Jim is enroute for his Christmas vacation and I thought this news I came across was worth a short posting.
A program manager for Microsoft's MSN division, Ian McAllister, has a personal blog that has an interesting tidbit of info... well gossip... possibly well-informed gossip considering where it is coming from.
Essentially Mr McAllister was involved in a meeting with another "Tier 1" Internet company considering a partnership with Microsoft to (as one of the objectives) "help Microsoft level the playing field with Google in search and advertising." McAllister declined to state the name of the company but did note that he is "99% positive you're a customer."
Bill Slawski of WebAdvantage.net and Cre8asite Forums has made a list of companies and technologies acquired by Google over the past six years. For anyone interested in Google, especially search marketers, the post is a must-read.
Matt Cutts has given librarians and school teachers an early Christmas present. In an article published in Google's Newsletter for Librarians, Cutts gives a basic explanation of how Google ranks and sorts documents found in its index. Along the way, he offers search engine marketers a bit of advice on what Google is examining when looking at specific websites.
The document is written so that school children can easily understand it and takes readers through a simple explanation outlining how Google finds sites and what it does with them once found. It also offers a couple of simple exercises for teachers and students to give them an idea of the complexity of sorting search results.
The Google Librarian Newsletter, along with Matt Cutts Blog are two tools Google is using to make itself more transparent to general search engine users and the search marketing community. By trying to be the most open and informative search engine, Google is hoping to stem the mounting public relations issues that come with rapid growth, a couple of PR mistakes and the increased public interest in the search sphere. From what we observe, it's working. Google's efforts to be open are paying off with better press, deeper discussions about Google, and a new level of trust between the search marketing community and the world's most popular search engine.
StepForth Placement publishes a weekly newsletter known, (for want of a better title), as the StepForth Weekly. In it, we cover three to five stories from that week that might interest our clients. Today, we take a look at a year worth of back issues to get a sense of where the search marketing industry has been in 2005.
The Yule season, which offers a brief lull in the general rush (except for us, of course) is a good time to take a look back on the year that has almost passed. For search engine marketers, 2005 was a tumultuous year full of contradictions. Search marketing became more challenging, even as the search engines became better at finding and sorting data.
The business of search marketing became more competitive, even as newer SEO firms dropped by the wayside over the past twelve months. The user-popularity of the major search engines has not changed that much but the playing field they compete on has shifted enormously. The one constant throughout 2005 was the meteoric rise of Google. While the year was full of activity, invention and innovation, 2005 was the year of the Goog.
A brief glance at a year of publishing weekly newsletters shows how much has changed in the world of search marketing and the business of search. The links in this piece all lead to the StepForth newsletter the topic was drawn from. It has been a long and very interesting year. Knowing a little bit of what is coming in the first few months of 2006, I strongly suggest next year will be even more interesting for search watchers.
January
In January, MSNsearch released its own algorithmic search results, making it the third major stand-alone search engine. Previously, MSN had imported results from the Yahoo owned Inktomi database. Of all three major search engines, MSN is the most "old-school", relying heavily on on-page factors to produce ranking results. SEOs learn one of the major tricks to the MSN search engine is finding ways to drive the new MSNbot spider through the page as frequently as possible.
The relationship between Google and Firefox continued to fuel speculation that a Google branded browser was going to be introduced to the market. In late January, Google hired Ben Goodger, the lead Firefox developer away from the Mozilla Foundation and then registered the domain, Gbrowser.com. While Google and Firefox worked closely together in 2005, a Google branded browser remains elusive.
At the end of January, Bill Gates made the single largest private charitable commitment of all time when the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced a $1.5 billion donation to the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations
In the last week of January, Google released its fourth quarter results from 2004 showing a 101% increase in revenues over the previous year. The results marked the first time a search engine had seen billion dollar revenues in one, three-month period.
Search Engine Market Share January 2005: (source: Nielsen Net Ratings via Search Engine Watch) Google 47%, Yahoo 21.2%, MSN 12.8%, AOL 4.7%, Ask Jeeves 1.8%
February
The head of the Yahoo Media Group, Lloyd Braun, made waves in early February with the announcement Yahoo was ramping up its efforts to serve home-entertainment content via the Internet. Yahoo was not the first search engine to seriously speak of offering TV and movie files to subscribed users but it was the first to actually do it. As the year progressed, Yahoo introduced several TV related features.
Ask Jeeves entered the blogosphere with its purchase of Bloglines. Long known as the all too quiet fourth in the search engine hierarchy, users thought the purchase of Bloglines marked a stepping-stone for Jeeves to get into the PPC market however a paid advertising program from Ask has not fully materialized. Ask Jeeves also embarked on a major advertising and promotion campaign with the release of the six thirty-second TV commercials seen here.
