Paul J. Bruemmer on Search

Google # 1 Brand

Google has been named the world's number one and most powerful brand for the second year in a row clocking in at an estimated value at $85,057 million which represents a 30% increase in its brand valuation.

Source: WebGuild

Universal Search Reporting Traction

The upward trend in reporting activity with regards to changes in Universal Search are increasing testimony to an ongoing and expected change in SERP landscape. This includes all forms of Google's vertical blend; video, news, blogs, images, products etc..

Search Engine Roundtable reports "if you notice halfway down the page, you're seeing a whole brand new set of results that are pulled from a file built in C programming language."

MediaPost reports "Google, Yahoo and MSN are rapidly integrating multi-media results into their search engine results pages..."

Search Engine Land qualifies ongoing discussion and speculation about Universal Search impact...

Search Engine Journal reports "Google tweaks Universal Search with horizontal video results..."

SEMPO: State of Search Marketing is Sound

Chris Sherman gives advance info on SEMPO's State of Search Marketing 2007 after interviewing SEMPO Chairman Gord Hotchkiss. SEM industry revenues increased in 2007 to $12.2 billion, which is a 30% increase over the $9.4 billion spent in 2006.

Growth rates have slowed since the 62% increase in 2006; however, the $12.2 billion reported for 2007 exceeded projections of $11.5 billion. New projections for North American SEM spending are $25.2 billion by 2011, an increase over the $18.6 billion forecast a year ago.

Paid Search: Again, paid search rules, taking 87.4% of the 2007 spend (vs. 85.9% in 2006). Keyword price increases have slowed since 2006.

Organic search: SEO got 10.5% of the search spend in 2007 (vs. 11.9% in 2006). In-house SEO was responsible for 80% of the SEO spend (vs. 20% for search agencies). However, trends toward in-house SEM have slowed. Hotchkiss believes two obstacles are responsible for this: lack of skilled SEOs and complexity of managing search campaigns in an ever changing and competitive environment.

The survey also shows high satisfaction with search marketing partners, signs of a maturing industry. SEMPO will announce results of the State of Search Engine Marketing 2007 some time this week. Check SEMPO for details.

Source: SearchEngineLand

SEMCompare: User Reviews of SEM Vendors

The publishers of Search Marketing Standard will launch SEMCompare.com, a site for user reviews of SEM vendors, on March 17. However, you can submit a review right now if you've purchased SEO and/or SEM services.

The site's goal is "to serve as a comprehensive, unbiased resource where people can accurately compare and evaluate the thousands of service offerings."

An obvious concern would be how SEM Compare plans to vet the reviews in the database. My understanding is the site will have filters to ensure quality reviews. It will use IP address and cookie tracking, name/email research, and a follow-up on reviews that are suspect. If they can do that, it could eventually become a valuable resource for the Internet marketing community.

A few sites in the past have tried to provide the community with SEM vendor information, but most of these relied on self-report or the subjective evaluation of the report's author. Off the top of my head, I recall seeing SEM Vendor reports or databases by MarketingSherpa, SEOPros.org, and MarketingProfs.

I recall MarketingSherpa attempted to rate SEM vendors in early days, but it turned out to be a can of worms because a single author (also a search provider) determined the ratings. Subsequent Buyer's Guides did not have ratings and relied on self-report by the vendors. I searched the site for its current SEM Buyers Guide and couldn't find one. Instead, MarketingSherpa now offers its Search Marketing Benchmark Guides, which survey marketers for industry trends.

Dip in Google Paid Search Clicks

The latest comScore data show that paid search ads on Google were down 12% in the last quarter of 2007 compared to the same period in 2006. Ad clicks on Yahoo fell 3% in the 4th quarter year-to-year.

Is the paid search frenzy slowing down? Could this be a sign of a slowing economy? Is there another explanation? We need to wait for more data before we can draw any conclusions. This could simply be a sign of a maturing industry. Search can't keep up its rapid growth forever. Eventually, the industry has to stabilize, and that could be starting to happen.

Hitwise showed traffic from Google to retail sites increasing over this same period. We've seen adjustments to Google's paid search algo to reduce accidental clicks, which could be responsible for reducing the total number of paid clicks. This may translate into fewer but more valuable clicks for retailers.

Paid search marketing budgets do not appear to be decreasing. eMarketer predicted in January that search ad spending would increase to $16.6 billion in 2011, up from $8.6 billion in 2007.

Source: eMarketer

85% Of Global Online Users Shop the Web

The latest Nielsen Global Online Survey on Internet shopping habits shows over 85 percent of worldwide online users have shopped online (875 million users). This is a 40 percent increase in online shopping since two years ago, when only 10 percent of the global online community had shopped online (627 million users).

The study also found over half of the global online audience purchased at least one item online in the past month.

The highest percentage of online shopping was recorded in South Korea, where 99 percent of online users had purchased online and 79 percent of those shopped in the past month. Other heavy shoppers over the last month include:

The UK 76%
Switzerland 67%
The US 57%

Globally, the most popular items purchased online include: books, clothing/accessories/shoes, videos/DVDs/games, airline tickets, and electronic equipment.

The study also found online shoppers gravitate to shopping sites they are familiar with, as 60 percent said they frequently purchase items from the same site. This means if you can create a positive shopping experience the first time, you could be creating a lifetime customer.

One-third of the survey respondents said they selected a shopping site through a search engine. One out of four people relied on personal recommendations. This suggests user reviews and user-generated content are more important and preferred over other types of referrals.

Source: Nielsen

Yahoo! Microsoft vs Google

Shape, Change, whatever you want to call it; $44 billion and some change gets software giant Microsoft a front-row seat at the search engine ball. Combining assets is the only way to come close to competing with giant Google.

Adding more servers; Google is up to 467,000 servers and over 30 data centers. Google invests $2 billion/year in their data centers. This is all built under one core mission whereas Yahoo! and Microsoft have very different cultures and must begin to integrate quickly if they expect to compete effectively in this fast moving space.

