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February 25, 2007 - March 3, 2007

March 2, 2007

Search Headlines & Links: Mar. 2, 2007

Want a snapshot of the day's search marketing news? Here we've collected today's top news stories posted to the Search Engine Watch Blog, along with search-related headlines from around the Web:

From the SEW Blog:

Headlines & News from Elsewhere:

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 11:52 PM | Permalink

Consumer Mags Are Waking Up

Consumer magazines are finally waking up and extending their brands online. This past week, the Magazine Publishers of America supported online progress through its first-ever Digital Awards. Why are the largest magazine groups focused on digital initiatives right now?

The Challenges:

Publishers began watching community sites which attracted their targeted audiences, and also found their own readers interested in unique online content and social functionality. They've been left behind, while their readers are discovering completely new ways to find and share their specific interests online.

Also the magazine business isn't growing much. Publishers are seeking higher growth advertising opportunities online, while adjusting their expectations for print-based advertising and subscriptions. Some are already testing the waters and finding much higher profitability percentages in the incremental online revenue they are generating.

The consumer mags are fighting an uphill battle. When they go online, magazines are not wielding the same clout because other players have been reaching their targeted audiences for a while. Most of these well-known brands haven't found traffic or achieved the revenues they hoped for…yet. Let's look at what they're doing to grow their communities online these days, to attract and keep visitors.

Leaving Web 1.0:

At first, magazines created virtually identical online editions. Peter Meirs, director of alternative media technologies at Time, states the failure: “I believe there is a small core audience for digital magazines but the present model – digital facsimiles that meet the formatting rules for ABC and BPA – does not resonate with most readers.” Time still uses plenty of text content, and looks towards video as its next “must-have,” per Time's Betsy Frank.

Martha Stewart Living's president and CEO, Susan Lyne, is re-thinking their whole online strategy. In Mediaweek, she said they made early mistakes in taking the magazine directly online without adding anything else. She said all magazines are asking, “What is it that's different about this medium and what can it do that's different?” Lyne believes the answer lies in community features.

Digital Adoption Details:

The Bivens Group conducted a study to see what the Top 50 most circulated magazines are actually doing online. Overall the site content is limited, and continues to be focused on driving print subscriptions. While some digital functionality is getting used by these bigger players, they are far from early adopters:

* RSS feeds – 48%
* Message boards/forums – 46%
* Registration required – 38%
* One reporter blog or more – 40%
* Video offering – 34%
* Podcasts – 14%
* Bookmarking – 14%
* Article comments – 8%
* Tags – 6%

New Business Goals:

In Folio, Matt Kinsman reports that “More consumer publishers are closing their magazines in favor of Web sites...but just how committed are they to an Internet strategy?” Some examples include brand extensions Ellegirl.com and TeenPeople.com, as well as FHMOnline.com for men. All have left their print roots behind.

Last year, Folio surveyed consumer magazine CEOs and most absolute revenue growth is expected from print editions. In particular, 77% of smaller publishers (under $10 million) and 57% of larger publishers (over $10 million) rely on the traditional advertising and subscription sources.

Yet publishers are shifting and investing more in their online efforts, intending to build up their internet-based revenue component over time.

Marta Wohrle, vice president of Hachette's digital media, gets the big picture: “We've done five-year plans for every brand online and we think we can get 20 percent of our income from online/mobile company-wide. In terms of profitability, the proportions should be much higher, possibly 40 to 60 percent. Overall it's going to be a smaller business but the margins overall may continue to be much, much higher.”

The magazine publishers are playing catch-up but are showing their intentions. It's significant that their MPA trade group, which typically champions magazine print advertising over internet advertising, has made a clarion call. Let's see how the magazines follow though.

Posted by on 7:45 PM | Permalink

Using MoLo to find a Mocha

Starbucks is often the first example used when someone tries to explain the benefits (or detriments, depending on your outlook) of location based services. "You'll be walking by a Starbucks, and get hit with a promotion for coffee on your mobile device," the story often goes.

