The rapid growth of search engine marketing over the past two years has firmly established the SEO and SEM sector as an important concern for the mainstream advertising industry. Lacking the long-term background and technical resources to properly serve the intense demand for search marketing from clients, the traditional ad agencies are starting to think about the search marketing industry.
A study released yesterday by Madison Ave. based AdMedia Partners suggests that advertiser interest, coupled with the changes in the way consumers perceive and receive advertising makes many search marketing firms tasty targets for acquisition or likely candidates for mergers.
“Search remains extremely hot as an acquisition category. If anything, demand might be stronger than before because traditional media companies within the larger game are realizing search is an incredibly important part of media,” said Seth Alpert, Managing Director of AdMedia Partners in an interview with StepForth, “They have to be planning and buying for clients but don’t have internal knowledge or staff to do it.”
As an investment banking and financial advisory firm focused on advertising and marketing, AdMedia Partners thrives on verifiable numbers. They conduct annual surveys of the advertising and publishing industries. This year’s look at trends in 2006 shows that 79% of respondents, “… anticipate strong merger and acquisition activity in Internet marketing…”
The survey, “Merger and Acquisition Prospects for Marketing Services and Internet Marketing Firms”, shows a shift in thinking in both the traditional advertising industry and the search marketing sector. Traditional ad agencies want to serve the search marketing needs of their clients while concurrently, many of the smaller firms providing search marketing services want to grow either through mergers or by being acquired by a larger entity.
The survey found that “54% of those who identify as prospective buyers expect to complete an acquisition during 2006, up from 51% last year.” It goes on to note a much larger shift among those looking to get bought up by someone larger showing “42% of those who identify as prospective sellers expect to sell all or part of their business in 2006, vs. 25% who thought they would do so last year.”
There is a lot of energy around mergers and acquisitions in the search sector right now. “Internet marketing works. Traditional forms are becoming more segregated or more subject to lack of attention span and concurrent disruptiveness of technology,” said Alpert, “Right now, the buyers have cash, either because business is doing well or they have cash backed by private equity funds.”
Search has proven to be the most disruptive form of online marketing for traditional publishers and ad agencies. It also presents a double edge sword. Witness the realignment announcement issued by the reigning titan of publishing, Time Inc., early Tuesday. While search marketing has shown significant impact on Time’s bottom line, it has also opened up a number of opportunities for the media giant, particularly through its ownership of AOL and AOL’s affiliations with Google.
Exploiting emerging opportunities is obviously on the minds of many marketers these days. One question asked if respondents were, “Considering Entering or Expanding their Presence in the Following Businesses”. The survey listed eleven types of marketing, allowing respondents to answer yes to one or more of the options listed.
The results of this question are interesting in that over 90% of respondents said they did expect to expand into other forms of advertising. Nine out of ten firms think they need to do something new and most of that thinking is focused on search marketing. Sixty-nine percent of the advertising or publishing agencies surveyed say they intend to enter or expand in the search marketing sector in 2006.
As they enter the search sector, many of the larger firms intend to purchase or partner with established search engine marketing firms. 85% of respondents who identified as prospective buyers said they expected to approach a potential acquisition though only 54% of them expected their approach to result in a completed acquisition.
The potential buyers might be in for a pleasant surprise however as 79% of those that identify as prospective sellers expect to be approached though only 42% expect to be acquired.
Those thinking about purchasing a company are advised to act quickly. It is currently a buyer’s market with 84% of respondents saying that, “… given the current climate, buyers should act now”, but the pendulum appears to be swinging in favour of sellers. In last year’s survey, 87% of respondents advised buyers to act swiftly.
This year, 52% of respondents say now is the time for sellers to act, a jump of 21% over 2005 and the most favourable response since the dot-com crash. Clearly, the balance is moving towards the search marketing sector. Search marketing knowledge is increasingly valuable on today’s market.
Appreciation of search marketing talent is reflected in the median multiples used to create a reasonable estimate of the value of a company. Take the operating profit of a given company and multiply it by X and you have a general sense of what that company is worth.
Over the past three years, the median multiples of traditional ad agencies and other off-line marketing services have remained fairly constant, ranging between 5 and 7 times the operating profit of any given company. The value of Interactive Ad agencies is now estimated between 6 to 10 times their operating profits.
“There have been seminal events have changed business and public perception of the business of marketing online,” said Alpert, discussing the impact of search on advertising. “An example of a negative event was the tech bubble bursting five years ago. Business is back in a very interesting way. Valuations are healthy (or crazy, depending on point of view) will continue for quite a while.”
Predictably, the second greatest growth area is seen in Strategic Consulting, helping both ad agencies and advertisers figure out how to best spend advertising dollars. The marketing world is not getting any less confusing, on either side of the coin and neither the agencies or their clients can afford to make mistakes.