Google had a year of public relations issues, starting with the way they treated one of their new employees, Mark Jen. A former Microsoft employee, Jen was hired in mid-January, only to be fired in mid-February for writing about work at Google in his personal blog. Topics that got him in hot water included the Google benefits plan and how Google tries to entice workers to stay on campus as long as possible by providing essential life-services such as dentistry, dry-cleaning and state-of-the-art street-hockey equipment. When Jen wrote, a Google obsessed blogoshpere read, creating a minor conundrum for Google. One thing blog readers love even more than Google is controversy and Google created a few months worth by firing Jen.
In February, Google purchased Answers.com, one of the largest expert-reference sources on the Internet. It has since incorporated responses from Answers.com into its search results.
A minor algo shift marked the first of several Google algorithm updates in early February. In all, Google's organic algorithm underwent at least seven significant updates over the course of 2005.
Towards mid-February, Google was hit with its second major public relations disaster with the release of the third version of their popular toolbar. A feature included in the toolbar known as Autolinks was designed to highlight text found on documents relating to specific topics, referring users to Google advertisers. For example, if a book's ISBN number was included on a web document, that ISBN would be underlined with a link leading to Amazon.com. The toolbar continues to have Autolinks built in but it is now disabled by default.
March
March marked the first decade of search as an application as Yahoo, one of the original search engines, turned 10. As part of their birthday celebrations, Yahoo fired a shot across Google's bow with the introduction of Yahoo Search Marketing, the paid-search advertising arm of Yahoo. Yahoo Search Marketing emerged from the combining of various Yahoo properties under one roof. Previously, Yahoo had run Overture, AltaVista and AlltheWeb as separate web properties.
The brewing backlash against Google started in earnest in March with webmasters furious about Autolinks, SEOs angry with Google for violating their own webmaster guidelines, and Wall St. puzzled by Google's lack of investor guidance documents. In a March 7 th column for The Street, Kevin Kelleher blasted Google for its coy silence while Charlene Li of Forrester Research famously labeled Google a "one trick pony".
The brewing backlash against Google is expressed in many creative ways including the eight-minute film Epic2014.
MSN released the beta version of its paid-advertising program but limited the test areas to France and Singapore . MSN is expected to make its paid-ad program available somewhere around June 2006 when its current deal with Yahoo expires.
In mid-March, Yahoo made its biggest acquisition of 2005 when it purchased Vancouver BC based Flickr, an online photo-sharing package known for its major feature, social tagging. It also upgraded Yahoo email accounts from 250-megs to 1-gig in competition with Google's Gmail.
Google made its own interesting acquisition in March when it purchased analytics service Urchin in mid-March." If Google opens Urchin up for both AdWords and Organic placement advertisers, chances are it will become a standard tool for measuring and analysing user behaviours, at least for SEO and SEM practitioners."
Jeff Raskin, lead developer of Apple's Grapical User Interface (GUI), dies at age 63.
April
By far, the biggest story in April was actually filed fifteen months earlier. On March 31, the US Patent and Trademark Office granted a patent application to Google that would redefine the way we understand Google's algorithms. The patent, "Information retrieval based on historical data", explains how Google collects and interprets historic data associated with a document or domain. Today, we believe many ideas expressed in the patent have been incorporated into the recent Jagger algo update.
The first major click-fraud class action suit gets underway. "Led by Texarkana, Arkansas Retailer Lane's Gifts and Collectibles LLC, the plaintiffs contend that the search engines knowingly charged for fraudulent clicks, at an average rate of $0.50 per click. The group hopes to have their suit certified as a class-action lawsuit which would allow other advertisers to join."
Google opened Keyhole, the satellite mapping service they purchased in 2004 to the public by incorporating satellite maps into the Google Maps feature. Keyhole has since been re-branded Google Earth.
Canadian meta-search engine Mamma.com was placed under SEC investigation in mid-April. "An informal probe of Canadian search engine company Mamma.com, by the US Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) has become a formal investigation according to a press release sent out earlier this week."
Yahoo released its first quarter results of 2005 showing better than expected returns of $1.17 billion. Much of the revenue came from paid-search advertising.
A week later, Google released its first quarter results for 2005. As expected, they beat expectations with a 93% increase in revenues over the same period in 2004.
Google releases "My Search History" feature. "My Search History will record everything a searcher does while using Google. Users will note the amount of time they spend on Google, where they went, the amount of time they spend on each document found through Google, the last time they visited a web document, and where they went after visiting a web document."
The Economist reported that revenues for Google and Yahoo will likely exceeded those of the Big-3 US Television Networks; ABC, CBS, and NBC by the end of 2005.
May
Another round of search engine algo updates happened with both Google and Yahoo updating their indexes in the first weeks of May.