There has been widespread agreement that this scenario will never happen and that location based services will only work with an opt in model, hence the increased discussion over Mobile Local Search (MoLo). SMS (texting) is currently the most widespread form of MoLo, however many more are in experimentation phases and are patiently waiting for greater mobile search and smart phone adoption.

Well it seems that Starbucks - never having cooled off from the excitement over the possibility of push based mobile advertising - has gotten tired of waiting and has launched its own SMS based mobile search product. Like Google SMS and Yahoo! Mobile, any text enabled mobile device (basically every phone on the market) can send a search query to a five digit number that returns locations of nearby results.

In Starbucks' case this means sending your zip code to "MYSBUX" (a curious combination of letters if you glance over it quickly) to receive a text message back that has the locations of the nearest 3 Starbucks. CNET blogger Caroline McCarthy points out that this is only good if you know what zip code you're in, which isn't usually the case for travelers. Those that can find out their zip code will likely have GPS, and would thus have a more robust platform on which to find Starbucks.

Similarly, if you know what zip code you're in, you might already know where the closest Starbucks is. In any case, this might be unnecessary in some urban areas where you can almost turn around and see three Starbucks from any given spot.

But it could actually catch on well in other areas among the legions of Starbucks faithfuls, given the sheer size of this population and the fact that we're talking about an addictive substance. If it does, it could also work towards the general awareness and greater adoption of SMS search and MoLo in general. We'll see.

Posted by Mike Boland on 6:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Personalization, SEO, and Web Marketing

Gord Hotchkiss recently interviewed Matt Cutts in a discussion that focused on personalization and the future of SEO. Kevin Newcomb also comments on this in Search Engine Watch. I also think that personalization will have a significant affect on SEO. I suspect that there will be many other methods implemented by Google to improve their results.

We need to bear in mind that they win (in fact, and search engine wins) by having the most relevant search results. More relevant search results equates to more search market share, and this equates to more advertising revenue. This means they will do everything they can to provide each user better search results, and personalization is a step in that direction.

It will indeed make things harder for people to implement weak content sites, and then use some linking scheme to get it ranked. Poor quality sites will be far more easily identified. Sites that offer a poor quality user experience will have trouble getting much traffic regardless of the linking scheme they may implement.

I don't believe that SEO is dead, but SEO in a vaccum will be dead at some point in the not too distant future. Smart SEOs have already begun moving towards a more holistic web marketing approach. One facet of this is the whole notion of Social Media Optimization, but there are other aspects including old fashioned PR and media relations.

This will be increasingly viewed as part of a bigger picture, that includes developing a matching content strategy. Your web marketing strategy will match up with a content plan with the needs of your prospective customers and your web promotional plan by necessity. It will be the best way to build your web business for the future. And I bet more and more SEOs will be calling themselves Web Marketers in the near future.

Posted by on 4:34 PM | Permalink

Google and the Site: Command Glitch

Is this worth a 4.0 on the SEO Richter scale? Probably not. Just a rumble really, but oh how nothing shakes up the SEM industry and gets SEOs chatting like a nice bug in Google search results. Bring up the topic of the Supplemental Index and duplicate content, the story gets even juicier.

As has just been confirmed by Google's Vanessa Fox, there is in fact, something amiss with the current "site:" command, which is currently being rectified 'as quickly as possible', and this is merely the result of display issue that which shouldn't have any impact on search queries or ranking. (Special thanks to Vanessa, for working with us on sorting out this issue and finding a solution so quickly!)

But let's dig deeper in into why this is such a big deal in the SEO world.

The "site:" command tells you how many of your sites' pages are indexed in Google. In Google's Webmaster Central, the official syntax is "site:domain.com", and many SEO experts look at this as a real number.