When it comes to online advertising dollars, the upside for Yahoo! and Microsoft is big; this is the first significant change in search for 2008 and it feels good.

I hope all my friends at Yahoo! do well during this transition and I certainly wish them a prosperous future.

A Rant for Andy Rooney, wherever you are -- 2008

Regarding SEO/SEM in 2008

THE GOOD NEWS:

Implementing server configuration best practices in '06 and '07 have produced significantly improved revenue stream and site indexing improvement for B2C and B2B Web sites. (RDI)

We've seen SEO page-editing and optimization techniques provide a 425% return on investment for natural search non-brand keywords. (RDI)

Correcting non-compliant on-page factors has increased year-over-year revenue by 258%. (RDI)

Training internal teams on proper keyword research discipline improved site-wide keyword integration; this produced daily record-breaking natural search results attributed to non-brand keyword traffic revenue. (RDI)

Organic Search training with creation and implementation of SEO best practices documentation lead to producing more site revenue in the first six months compared to the entire previous year. (RDI)

Training with Google Webmaster console led to significantly improved revenue and site indexing; documenting thousands of conversions per quarter, attributed to improved site indexing through the Google console. (RDI)

Seventy-five percent of B2B searchers click on organic search result first. (Enquiro)

Top organic and sponsored ad placements, together in the SERP, added significant lift in consumer brand affinity, brand recall and purchase intent. (Enquiro)

THE BAD NEWS:

I'm fed-up with the word trend, so I think I'll do the opposite of whatever "trend" the experts have in mind for me in 2008.

I'm tired of being broadcast to, e.g., network TV, email spam and display; as if I'm here for the sole purpose of receiving their messages of what's good for me and what I should be doing, or what I should watch-out for.

SEO is humbling; so I think it's real cheesy for someone to think they know it all. To succeed in SEO for '07 does not guarantee growth in '08; one has to continue to collaborate aggressively.

I think the terms expert and SEO very rarely go together and have been exploited beyond the point of diminishing returns.

I'm especially tired of those who think SEO is unworthy, easy, dead or smaller than Paid Search. 80% of search engine traffic is organic; SEO is a war of art in language, technology and advertising combined.

It's disturbing to see so much random advice on SEO; as if everyone is an authority on the subject and because "they say so," we're supposed to believe it.

I'm knackered at the imbalance of paid search buys from search marketers who don't do SEO and treat it like some kind of disease. This behavior is motivated by irrational enthusiasm and deserves to be corrected in '08.

I'm well-worn by those who have a lack of respect for ROI; with all due respect...when SEO/SEM 'shows you the money' spend more, not less.

All the best to everyone in 2008 - we are setting-up for another outstanding year of new events in the world of SEO/SEM ! Do something good for someone else; it's the search community professional code.

Ask Makes User Queries More Private

Want to cover your tracks on the Internet? Use Ask instead of Google. Ask is allowing its users to make their queries a lot more private by turning on AskEraser with a click of the mouse.

As you know, Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft and most search engines keep a record of search terms entered by users, linking the terms to a computer's Internet address and sometimes to the user. This will no longer happen to you on Ask if you turn on AskEraser, making your searches more private.

However, because Ask has an agreement with Google to deliver many of its sponsored results, it must continue to pass the query information to Google, which uses this info in it's paid search algorithm and to detect click fraud.

Ask hopes this privacy protection will encourage more users to use its search engine. Privacy advocates are pleased and hope this will put pressure on Google and others to follow suit.

Source: NYTimes

SuperPages Promotes Video Ads With Access to Videographers

The use of video ads is advancing like never before. Idearc Media's SuperPages.com, a local search directory, contracted with professional filmmaker networks TurnHere and Denver MultiMedia to provide video production expertise for its 18 million SME advertisers in the U.S. The videographers will go out to local business to help advertisers create production quality video ads.

SuperPages has the sales force, reach and customer base that will help expand the use of video advertising through easy access to quality video production.

Source: ClickZ

Microsoft Wants to Be #2

Microsoft president of platforms/services Kevin Johnson spoke at a UBS investor's conference recently saying he believes Microsoft can achieve a 40 percent market share in consumer search over the next three to five years. He plans to increase Microsoft's share in web search, page views, and percentage of ad dollars.

That's quite a task, considering Microsoft currently gets about a 6 percent market share in search. With all the people leaving Yahoo! and rumors that Microsoft wants to buy Yahoo!, that could be the way to do it.

Microsoft's investment in aQuantive passed muster, while Google is still not cleared to buy DoubleClick because of the EU's 4-month study of the Google-DoubleClick deal. Meanwhile, Microsoft's continues to invest in data centers and servers to power it's ambitious web services empire. Just think of the clout if Microsoft could grab Yahoo!.

Source: Reuters

Google to Develop Mobile Platform

Ending all the speculation that's been going on for weeks and years, Google announced yesterday it is developing an open source mobile operating system to be offered free to cellphone manufacturers in mid 2008.

Google's platform for mobile devices will be an open code source project available to developers to encourage creation of new apps and other improvements. The platform includes an operating system as well as user interface and applications. Google intends to offer the operating system without proprietary obstacles. Google's Android platform will be developed with the help of the Open Handset Alliance, consisting of 34 companies that include handset manufacturers, mobile operators and chipmakers, and software developers.

This move will enable Google to sell more ads and services via wireless devices. Not only do we have more cellphones than PCs, users don't leave home without them, carrying them everywhere in their pockets and purses. Google wants to transform your cellphone into a mini, portable PC that lets you watch videos, share photos, play games, IM your friends, etc. This means you can do everything on the go that now requires a PC -- including search and buy, of course.

So far, Google says it won't be manufacturing a Gphone, but Greg Sterling (and Danny Sullivan) suggests this could happen in the future. Don't miss Sterling's detailed commentary on Search Engine Land.

