As searchers become more sophisticated, the search engines are forced to evolve to keep up with the changing times.
During a session at WebmasterWorld's Publishers Conference VI, Tim Mayer from Yahoo! Search explained how Yahoo! has improved its abstracts, the presentation of its results pages, and how it has developed a new algorithm designed specifically to focus on longer query searches using more terms.
Yahoo! now offers a larger index and additional changes have been made to its page cache. Yahoo’s daily crawler discovers and crawls millions of new documents each day. The company is also experimenting with submission quality and the new Yahoo! Slurp bot will crawl links from the URLs that are submitted.
Additionally, Yahoo! Search RSS will be arriving on April 15th.
Yahoo! Slurp. Mayer says Yahoo! Slurp adheres more strictly to robot exclusion standards than any other search bot. The best way to block the bot is through .txt files, as other methods won't necessarily work. The Yahoo! Slurp team currently prefers sites that are navigable by HREF's, not by forms, JavaScript or Flash. The site should not require cookies for entry. Avoid session IDs in the URL. Sitemap links should be included on the home page. Use REAL 404s for error pages.
New slurp commands: Slurp now recognizes the NOARCHIVE meta tag command and crawl-delay, although Yahoo! admits it is still struggling with the way Slurp handles redirects.
Yahoo’s Crusade Against Spam. Yahoo! takes the fight against spam very seriously, using both automated and human filters for fighting spam. Yahoo! Search will be combining intelligences with Yahoo! Mail to offer better anti-spam technology.
Have you been banned? If your site has been banned from Yahoo! for spamming, Slurp will visit your robot.txt but will not go deeper into your site. Paid inclusion members might notice their URLs appearing lower on keyword query pages.
What can you do? If your site has been banned and you've cleaned up your act you can submit your page to the paid inclusion program for review in April or send an email to feedback@yahoo.com and include what method got you in trouble and how you've corrected yourself.
ZNet writer Stephanie Olsen has uncovered a terribly interesting story. Why do you think Yahoo spent so much money buying AltaVista, AlltheWeb and Inktomi if it is simply going to develop its own search engine with its own database? For the intellectual properties associated with the patents their acquisitions hold.
Just wait to see it in court folks. Yahoo v. Google. Yahoo v. MSN. Yahoo v. et al.
My mother was right. I should have gone to law school.
This is actually last week's news but last week was busier than expected so it did not make it to the BLOG.
Yahoo is currently drawing results from Inktomi and filtering those results through its own algorithm. As of April 15, Yahoo will be drawing from its own paid-inclusion search database.
Yahoo has not released details regarding costs and coverage but we expect to hear some numbers sooner than later.
The past year has been one of major transition in the search engine industry. Changes to the landscape have been enormous with mergers, acquisitions, and the easing of several formerly big-players out of the sector or, in the case of AltaVista, Lycos and LookSmart, into the minor leagues. We’ve seen new technologies and revenue models being tested by search firms, along with fresh promises of personalized ad-delivery through contextual placement. While there is no end in sight for changes in this evolving medium, this is a good time to examine the impact of such upheaval on the state of website marketing and search engine placement.
The biggest recent shift in the industry is the steady erosion of Google’s dominance over the past eight months. In mid-July, the SEO community started to notice subtle changes in Google’s ranking algorithm. At that time, Google had an absolute lock on the search engine world with some form of involvement in over 76% of all searches conducted globally. By the time Google released its infamous “Florida Update” in mid-November, Google’s lock-hold was slipping. At that time, Google was the main listings provider for a host of Internet properties including the gigantic search-portal Yahoo!. That changed recently when Yahoo discontinued their relationship with Google in place of their in-house database, Inktomi. With the loss of distribution through Yahoo!, Google now fuels approximately 48% of all search traffic, with the bulk of the remainder split between Yahoo and MSN, both of which are currently fed by Inktomi. (Please note: Yahoo will be moving away from Inktomi in mid-April in favour of their own paid-inclusion database.) While Google continues to enjoy a higher viewership than any other search tool, it has lost a great deal of distribution power since being dumped by Yahoo!. The bottom line here is that there are now three major search engines as opposed to just one and SEO strategies need to change to meet the new environment. Last year, clients were strictly concerned with Google rankings, knowing full well that good Google rankings were a sure-fire ticket into Yahoo. SEO-Reaction: This year, SEOs will need to concentrate on a mixture of strong-keyword enriched copy in order to please Inktomi, along with a well thought-out link-building campaign to please Google. The re-emergence of Yahoo and MSN as serious players in the search industry is beneficial to advertisers and webmasters as competition and the corresponding increase in consumer choices tend to produce better products and services in the long run.