The Open Directory Project experienced a great deal of difficulty in 2005 but it suffered its worst period of public perception in May when a series of scandals broke.
Barry Diller makes the first of several death threats against Jeeves, the jovial butler loved by millions of Ask Jeeves users. Diller has been eyeing Jeeves for some time now but has not actually canned the character.
Nokia unveiled a handheld Internet Display Tablet, its first non-phone mobile device that can access the Internet via WiFi, signalling the first net-capable mico-device designed for the commercial market.
Search marketing as a sector continued to receive increasing recognition as a disruptive but mainstream advertising channel. A report issued by Safa Rashtcy a senior analyst at investment bank Piper Jaffray stated search revenues will increase by a staggering $18 billion by 2010. Search industry research and analysis firm Outsell issued another report saying the growth comes at the direct expense of the largest traditional media firms - Reed Elsevier, Thomson, Gannett, Pearson, Tribune, Reuters, McGraw-Hill, VNU, Wolters Kluwer, and the Daily Mail and General Trust.
The minor Google updates turn into a major algorithm change as Google unleashes what would come to be known as the Bourbon Update . The entire June 8 th newsletter was devoted to Bourbon.
While the Bourbon Update was underway at one end of the Googleplex, marketing demons were seen to be working evil at the other end of the campus. In mid June, Google announced it was going to bundle its controversial toolbar and desktop search applications into downloads of the popular WinZip application.
Jack Kirby, co-inventor of the microchip dies at age 81.
Google stock soared past $300 per share in June. It is now trading in the $440 range.
July
The SEO and SEM community comes together in an amazing show of unity and concern when UK SEO Ian Turner went missing for a few days after attending a Webmasterworld conference in New Orleans. "Last Tuesday, Threadwatch moderator Nick Wilson posted a frantic missing person report about Ian who had failed to return to Britain after the WebmasterWorld conference in New Orleans. Within hours, hundreds of search marketing blogs picked up the story. By the end of the day, literally thousands of blogs, many of which are written by people from outside the SEM sector, were carrying the story, making Ian Turner the most well known name in search, for a short time at least."
The most interesting story of July was the case of Dr. Kai-Fu Lee, part the ongoing battle between Microsoft and Google. Dr. Lee is one of the most respected computer scientists in the world and is considered a leading expert on search in the Chinese market. Google hired him away from Microsoft and that set off a month's worth of legal fireworks and disclosures of anger-management issues in Redmond.
James Doohan, the actor who played Scottie on the original Star Trek TV show died at age 85.
August
The Yahoo Publisher Network opens to a limited beta test. "Yahoo! has developed many highly successful relationships with web publishers around the world, and is building on those experiences to bring new revenue sources and compelling content to even more high quality sites," said Bill Demas, senior vice president, Yahoo! Partner Solutions group."By helping the broader publishing community maximize the value of their sites, we aim to create an even more rewarding Internet experience for publishers, advertisers and users."
Jupiter Media sold Search Engine Watch, the Search Engine Strategies Shows and ClickZ Magazine. "Search marketers were surprised yesterday by the announcement that three of the most influential publications in the search marketing sector had quietly been sold to new owners. Jupitermedia, publisher of Search Engine Watch and ClickZ Magazine, announced plans to sell its research, publishing and trade show divisions to UK-based publisher Incisive Media PLC for approximately $43million in cash."
Google introduces GoogleTalk, their entry into the Instant Messaging service sector.
Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast causing the largest natural disaster in US history.
September
Google turned seven. To celebrate, it installs the first phase of what would come to be known as the Jagger Update.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer blew a gasket when he learned of the pending defection of .Net guru Marc Lucovsky to Google. "In written testimony given in the lawsuit Microsoft filed over Dr. Kai-Fu Lee's hiring in June, Lucovsky stated that Ballmer swore, jumped and threw a chair across the room upon learning Lucovsky was leaving for Google. Ballmer then started to rail against Google CEO and long term personal rival Eric Schmidt eventually questioning Google's long-term existence."
Yahoo announces it has hired veteran war correspondent Kevin Sites to broadcast via the web from some of the world's most brutal war zones. "Using a backpack and a notebook as his production studio, Sites plans to carry up to 40lb of computer and satellite gear into conflict zones. He wants to show the human side of armed conflicts by speaking to the people most affected by war, innocent civilians. One episode will be based on the destruction seen by a family in war-ravaged Somalia ."
Industry watchers speculate that Google plans to build an alternative, private-Internet. "Google is working on its most ambitious project to date, the creation of a global data transfer network that could effectively serve as a private Internet."
Microsoft appoints Ray Ozzie as executive responsible to bring it all together. "Microsoft announced it is reorganizing its corporate structure in reaction to competition posed by Google and Yahoo. A restructured Microsoft will see the merging of seven business units into three new divisions. It will also see the elevation of new Microsoft exec. Ray Ozzie to oversee coordination between the Internet arms of the various divisions."
