian.
He likes Inktomi's predictable and stable algorithm. It allows him to provide stable, predictable Inktomi placement to his clients. It's the StepForth office's favorite database to optimize for. If you have a good placement with Inktomi it may alter slightly, he says, but it won't drop.
From the searcher's perspective however this isn't the best scenario because it indicates a lack of algorithm upkeep that may deliver more spam than useful results, and deliver Google more searchers.
If Yahoo's going to make Inktomi a true Google competitor then their algorithm is going to begin to have a more Google-like unpredictability as they start dodging our optimization techniques and really striving for ultimate relevance.
So watch for some big changes in the Inktomi algorithm when Yahoo officially moves to only Inktomi results. (Probably at the time of Google's IPO.)
Ranking well with Inktomi (for now...) is simple, says Ross. Make sure you have good meta tags, keyword titles, and good body text with your keyword relevantly peppered in there about 3 or so times. Standard optimization stuff, what used to rank you well with Google. Don't spam them though. Check out Ross's buddy's article if you have any spam concerns.
Pay For Placement. I asked Ross about Daniel Brandt's observations that Inktomi drops unpaid pages (they recently dropped about 49,7000 of Daniel's pages). It's true. Ross says Inktomi is definitely an engine you should pay to be in. "I'll pay twenty bucks for stability any day."
Is that Canadian or US?
But seriously, it's probably a good idea to fork over a little dough right now for Inktomi placement. Get in early with Google's main competitor.
Ross has not noticed any difference in the Inktomi bot's behavior. Inktomi's bot's name is Slurp.
_________________
Garrett French
Editor, WebProNews.com
http://www.WebProNews.com
Garry Grant, CEO of SEO Inc. replied to Lee Roberts, The Web Doctor when he asked about using StepForth's copyrighted content (see Jan 8th, 11:18 AM Post for background info):
Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I have no clue who is copying from who but this was written by our PR firm. I am going to remove the info as there is no way to confirm or deny what transpired.
Do you find it as odd as we do that a PR Firm is writing the articles under Garry Grant's name? Or even more odd that the PR Firm is taking content from StepForth's newsletter or web site?
I don't know about you but I believe in writing my articles myself.
Oh and again, if you have any doubt as to who wrote this article click here to see a search for what the world other than SEO Inc. thinks.
On December 5th 2003, Search Engine Optimization Inc. published and broadcast a newsletter in which the second article bore a striking resemblance to one of ours.
Look at the 2nd article called "How to Improve Search Engine Placements with Content" within the following newsletter and compare it StepForth's above.
Just how much more identical can an article be? StepForth's was published Nov 19th and theirs Dec 5th yet right-click the SEO Inc page and you will note that SEO Inc diligently says:
"This website and all it's contents are Owned and licensed by Search Engine Optimization Inc. All contents are Copyrighted and not available for download or use on any other site."
And yet StepForth copyrighted the same article a full 2 weeks before SEO Inc. did.
Now we all know that imitation is the highest form of flattery but this is questionable and we at StepForth thought you should know about it. What do you think?
The following are some more links for your interest and to back up the legitimacy of this posting:
Here is a link to the "e-News Archives" where you can find the article in question noted as "Volume 4"
Oh and in case you have any doubt as to the author is after all of this, type "improve search engine placements with content" into the search box on Google. Today that shows 185 web sites with StepForth as the author all posted before SEO Inc. even published theirs.
Please let us know if any of the above links no longer function.
2003 was a watershed year in the search engine industry. Not only was it the year of mergers and acquisitions, it was also the year that the media, business and financial sectors really took notice. It was a very busy year for the SEO sector as well, perhaps marking the maturity of the optimization industry. With so much action and so many changes, one almost required a scorecard to keep up. By the end of 2003 the search world looked remarkably different than it did at the beginning. Some firms were big winners while others were huge losers. Here's our list to kick off the new year.