According to Alpert, there are a number of things buyers are looking for when examining a potential merger or acquisition.
· Great clients and the ability to retain those clients is one of the most important. · Firms should have great skill sets as evidenced by results and what they can do for their clients. · Sustained revenue growth and healthy profit margins make a company more attractive and increase valuations (however), · SEM is a scalable skill; smaller firms with great talent are of interest to potential buyers. · Location is also an important factor as travel and meeting clients is often necessary. · Lastly, proprietary techniques and technologies are important assets for sellers.
The survey establishes that Internet marketing is extremely important to the traditional advertising sector but it was unable to find a similar consensus on what form of marketing will see the greatest growth in 2006.
Search lead with 18% saying it will show the largest growth over the year but Pay per Performance, Interactive Media, Customer Relation Management and Lead Generation all polled well. The only actual consensus in growth shows what is not hot this year with none of the respondents suggesting Affiliate marketing will see any perceptible growth in 2006.
One of the respondents to the survey said, “Open media (podcasting, blogging, video blogging, etc.) has opened a world of opportunity… Think the Internet and World Wide Web in the early 1990’s”
Within the search marketing industry, there is a lot of sustained optimism, (no pun intended), and has been for a number of years. Moving into the second half of the global decade, search and search marketing is more important each year. The sector is capturing an increasing share of the global advertising budget; enough to make the traditional ad agencies finally sit up and notice.
SEO and SEM shops take notice, not only is Madison Avenue looking to enter your sector, they are also looking at you.
Change seems to be the theme of our story these days with the Internet, search marketplace and our daily set of tasks morphing rapidly. Change is a good thing but never comes without its price. For us that price has been painful, literally.
The StepForth staff has just survived what has to be counted as the longest, most physically challenging weekend in the nine year history of our firm. Bill is still down sick, Scott is temporarily offline, Ross, Mark and I have just recently gotten back online, and our new offices are still turned upside down.
StepForth brags about how we do all our SEO work by hand, without the aid of automated systems or in-the-box software. As a small business, we are extremely cost-conscious. We are saving about $200 per month in our move and saved over $1200 by doing the heavy lifting ourselves. One thing we forgot about... We are geeks and geeks tend not to resemble bodybuilders. While we all weigh in over 98lb, lifting heavy boxes is not in our general job descriptions. Suffice it to say we are all suffering muscle strain today.
To add to the difficulty of moving a nine year old business from one side of town to the center of the city, this weekend brought the worst weather southern Vancouver Island has seen all winter. A major gale pushed power lines down, toppled trees and dumped nearly two centimeters of rain in a few hours. Much of the city was blacked out yesterday and part of Saturday night. Scott, who lives about 1500 kilometers north of us (just south of the Yukon/Alaska border), was knocked offline when the satellite connection in his new town was snookered by the heaviest snowfall Northern British Columbia has seen in over thirty years. He is expected to be back later today or early tomorrow.
Today, the sun is shining and the weather is sweet, at least in relation to what it has been over the past 72-hours. The wind is down to a dull roar and while we can see dark clouds forming over the Olympic Mountains to the south, the skies above Victoria are blue. I am typing away on a newer Toshiba laptop in my as yet unadorned room in StepForth's new office. The coffee machine is plugged in, the internal network has been re-established, our central server is again accessible and my desk surface is actually clear for the first time in almost a year.
That's a good way to start off in a new space. Another positive omen is the pending launch of our new website, coming on Wednesday February 1. The goodness comes in threes (so they say) and I hope to discover some bite-sized goodness in about an hour when I go off to explore a new menu of restaurants and eateries surrounding our new space. I am hoping for a three martini posting later today.
Google's new China focused portal, Google.cn has been roundly and rightly criticized for censoring results shown in China at the request of the repressive Chinese regime. The absence of material deemed dangerous by the Chinese authorities leaves search results that tell the "right-side" of the story. This is the material open to viewing Chinese citizens.
In an interesting post to the Google Blogoscope (no relation to Google Inc), Philipp Lenssen displays results from 15 experimental searches he conducted using Google.com (US and International) and Google.cn (Google China). Though Philipp didn't make the connection in writing, the results generated clearly show Google not only censors results, it is acting as a propaganda arm of the Chinese government.
Google's senior policy counsel, Andrew McLaughlin, says that "while removing search results is inconsistent with Google's mission, providing no information (or a heavily degraded user experience that amounts to no information) is more inconsistent with our mission."
That may be true however a glance at the results generated in Philipp's research shows the distinct use of words such as "tragic", "heretical" and "cult" to describe the spiritual meditation group Falun Gong. A second look shows similar issues surrounding Tibet, human rights groups and even the American Dream as expressed by Hugh Heffner's Playboy magazine.