So when Google starts to suddenly return disparaging results for that command, it raises a red flag in the industry, and the conspiracy theories fly. For SEOs and webmasters, the questions that immediately come to mind are along these lines:

  • Is this the sign of a stronger "duplicate content" filter?
  • Does it mean I'm really in the Supplemental Index or possibly banned for life?
  • Did I mess up something on my site?

Probably nothing to raise your blood pressure over, but definitely this glitch is an anomaly in Google SERPs.

As is well documented here at SEW and other sites around the Web, typing "site:www.domain.com", "site: www.domain.com", or "site: domain.com" will return drastically different results. Note the differences when using a space after the colon, as well as when using the www vs. non-www version of a domain.

At SEW, we were alerted to this problem yesterday when the effervescent David Naylor posted that something was amiss with the results for SEW. The "site:" command site:searchenginewatch.com shows only 1 page, with "about 268" similar pages whose results are omitted.

Rest assured, at SEW, we do still have a vibrant pulse, and have not experienced any significant drops in traffic due to this problem. So, it's too early to plan a funeral. I am happy to report that traffic is normal at Search Engine Watch. In fact, it has actually been growing fairly steadily since January 1, and that deserves a post of its own.

As it turns out, Dave Naylor was not the first to discover this problem, as Danny Sullivan points out in his SEL post, Webmaster World has had a discussion going on this for almost a month now. Several large, authority sites, with total numbers of indexed pages reaching in the tens or hundreds of thousands were seeing this result as well.

Because of the strange coincidences in the number of results, Danny Sullivan does get credit for dubbing this "About 260" problem. However, that may not be an entirely correct title, because in some datacenters, the result is "about 359" for the same search. Try the searches among different browsers (Firefox/IE) and with personalized search on/off. While some are not dramatically different, they do still fall into the "About 260" category, other searches are up by at least 100 more results.

SEW blogger Eric Enge dug up similar examples of other authoritative sites exhibiting this problem:

Posted by Elisabeth Osmeloski on 2:44 PM | Permalink

Microsoft's Appeal to Hollywood

Microsoft is reaching out to Hollywood studios to offer their assistance on anti-piracy efforts for its MSN Soapbox video sharing platform, currently in beta. According to a memo intercepted by Variety, MSN media and entertainment VP Blair Westlake said Microsoft is developing "what we believe content owners want and need: industry-leading notice and takedown ... practices, including tools that enable our content partners to more easily find content that is rightfully theirs and give us prompt notice so we can respond even more efficiently and expeditiously."

Those practices will not include filtering technology, such as that being asked of Google's YouTube by Viacom, according to the memo.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 12:31 PM | Permalink

Cutts: The End is Near for Black Hat SEO

In an interview with Gord Hotchkiss published at Search Engine Land, Google's Matt Cutts all but sounds the death knell for black hat SEO, saying that the recent implementation of personalization of Google's search results should be seen as a "call to action" for SEOs that are focusing on reverse engineering search engine algorithms:

There's a fork in the road, and people can think hard about whether they're optimizing for users or whether they're optimizing primarily for search engines. And the sort of people who have been doing "new" SEO, or whatever you want to call it -- that's social media optimization, link bait, things that are interesting to people and attract word of mouth and buzz -- those sorts of sites naturally attract visitors, attract repeat visitors, attract backlinks, attract lots of discussion. Those sorts of sites are going to benefit as the world goes forward.

Cutts says that not all SEOs should worry, as long as their focus is on building good Web sites instead of trying to build sites to rank in a given algorithm:

I think the SEOs that adapt well to change and are optimizing for users are going to be in relatively good shape, because they're already trying to produce sites that are really pleasing and helpful to users. It's definitely the case that if all you care about is an algorithm, then the situation grows more complicated for you with personalization. But it's also an opportunity for people to take a fresh look at how they do SEO.