Google and Sun Microsystems announce a distribution partnership deal between the two companies. "The news out of the press conference at first glance seemed simple and anti-climatic. Under the terms of the deal, the Google Toolbar will be bundled into downloads of the Java Runtime Environment. Java will be used to power new software developed and released by Google, effectively endorsing Java and nailing Microsoft's .Net as an emerging development platform."
Bloggers around the world unite to try to save Jeeves from Diller's death threats. (Thus far, their efforts have worked)
The search marketing world notices the Google Jagger Update is well underway. "In case you haven't noticed, there is a fairly significant update happening at Google right now. As with all other major updates, Brett Tabke from WebmasterWorld has given it a name, Jagger."
Google Base is released. "Google is rumoured to be developing a tool so powerful it could dominate the online auction and classified advertising sectors. Known as Google Base, what appears to be the Alpha-phase or first development stage of the program has been featured on Google focused blogs for the past 24 hours."
November
AOL confirms it is in discussions with other search engines. These discussions would lead to this week's major deal that, if accepted by the Time Warner board will give Google 5% of AOL and shut MSN out of the picture.
The now famous MSN memos exchanged between Bill Gates and Ray Ozzie are leaked from Microsoft. Part of the Gate's memo read, "The next sea change is upon us. We must recognize this change as an opportunity to take our offerings to the next level, compete in a manner commensurate with our industry responsibilities, and utilize our assets and our broad reach to reshape our business for the benefit of the users of our products, our customers, our partners and ourselves."
Microsoft releases a beta version of something called Fremont, which looks an awful lot like Google Base.
December
The Wall St. Journal announces AOL is about to sign a deal with Microsoft. Six days later, the Wall St. Journal reports Google pushed Microsoft out of the picture. The Time Warner board which meets Tuesday is expected to ratify the deal with Google.
NYTimes re-launches About.com. "In the coming months, About.com CEO Scott Meyer said quality control and monitoring of content is going to be a high priority, one of five major steps to be taken to relaunch and rebrand About as an information destination and advertising distributor."
StepForth Blog Nominated for SEO Blog of the Year by Search Engine Journal readers. "Readers of popular search engine news site, Search Engine Journal, have nominated StepForth News as one of the best SEO focused blogs. This is the first time our contributions to covering the complicated, interesting, challenging and often absurd world of search have received such recognition. It is also a tremendous vote of confidence from our peers, one we are humbly thankful for."
As I said in the first paragraph, 2005 has been a long year. We would like to send special thanks out to our clients, readers, supporters and friends for making 2005 such a good year. Best to all of you and thanks again.
< -- No offence to Google. I do not mean to imply that they actually are barbarians. These things happen when puns are involved. -- >
The New York Times is reporting Google the winner in the competition to catch AOL, culminating in a $1 billion deal between Richard D. Parsons, CEO of Time Warner and Eric Schmidt CEO of Google around 9pm last night.
According to the NYTimes, the negotiations went down to the wire last night, resembling a scene from Barbarians at the Gate with a group from Microsoft in one room, a group from Google in another, and executives from AOL running between the two.
The deal gives Google a 5% stake in AOL but also sees Google agree to giving favoured placement to AOL content on the Google site. It is also an event of seismic proportions, solidifying Google's place as the absolute dominant search entity. It also denies MSN the premium paid- advertising entry point needed to challenge that position.
Parsons called Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer this morning to break the news. When MSN enters the paid ad market, it will enter it way behind Google and Yahoo Search Marketing.
In the end, AOL gets a billion in the bank and some form of prominence on Google pages. Google keeps its biggest active rival off its back until the next deal comes along. We all get a lesson in irony as Microsoft gets a dose of karmic reality delivered by the owners of Netscape, a ghost from Microsoft's past.
AOL, which has been likened to a greased pig, has apparently slipped out of Microsoft's grasp and was last seen running south towards the Googleplex.
Earlier today, Reuters and the Wall St. Journal (no link - sub. req.) reported that Time Warner, owner of AOL, has entered exclusive talks with Google, effectively shutting out MSN at the last minute. The story is based on information from an unnamed source said to be close to the negotiations. A similar story that ran in the Journal last week said MSN was very close to a deal with AOL.
Time Warner wants to move AOL away from lagging subscription based revenues and take advantage of the growing market for paid search advertising. The deal it currently has with Google is responsible for a substantial portion of AOL's online revenues and about 2 - 4% of Google's. It expires in June 2006.
According to both Reuters and the Journal, the deal being discussed would allow AOL to place advertising beside and among search results provided by Google. In turn, AOL branded properties would be promoted alongside sponsored search results at Google. There was no mention of what types of advertising would appear or how AdWords distribution on AOL properties might be affected.