Google is not only helping limit access to information, it is actively (though perhaps inadvertently) helping the Chinese Government deliver a very limited view of the world. By censoring the Chinese web experience, it is acting as a propaganda distributor for of the Chinese Government.
Already, protests have formed around Google's decision to honour the Chinese Government's requirement that Google self-censor search results. About twenty members of Students for a Free Tibet marched in front of Google's Mountain View CA headquarters on Wednesday. More troubling than a score of protesters is a growing movement among Bloggers to remove Google AdSense advertising from their websites.
Earlier today, Google removed a section addressing censorship from its website. Where it used to say,
"Google does not censor results for any search term. The order and content of our results are completely automated; we do not manipulate our search results by hand. We believe strongly in allowing the democracy of the web to determine the inclusion and ranking of sites in our search results."
StepForth is leaving its quiet, residential space in the Fernwood neighbourhood of Victoria and moving downtown to its new Bastion Square offices.
The move is prompted in part by the tremendous growth of our industry over the past few years. We've grown too, bringing on new staff, upgraded services and a growing list of marketing partners. Also, the new location is simply too nifty to pass up.
This will be our last full day in our current space. On Friday, we start the process of ripping out the servers, dismantling the office, disconnecting our computers and saying goodbye to the funkiest section of town.
We'll miss the Thin-Edge of the Wedge pizza parlor, the George and Dragon Pub, and our downstairs neighbour, "Fast Sammy" the convenience store owner. Our free-range mascot, Hydro the death-defying squirrel will also be remaining behind.
Our new offices are located in historic Bastion Square overlooking Victoria 's gorgeous inner-harbour. Our new building houses some of the oldest offices in the Pacific Northwest region, originally built as a warehouse for supplies heading towards the Yukon gold-rush or to logging and mining interests on the north end of Vancouver Island.
Needless to say, we are all excited and a bit intimidated by the move.
As of Monday, our new address is:
StepForth Placement Inc. #208, 26 Bastion Square Victoria BC, V8W 1H9
Please note that our phone numbers and email addresses will not change.
Toll Free (North America) : 1-877-385-5526 Local Phone Number: 250-385-1190
On behalf of the StepForth crew, I'd like to say thanks to the entire Fernwood neighbourhood. You've put up with a lot of parties, traffic, and general geeky weirdness from our space and we're going miss it here. Thanks for the support, friendship and being such amazing neighbours.
As expected, the roll out of change in the world of search is proving to be highly disruptive. Though the year is only three weeks old, noticeable shifts are occurring among the largest search entities and throughout the search marketing sector, making the scenery much different this month than it was just a few short weeks ago. These are among the most interesting times on the Internet as the largest players are positioning themselves to take their unique and collaborative runs through the year of global convergence.
For those interested in search marketing, a number of things will soon be different, most notably, our assumptions about the state of competition in the search sector. The three-way race between Google, Yahoo and MSN is, for all intents and purposes, over.
Yesterday, Yahoo's chief financial officer, Susan Decker, suffered the embarrassment of producing a poorly paraphrased quote. She made a simple, clear and brutally honest statement agreeing with a reality everybody else already perceived. It wasn't as much what she said.
Decker acknowledged in an interview with Bloomberg News that Google has a much larger share of the global search market than Yahoo does and that the gap is not likely to be bridged anytime soon.
"We don't think it's reasonable to assume we're going to gain a lot of share from Google,"Decker said. "It's not our goal to be No. 1 in Internet search. We would be very happy to maintain our market share."
The comment left some questioning Yahoo's long-term commitment to excellence and innovative search technologies. The attendant controversy stems in part from the way she chose to state the obvious but also in part from a public perception that Yahoo has not fully defined its place in the search sector. That three-way race metaphor wasn't working anymore.
Google dominates today's versions of search and both Yahoo and MSN are prepared to admit it. In short, the recent past and the persistent present belong to Google. For its formal rivals, the only place to look is the future. Time is accelerated, often to the point of pointlessness in the tech world and that future is already functioning online. It is just waiting mass user adoption.
The interview was conducted last week, just after Yahoo released fourth quarter financial results that, while wildly profitable, were seen as mildly disappointing by investors. Wall St. appeared to be expecting Google-sized gains from Yahoo, results even Google will have a hard time matching when they release their Q4 numbers next week.
As for the search marketing community, Yahoo actually delivered good news that was buried beneath Decker's first quote. Yahoo's CFO was also quoted saying, "We have held our own, and we should gain revenue share in the industry as we roll out these new initiatives. Our goal has been to hold our share and to be a leading, if not the leading, total marketing platform, which would include both brand and search."