Hotchkiss also published a full transcript on his blog.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 11:43 AM | Permalink

More Search Engine Wishes

In his ClickZ column today, Kevin Lee continues his look at Search Engine Wish Lists, with requests for search engines for things that would help search advertisers. This week's list includes requests related to video ads (short pre- and post-roll video ads targeted against geography, daypart, user profile, or content channel), geotargeting (more accurate), campaign management (network opt-outs, campaign cloning), and some Yahoo-specific wishes (like merging its display and search ad sales and support teams).

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 11:27 AM | Permalink

A Look at Google Censorship

Philipp Lenssen of Google Blogoscoped has compiled the answers to several questions on Google's censorship activities. He's listed several reasons why Google may have removed results for reasons of politics or regulations, either to comply with local authorities or to enforce copyright laws. He also outlines how Google's policies are viewed by local users, the search industry, and others.

In deciding whether the practice is "evil," according to Google's "don't be evil" motto, Lenssen points to two schools of thought:

  1. Censoring may not be great but it's the lesser of two evils
  2. Censoring is evil so needs to be avoided at all circumstances

In either case, Lenssen argues that censorship matters: "Ideas have effects on lives, and removing access to the ideas (for you can't ever remove an idea itself), does have a very real effect on us."

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 11:15 AM | Permalink

Test of YouTube AdSense Unit Reveals Clickthroughs

You may have noticed Google is testing a new ad format, which features YouTube videos inside an AdSense unit, as noted by Forrester analyst Josh Bernoff earlier this week.

According to technology analyst Amit Agarwal, the units reveal clickthroughs for the ads via a bug in YouTube's "links" feature. Agarwal notes that the feature, which is intended to show how many sites are linking to a YouTube-hosted video clip, and the number of clicks coming from those sites. An unexpected side-effect of that feature exposes the number of clickthroughs the ad receives, by listing the site that hosts the ad unit in the links list, and showing the number of clicks send to the video.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 12:02 AM | Permalink

March 1, 2007

Search Headlines & Links: Mar. 1, 2007

Want a snapshot of the day's search marketing news? Here we've collected today's top news stories posted to the Search Engine Watch Blog, along with search-related headlines from around the Web:

From the SEW Blog:

Headlines & News from Elsewhere:

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 10:24 PM | Permalink

IBM's WebSphere to Support Google Gadgets

CRN reports that IBM is now opening WebSphere to Google Gadgets. One notable aspect of this is that this "could make Gadgets like Google Maps directions available to business users even when they're offline".

This move should enable a much broader use of Google Gadgets in enterprise environments that are traditionally resistant to the use of such applications because they present a security risk. IBM's implementation will manage the security issues, and the use of the gadgets can be audited and tracked.

Posted by on 6:14 PM | Permalink

John McCain and Hillary Clinton post on Yahoo Answers

Before announcing his presidential candidacy yesterday, Republican Senator John McCain asked Yahoo users, “What would you do to stop wasteful government spending in Washington?” on Yahoo Answers. John McCain is the second 2008 presidential hopeful to post on Yahoo Answers, following Democratic Senator Hillary Clinton, who posted her question just over a month ago, "Based on your own family's experience, what do you think we should do to improve health care in America?"

According to Hitwise data for January 2006, Yahoo Answers is the leading Q&A site on the Web. And John McCain's question has currently solicited over 15,000 answers with responses ranging from placing a limit on politicians' compensation and tenure, to changing rules for lobbyist endorsements and taking a closer look at immigration policy.

The presidential candidates join a list of more than 70 prominent figures that include Oprah Winfrey, Leonardo DiCaprio, Stephen Hawking, Al Gore, Bono, and Donald Trump who have posted questions around globally-pressing issues for the collective knowledge of the Yahoo Answers community to help solve. They see Yahoo's audience as a great way to build awareness for the causes that matter to them most.

Back in 1992, Ross Perot used CNN's "Larry King Live" to launch his presidential campaign as an Independent. Times change.