MSN wanted a way into AOL in order to establish a platform for a breakthrough in the paid search advertising market currently dominated by Google. Its proprietary paid search ad unit, adCenter is expected to be open for general public use early next year. A deal with AOL would have given adCenter an enormous leg up in competition with AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing.
AOL, the greatest greased pig of all, has a bit of play left in it. It will be interesting to watch how the story develops over Time. Warner buy into a search engine?
For the past year, StepForth has published a bare bones Blog. We have not implimented features found on many other Blogs such as comments, trackbacks or tags.
We chose to publish our ideas and comments this way because, being the extremely busy people we are, we felt moderating a comments section on a fairly popular Blog would add too much time to our already action packed day. We already have a significant readership and, until now, have had no pressing need to see where or how far our words have travelled in cyberspace.
That's all about to change. Actually, some of it has already changed. Earlier today we opened the comments section up, one of the first steps towards a much larger site and (by extension), Blog redesign. We hope the changes lead to more interaction with readers, other SEO practitioners, and webmasters. We strongly believe everyone who reads these words has something useful to share and that through the sharing of information, we can help in the effort to make the SEO/SEM industry more transparent and easier to understand.
Those interested in sharing their thoughts, opinions and/or ideas are welcome to register and participate in discussions. A special thanks to Ross (the Boss) and Mark (the VP) for doing the "heavy lifting" in our site and blog redesign.
Tim Mayer from Yahoo search has posted notice of a significant update to the Yahoo index last night. The refreshed and hopefully improved Yahoo index is now live.
Yahoo is looking for user feedback at ystfeedback@yahoo.com. The specific feedback they are looking for is,
the quality of the search results (please specify keywords or terms used in conducting the search, and
specific domains you think are under indexed, over indexed, or shouldn't be there at all.
Readers and Yahoo fans can also make comment on the new index over at the Yahoo Search Blog "Sixth Weather Report" posting.
Search engine marketing has displaced every traditional media with the exception of television in relevancy and importance in the eyes of ad-buyers. With much lower costs and a much greater reach, online advertising makes up the second largest area in which advertisers spend money and marketers pass messages. There are a growing number of advertising channels available via the Internet and the major search engines are interested in acting as facilitators for as many of them as possible.
These channels or services, unlike traditional predecessors, are open and available to virtually anyone with a product to sell or message to communicate. Openness, ease of use, a sense of fairness and the global reach of the Internet are factors that make search marketing so popular. Ultimately, the versatility of the Internet combined with the much lower costs associated with online communications is what has brought search marketing to today's prominence. Add the evolution of the medium and expanded accessibility and it is a safe stretch to say that search marketing will eventually surpass traditional television advertising by 2010 as the communications vehicle of choice. Here is a short list of what the search engines currently offer in the way of services to small business advertisers.
Organic Listings
By far, the strongest form of search engine advertising is found in the free organic listings, at least if your site is in the Top10. According to a number of studies, the most well known of which is Gord Hotchkiss' Google Eye Tracking study , the vast majority of search engine visitors examine and select organic listings over paid listings.
Organic listings are also the least expensive form of online marketing. All that is required is a good website and information on items people are searching for. Delivering a bigger bang for less money, a strong placement at Google, Yahoo and MSN can provide dramatic increases in site traffic.
Ironically, organic search marketing is not seen to be nearly as sexy or interesting as its wealthier cousins from the paid-placement side of the family. The free, organic listings are the loss leader of the search engine world. None of the major search engines makes a penny providing free listings and the search marketing sector servicing organic placements is still seen as an arcane and murky world by many advertisers.
Pay Per Click Advertising and Placement
Pay Per Click or PPC is currently the most popular advertising service offered by the major search engines. Mainstream marketers love it because PPC is fairly easy to understand and not nearly as difficult to explain to others as organic SEO. Because of this, and the base fact that search engines make money hand-over-fist from PPC programs, the rise in interest in search by major advertisers mirrors the evolution of the various PPC systems offered.
Overture started the ball rolling with their original pay per click search engine GoTo.com. The model was copied and modified by Google and Yahoo purchased Overture, rebranding the service Yahoo Search Marketing. Overture was fairly successful in its early years, sticking deals with the search engines of the day to display paid results much in the same way Google and YSM do today but it wasn't until Google introduced AdWords that mainstream advertisers took notice.
When they did, the sky was suddenly no longer the limit. (Google is actually working to send search services to space.) Mainstream advertising agencies and the absurd amounts of money they control started attending conferences and learning as much as they can about pay per click and other forms of search marketing.