Yahoo is improving its Yahoo Publisher Network and is almost ready to bring it out of beta. The YPN is a live experiment in online publishing built on the idea that an increasing number of individual web users will help funnel large amounts traffic based on shared interests.
Meanwhile, Microsoft appears to have been badly affected by losing the AOL deal to Google. It is almost as if Galileo's law of inertia is applied in double doses in the Pacific Northwest . Very little search related has moved forward from Microsoft over the past year though they do maintain a relatively good search engine.
A year ago, Bill Gates told the world it hadn't seen anything when it came to search. MSN search had just introduced its own algorithmic search engine and was ready to challenge Google. Nine months ago, Steve Ballmer noted MSN search was going to produce much better results than Google.
Six months ago, Microsoft reorganized its management structure to streamline integration between its software and Internet services divisions, challenging Ray Ozzie to bring it all together. Three months ago, Ballmer was said to be throwing chairs in a fit over how badly Google was beating Microsoft, notably around hiring and retaining talent.
A year later, the search results at MSN are pretty much the same and they still haven't introduced a search-advertising product to compete with Google's. Again, Google virtually owns the space.
In the face of Google's dominance, Microsoft is looking inward both figuratively and literally. The reorganization of its management system in the autumn of 2005 was the first clue to how Microsoft is preparing to redefine itself in relation to the search sector. Gates' comments at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this month mark the second.
Microsoft is retrenching behind the operating system right now. While it is working to release its paid advertising program adCenter by the summer, much of its efforts are said to be going towards finally shipping the new Vista OS, with a number of search and e-commerce tools included.
Google's dominance of today's version of search is absolute, a big problem for Yahoo and MSN even as they look forward to an expanded search environment. Search is the primary way to access information on the web and in order to stay in business, Google's rivals need to segment the concepts of search and find ways to excel in specific areas while Google overshadows general search.
The next few months are going to seem like a waiting game until the bevy of new products already introduced or soon to be introduced, (and user adoption of those products), begins to change the way searchers look for information and results are compiled. There is going to be a lot more stuff available to the common searcher and a lot more sources to draw from.
Yahoo is thinking outside the box by inviting users to create their own media environments in order to facilitate distribution of pay-per-use content (TV, music, movies) and pay-per-click advertising.
MSN is again looking inside the box with its newly revised focus on Vista . It hopes to erase the lines between the user, their computing device and the Internet by integrating search and search related products into commonly used software packages.
Google will continue being Google. As long as it continues to build on its membership driven services and produce better than adequate search results, the general public is likely to continue using it more than any other search engine.
Yahoo, the longest running search related business still running on the web has admitted defeat in the organic search sector, noting that Google remains the most popular in terms of market share. In an interview with Bloomberg News, Yahoo's chief financial officer, Susan Decker said, "It's not our goal to be No. 1 in Internet search. We don't think it's reasonable to assume we're going to gain a lot of share from Google. We would be very happy to maintain our market share."
Yahoo has been the number-two search engine to Google for almost five years, at one point even displaying organic results generated by Google. When Yahoo introduced its own algorithmic search spider almost two years however, Google and Yahoo have competed for organic popularity.
"It kind of makes you wonder about how serious they are about search", said Search Engine Watch editor Danny Sullivan in an interview with Bloomberg, "It really ought to be their goal whether it's realistic or not."
Yahoo is far from giving up the number two spot in the global search market. Many are speculating that Yahoo made this announcement in an attempt to lower expectations they might surpass Google sometime in the near future. Their engineers continue to try to introduce better organic search algorithms. In a weather report to readers of WebmasterWorld, Yahoo announced an update of its organic search results, one many webmasters appear to be applauding.
As of today, however, observers should watch for Yahoo to direct our attention to the Yahoo Publishers Network (YPN), an arm whose muscles will be flexed by Yahoo at every opportunity in the near future. Loren Baker, editor of the Search Engine Journal notes comments by Yahoo CEO Terry Semel from Yahoo's Q4 earnings report in an article titled, "Yahoo’s Goals Beyond Search".
I would like to briefly give you an overview of our key priorities for 2006. Our #1 priority is building and expanding the suite of tools services and solutions for Internet marketers and publishers.
In search marketing, our monetization efforts can be grouped into 3 categories.
First, we are expanding our content match services through the Yahoo Publishers Network to take advantage of the growing number of small publishers on the web. We plan to add new features to beta over the coming quarters including search and enhanced ad targeting. We believe the service will ultimately position Yahoo as one of the preferred advertising partners for small and medium-sized publishers.
Second, we are focused on improving RPS to better matching in relevance algorithms. While our matching initiatives will largely benefit coverage, we're also focused on improving tools to drive higher relevance and click through.
And third, we are increasing the number of easy-to-use tools for advertisers and publishers, so they can buy more keywords, touch more creative and add more listings faster.