Posted by Greg Jarboe on 4:13 PM | Permalink

ReportLinker: Vertical Search Engine For Marketing Research

If you have looked for open access market research reports, then Reportlinker may be the answer.

The newly launched engine attempts to filter the results of regualr engines that are imapct by SEM efforts.

The engine addresses the problem of "how to quickly find and access relevant information using general public tools? General public tools promote merchant content, boosted by search marketing (SM) and search engine optimization (SEO) techniques, making relevant open access information more difficult to find," Digital50.com explained.

Unfortunately this is not a free service. Monthly subscriptions are 29.89 euros, according to information at the site. Though marketing reports can run a lot more than that, so this could be a fast and inexpensive way to pull research.

Posted by Frank Watson on 12:53 PM | Permalink

Citysearch to Acquire Insider Pages

IAC/InterActiveCorp, parent to Ask.com and Citysearch, announced plans to acquire reviews-based local search provider Insider Pages. IAC is not sharing the details, but TechCrunch puts the purchase price at $13 million, which should cover the $10 million VCs have invested in the company.

Insider Pages has been struggling to compete in the competitive local search space, and a sale had been rumored for some time, amidst layoffs and dwindling traffic.

Insider Pages has about 600,000 user reviews, which will be integrated into the Citysearch's offering, as well as 2.5 million monthly unique readers, based on Comscore and internal tracking numbers, according to VentureBeat.

IAC will retain the Insider Pages brand identity and positioning, using its reviews to strengthen and complement Citysearch. Insider Pages will move its current operations and team to Citysearch's San Francisco office.

More details in this ClickZ News story.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 11:17 AM | Permalink

Google Shares More Click Fraud Numbers

Invalid clicks on Google AdWords ads have consistently remained under the 10-percent mark, and are generally in low single-digits, Google revealed today. In addition, the amount of invalid clicks that are not proactively detected and are caught by advertisers is less than 0.02 percent, according to Google's Shuman Ghosemajumder.

Google advertisers have been clamoring for a hard number to put on click fraud for years, but Google has been unwilling to share specifics. The company has often said that revealing too much would make it easier for fraudsters to take advantage of the system, which has frustrated advertisers who want to know where their money is going.

This revelation is the latest in a series of moves designed to offer more transparency to advertisers, Ghosemajumder said. Google has come under fire from lawsuits, click fraud reporting firms, and advertisers in recent months, all looking for more granular details on the level of invalid clicks occurring in the AdWords system.

Google is also undertaking several more click fraud-related initiatives in coming months. Among these are IP Filtering capabilities for advertisers, enhanced invalid click reports, educational initiatives, and an improved reporting format. The first three initiatives are expected to roll out this month, while the improved reporting format will come later this year, he said.

We have more details in today's SearchDay.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 6:54 AM | Permalink

The Long Tail of Local Search

In his ClickZ column today, Brian Wool takes a look at how Long Tail economics are affecting local search:

"Without any real inventory costs, Internet businesses can use deeper catalogs to beat their brick-and-mortar counterparts on market share. On the Web, unlimited inventory allows obscure or less-popular online products to outshine hits in total sales volume," he writes.

Wool advises local businesses to take advantage of basics, like the free or low-cost services the search engines offer to post and update listings. He also suggests looking beyond the major search engines and IYPs to find niche local search sites like Kudzu, MojoPages.com, and Yellow Page City.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 6:14 AM | Permalink

February 28, 2007

Search Headlines & Links: Feb. 28, 2007

Want a snapshot of the day's search marketing news? Here we've collected today's top news stories posted to the Search Engine Watch Blog, along with search-related headlines from around the Web:

From the SEW Blog:

Headlines & News from Elsewhere:

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 10:52 PM | Permalink

Autobytel's MyRide.com: The Future of Automobile Search?