PPC offers a number of definable results that organic SEO simply cannot. You can guarantee with absolute accuracy that the result will be visible on the front page as long as the money and effort is there to make it happen. Good SEOs haven't made guarantees for a number of years now. PPC has another hidden advantage that makes it widely attractive to larger advertisers.
Contextual Ad Delivery is possibly the coolest thing since the automated bread slicer was invented, at least if you think like a marketer or a search engine financial executive. The delivery system works in two unique ways. The first is based on keywords entered by searchers; the second is based on keywords found on a page or document.
Many search engines display ads generated by a larger search tool. AOL for example currently runs ads generated by Google. The specific ads coming up to the right of the organic search results are placed there because they somehow correspond to the keyword query made by the searcher viewing them. That's the basic form of contextual ad delivery.
The more complex form is found on non-search related documents. Next time you visit a website that is not a search engine, (perhaps even this one), take a look around the sides of the screen. If you see any ads by Google or YSM, you are looking at contextually delivered product. The ads appear on the screen because the website owner has partnered with Google or YSM. The ads are generated based on keywords found on the document on which they are displayed. Whenever a site visitor clicks on one of those ads, the site owner shares a percentage of the click-through bid. Similarly, users of Gmail have become accustomed to seeing paid advertisements generated based on keywords found in the text of their email messages.
Marketers see contextual delivery as the predecessor of personalized ad-delivery, a service MSN feels it is close to introducing when it takes adCenter out of beta.
Shopping Search
Another form of search service is shopping based search engines. Shopping engines deliver product information directly to consumers, and help them find online merchants to purchase from. They are not meant to be places people look for lost relatives or seek solutions to common health ailments but they would be glad to refer visitors to a good book or microwave oven.
Most shopping search engines receive information directly from the databases of merchants using their systems via an XML feed. Two well-known independent examples are Become.com and Shopping.com . They are not alone however as the major search engines know a good thing when they see it. Earlier today, another well-known shopping engine, PriceGrabber.com was purchased by London based GUS PLC for $485million.
Google, Yahoo and MSN all have their own shopping search engines. Of the three, Yahoo's is arguably the most interesting application of Web2.0 philosophy, MSN is the most traditional and Google is the most comparative.
Yahoo Shopping has moved forward into the world of Web2.0 providing lists of products and reviews compiled by its massive user base. It actively promotes users to save lists to an area known as my lists, and to make those lists available to other users. Yahoo has tied Yahoo Shopping into Yahoo local search and provides maps to stores found through their shopping engine.
MSN Shopping is fairly traditional and straight forward with product listings by category and price range. Google's shopping service Froogle is actually more of a comparative price engine than a pure shopping engine but, in conjunction with Google Local and Google Maps, Froogle can provide directions to the lowest cost items near you.
Local Search
Perhaps the biggest marketing bonanza will be found in local search engines. Many search engine observers suggest local search will replace the Yellow Pages as users start to interface with search via handheld devices and cell phones. Most often used by consumers looking for a product or service near their own home, local search engines tend to draw information from the general search databases.
The types of search services mentioned above are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the full range of features, tools and services offered by the major search engines. For small business advertisers though, these are the services that are easiest to take advantage of and tend to return the best results.
Marketing in general has become more complicated and search marketing is becoming extremely complex. Small businesses that already have a relationship with an SEO or SEM firm might want to arrange a meeting with their search marketing vendor to discuss plans for the coming year. With or without the assistance of SEOs or SEMs all online advertisers have a lot to think about over the holiday season. 2006 looks like it is going to be wild and highly productive year.
Monday was what some would consider a manic day following a highly eventful week. As I read through Monday's headlines I found four stories that I feel have long-term implications for the search marketing community. Several hours into the writing of it, I realized it was going to run several thousand words so I decided to break it up into two sections. The first section focused on the two negative aspects of our industry both of which stem from SEO practices considered to be less than ethical in the minds of many in the search marketing community. The points I was trying to make are fairly simple. The biggest challenge faced by the search marketing industry comes from the ranks of rogue search marketers but Google is attempting to crack down on them. It is a good thing Google is taking steps to crack down on SEOs who work to exploit Google's weaknesses instead of simply employing its strengths. Someone has to take action and the SEO community resembles a dysfunctional social club when it comes to any form of self-regulation.Ironically, the SEO sector's greatest strength is about to become its greatest weakness. Our greatest strength is that our services are extremely interesting. SEO and SEM produce successful results and unquestionably increase website traffic and revenues. Naturally, before a group of people are prepared to drop a few billion bucks here and there, they want to have a good sense of what they are spending it on and with whom they are spending it. That accounts for the increased scrutiny faced by the industry, which in turn accounts for the tone of the Newsweek article reported on in the first half of this piece. Search Engine Optimizers, as one of the knowledge based sectors whose work directly affects the general public, have a public relations management problem. It is in fact our greatest collective weakness. We have been courting this problem for several years, seemingly in the vain hopes it would simply go away before it one day becomes a survival issue for ethical players in the industry. I suspect that day came Monday.