The Yahoo Publishers Network is a self-publishing initiative offering individual micro-publishers unique tools, content and paid-advertising support from Yahoo Search Marketing. Yahoo is betting a large part of its image and reputation on facilitating the growth of content creation and distribution by its users.
Unlike Google, Yahoo has never focused solely on search. Yahoo is seen as a shopping portal, news aggregator and entertainment source as well as being known for its search powers. Yahoo's CFO might have taken a bit of the heat away from Sunnyvale CA but she inadvertantly refocused it several hundred miles up the coastal highway to Redmond WA, home of Microsoft. If Yahoo can't beat Google, what exactly does that say for the search engine Bill's team built?
Many search commentators have connected the rapid drop in Google's share-values with their recent tussle with the US Department of Justice over its refusal to share search-records with the Government. As far as I can tell, the only thing connecting the two is the coincidence of timing.
As anyone with even a remote interest in search knows, the legal drama unfolding between Google and the DOJ fell out from the closet and into the public realm early last week, nearly a year after the DOJ initial request was complied with by Google's rivals, Yahoo, MSN and AOL. Of the four major search engines in the United States, Google was the only one to resist the US Governments demand for information on searches conducted by its users.
Within days of the story breaking, Google share prices began to fall, showing a sustained decline for the first time since the search firm went public in August 2004. The sudden drop sent search journalists scurrying to their keyboards to make the unsubstantiated connection between the court case and the value of Google stocks.
What these commentators are neglecting to mention is that investors are becoming wary of the search sector, seeing the bulk of revenues coming from the single source of paid search advertising. Although Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing continue to shower shareholders with positive results, Yahoo's most recent financial numbers, filed last week, just before the Google share drop started, came in one-cent below investor expectations.
The dust-up between Google and the US Department of Justice is very important and something all search engine users should pay very close attention to; however, it is not likely the root cause of the drop in investor confidence in the search sector. Perceived instability in the long-term business model is far more likely the reason investment management firms and the investors who rely on their advice appear bearish about Google this week.
Yesterday, the Bush Administration asked a federal judge to order Google to give the US Government access to approximately one week of recorded searches.
The US Government says it needs the information to determine how often pornographic files are searched for and/or found using the Google search engine. It has already acquired similar data from other, unnamed, search engines.
Court papers filed in San Jose yesterday revealed that Google refused a Justice Department subpoena issued last year which ordered Google to turn over 1-million random search requests and records of all searches and results for a full, one-week period.
Fearing a privacy backlash, Google refused to honour the subpoena last year and is fighting the Justice Department this week.
Interviewed by the San Jose Mecury News yesterday, an associate general counsel for Google, Nicole Wong said, "Google is not a party to this lawsuit, and the demand for the information is overreaching." She added Google will fight government vigerously.
The US Government contends it requires this information as part of its defense of the Child Online Protection Act, as part of a case being heard in a Pennsylvania Federal Court.
The Child Online Protection Act was struck down by the US Supreme Court in 2004 for being too broad and unfocused. In its ruling, the Supreme Court recognized the Government's responsibility to protect children by suggesting the Government rewrite the COPA so that it does not violate First Amendment protections outlined in the constitution.
Instead of rewriting a law the US Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional, the US Government appears ready to defend it by violating the privacy of Google users and of the corporation itself. If Google is forced to release the data, it will also be forced to reveal important technical information it considers trade secrets.
Mirror, Mirror, on the Web, Who has got the biggest head?
According to the egoSurf Top50 , I do, for the time being at least. I even appear to have a bigger syndicated ego than the truly great grandfather of search journalism, Danny Sullivan, though a slightly smaller one than someone named LawMoose.
egoSurf is a new vanity search/reputation management tool that allows you to check your placements on Google, Yahoo, del.icio.us, or Technorati in relation to the number of links back to your blog(s) or URL(s).
If a name is mentioned in, or associated with a piece of writing or a blog document, “ego points” are assigned to that name. The more verifiable references found, the more ego points scored. Apparently, my name is mentioned a number of times in a number of places, likely found by reading between the by-lines. My new found and totally befuddling big-headedness is entirely due to the nature of an environment that allows 2000 word musings to be instantly syndicated through live-feed RSS or human-edited copy/paste routines.
Writers will vanity surf much in the same way an actor will preen in all mirrors. Reputation management is part of the job. It is amazingly gratifying to confirm I do in fact, have a big ego, even if that knowledge is known to go straight to my head. (I'm gonna be mega fun to work with for the next few months eh?)
If someone were to ask you to name the core business of General Motors, chances are you would naturally respond, "automobile manufacturing". If that were your answer, you would be invited to join the 99% who also answered incorrectly. The correct answer is automobile purchase financing through General Motors Approved Credit, (GMAC). In reality, GM makes most of its money from interest payments it earns helping consumers purchase the vehicles it builds.