Google will work with four cellphone manufacturers who have agreed to install Google's Android operating system on their handsets: Motorola, Samsung, HTC and LG Electronics. However, consumers will have to buy a new phone to get Google's operating system on their handsets because it wasn't designed for existing phones. BTW, Android is the name of the software company acquired by Google in 2005. The company moved into the Googleplex and is led by Andy Rubin, Google's director of mobile products.

Because Google's software deck is free, it could undercut rivals who charge handset manufacturers for operating system software. This will be a significant threat to other mobile operating systems (including Microsoft and Apple) and will make smartphones considerably less expensive since manufacturers will save on software.

It looks like the mobile revolution will finally accelerate. ABI Research predicted a 13-fold increase in global spending on mobile marketing and advertising between 2006 and 2011. While Informa Telecoms & Media estimated mobile advertising will be worth $11.5 billion by 2011, other estimates have been as high as $14 and $20 billion.

Source: GoogleBlog

Forrester Predicts Interactive Will Drive Ad Growth

This summary describing the latest Forrester research report, US Interactive Marketing Forecast, 2007 to 2012, has a lot of good news for interactive. For one thing, it concludes all marketing will become interactive over the next five years. Then it says no single channel will dominate.

If you've been following the TNS Media Intelligence reports, you can see evidence of erosion in the traditional media ad spend over the past year. The latest report shows the U.S. ad spend for newspapers, radio, and broadcast TV declining and the Internet spend increasing 17.7 percent to $5.52 billion for the first six months of 2007. In my mind, this rather supports Forrester's contention that there's a shift toward interactive advertising.

The Forrester report says the interactive marketing spend will increase to $61 billion by 2012, and that technology advances in interactive will drive an emerging customer-centric model that demands integration of all marketing efforts for best results. This means less emphasis on media buying. Obviously, the social media phenom is contributing to the customer-centric focus.

Interactive to Drive Ad Growth

Forrester says four interactive areas will drive major growth: search marketing, online video ads, social media, and mobile marketing. As you know, all these areas intersect with SEM and SEO skills. With barriers between traditional and interactive coming down, Forrester predicts a 27 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for the interactive marketing spend over the next five years. The report further states interactive accounts for 8 percent of all ad spending now, and this number will increase to 18 percent of total ad budgets in five years. Search marketing is slated to triple in five years. The search category is increasing at 26 percent CAGR and will reach $25 billion by 2012. All good news!

Google Algorithm and PageRank

You will be wasting your time reading about the current buzz regarding perceived changes in the Google algorithm October 2007.

Instead you should be paying attention to your server configuration, web site architecture, content development, page construction, competitor analysis and inbound link anatomy. Once you've got all of those bases properly covered, you can branch into social media optimization and direct link building.

Google established its fundamental business rules a long time ago, while Larry Page and Sergey Brin were attending Stanford University (developing Google as a research tool). Bloggers and businesses who claim to track, control or manipulate Google's algorithm are either disingenuous or unaware of the self-evident truths regarding its rules.

Google Webmaster Tools Update

Google's recent update to Google Webmaster Tools gives Webmasters and SEOs a way to manage Google Sitelinks. From now on, top search queries in Webmaster Tools will present historical data and other enhancements.

Historical Data: You'll get up to 6 months of historical data. Before, you only got query stats for the last 7 days. Now, you get query-stats snapshots that range from the current date to 6 months ago. Time intervals for each snapshot are different:

• 7-day, 2 weeks and 3 weeks snapshots: Google reports top queries for the previous week.
• 1 to 6 month snapshots: Google reports statistics for the previous month.

Top Query Percentages: Look for a new column in the top query listings. Before, Google ranked only query results and clicks. Now, they show what percentage each query result or click represents out of the top 20 queries. Gives you a better idea of the extent to which one query ranks higher than another query.

Downloads: Google added a "download data" link to the Top Search Queries screen that let's Webmasters download all the historical stats in CSV format. A "download all stats" link includes all query stats historical data across all snapshots, search types, and languages for your site and subfolders for the last 7 days.

Google also reports the data in Webmaster Tools Top Search Queries are being updated constantly, resulting in improved data freshness. Expect your Top Search Query results and clicks to change rank more often, sometimes daily.

Webmasters can experiment with this new data and provide feedback in the Webmaster Help Group.

Source: Google Webmaster Blog

SMX Local/Mobile OCtober 1st and 2nd

Attend SMX Local & Mobile! October 1-2, Denver

Produced by the Search Engine Land editorial team, Search Marketing Expo (SMX) Local & Mobile covers the latest tips and techniques for local search. It's the only event 100 percent focused on the significant opportunity that the local and mobile space offers to search marketers. See the Agenda. Check out the Networking page. Register today!

Google Algorithm subject to search and siezure - Red Door teaches SearchMasters

Europe's antitrust authorities and regulators are questioning bread and butter products from U.S. companies they believe are illegally limiting competition and harming consumers, which means any restrictions on their business practices could have a severe impact on revenues.

Source: CNN Money

Will it open the SEO door and push Google into revealing how its top-secret search algorithm prioritizes web pages? Attend Red Door Interactive's SearchMasters event to learn everything you need to know about the technical and editorial factors hindering large and midsized corporate Web site natural search results.

Source: Red Door Interactive SearchMasters

SEO Expert?

Well, Rick...here it is!

SEO Dark Lord - 100%

Are you an SEO Expert?

Synergistic Relationship Between Search and Offline Channels

A new study by JupiterResearch, "iProspect Offline Channel Influence on Online Search Behavior Study," shows 67 percent of online searchers are driven to search results pages by offline channels. Additionally, 39 percent of the online searchers influenced by offline channels will ultimately make a purchase. The study shows a synergistic relationship between search and offline channels.

This study also shows the efficacy of search is enhanced when search campaigns are combined with offline channels. Smart marketers will integrate online marketing campaigns with offline channels.