A vast ocean of money is coming into the search marketing sector. Much of it is being funneled in from radio, print and television advertising budgets. The people who make those budgets have been marketing products to the people for so long traditional marketing is considered an often grotesque but fine science. While the adage, "information is power" might have come from the mouth of a military mind; marketers understand that the knowledge of ways to use information is what makes information useful.
A report,"The Changing Face of Advertising in the Digital Age" issued late last week by Parks Associates, notes online advertising spending will double by the year 2010 to account for over 10% of the general advertising market. The report also found that nearly 21% of Internet users considered Internet advertising as the most relevant ad format, outscoring radio, newspapers and magazines.
A good portion of this growth can be attributed to Overture (now Yahoo Search Marketing) and Google's AdWords. While organic search is less expensive and proven to convert more traffic than PPC does, the PPC model is easy to understand and offers quantifiable results. Suddenly, traditional marketers "got it" when presented with a system that delivered promised results, could be easily explained to clients, and did not require a deep tech background to understand.
What is simple to understand is that the Internet is the most efficient communications medium on the planet and search is the most efficient method of finding information on the Internet. Something a little more difficult to understand but instinctually compelling for advertisers is the ability to track information as it passes through the Net. Everything is recorded online. The fact you are reading this article and how much time you spend reading it is being recorded at Google, MSN, Yahoo, Amazon, and a host of other information brokers too numerous to mention. Where you go, what you do, and the patterns you form in doing whatever it is you are doing online is of enormous interest to the major search engines. The only thing that isn't known about everyone with absolute certainty is exactly who is conducting which session. The major search engines can only match registered users to specific user-sessions.
The reason they want to know as much about the individuals using their systems as possible is, the more the search engines know about you and your web surfing habits, the better they can serve personalized advertising to you. At the Search Engine Strategies Conference held last week in Chicago, MSN demonstrated a long awaited feature of its paid placement and contextual ad delivery program, adCenter demographic targeting.
Imagine running a PPC campaign bidding on over 10,000 keywords or phrases. The expenses of serving so many ads every day to consumers who's only pre-qualification was they typed keywords into a search window or were looking at a document with those keywords in it. While slightly more focused than television or print advertising, it is obvious the PPC campaign will be serving ads to many viewers who are not interested in the product. What if you could specifically tailor the delivery of those ads to target viewers by age, income, or social interest? Chances are the number of click-throughs that actually convert into a sale will rise dramatically. That's the thinking behind personal targeting and, given the extreme competition between search firms, it is only a matter of time before Google and Yahoo follow suit.
Contrary to stereotype, the vast majority of lawyers enter the legal profession because they truly love the convoluted nuances of the law. Did you know that most used-car salespersons want to give you a good deal and do not want to sell you lemons? Would you believe that most politicians run for office because they truly care about their communities? Even though the vast majority of SEO and SEM shops run honest operations and act responsibly with their clients, a few not-so-ethical SEOs can make the rest of us look like, well, lawyers, politicians and used-car salespersons in the under-informed public eye. The only things left to wonder about is how long mainstream advertisers will trust us with their dollars and, if not us then whom?
The SEO/SEM PR problem might seem a molehill to some but it is wise to remember that any sudden influx of money will naturally create inflation. Our molehill is quickly growing into a mountain, just in time for those of us who want smaller SEO firms to thrive and survive to push a very heavy rock up.
The harshest aspect is, those damaging the reputations of honest SEOs by using the knowledge to spam search rankings don't need to care if the small business SEO and SEM shops are replaced by the larger corporate ad agencies. They are, for the most part, working to promote their own reference based businesses. If not, they are almost certainly working in the ultra-competitive worlds of casinos and adult entertainment.
That's why I think the recent moves by Google to chase after black-hat SEOs and improve user experiences in their PPC offerings is a signal that a significant shake-up is coming in the SEO industry. The movement has actually already begun with many noted black-hats adopting non-spammy technique in the wake of the Jagger updates. The searchmarketing industry is changing and that change appears to be for the better. Hopefully, that will translate into better coverage and reporting that digs deeper than the Newsweek article printed on Monday.
Mondays follow weekends and a lot can happen over 48-hours. That makes a Monday morning a bit of a mash-up. As I scan article ideas from first to last, my mind keeps wandering to the middle. There must be a common thread uniting ideas found in the four pieces outlined below. The most obvious connection is that each relates to search marketing but perhaps if read collectively there is something a bit deeper, a signal of where the SEM industry is going.