Similarly, if someone were to ask what Google's core business is, the vast majority of respondents would answer, "search engine", smiling the giddy grins of those who know they are right. I've tried this one on my friends, most of which are already used to the torrent of trick questions that seem to stream from my tongue. Though most of them have heard me lecture about Google in public and private, most still get the answer wrong. Google's primary business is advertising, as it makes the bulk of its billion-dollar quarters from advertising revenues.
Along with its competitors, Google has been undergoing a remarkable series of changes over the past six months as it adds new features, acquires new technologies and expands its operations. It is no longer a pure search engine company though its search engine is the most popular around the world. Google acknowledged the shift early last summer when CEO Eric Schmidt famously defined Google as a media company.
That is an important distinction moving forward towards global domination. Google is a very big business, one that is growing faster and far more powerful than any other business before it. In seven short years, Google has grown from a university dorm room to universal dominance. After nearly five years of being at the top, being in second place is not on the agenda. That puts Google in the interesting position of being among the most watched firms on the planet. Search Engine Optimizers pay attention to all major search engines but we obsess about Google.
Recently, the StepForth research team took a long, hard look at Google and made some well-educated assumptions about what we saw. Our findings, though absolutely unscientific have been labeled the Unified Theory of Google, an expansion on the European Football inspired name Google United .
The Unified Theory of Google
Five years ago Google had the basics covered, producing the most accessible information resource ever built. Google spent those five years growing rapidly to include as many forms of spiderable media in its index as possible. In that time it has been remarkably successful, having collected more information from a greater variety of sources than any other repository ever has. It also enjoys the highest usage numbers, attracting more visitors in an hour than Disneyland does in a year.
Today, Google is a collection of several Internet technologies, many of which work together to improve the experience of each end-user and/or Google's bottom-line. For example, satellite maps generated by Google Earth have been incorporated into maps generated for users of Google Local search. Similarly, paid-search ads placed through Google AdWords augment organic search results and are also displayed to users of Gmail, Google Groups, Google Local, Froogle, and other branded search appliances.
Google has a number of branded search appliances. Known for its general search engine, Google also has News Search, Image Search, Comparison Shopping Search (Froogle), Local Search, Desktop Search, Blog Search, Google Answers, Video Search, Google Groups, and Email search features through Gmail, (to name but a few). Enabling and supporting the interoperability of its various components has been an important mission for Google engineers. Google appears to be trying to unify itself.
For search engine marketers, a unified Google offers a wide array of information resources to work with in planning and executing strategic initiatives. From a search engine optimization perspective, the Unified Theory of Google starts and ends with the search engine results pages (SERPs).
The SERP is the primary environment where the work of search marketers makes a difference. An in-depth understanding of how those results are generated is the product search marketers sell. Getting a client's URL on the first page of Google results for related keyword queries is the primary goal of all SEMs.
On a typical SERP served by Google there are five unique elements. Starting from the top of the page, users see a coloured box containing the top 2 or 3 AdWords, News results drawn from Google News, Desktop Search results drawn from the computer the search is conducted on, and ten organic results. Running down the right hand side of the screen, under the heading Sponsored Links, are the rest of the paid ads generated by AdWords.
Google has traditionally kept paid advertising separate from organic search results, at least when it comes to calculating placements in each format. Since the advent of AdWords, there has been a fear in the SEO community that Google would give special consideration to paying advertisers. As far as we can tell, Google does not grant organic privileges to paid advertisers.
It does however offer special services to another group of non-paying users, its growing membership. Membership has its privileges in an inter-exploitative sort of way. This was one of the reasons we changed our in-office reference from Google United to Unified Google.
In the early autumn of 2004, Google purchased a well-known web analytics firm called Urchin. In November 2005, Google opened Urchin to its membership, rebranding it Google Analytics. The server-side software package was greeted with tremendous enthusiasm by webmasters, causing a continuing series of problems for Google engineers. They appear to have most of the preliminary bugs worked out now but are still limiting new sign-ups to a waiting list of those who registered in November.
Google Analytics is designed, primarily, to support and promote AdWords advertising. Offering webmasters and search marketers over 70 unique stats that track visitors through the URL, the analytics package gives a clear view of how the public views a particular website. There are several tools included that help webmasters or SEMs improve the conversion rates of documents, along with revenue based goal setting and tracking features.
At Google's end of things, information from Google Analytics is used to inform both Googlebot and Google's AdWords algorithm. While most of the data acquired by Google is not site specific, the info that does relate to unique documents is assumed to be recorded in the historic profile Google accumulates about every document in its index.