MyRide.com, set to debut during the second quarter of 2007, will offer consumers a comprehensive array of information related to "the automotive purchase and ownership lifecycle." Is the company that invented the automotive Internet now reinventing it? Greg Jarboe takes a look at what MyRide.com has to offer in today's SearchDay.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 10:46 PM | Permalink

Google Holds Testapalooza

Google held an in company conference this week, gathering techies from their various departments. They assembled "engineers from Testing, Development, User Experience, and other groups to submit conference sessions: tool presentations, tutorials, workshops, panels, and experience reports", the Google testing blog reported.

Testapalooza was a big sucess, they reported in the blog.

"The idea for Testapalooza came out of discussions about how to build a vibrant testing community here at Google. Many diverse groups work daily on quality-related activities, but each group uses different tools and has different ideas for testing an application, so it can be difficult to find out what others are doing. So we decided to put on a conference!"

"All Testapalooza sessions were video recorded (many were videoconferenced to other offices). We want to publish as many of these videos as possible, and will review them over the coming weeks to publish sessions which did not contain any confidential information. Watch this space for more information on the videos."

Posted by Frank Watson on 9:11 PM | Permalink

Clicktracks CEO Interviewed

John Marshall, the highly respected CEO of Clicktracks, and I had chance to talk about analytics recently. Clicktracks is well known for it's analytics software solution.

While many people are familiar with Google Analytics, fewer people are aware that Clicktracks offers a free analytics solution as well, known as Clicktracks Appetizer. This is a great free tool that offers a powerful set of capabilities for users who want to have their analytics software analyze their log files instead of putting Javascript on their web site (which is something that Google Analytics requires).

John talks with me about a wide range of topics that may help you get a better idea of how to make use of web analaytics as a tool in your web promotional strategy.

Posted by on 7:44 PM | Permalink

Convera Offering New Search Tools

Convera Corporation, a leading provider of search technologies for publishers, announced their launch of the Convera Publisher Control Panel. This new tool is designed to help publishers to integrate vertical search tools into their sites.

The tool provides publishers with tools to tune results for their search engines, providing a broad range of editorial capabilities that enables publishers to develop very high quality vertical search tools for their sites. In addition, the Convera Publisher Control Panel allows the publisher to see detailed traffic information enabling them to further tune their results.

Convera has been providing enterprise search solutions for the past 20 years, with organizations served including the Department of Defense, Justice and Agriculture, and the FBI.

Posted by on 7:30 PM | Permalink

Yahoo's Yang and Semel Going On the Road

The beginning of March will be busy for Terry Semel and Jerry Yang - they are going on the talk circuit as it were. A press release I received today highlights two stops these Yahoo members of the board are making.

Yahoo! (Nasdaq:YHOO) will present at the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference and Thomas Weisel Partners Internet & Digital Media Conference during the week of March 5, 2007.


Morgan Stanley Technology Conference
Terry Semel, Chairman and CEO
Susan Decker, EVP, Head of Advertiser and Publisher Group and
acting Chief Financial Officer
Tuesday, March 6, 2007
12:30pm Eastern Time / 9:30am Pacific Time.

Thomas Weisel Partners Internet & Digital Media Conference
Jerry Yang, Co-Founder and Chief Yahoo
Wednesday, March 7, 2007
6:15pm Eastern Time / 3:15pm Pacific Time.

A live webcast of both presentations will be available on the Investor Relations website at http://yhoo.client.shareholder.com/calendar.cfm?CalendarID=5.

Can't hurt solidify their stock which has been getting good reviews lately.

Posted by Frank Watson on 3:59 PM | Permalink

Google Ad Sales Exec Exits

Patrick Keane, until recently the head of advertising sales strategy at Google, has left to become executive VP and chief marketing officer at CBS Interactive. Keane will help CBS implement systems to market and sell its content on emerging media platforms and expand the company's roster of advertisers, according to a press release. Keane joined Google four years ago, having previously been a VP and senior analyst at Jupiter Research, covering the online advertising space.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 2:49 PM | Permalink

Yahoo Adds NOYDIR Tag

Finally we get to undo the silly descriptions the Yahoo directory editors foisted upon us.