The offline channels that influence online search users include TV and word of mouth, which influence over one-third of online search users to perform a search. Other offline channels influencing online searches include magazine/newspaper ads, company store location, radio ads, billboards, and company name/ad on vehicle.

Daily online search users are more influenced to perform online searches based on exposure to offline channels than less-frequent searchers, and these frequent searchers are more influence by branded keywords than non-branded terms.

One of the most significant finding of this study is: "Over one-third of online search users who perform a search as a result of exposure to some offline channel recall making a purchase (via any channel) as a result of that search."

Since survey respondents across all age, income, and online tenure ranges reported searching has become more important as an online activity over the past year, it is critical for businesses to ensure their Web sites are finable by these searchers.

Source: iProspect

comScore report

Q2 E-Commerce Sales Up 23 Percent Over Last Year

comScore reports total U.S. e-commerce spending for Q2 increased 19 percent over the same period last year. When you take the travel figures out of the equation to calculate pure e-tail, Q2 spending amounted to $27.2 billion in Q2, a 23 percent increase over last year.

Of the total U.S. online e-commerce sales of $170.8 billion last year, non-travel consumer spending accounted for $102.1 billion (travel spending accounted for $68.8 billion). Based on performance so far, total U.S. online consumer spending will surpass $200 billion in 2007.

Online Sales Explode for Video Games

comScore broke some of the sales figures down by category. The top-gaining category was video games, consoles, and accessories with a 159 percent gain due to the healthy sales of Nintendo Wii and PlayStation 3. Sport and fitness was up 58 percent, followed by consumer electronics (up 51 percent) and event tickets (up 44 percent).

Source: comScore for major companies valuing real research rigor.

Click Fraud Rate Goes Over 15 Percent

Click Forensics' Click Fraud Index shows a 15.8 percent overall industry average click fraud rate for Q2 2007. Reasons given for the rise is the increase in botnet traffic, parked domains and made-for-ad (MFA) sites. The click fraud rate for contextual advertising in the content networks hit 25.6 percent.

Click Forensics monitors and reports on data gathered from its Click Fraud Network of over 4,000 online advertisers and agencies. The data is collected from online advertising campaigns for large and small companies.

Among key findings:
The current click fraud rate of 15.8 percent went up from 14.1 percent in Q2 2006 and 14,8 percent in Q1 2007. In contextual advertising (Google AdSense and Yahoo Publisher Network), the click fraud rate was 25.6 percent in Q2 2007, an increase from 21.9 percent in Q1 2007 and 19.2 percent in Q4 2006.

Traffic from botnets doubled from Q1 to Q2 2007, significantly increasing click fraud rates.

The countries originating the greatest percentage of click fraud outside North America were: France (5.1 percent), China (3.2 percent) and Australia (3 percent) in Q2 2007.

Unfortunately, botnet activity is on the rise, with botnets participating in a variety of online fraud activities besides click fraud, including spam activities, identity theft, denial of service attacks, phishing, and spyware distribution. The FBI says such botnets have infiltrated over 1 million U.S. computers. The degree of sophistication makes it difficult for search engines to identify click fraud originating from botnets since they don't leave any tracks.

It should be noted that Google and other major search engines take issue with the Click Fraud Index, claiming a much lower click fraud rate.

Source: Business Wire

Additional information: Forbes

comScore U.S. Search Engine Rankings for June

The monthly comScore numbers from monitoring user activity across major search engines indicate that Google is still top dog in June with 49.5 percent of the U.S. search market. Yahoo! remains in second place with 25.1 percent of U.S. searches, followed by Microsoft Live at 13.2 percent, Ask at 5.0 percent, and AOL Time Warner at 4.2 percent.

U.S. users conducted 8 billion online searches in June, up 6 percent from May and up 26 percent over June 2006.

Google got 4 billion search queries in June, followed by Yahoo! with 2 billion, Microsoft with 1.1 billion, Ask with 403 million, and AOL with 241 million. Despite declining in search market share in June, both Google and Yahoo! enjoyed an increase in search query volume.

Microsoft was the only engine that experienced an increase in search query volume (up 36 percent) and search market share (up 2.9 percentage points) in June, due to the Live Search Club, a program launched in late May to engage and reward users of Live Search.

The table below shows Share of Online Searches by Engine. As you can see, Google is ahead although it lost 1.2 percentage points since May. Yahoo is second and lost 1.3 percent share, Microsoft gained a hefty 2.9 percent; Ask stayed even, and AOL lost 0.4 percent.

Source: comScore

Searchnomics 2007

Bill Tancer: Keynote - Hitwise (1M sites in 172 industry categories – 1200 clients World Wide)

Essential data:

1) There are 1,753 search engines; the top 3 engines account for 79% of visits.
2) Top 20 Google properties; Google 68.72%, YouTube 12.55%, Image Search 7.02%, Google Base growing
3) Universal Search growing; Google Maps is the winner; looser is Google News
4) % clickstream from Google to eBay; eBay shut down sponsored listings = only a slight drop in eBay traffic
5) www.ilovedata.com is Hitwise blog for more information
6) search terms driving traffic to eBay; top 100, 24 are generic, top 5 are brand related
7) search term data; iPhone volume up May 26 thru June 23, surpasses iTunes

James Lamberti: Keynote - comScore (digital intelligence company with 2M customers)

Essential data:

1) Head marketers: investment banks, telephone carriers, interactive agencies...
2) Large gap between utilization and monetization of the Web.
3) Ecosystem of Search is isolated
4) Online sales measurement; links to offline sales (media mix model...where is search)
5) Motivation of Search; immediate (carpet stain - transactional), temporary (buying a home - advice), permanent (computer issues - research)
6) Engage the creative
7) Direct search 17% (purchase online), 63% offline, 20% latent online
8) 31% consumers delete cookies (understaing search results if not adjusting for this)
9) Sales Impact: $1.00 online, $1.20 Latent, .40 Cookie, $4.00 Offline
10) Integrate Search into all media; search experience w/o ads and w/ ads
11) Testing Search w/ Image campaign; Search w/ Display = highest effectiveness
12) www.atlassolutions.com white paper
13) It's all about PEOPLE, not words and clicks
14) Search is a "reach vehicle"; pampers reaching new mothers, buyers finding homes
15) If you're good with TV, Print and Image; you will drive people to Search - Search will wrap-around