An important note, a Google Membership account is required to access Google Analytics. For savvy search marketers, use of Google Analytics, along with other Google branded search features can be highly beneficial to client rankings. In our research, we have been using Google Analytics to track visitors to the StepForth domain. While we do not currently run paid-advertising on any of our sites, we have learned a lot from the experience and are reworking our website accordingly.
Getting clients signed up for Google Analytics will be a priority for us as soon as Google reopens the program to the general public. In the meantime, there are a number of other steps we believe our clients (and other SEOs) should consider when thinking about Google's organic rankings.
No honest SEO is 100% certain about anything in regards to Google, however, following the Jagger algorithm update, we are confidently certain Google has incorporated several of the concepts covered in their March 2005 patent application, “ Information retrieval based on historical data”. (click here to read our examination of the patent)
This knowledge has forced us to take a look at other ways to promote our clients' websites thorough Google's vast system. Working on the assumption that Google considers itself a trusted authority, we have started posting or providing information to as many Google branded search appliances as possible. (Note to all SEOs, follow the rules Google posts in each instance and avoid spamming. Don't blow the environment, its too cool to lose to petty abuse.)
One of the simplest ways to provide information to Google is through the use of an xml sitemap. We continue to subscribe to the SEO School of Spider Control, believing that the more we can drive spiders through our clients' offerings, the better those clients will rank. The trick is, it is not the number of times our clients get spidered, it comes down to how and where they get spidered. For us, that first line comes in the use of the simple sitemap.
Next, SEOs need to convince their clients to pump product or service information into Google Base. Earlier this week, folks at the SERoundTable noticed data from Google Base leaking into the general Google SERPs. We are assuming that including clients in Google Base is going to become increasingly important as Google tests a clustering engine that will produce results drawn from its various search appliances to present them in an info-tree format.
Lastly, SEOs need to pay attention to the past as well as the present when planning future website promotions. As Google acquires more information about the histories of documents in its index, and compares those histories against sites linked together, a continuing cascade will show itself in the SERPs. We believe that Google is entering a period where it favours its membership though we are not convinced this was an intended consequence. We are however, convinced that signing our clients up for Google memberships, primarily through Google Analytics and Google Base will be beneficial in the long run as Google works to draw results from its multiple databases.
The Unified Theory of Google, (and it is only a theory), suggests to us that as Google grows into itself, it will subtly favour information found within its own databases. We believe this provides a series of indispensable tools along with a basic outline for client campaigns that uses the strengths of Google to propel client sites to the top of the general SERPs. Which is why they came to us in the first place.
Spam, in almost any form, is somehow bad for your health. The vast majority of web users would agree with that statement and nobody would even think of the finely processed luncheon meat-product made by Hormel. Even the word itself is infectious in all the worst ways, being used to describe the dark-side and often deceptive side of everything from Email marketing to abusive forum behaviour. In the search engine optimization field, Spam is used to describe techniques and tactics thought to be banned by search engines or to be unethical business practices.
While writing copy for our soon to be revised website, the team put together a short list of the most outrageous forms of Spam we had seen in the last year and a short explanation of the technique.
Please note, we do not encourage, endorse or suggest the use of any of the techniques listed here. We don't use them and our clients' sites continue to rank well at Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask. It is also worth noting Google has been the dominant search engine for almost five years. Most of the spammy tricks evolved in order to game Google and might not apply to the other engines.
1. Cloaking Also known as "stealth(ing)", cloaking is a technique that involves serving or feeding one set of information to known search engine spiders or agents while displaying a different set of information on documents viewed by general visitors. While there are unique situations in which the use of cloaking might be considered ethical in the day-to-day practice of SEO, cloaking is never required. This is especially true after the Jagger algorithm update at Google, which uses document and link histories as important ranking factors.
2. IP Delivery IP delivery is a simple form of cloaking in which a unique set of information is served based on the IP number the info-query originated from. IP addresses known to be search engine based are served one set of information while unrecognized IP addresses, (assumed to be live-visitors) are served another.
3. Leader Pages Leader pages are a series of similar documents each designed to meet requirements of different search engine algorithms. This is one of the original SEO tricks dating back to the earliest days of search when there were almost a dozen leading search engines sorting less than a billion documents. It is considered SPAM by the major search engines as they see multiple incidents of what is virtually the same document. Aside from that, the technique is no longer practical as search engines consider a far wider range of factors than the arrangement or density of keywords found in unique documents.
4. Mini-Site networks Designed to exploit a critical vulnerability in early versions of Google's PageRank algorithm, mini-site networks were very much like leader pages except they tended to be much bigger. The establishment of a mini-site network involved the creation of several topic or product related sites all linking back to a central sales site. Each mini-site would have its own keyword enriched URL and be designed to meet specific requirements of each major search engine. Often they could be enlarged by adding information from leader pages. By weaving webs of links between mini-sites, an artificial link-density was created that could heavily influence Google's perception of the importance of the main site.