Bigger, Better, Undercut The validity of the truism about competition driving innovation and producing better products and innovations is demonstrated by the number of new services and innovations introduced over the past twelve months. Search is becoming far more technical and, in many ways, far more specific. Localization and personalization are two of the new common buzzwords in Internet marketing. Localized search results promise increased relevance to the searcher by delivering search results from sources within a reasonable traveling distance such as a postal/zip-code or telephone area-code. Personalized search results promise listings based on specific interests or behaviours of the individual searcher, or the computer used to conduct the search. An early example of a search tool designed to deliver personalized search results is Eurekster. Eurekster bases it’s results on two major factors. The first is the user’s personal behaviour. The second is the behaviour of friends and others belonging to a social or work grouping. The basic idea is that groups share common interests. Weighing a search-query by those interests may produce better, more personalized search results. SEO-Reaction: In order to adapt to these two innovations, website marketers and SEOs will need to add highly specific elements to a client’s website such as geo-specific metatags and text, and corporate identifying information such as full street addresses and telephone numbers. Website marketers will also need to add features to websites making them more useful to individual searchers such as newsletters, local-promotions and blogs to make their site relevant to specific users in order to present a level of personalized attention that will keep viewers coming back, or at least keep the client’s website in the minds of search engine users.
The big three are using these and other features to try to undercut each other’s level of service offerings, including blogging, news aggregators, email and instant-messaging, and a whole host of tool-bars. It is only a matter of time until someone introduces a new technology or search tool that “re-invents” the way we relate to information retrieval. Both IBM and MSN are developing deep-crawling spiders that will certainly expand the scope of search. IBM is developing the Webfountain tool and MSN is slated to release its new search tool based on the coming Longhorn operating system. These tools will include Excel sheets, Word docs, emails, and other documents found on a hard drive that a user has viewed, in search results for that specific user.
Evolution or Bust Over the past three years, search engine marketing has become the fastest growing advertising medium in the world. New SEO firms are emerging and established SEO firms, like StepForth are growing rapidly. Website owners and webmasters are advised to shop around before choosing an Internet marketing provider. Check out several SEO websites and compare service offerings. Ask serious questions and don’t be afraid to challenge an SEO’s knowledge of the environment. With change comes confusion and we are noting a number of new firms playing on that confusion in order to see short-term gains. A new company in our area will take $200 from clients in order to add their URL to an automated submitter. As difficult as it may be to believe, there are still millions who fall for that old, “better living through automation” argument. Another pitfall to watch out for is hiring a company that is not prepared to evolve their services to meet new technical innovations. As the search world changes, good, honest SEOs are prepared to adapt and tell their clients exactly how that evolution will take place and why.
It seems that the Ask empire has been quietly innovating while the search engine world focused on the ever public battle between the top 3 search properties. Recently Ask launched "Smart Search" which VP Jim Lanzone noted as "more of an ideology than a brand name". Smart Search has been implemented to improve the natural-language processing that Ask Jeeves made its name on since its inception. In fact, our informal research at StepForth points to a very admirable job on their part. Type in just about any question into the Ask search field and you will more often than not (finally) get a highly relevant answer. There was a time where the results were simply bunk for any reasonably technical question, however, it appears that Smart Search was an incredibly worthwhile endeavor. Does this mean that Ask will become a going concern again? In a world where high relevancy rules they certainly would but it is anyone's guess if they are up to the task of siphoning Google's or Yahoo!'s market share that is so heavily based on user habit.