Melanie Mitchell: Keynote - AOL (building in-house search)

Essential data:

1) Company and organization must be aligned around Search
2) Technical and organizational challenges
3) Why change the culture; 8% of AOL pages indexed in search engines
4) Requires CEO; show ROI, prove your point, sound financial investment
5) Look at rankings opportunities, quality of search (45% CTR for #1, 19% for #2, 9% for #3)
6) Look at revenue with and w/o search; change requires accountability on managers
7) Create core team:SME's System Architect, Tech Lead, Front-liners, Program Manager, Project Manager.
8) Set priorities, goals (referrals etc.) and incentives (reviews, bonus).
9) Training; internal certification program
10) Set internal standards; linking, keyword, titles, meta.
11) Provide tools; keyword and link analysis, internal wiki, etc.
12) Measure, track, adjust; pages indexed, referrals, behavior.
13) Dashboard; search referrals, progress, 20-30% from organic search
14) Paid Search; avoid in-fighting - remove budget silos (centralize one search budget)
15) Strategy; what are priorities, search inventory, where is highest ROI
16) Economic; cross-compete (Jessica Simpson) - marketing matrix
17) Growth potential in traffic; what is it, crowded field, revenue targets, monetization model, value of a visit.
18) Value of pages views, pages required, network allocation (gaps), fill with paid search, adjust goals.
19) Pageviews; CPM cost, gross rev, add'l rev, total rev, cost = ROI
20) Bid & Adjust

Signals and Classifiers

The following is an excerpt from The New York Times article written by Saul Hansell...

****

Google recently developed a new system that can hold far more data and search through it far faster than the company could before.

This involves more than 200 types of information, or what Google calls “signals.” PageRank is but one signal. Some signals are on Web pages — like words, links, images and so on. Some are drawn from the history of how pages have changed over time. Some signals are data patterns uncovered in the trillions of searches that Google has handled over the years.

“The data we have is pushing the state of the art,” Mr. Singhal says. “We see all the links going to a page, how the content is changing on the page over time.”

Once Google corrals its myriad signals, it feeds them into formulas it calls classifiers that try to infer useful information about the type of search, in order to send the user to the most helpful pages. Classifiers can tell, for example, whether someone is searching for a product to buy, or for information about a place, a company or a person. Google recently developed a new classifier to identify names of people who aren’t famous. Another identifies brand names.

These signals and classifiers calculate several key measures of a page’s relevance, including one it calls “topicality” — a measure of how the topic of a page relates to the broad category of the user’s query. A page about President Bush’s speech about Darfur last week at the White House, for example, would rank high in topicality for “Darfur,” less so for “George Bush” and even less for “White House.” Google combines all these measures into a final relevancy score.

The sites with the 10 highest scores win the coveted spots on the first search page, unless a final check shows that there is not enough “diversity” in the results. “If you have a lot of different perspectives on one page, often that is more helpful than if the page is dominated by one perspective,” Mr. Cutts says. “If someone types a product, for example, maybe you want a blog review of it, a manufacturer’s page, a place to buy it or a comparison shopping site.”

****

Source: New York Times

my point below is that on March 13 2003 Google said "pages will be less visible as they fall down further in the search engine's results list."

it is 4 years later and nothing has changed.

Big Brother e.g., Google is here

Google Satire?

Go to Google and type in the search for - french military victories. You will be prompted with "Did you mean French military defeats?" Take note of the page you are actually on...it's not a Google result page; you've landed on http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/text/victories.html which "appears" to be a Google result page.

This implies either of two things; 1) Google is having fun with the French, or 2) Someone has hacked into Google. I believe it is Google having fun. Click on the link "Did you mean French military defeats?" and you will be taken to /france.html page; a list of the wars engaged by the French military over the past thousand years or so.

The list would infer that the French are military incompetents.

I wonder what other little tricks (or humor) Big Brother Google has planned for us in the future?

Universal Search and SEO

Google’s universal search algorithm, along with its move toward personalization, is changing the search engine shelf-space. The intent in initiating these changes is to improve the user experience by serving more relevant results. Granted, Google likely tested this with user groups before launching; some veteran searchers I spoke with claim, "Universal Search is a nuisance and distraction, I was already getting too many result options, now they are dumping too much data in front of me."

Universal Search: The vertical databases, which were maintained separately, will now be included with web searches. They can still be accessed separately by clicking on the links that are currently located in the upper left corner on the Google home page (but were previously available above the search box).

Depending on the query, the new universal search algorithm will result in knocking off 1 of the 10 links on the SERPs to make room for a vertical link, if the vertical link is relevant to the query.

Implication for organic listings and SEO: Multiple search services are no longer an option, they are a requirement. It is important to ensure clients are entered into all the possible niche databases and search services to improve favorable organic rankings. Organic best practices will continue to be standard protocol.

Organic best practices have shifted over the years as search engines evolve to meet user needs. When search engine optimization first started, SEO was predominantly made up of spammers; practitioners focused on manipulating robots with IP redirects. Then Google attempted to shut down cloakers and came out with PageRank, and manipulation has shifted to inbound links. The current and more professional approach is to focus on organic best practices, user behavior and verticals. Vertical search is a largely misunderstood niche by many verticals and will go through several years of adaptation and competitive positioning.

Google’s move toward personalization and universal search may improve relevancy for users who are reportedly dissatisfied with general search relevancy. The 2006 Outsell study reported an average Internet search failure rate of 31.9 percent, and other research has reinforced these findings. We will wait to see.