In the summer of 2004, Google penalized several prominent SEO and SEM firms for using this technique by banning their entire client lists.
5. Link Farms Link farms emerged as free-for-all link depositories when webmasters learned how heavily incoming links influenced Google. Google, in turn, quickly devalued and eventually eliminated the PR value it assigned to pages with an inordinate collection or number of links. Nevertheless, link farms persist as uninformed webmasters and unethical SEO firms continue to use them.
6. Blog and/or Forum Spam Blogs and forums are amazing and essential communication technologies, both of which are used heavily in the daily conduct of our business. As with other Internet based media, blogs and forum posts are easily and often proliferated. In some cases, blogs and certain forums also have established high PR values for their documents. These two factors make them targets of unethical SEOs looking for high-PR links back to their websites or those of their clients. Google in particular has clamped down on Blog and Forum abuse.
7. Keyword Stuffing At one time, search engines were limited to sorting and ranking sites based on the number of keywords found on those documents. That limitation led webmasters to put keywords everywhere they possibly could. When Google emerged and incoming links became a factor, some even went as far as using keyword stuffing of anchor text.
The most common continuing example of keyword stuffing can be found near the bottom of far too many sites in circulation.
8. Hidden Text It is amazing that some webmasters and SEOs continue to use hidden text as a technique but, as evidenced by the number of sites we find it on, a lot of folks still use it. They shouldn't.
There are two types of hidden text. The first is text that is coloured the same shade as the background thus rendering it invisible to human visitors but not to search spiders. The second is text that is hidden behind images or under document layers. Search engines tend to dislike both forms and have been known to devalue documents containing incidents of hidden text.
9. Useless Meta Tags Most meta tags are absolutely useless. The unethical part is that some SEO firms actually charge for the creation and insertion of meta tags. In some cases, there seems to be a meta tag for virtually every possible factor but for the most part are not considered by search spiders.
In general, StepForth only uses the description and keywords meta tags (though we are dubious about the actual value of the keywords tag), along with relevant robots.txt files. All other identifying or clarifying information should be visible on a contact page or included in the footers of each page.
10. Misuse of Directories Directories, unlike other search indexes, tend to be sorted by human hands. Search engines traditionally gave links from directories a bit of extra weight by considering them links from trusted authorities. A practice of spamming directories emerged as some SEOs and webmasters hunted for valuable links to improve their rankings. Search engines have since tended to devalue links from most directories. Some SEOs continue to charge directory submission fees.
11. Hidden Tags There are a number of different sorts of tags used by search browsers or website designers to perform a variety of functions such as; comment tags, style tags, alt tags, noframes tags, and http-equiv tags. For example, the "alt tag" is used by site-readers for the blind to describe visual images. Inserting keywords into these tags was a technique used by a number SEOs in previous years. Though some continue to improperly use these tags, the practice overall appears to be receding.
12. Organic Site Submissions One of the most unethical things a service-based business can do is to charge clients for a service they don't really need. Charging for, or even claiming submissions to the major search engines are an example. Search engine spiders are advanced enough to no longer require site submissions to find information. Search spiders find new documents by following links. Site submission services or SEO firms that charge clients a single penny for submission to Google, Yahoo, MSN or Ask Jeeves, are radically and unethically overcharging those clients.
13. Email Spam Placing a URL inside a "call-to-action" email continues to be a widely used of search marketing spam. With the advent of desktop search appliances, email spam has actually increased. StepForth does not use email to promote your website in any way.
14. Redirect Spam There are several ways to use the redirect function to fool a search engine or even hijack traffic destined for another website! Whether the method used is a 301, a 302, a 402, a meta refresh or a java-script, the end result is search engine spam.
15. Misuse of Web 2.0 Formats (ie: Wiki, social networking and social tagging) An emerging form of SEO spam is found in the misuse of user-input media formats such as Wikipedia. Like blog comment spamming, the instant live-to-web nature of Web 2.0 formats provide an open range for SEO spam technicians. Many of these exploits might even find short-term success though it is only a matter of time before measures are taken to devalue the efforts.
Search engine optimization spam continues to be a problem for the SEO industry as it tries to move past the perceptions of mainstream advertisers. When under-ethical techniques are used, trust (the basis of all business) is abused and the efforts of the SEO/SEM industry are called into question. Fortunately, Google’s new algorithm appears to be on the cutting edge of SEO Spam detection and prevention. Let’s hope 2006 is the year the entire SEO industry goes on a Spam-free diet.
Blink
Del.icio.us
Digg
Furl
Google
Simpy
Spurl
Y! MyWeb