In the battle for search engine placement across all organic listings, that golden spot of number one is top priority, and for good reason. That may not hold true in the realm of pay per click advertising. What many people may not know, is that the number one spot, although it typically grabs the highest click through’s, may not always be the most cost effective. Here’s why.
If you are running an ad campaign with limited funds, chances are you will max out your daily budget regardless of where you sit in the top 3, or even top 5 for that matter. It really makes little sense to pay a dollar a click for top spot if you are able to pay 50 cents for number 3.
Lets say you have a 10-dollar a day budget, currently sit in number one spot, and max your budget every day. You’re paying a dollar a click and getting 10 clicks a day. Wouldn’t it make sense to drop your max cost per click to 50 cents, drop to position 3, and generate 20 clicks per day instead? In my opinion it’s a no brainer. If you can increase your traffic while decreasing your spending, that seems to me to be the way to go.
One thing to remember though, regardless of the PPC engine you are using, in most cases the top few positions are distributed across a variety of network sites. Make sure you know which positions will be distributed and stay within them.
Please keep in mind that this example is for illustrative purposes only and will not apply to all ad campaigns or keywords, and typically will work best for those on limited budgets, but this is definitely something to think about when selecting your max CPC.
When you’re working with a limited budget and need to increase your visibility with minimal expense, then forums are a great place to start. The effect of posting information and opinions on forums are two-fold:
When you post to forums you are posting information to a targeted readership that is interested in the forum topic. Provided that you have chosen a forum related to the topic of your website you are, in posting interesting and insightful information, promoting your own knowledge of the area and people are likely to visit your website based on this.
An additional benefit to forum posting is that you will generally have the opportunity to add your website address to your signature. This acts as a beneficial link to your website given that it is from an entirely related site. This will count as a quality link to your website and help to improve your link popularity on the search engines.
While forum posting can be a time consuming process, especially in the beginning while you are having to set up accounts, create your profile, etc. it is one of the best of the zero cost (other than time) marketing tactics.
To find forums related to your topic you can visit one of the major search engines and enter your keyword along with the word “forum”. This should give you a good list to start from though in your travels you may find other quality forums to post to.
Over the past several months, GoGuides.Org has been undergoing some changes. One of the most notable changes is in the scripts that make the directory run. We are still in the process of writing and upgrading that code. Over the next couple of weeks, the foundation for the entire system will be put firmly in place. Expect a dramatic increase in system speed for both searching the directory and browsing topics once these final building blocks are put in place.
-- Change in Editors’ Area --
From the public side of the directory, everything will appear basically the same. But for editors in the system, there is going to be a dramatic change in the way edits are allowed. Our long time editors will remember the old editing system that was in place for the volunteer editors at go.com.
GoGuides.Org was created by Mr. Robert Barger just days after the closure of that volunteer directory. Many of the volunteers that still edit the directory today have fond memories of that old system, so it is a case of going back to our roots now that we are putting a point system back in place. We have no set time limit for when this part of the project will be completed, but our programmers are working on this daily, so hopefully everything will be fixed in the near future.
-- Division of Ownership --
In December, GoGuides was put on the market. We were approached by numerous individuals and corporations showing great interest in buying the directory. We were astonished by the offers that poured in and the amounts that some search engines were willing to pay for this project. In the end, it was Mr. Barger’s sole decision to pull GoGuides back off the market. This decision was due largely to the outcry from the volunteers in the community and his passion for this project. Because of those factors, we withdraw all offers to sell. It has always been our utmost desire at GoGuides to see this community continue to grow and prosper. Keeping the same owner at the helm will ensure this community stays on track.
The most notable change to announce is the break-up of partnerships in the directory. Shortly after starting GoGuides, Mr. Barger extended a form of shared ownership in the directory to Mrs. Laurie Coby. Over the years, this partnership has proven very successful for the community.
But as the directory has evolved, so has Mrs. Coby’s experience and knowledge in the search engine field. Mrs. Coby has now decided to broaden her horizons and take on the challenging task of running an independent directory at www.web-beacon.com.