More importantly, this is a great tactical move for Google because other search engines face a tremendous challenge in indexing increasingly larger amounts of information, while protecting their algorithms against gaming and spammers.

Organic best practices will be paying more attention to user intent and the social aspect of search, which only makes the field or organic search more interesting and broad in scope. This is nothing new for professional organic search experts as this landscape has been morphing ever since it started with Infoseek back in the late 90's.

Google Searches

65 Percent of All US Searches in April

Hitwise reports that Google’s search market share went up 11 percent year-over year. The actual figures show that Google accounted for 65.26 percent of all US searches for the four weeks ending April 28, 2007.

Yahoo, Live Search and Ask accounted for the following percentages: 20.73, 8.46 and 3.69 respectively. The other 47 search engines in the Hitwise analysis accounted for 1.86 percent of US searches. Guess it’s now the top 4 rather than top 5, with AOL out of the running.

Google dominates traffic provided to key industries as search engines continue to be the primary source for users to navigate key industry categories.

Comparing April 2007 to April 2006, the Travel, Entertainment, and Business & Finance categories got more than double digit increases in their share of traffic coming directly from search engines.

Percent of Category Traffic from Search Engines

Health and Medical 44.58%
Travel 31.34%
Shopping and Classifieds 25.37%
News and Media 20.21%
Entertainment 20.65%
Business and Finance 16.09%

All figures are based on US data from the Hitwise sample of 10 million Internet users.
Source: Hitwise

SEM/SEO Training

A study conducted by Latitude Group, a UK-based SEM firm, states there is a “search gap” between US and UK firms as far as SEM penetration levels are concerned, with the UK far outperforming the US.

The paper suggests this is due to the fact that in the UK, SEM agencies handle the bulk of SEM campaigns, whereas in the US, the majority of SEM campaigns are handled in-house. This makes SEM less efficient in the US, to the detriment of search engine coffers.

The paper actually states that US search engines would have earned $11 billion more in 2006 if SEM were conducted more efficiently. To quote from the study, "The US has a much higher proportion of in-house search marketers, who tend to be less innovative and do not operate search as effectively as search agencies, slowing the flow of funds from other media."

This points to the fact that large companies conducting search marketing campaigns in-house need to avail themselves of in-house SEO/SEM training to achieve better results. The alternative is to outsource their search functions to interactive ad agencies or SEM firms for better results.

You can download the white paper

Source: SearchEngineLand

Click Quality Council

The newly formed Click Quality Council, an industry group consisting of online advertisers, ad agencies and click quality monitoring firms, just proposed eight quality principles to ensure industry-wide click quality.

These principles have emerged after six months’ work by members of an ad-hoc group focused on identifying the key elements needed to deliver adequate quality in pay-per-click advertising. The group’s mission is to propose and help establish standards for search advertising quality.

The principles are:

· Advertisers should never pay for double clicks or repeat clicks from the same session.

· Advertisers should never pay for traffic from bots.

· Advertisers should have control over where, when and to whom ads are distributed.

· Domain and IP exclusion lists from search providers should be easy to use and maintain.

· Search providers should provide advertisers detailed referrer information on all traffic that is billed.

· Advertisers should never pay for traffic originating outside the specified geo-targeted settings.

· Search engines should adopt third-party validation for click quality as other media companies have done for their audience validation.

· Search providers should provide an easy mechanism to reconcile paid clicks on a monthly basis.

Click here for more information on the eight principles to ensure click quality (pdf). Additionally, a video is available on the Click Quality Council web site.

For more information about the Click Quality Council, or to become a member, email info@clickqualitycouncil.org.

Sergey Brin said...

Google Profits Soar Beyond Expectations

Thanks to pay-per-click, Google reported another billion in quarterly profits. Google put another $1,002,000,000 into its coffers for Q1, 2007, the second time it hit the billion dollar profit mark.

Going beyond Wall Street expectations, Google has defied analyst predictions of slow growth for search engine advertising. Google’s Q1 income shot up 69 percent ($3.18 per share) compared to $59.3 million ($1.95 per share) for Q1 2006.

Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt said, “We are ecstatic about our financial results this past quarter. Our core business at Google remains very strong and continues to grow.”

Co-founder and president Sergey Brin said, “That’s fundamentally our vision, that we can make advertising better for everyone.” That sounds a lot different than Google’s mission “to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

Source: BizJournals

Google Searches for March Differ

ComScore Google Searches for March Differ From Hitwise

We reported Hitwise numbers the other day, saying that Google got 64 percent of U.S. searches in March. Now comScore reports that Google captured 48.3 percent of the U.S. searches in March, a slight gain (0.2 percent) from the previous month. Yahoo follows with 27.5 percent, then Microsoft (10.9 percent), Ask (5.2 percent) and Time Warner (5.0 percent).

ComScore reports U.S. users conducted 7.3 billion searches in March, up 6 percent from February and 14 percent from a year ago March.

Google leads with 3.5 billion search queries performed, followed by Yahoo (2.0 billion), Microsoft (798 million), Ask (379 million), and Time Warner (368 million).

Source: comScore

Sitemaps Support

Ask Joins Google, Yahoo and Microsoft in Sitemaps Support

You’ll recall that Google, Yahoo and Microsoft started supporting the Sitemaps protocol late last year, and now Ask is also supporting the system. Sitemaps standardizes the submission of web pages to search engines through feeds. All four search engines made this announcement at Search Engine Strategies New York.

The sitemaps protocol allows webmasters to create an XML file that tells search engine spiders which pages are important within the site. This can include meta data such as the date of last updates. Sitemaps also makes the indexing of dynamic pages easier.

The four search engines will start supporting auto-discovery of a sitemap through a line of code in the site’s robots.txt file. They will also continue to accept sitemap submissions by webmasters. Google, Yahoo and Ask will implement auto-discovery immediately, and Microsoft will do it some time this year.
Today’s webmasters have more control with Sitemaps and other programs like Google Webmaster Central and Yahoo Site Explorer. These programs provide tools to help webmasters influence the way their sites are indexed by search engines.