WINNERS
#1) Yahoo! Yahoo! was the clear winner of the search engine war last year. Yahoo spent most of the first quarter of 2003 purchasing several of the biggest names in search. The biggest and brightest move made by Yahoo was the acquisition of Overture, shortly after Overture had bought AltaVista and AlltheWeb. Yahoo also bought Inktomi, the largest paid-inclusion database on the web. Yahoo! now controls (if combined) the largest search database, two of the most innovative search tools and the second largest paid-placement and contextual advertising firm. Along with one of the most recognized brand names on the Internet, these new facets of Yahoo!'s business place them in the same position as Google when it comes to presenting search results independent of other search firms. Yahoo! will be dropping listings from LookSmart as of January 15th, and is likely to drop listings from Google shortly thereafter.
#2) Google was the undisputed champion of search engines last year. Driving over 77% of all search traffic in one way or another helped place them there but their real power came from the near cultish popularity of their brand. The name "Google" became firmly synonymous with search in 2003. Google blazed several paths in 2002-2003 from the introduction of Google News in late 2002 to their online catalog search tool, Froogle. In 2003, Google also introduced their strong paid-advertising programs, AdWords and AdSense. These two programs revitalized the search market and are likely Google's greatest strengths going into their widely expected IPO. Google's reputation has been building over their five year existence as the "clean" search tool, winning the trust of search engine users around the world. In November, Google took a huge risk in re-tooling their search ranking algorithm. Named the Florida Update, the re-tooling might prove to be Google's biggest misstep in it's history but, it might have also been the wisest (despite the thoughtless timing). Since November, the search returns offered by Google have been, for the most part, abysmal. They are getting better though as we have seen a general reduction in SPAM in the listings over the past week and have also seen good sites get rewarded with good listings recently.
#3) MSN is ranking number three today mostly due to the hype they managed to build around their new search engine and the release of the new operating system Longhorn. While both are scheduled to make their appearances in 2005, Microsoft managed to make their main competitors jump through hoops
in 2003. The threat of MSN's new search tool forced Google to make upgrades to its algorithm and Yahoo! to develop its own in house search solutions.
#4) Inktomi is not a search engine but it does have the largest search database in the world. Now owned by Yahoo!, many think Inktomi's database will be replacing Google as the major distributor of search listings on the Internet. Inktomi currently powers HotBot, MSN, Excite and Overture (for areas without paid listings).
LOSERS
#1) LookSmart is facing deep troubles this year. Dropped by MSN, Sprinks and Yahoo! as the provider of paid-inclusion listings, LookSmart enters 2004 with significantly reduced revenue sources. Their stock price has plummeted and senior management is jumping ship. LookSmart started 2003 behind an eight-ball of their own creating when in late 2002 they changed their pricing structure overnight without warning, angering webmasters and advertisers. They were never able to fully recover this market or the goodwill of the webmaster/SEO community.
#2) Pity the poor souls working at Netscape. Battered by Microsoft, bought by AOL, and almost totally neglected by TimeWarner (AOL's owners), Netscape continued to roll along through 2003 until the day AOL announced a deal with MSN to provide search results to AOL customers. Netscape seems to have been put out to pasture and lost its R&D arm. Netscape will always find a soft-spot in long-term Internet user's hearts but it very rarely comes to mind and may not be around this time next year.
#3) AltaVista is the oldest surviving search tool and continues to provide extremely solid, relevant results. Its problem is that it is owned by Yahoo! and does not have the brand-name appeal to keep it going as a business entity. Industry rumour has Yahoo! shutting the doors at AltaVista in the coming months. (Please note, this is just rumour)
Those to Watch in 2004
Google (IPO), Yahoo! (in house search tool), MSN (in house search tool), TEOMA (innovation), Vivisimo (lots of great media coverage towards end of 2003).
Blink
Del.icio.us
Digg
Furl
Google
Simpy
Spurl
Y! MyWeb