Mr. Barger holds full copyright and trademark authority over all intellectual property in the directory and has now willingly provided Mrs. Coby with a copy of the GoGuides.Org directory and has granted her a full end user’s license to use and improve upon that intellectually property as needed in her new project. With the signing of this agreement finalized, Mr. Barger now has a full controlling interest in GoGuides and Mrs. Coby has a full controlling interest in Web-Beacon.
Although going down our own separate paths, both directories are expected to play a key role in the mapping and indexing of the Internet. Both owners have different visions for the editors’ sections of the directories so it will be very exciting to watch how these two projects evolve. This break-up in ownership also puts an end to any speculation and concerns about ownership in either directory. Both directories will continue to have a close working relationship with one another and plan to work jointly on various future projects.
-- Seeking New Search Partners --
GoGuides is seeking to form long-lasting partnerships with other directories and search engines. If you would like to contact us regarding a possible partnership, please email us at: teamsupport@goguides.org
-- New Submission Specialist Program --
In an effort to help web professionals better meet their clients’ needs and to increase submission speed, we have started a new program called the Submission Specialist Program. This allows members to make instant submissions in the directory for a flat low monthly fee without having to join the community as a volunteer editor.
This program allows web developers to make up to 20 instant submissions in the directory for a flat monthly membership fee of $39.95
To learn more about this exciting program, please visit: http://www.goguides.org/DIR/membership.html
-- Our Future Plans --
With the sale of GoGuides now withdrawn and the division of ownership finalized with Mrs. Coby, we are now focusing 100% of our energy into making GoGuides.Org the number one human edited directory on the net. If you would like to be part of our growing community, please apply to become an editor in any topic.
Verison, the largest telephone company in the US is introducing a search feature at Superpages.com. Verison is the primary publisher of Yellow Pages directories in the USA. They are trying to save this market from Yahoo, Google and MSN. Currently basic listings are free (with registration required).
This is likely an important place for business listings and submissions. We're going to add iit to our submission runs for US-based businesses. I think one or more of the big three will start referencing from here and all will likely spider the listings when they go live on March 1.
Since December 2003, StepForth has been using Clicktracks to analyze the statistics associated with some of our client web sites and the results have been very revealing. We are extremely impressed with the results provided by this software which is why were glad to hear that the smaller company Clicktracks tied with statistics giant WebTrends as the Best Marketing and Analysis Product available. The award was handed out by the prestigious website SmallBusinessComputing.com and has been added to the long list of amazing awards that Clicktracks has won since its inception.
Congratulations to the Clicktracks team! Keep up the good work.
If you would like more information on this fabulous web site tracking product, please visit http://stats.stepforth.com
1. Inktomi Search Submit
Yahoo! Search has transitioned to its own search technology and is preparing to launch a new inclusion program.
As a bonus for Inktomi Search Submit customers only, Yahoo! Search is providing a free trial of Yahoo! traffic that will end on April 15, 2004. When the new inclusion program launches, Search Submit customers will have the option of joining the new program for ongoing participation in Yahoo! Search results.
Please note that inclusion into Yahoo, applies for existing Inktomi Search Submit customers and is for a limited time only. We will shortly provide details how you can participate in Yahoo! Search results after the 15th April.
Existing Inktomi Search Submit customers will continue to receive distribution from the rest of the "Inktomi" network for full 12 months of service as ordered. Again after the 15th Yahoo! Search traffic will not be included in this.
2. AltaVista Express Submit
AltaVista paid inclusion customers will not receive distribution in Yahoo! Search results. You will however continue to receive traffic from AltaVista for the full duration of your listing period.
When the new inclusion program launches, AltaVista Express Submit customers will have the opportunity to participate and gain traffic from Yahoo! and other major portals.
3. Fast PartnerSite
FAST paid inclusion customers will not receive distribution in Yahoo! Search results. You will however continue to receive traffic from portals that had been previously served FAST results for the full duration of your listing period.
When the new inclusion program launches, FAST customers will have the opportunity to participate and gain traffic from Yahoo! and other major portals.