Source: SearchEngineLand

Google Gets 64 Percent

Hitwise reports that Google’s market share jumped 10 percent year-over-year in March.

With Google accounting for 64 percent of all US searches for March, that left 22 percent for Yahoo, 9 percent for Microsoft Live Search and 3 percent for Ask. The remaining 5 percent belongs to 48 other search engines.

Percentage of US Searches Among Leading Search Providers

Search Provider Mar-07 Feb-07 Mar-06
Google 64.13% 63.90% 58.33%
Yahoo 21.26% 21.47% 22.30%
(MSN) 9.15%* 9.30%* 13.09%
Ask 3.48% 3.52% 3.99%

Data based on four week rolling periods (ending 3/31/07; 2/24/07; 4/1/2006) from a sample of 10 million US Internet users.

Source: Hitwise

There’s no stopping Google as it becomes the major source of traffic to key industries.
Search is the primary vehicle Internet users take to key industry categories, as shown in the Hitwise chart below. Over the past year, the Travel, News & Media, and Business & Finance categories received double-digit increases in direct traffic coming from search engines.

See: Hitwise

Retailers Count on Search to Drive Sales

A new study by Internet Retailer shows retail sites will be investing more on organic SEO and paid search. Major findings include:

Search engine marketing drives over 50 percent of sales for 30.2 percent of the survey respondents. This amounts to about 80 retailers out of a total sample of 245. The 50 percent figure coincides with earlier studies.

You won’t see any reductions in paid search advertising as 82.8 percent of respondents said they would not reduce overall PPC spending this year.

57.4 percent of respondents said search engine marketing performs better, or somewhat better, than other marketing media, including email, affiliate marketing and direct mail. Only 12.7 percent said it performs worse.

While more retailers prefer PPC to SEO for driving traffic (39.2 percent), another 34.7 percent indicated a preference for SEO over PPC. A savvy 26.1 percent use both SEO and PPC equally.
Retailers believe SEO delivers better conversions (46.1 percent), while a lesser number (37.3 percent) believe PPC is better, and 16.6 percent think SEO and PPC perform equally well.
Organic SEO

Optimizing their SEO campaigns is a high priority for most retailers. One reason is the rising cost of PPC. Retailers will improve their natural rankings on Google, Yahoo and other search engines as follows:

· 80.9 percent plan to rewrite keyword descriptions on the home page and product pages to achieve higher rankings.

· 67.9 percent will include the actual phrases commonly used in search queries on product pages.

· 58.1 percent will include common product keywords in image file names and in image display captions.

· 61.8 percent plan to improve overall site navigation.

This makes sense since 70 percent of traffic is generated by organic links while the other 30 percent comes from PPC traffic.

Paid Search

Most retailers will spend more rather than less on paid search.

· 58.5 percent will spend more on paid search this year

· 32.8 percent will stick to current budgets.

· 8.7 percent will cut back.

What search engines deliver the best ROI?

· 79 percent said Google produces the best ROI.

· 13 percent prefer Yahoo.

· 4 percent like Microsoft Live Search

· 2 percent count on AOL.

Source: Internet Retailer

U.S. Search Engine Rankings

comScore’s monthly qSearch analysis for February shows Google Sites with 48.1 percent of the U.S. search market, a slight increase of 0.6 points from January. Yahoo Sites maintained second place with 28.1 percent of searches, followed by Microsoft Sites (10.5 percent), Ask Network (5.0 percent) and Time Warner Network (4.9 percent).

U.S. users conducted 6.9 billion searches in February, up 1 percentage point from January and 19 points from last February.

Google led as usual with 3.3 billion search queries in February. Yahoo received 2 billion queries, followed by Microsoft (730 million), Ask (348 million), and Time Warner (338 million).

Source: comScore

Non-U.S. Users Account for 80% of Global Online Population

comScore reports that global Internet users totaled 747 million adults in January 2007, representing a 10 percent increase over January 2006.

The highest penetration is concentrated in 15 countries, with India, the Russian Federation and China showing the largest increases in 2006 (33%, 21% and 20% respectively). While the U.S. has the largest Internet population in the world (153.4 million adult users), China is second with 86.8 million users.

comScore Europe Managing Director Bob Ivins notes, “Internet users outside the U.S. now account for 80 percent of the world’s online population, with rapidly developing countries experiencing double-digit growth rates year-over-year.”

comScore also measured engagement by analyzing the average hours online per visitor in the top ten countries during January 2007. Canada led the list, where the average user spends 39.6 hours online per month (41.3 hrs for broadband users). The top five also included Israel, South Korea, the U.S. and the U.K. All these countries have high broadband penetration.

Source: comScore

New Advertising Ecosystem

Piper Jaffray’s report, The User Revolution, The New Advertising Ecosystem - Rise of the Internet as a Mass Medium, is 425 pages and worth a read. Greg Jarobe’s comments on Search Engine Watch give a good description of 6 the 12 key findings, described as:

The User Revolution
Communitainment
The Internet Is Mainstream
Media Fragmentation
The Golden Search
Video Ads Could Drive the Next Wave

Jarobe encourages you to read the full report. I haven’t digested it completely yet but printed out Chapter 13, Advertising Services and Technologies. It starts off by explaining the shift in the role of technology and services in the advertising world, and then digs right into search with key themes.

Key trends in Search Engine Marketing:

Robust search ad spend driving strong SEM growth
Increasing search complexity
Integration of SEM campaigns
Click fraud

BTW, Red Door Interactive was listed in Jaffray’s 2005 Top 20 Search Engine Marketing and Optimization Companies on page 267 of the report.