The most popular story of the day is the Newsweek article about Search Engine Optimization which features Seattle based "white-hat" SEO Rand Fishkin, UK-based "black-hat" SEO Earl Grey, and Matt Cutts, who is known as the Spam Czar at Google in Mountain View, California. The article ranges fromSEO success stories to shadowy tactics using the white hat/black hat monikers to describe their techniques. The mainstream media has gotten interested in organic search marketing, leading to its interest in the "white-hat" vs. "black-hat" debates.
Another interesting story comes from a press release Google issued on Friday at 2:45 pm (pacific). The press release stated Google is going to consider the quality of landing pages in its AdWords placement algorithm. A press release that comes out late on a Friday often contains interesting and possibly sensitive information. A professional press release issued so late on a Friday afternoon is intended to slip under the wire imposed by the weekend and put a few days of distance between an action and the reporting of that action.
Next, Gord Hotchkiss from Enquiro has a great piece in Search Engine Guide on ad targeting by demographic profiling, a feature of MSN adCenter demonstrated at the Search Engine Strategies Conference held last week in Chicago.
Lastly, a report,"The Changing Face of Advertising in the Digital Age" issued late last week by Parks Associates, notes online advertising spending will double by the year 2010 to account for over 10% of the general advertising market. The report also found that nearly 21% of Internet users considered Internet advertising as the most relevant ad format, outscoring radio, newspapers and magazines.
Each of the aforementioned articles or ideas has long-term implications that will serve in part to define the parameters of professionalism in the search marketing sector. As this piece is going to run too long to mention all at once, we'll break them off two at a time, starting with news from Google. SEO Ethics and the new state of search marketing Search engine optimization is the basis of a well-rounded search marketing campaign. Generally referring to work done to achieve high placement in organic (free) listings, SEOs might use any number of techniques depending on the type of website they are working on. The characterizations of white-hat and black-hat practitioners is oversimplified with the vast majority of SEOs figuring they fall somewhere in the grey-hued middle.
Unfortunately, the mischievous sense of murkiness that attracted a number of people to the sector does not work well in the mainstream mindset, as demonstrated by the Newsweek piece. Newsweek's sub-headline, "Inside the shadowy world of SEOs" says it all.
The author, Brad Stone, did research his material before hand. He called Danny Sullivan from Search Engine Watch and Matt Cutts from Google. He also tried to present two sides of SEO with Rand representing the "white-hat" side and Earl Grey (online handle, not real name) representing the "black-hats". Most who know Rand, or know of him, would consider him an honest, ethical optimizer. His techniques conform to the Google guidelines and in his writing he puts a high standard on following those guidelines when working on client sites. According to the Newsweek piece and his own writing on SEO, Rand places long-term ethics above short-term profits. Nevertheless, Stone was left with the impression that SEO was solely based on the manipulation of results, an impression he shared with millions of mainstream readers.
That might be due to the second SEO introduced in the piece, Earl Grey. Grey asked Newsweek to use his handle or nickname rather than his actual name in order to avoid harassment from "anti-spam vigilantes". In the article, he shows Stone how he can place a link to a private detective referral site he runs on other peoples' sites, in this case the Stony Brook University website. The link serves two purposes. First, it might drive one or two visitors to the site. Second, and more importantly, a link from an academic site is thought to be more credible in Google's eyes than links from other sites. Grey comes off giving the legitimate SEO sector a poor reputation with quotes like, "I'm not very professional,'' he said, "I do what I need to do to get where I need to be." He told Stone that if his private investigator referral site is removed from Google or other search engines, he'd drop it as well and move on to another project.The article goes on to mention that the private detective site ranked well at MSN and Yahoo but not at Google. Grey chalked it up to the "sandbox" but apparently there is another explanation.
Matt Cutts, the Quality Control engineer at the Googleplex chimed in with his thoughts on the piece in an entry at his blog today. Cutts knows the search marketing industry inside and out. Having worked at the National Security Agency until Google hired him in 2000, Cutts understands the value of intelligence. He has been gathering it for several years, first under the pseudonym GoogleGuy and now in his role as search engine superstar. Swarmed at search related conferences and one of the most read bloggers on the Internet, Cutts seems to have taken up the challenge posed by the part of the SEO community bent on using tactics even they describe as spam.
Cutts' research has not been too difficult. Earl Grey, is the moderator of a black-hat forum at which he and others brag about their exploits and exchange information. Cutts is known to participate in a few SEO forums and lurk around several.It seems Cutts had already zeroed in on Earl Grey's series of sites and was using them to train Google staff how to trace one spam domain to other spam domains. Cutts claims that Grey's detective page, while ranking well at MSN and Yahoo was caught-out as spam both algorithmically and manually by Google spam fighters.
The Newsweek article and the incidents surrounding it are important for two reasons. First, the mainstream advertisers are cooling towards paid-search as the ONLY search solution possible and starting to warm aga
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