4. Summary
Both AltaVista and Fast paid inclusion programs will shortly be removed from our range of offerings... those with last minute submissions to be made, please do these as soon as you can before they are removed.
Thank you and all the best.
Kind Regards
Trellian Priority Submit Team
http://www.trellian.com/
http://www.prioritysubmit.com/
You have received this email because at one time you have used the PrioritySubmit.com system.
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Yahoo unleashed the biggest surprise of the year today with the formal introduction of their own search engine. While the vast majority of search engine analysts were expecting Yahoo to simply adopt results from the powerful Inktomi database, Yahoo has been quietly and apparently quite effectively developing their own spider, database and ranking algorithms. Last month, Yahoo CEO Terry Semel announced that Yahoo would be moving away from results licensed from Google's database by the end of this quarter. The move to produce in-house search results is part of the growing competition in the search engine industry. The sector is currently dominated by three big players, Yahoo, MSN and Google. Until recently, Google was considered the most important search engine to be ranked on, however the changes made by Yahoo and the anticipated arrival of MSN's own, proprietary search engine have changed the perceptions of many webmasters and search engine analysts. Where there was once only one, there are now three, opening the doors to more competition, better pricing and hopefully better results from all three.
We are very excited about the "new" Yahoo. The listings returned look highly relevant to keywords entered and we don't see much SPAM in the listings, based on the limited number of keyword phrases we have tested. We may still see Google results filtering in and out of Yahoo for a few weeks yet as the techs at Yahoo work out any bugs or problems associated with their new search engine. There are a few features of the "new" Yahoo webmasters and SEOs should be aware of.
* Yahoo seems to be looking at similar page elements as Inktomi, though the results displayed are somewhat different from those shown on HotBot which runs nearly pure Inktomi results. Elements such as keyword densities, keyword enriched titles and keyword arrangement seem to be important factors in Yahoo's current algorithm. We have also seen Google results popping up from time to time. This is very likely a temporary measure to ensure search-continuity as Yahoo engineers continue to develop their algorithm.
* The description meta tag weighs heavily in Yahoo's algorithm. Webmasters are strongly recommended to display similar incidents of keywords in titles, descriptions and body text for each page in their site. (Be certain the incidents are page and topic specific, of course)
* Yahoo has a new spider known as YahooSlurp. YahooSlurp will work a lot like GoogleBot in that it will follow every HREF link on found a website. YahooSlurp will NOT follow SRC links such as images or FRAMES. When optimizing a site that uses FRAMES, correct use of the noframes tag will be necessary. Yahoo's spider can follow dynamic links but Yahoo is advising webmasters to post static pages with HREF (text) links directed to specific sections featuring dynamic content. This tells us that the use of a sitemap will continue to be an SEO Best Practice technique.
* Paying to get into the Inktomi database should attract more attention from YahooSlurp. I am pretty sure that YahooSlurp will find your site if you don't pay however, paying will buy you much greater frequency of visits from the Slurp spider.
* Inktomi is very old-school when it comes to Keyword densities, keyword arrangement and simple-site structure. Optimizing for Inktomi is a lot like optimizing for AltaVista was a few years back (without the leader-pages and gateways that were once so popular). While Yahoo is clearly not running on pure Inktomi results, the fact they share a spider and likely a database leads us to believe that the two sections of the same firm are working together and will continue to share several common algorithmic attributes.
There are several other factors we are examining in regards to the new Yahoo. Hopefully we will have some answers to these questions in the near future.
* What is the relationship between Directory and Algorithmic listings?
* What is the average "turn-around" time for sites from submission to Top10 or Top20 placement?
* Will the expected absence of Lycos effect Yahoo or Inktomi's database in any way?
* What is the role of AlltheWeb and AltaVista? Both are owned by Yahoo which acquired the two companies when it purchased Overture. Speculation had Yahoo buying AV and ATW for their patents but what about their technologies and databases?
This move, in my mind, marks the second phase of the current war of dominance between the big three. Last year was marked by the many mergers and acquisitions that redrew the landscape. This year we've seen former big players such as LookSmart and Lycos fall below the radar screen as the first major casualties. While it is becoming more difficult to predict the next victims, clearly the big winner this month is Terry Semel and the team at Yahoo.