Key trends in Web Analytics:

Expansion beyond core analytics
Migration to more customized and robust analytics
Multi-channel analytics and distribution
Benefiting from growth of online advertising and ecommerce

Key trends in Ad Serving:

Move toward integrated platform
Video ad serving gaining traction
New interactive forms of ad serving
Optimization technologies increasingly important

Download full report here:

Piper Library

Online Ads Outpace Print

Kelsey Group reports that advertising in online directories (Internet Yellow Pages, mobile directories and local search) is expected to increase 22.3 percent every year over the next five years, reaching over $11.1 billion by 2011. The 2006 online directory advertising revenues totaled $4.1 billion.

Offline print directories, on the other hand, are expected to grow at the much lower rate of 0.9 percent annually over the next five years. Advertising in traditional directories is projected to increase from $26.5 billion in 2006 to $27.8 billion in 2011.

As consumers and B2B buyers increasingly use the web for product research and purchasing, small and medium sized businesses are switching to targeted, vertical electronic directories. Currently, however, most SMEs are using traditional print directories.

The Kelsey Group states that local search ads will grow 23.2 percent annually, from $922 million in 2006 to $2.6 billion by 2010. A healthy annual growth rate of 29.9 percent is also predicted for Internet Yellow Pages, where revenues will reach $2.3 billion in 2011. The 2006 Yellow Pages advertising revenues totaled $624 million.

Source: Kelsey Group

Retail Ecommerce Thrives on the Web

Emarketer came out with a report showing that retail ecommerce sales for Q4 2006 exceeded expectations by increasing 25 percent over the same quarter in 2005. This was the biggest jump in Q4 sales since 2002 and indicates that Internet retail is getting hotter.

The estimate for total ecommerce sales for 2006 was $108.7 billion. This represents an increase of 23.5 percent over 2005. Overall retail in 2006 increased 5.8 percent over 2005. However, ecommerce accounted for a mere 2.8 percent of total retail in 2006. While ecommerce has always been a fraction of overall retail sales, the increasing growth rate shows that a lot of offline retailers would do well to put up a web site.

How Big is the Web?

Can you believe we’re probably up to 30 billion web pages? This is a far cry from the 700 million sites reported in 2000 and the estimated 11.5 billion pages in January 2005.

Google stopped reporting the number of web pages indexed after 8 billion. Yahoo boasted over 19.2 billion documents in 2005. I don’t know how accurate the 30 billion pages is, but the Pandia article, The Size of the World Wide Web, referenced below is an interesting read.

Note that Internet World Stats show 1,093,529,692 Internet users as of January 11, 2007.

Ecommerce researchers from Plunkett Research report the following stats:

· Of the 300 million people in the U.S., about 50 percent currently use the Internet

· Approximately 50 million American businesses and households now access the web with broadband connections

· About 75 percent of American adults regularly surf the web

Source: Pandia Search Engine News News on Internet searching and search engine ranking.

Source: eMarketer Market Research on E-Business and Online Marketing.

Google Gets Largest Share of January US Searches

ComScore Networks’ qSearch analysis of search engine activity shows that Google Sites got 47.5 percent of US searches in January, a slight gain for Google over the previous month. Yahoo is still in second place with 28.1 percent of US searches. Microsoft is third at 10.6 percent, Ask follows with 5.2 percent, and Time Warner captured 5.0 percent of US searches. Not much changed from December to January in search market share, as shown in the table below.

Share of Online Searches January 2007 comScore qSearch

Google Sites 47.5
Yahoo Sites 28.1
Microsoft Sites 10.6
Ask Network 5.2
Time Warner Network 5.0

Total US searches came to 6.9 billion in January, a 2 percent increase over December 2006. Search query volume continues to increase year-over-year with a 26 percent increase from January 2006 to January 2007.

Google was the clear winner with 3.3 billion search queries performed in January, followed by Yahoo with 1.9 billion, Microsoft with 733 million, Ask with 361 million, and Time Warner with 342 million.

Source: comScore

SES London - Matt Cutts

SES London Keynote Matt Cutts interviewed by Chris Sherman...the essentials:

Sherman asked: "If you could boil down to one thing, what is the single best way to improve a site?"

Cutts enthused about Google's new Webmaster Console, the latest iteration of the webmaster relations tool that began life as Sitemaps. "It will alert you to 404 errors, page load slowness, some spam penalties, and integrates application for reinclusion, so it's now a wonderful one-stop shop." Gesturing towards the hallway he saluted Vanessa Fox and her team for building and improving the tools; the crowd applauded appreciatively.

A key feature of the new console is a full backlinks list, something Google plans to develop and improve steadily.

Source: SearchEngineWatch
2007: A Search Odyssey? Keynote Conversation with Matt Cutts
By Andrew Goodman,
February 21, 2007

Google CPC Site Targeting Beta

Google is going to be testing a new beta for advertisers who prefer cost-per-click (CPC) site-targeted campaigns. Up till now, Google only provided cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM) bidding for site-targeted campaigns.

In March, Google plans to test CPC bidding as a new site targeting feature, giving advertisers more flexibility and control of their site-targeted campaigns

CPC bidding is being introduced because it’s a feature often requested by advertisers who are uncomfortable with CPM bidding. The benefits of CPC bidding are shown below:

· Increased flexibility. Select the content network sites you want your ads to appear on and choose the bidding option that fits your needs. If you prefer clicks, try CPC bidding to pay only when users click to your site. If you prefer CPM, you still have that option.

· Increased control. You can create a new CPC site-targeted campaign, or switch your existing campaigns between CPC and CPM at any time. In either case, you always have control over budgets and bids.

If you're a U.S. AdWords advertiser and are interested in participating in the CPC site targeting beta, you can fill out a short web form here. Google advises that not all applicants will be selected for the beta. If you are selected as a beta participant, Google will contact you within the next two weeks.

Source: SearchEngineWatch Blog

Google Eyes In-Game Advertising Market

After a bit of rumor and speculation, Google entered into an agreement to purchase Adscape Media for $23 million. The deal is signed but not yet closed. This would enable Google to compete with Microsoft in the in-game advertisin