I mean DMOZ edits were bad, but the Yahoo ones seemed like they were written by someone composing a telegram. I have about 5 or 6 descriptions that are all of 8 words....

So we can now get Yahoo to use our carefully crafted descriptions (well that is another story). The implications of these recent moves are important.

Let's get the Yahoo statements out of the way first. They released this through their blog:

We're adding support for the Meta tag called ‘NOYDIR' that will complement the ‘NOODP' Meta tag, which we already support. If you're unfamiliar, the ‘NOODP' Meta tag is basically a way for webmasters to indicate that Open Directory Project (ODP) titles and abstracts will not be used in search results for their pages. While we continue to pull from various sources to provide the best title and abstract for a given page in search results, we realize that webmasters may still want the ability to exclude titles and abstracts from the Yahoo! Directory. So, as promised, we're providing support for ‘NOYDIR' which will recognize the following Meta tags on your pages:

or

For pages with this tag, we will not use Yahoo! Directory titles or abstracts for your URL in web search results. This will grant webmasters the ability to participate in the Yahoo! Directory Submit program and benefit from inclusion in the Yahoo! Directory, while maintaining control over URL titles and abstracts in search. This will not have any effect on the Yahoo! Directory Search experience, which will continue to use the Yahoo! Directory and title abstract information.

We are re-indexing content on the web to launch this change, and you should immediately begin to see the changes on Yahoo! US, Yahoo! Japan and Yahoo! Korea. (Other regions will roll-out in the future.) This will be accompanied by the usual ranking changes and page shuffling that is typical of weather updates.

There are two MAJOR points mentioned in this information.

First, we now have the ability to have our description tags used in organic results. The ability to more directly determine how people perceive us is critical for effective marketing as well as AB testing, etc. How the choice of words in the description impact rankings can now be tested directly.

Second, and more importantly, Yahoo states there will be ranking changes from this... a strong indicator that either they will no longer use the directory listing as a major impact on ranking or the description tag is being given more importance or it had impact but the directory listing kept it in check.

Either way there are changes coming and things to play with.... you have to love this industry.

Insights, impacts or comments? Jump in!

UPDATE: The great people in the Yahoo PR Department ran down some answers to a few questions for me last night...

Will using the NOYDIR tag default organic descriptions to the onpage
description if filled out? If so how many characters wuill it be
limited to?

The NOYDIR tag will take the Yahoo! dir and title out of contention, we
could still use the ODP t&d, page t&d, anchor text etc. There are no
changes to what organic description guidelines are from before

Does using the NOYDIR tag stop any link love from the directory listing
itself?

No, the directory listing link credit will still carry.

Has Yahoo checked how this may impact other search spiders when reading
the tag?

No, we also noted this on the comments section on the blog post.

Your blog entry mentions changes coming to the organic results. Does
this mean not using the tag will lower sites or will possible more
keyword rich descriptions possibly improve some listings?

This is a regular weather update related to a new index launch without
any other implied effects...

Posted by Frank Watson on 2:49 PM | Permalink

Panama from a Big Agency Perspective

Avenue A | Razorfish put Yahoo's Panama platform through the paces this month, and has shared some data from 33 search clients in an article on its Search Marketing Trends site, "Yahoo Panama First Look."

Some highlights:

  • Search Impressions – Up an average of 5%
  • Cost Per Click – Down an average of 6%
  • Click Rate – Up an average of 10%
  • Conversion Rates – Down an average of 5%
  • Overall CPA – Up an average of 6%

The agency stresses that there is still a wide variance in data across clients, making it difficult to draw firm conclusions.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 1:51 PM | Permalink

Mobile, Video Search Ads Set to Grow?