For search engine users, marketers and advertisers, the increased competition between the three major search tools will be, for the most part, beneficial. It will be easier to find relevant information and easier to achieve strong placements on one or more of the major search entities. In the best and most idyllic circumstances, competition breeds better products, fosters stronger customer relations, and pushes competitors to work harder and smarter. We will see more innovations, new product and service offerings, and a race to "lock-in" users by offering more personalized information resources such as Email, dating services and one-click lookups of common information (such as airplane schedules). Hype it or hope for it, the future looks very search friendly.
It looks as if Google has stabilized, for now at least. After four months of intense updating and incensed advertisers, the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) finally appear worthy of Google's reputation. Last week StepForth predicted a major change at Google which happened over the weekend, resulting in the best results we've seen in months. Google has redesigned their PageRank algorithm, amalgamating semantic language recognition technology acquired from Applied Semantics (purchased by Google in the summer of 2003), and major sections of what has become known as the Hilltop Algorithm.
In what appeared to be the first Google-Dance of the new year, the world's most popular search tool has won its way back into the hearts of many in the SEO community by finally offering clean, clear results.
Google continues to pay very close attention to the quality of incoming links, most heavily rewarding those from "authority" sites with very high page ranks in the 7 - 9 range. Webmasters are advised to check the number of links recognized by Google on a daily basis to keep themselves appraised of any sudden changes.
The balance of organic and CPC advertising is totally subjective depending on the needs and goals of the advertiser. The following discusses the two most common scenarios for determining a balance of online marketing.
For Startups
The most relevant determining factor for startups is budget; which form of advertising will provide the fastest ROI? Generally speaking, top organic (non-paid) placements are the most effective (top organic placements get more attention) and lucrative form of promotion in the online marketplace and it should be the first target for any Internet marketing plan. Even 2nd page organic placements, however, can take time to achieve so depending on the budget available it is recommended that a small CPC campaign be implemented to generate interim traffic while organic placements are assessed. This two-pronged approach will ultimately provide the marketer with a clearer picture of which marketing tool is more efficient for their targeted terms, thus determining the proper balance for ROI.
The exception is where the competition is so well entrenched that obtaining a top placement is expected to take a great deal of time to attain. In this case, a larger CPC campaign should be created to generate traffic to the web site while organic placements slowly improve.
For Established Sites
In this scenario an established web site is assumed to have unreliable top 10 presence on the organic search listings. In this case, the marketer needs to increase sales to balance the dips in sales during negative organic listing fluctuations. CPC promotions are an excellent solution because they can be manipulated in real time and if properly tweaked they can be incredibly effective for maintaining traffic and reasonable ROI.
Yahoo has introduced it's own search engine! Here's a few rules to follow to keep Yahoo happy...
HTML Titles:
Contains less than 80 characters.
Provides call to action.
Uses important keywords and phrases unique to the individual page.
Uniquely describes what the page is about.
Consistent with page Description and web page Body.
Does not unnecessarily repeat your Company Name at the beginning of each Title Tag. The first few keywords of your Title tag are given the
heaviest weight by the search engine, so it is important not to dedicate these first few words to your Company Name if your name is not what customers are searching for the most.
Your Company Name is moved to the end of your Title tag.
META Keywords:
Contains less than 15 keyword phrases each separated by commas.
Uses important keywords and phrases unique to the individual page.
Combines important online action words with your product/service keywords such as, "buy", "shop", "find" and/or "purchase". Use
WordTracker.com to research what action words are used by searchers of your keywords.
Minimal repetition of individual words.
Consistent with Title tag and web page Body content.
META Descriptions:
Contains less than 225 characters.
Provides call to action.
Combines important online action words with your product/service keywords.
Uses important keywords and phrases.
Uniquely describes the page.
Consistent with Title and web page Body content.
Blink
Del.icio.us
Digg
Furl
Google
Simpy
Spurl
Y! MyWeb