After digging deeper into the results of its "State of Search Engine Marketing 2006" report, SEMPO has revealed that a majority of respondents in the North American study said they were interested in mobile and video search, but few were willing to pay more for those ads.

That's not surprising, given human nature -- if you ask someone if they'd like to pay more or less for something, I'd assume that most would choose "less." What's more interesting is the level of interest from marketers, indicating that these ad models may be farther along than some would think.

SEMPO reports that 66 percent of respondents say they would be interested in contextually targeted advertising attached to video search results. Of those marketers, 53 percent want contextual video ads, compared to 33 percent who want contextual text ads attached to video clips. For mobile, SEMPO found that 60 percent of respondents are interested in contextually targeted ads delivered to mobile search users.

Dana Todd, president of SEMPO, says she's cautiously optimistic on the future of mobile search.

"Advertisers go where the audience is interacting. In the U.S., the fact that everybody is carrying a cell phone is less important than what they're doing with it. Right now, they're using them in rudimentary ways, for communication, and for playing games and listening to music," Todd told SEW.

Todd pointed to a recent comScore study, which found that cell phone Internet usage is an activity for the young. That study found that 29 percent of respondents in the 25-34 demographic and 23 percent of 18-24 year olds currently subscribe to a cell phone Internet service, while only 13 percent of adults over 35 do so.

"Until users find it's a useful environment, we're not going to see significant play, but there's still a market there," Todd said. "This is an area where local search has the most promise. We need to look at how users are interacting with their phones, and find a way to engage them there."

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 11:19 AM | Permalink

SEO Is Easy...and Hard

Reduced to its simplest form, SEO is a four-step process: set some ground rules; get your site right; post some great content; and earn inbound links. Sounds easy, until you try to do it. PJ Fusco offers some tips for in-house search marketers on how to go about making it work in her latest ClickZ column, DIY SEO.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 10:30 AM | Permalink

Step Right Up, Start A Community Site

Maybe community sites are the next wave for entrepreneurs. Now anyone can invite their extended neighbors into a closed community and begin making money, right? We wish it were that easy.

In yesterday's WSJ, there's an interesting article (subscription required) about several niche sites that grew into something meaningful. What these sites share in common is a loyal and active user base. Otherwise, they seem quite different.

Stick To Targets:

First there's QuentinsFriends.com, a marketplace site for younger New Yorkers that's akin to Craig's List. It charges membership fees and accepts members via referrals. Next is ASmallWorld.net, which helps diplomats and other travelers find each other. It's ad-based and free but also controls invitations. Finally, MothersClick.com addresses the concerns of new parents. It's also ad-based yet open for registration.

These sites are experiencing success on a niche scale. They focus on meeting the needs of members who share similar demographics and interests. People can ask questions, make posts, or participate in transactions. Perhaps it's the small-town feel that makes these sites work.

Flash back to 2005, when we were all exploring the potential targeting opportunities for vertical search. There was even going to be a vertical search destination for left-handed dog walkers, right? Maybe not, but a large variety of vertical search destinations didn't come to pass either.

Keep Them Active:

Community sites may be targeted like search sites, but the similarity ends there. These are destinations which seek far higher levels of participation. At some point, there's enough activity to keep things interesting for active users.

Reporter David Enrich says that the main obstacle to the ongoing success of niche sites is the profit motive. The balancing act between revenue and membership growth may wipe out “the niche player aura that made the sites attractive in the first place.”

However I'm not sure that community sites are more trustworthy or successful because they're smaller. Their success may hinge on sticking to their main mission of social participation, without adding extra functionality. Another reason for success may be some rate of natural turnover and freshness among the members, which keeps the sites more vibrant.

Who knows? Maybe these communities and others like them are considered hip places by their audiences now. When other hip places open, some will stagnate or close due to diminished interest in them. We have all followed the herds before.

Posted by on 1:36 AM | Permalink

Jump On The Video Distribution Bandwagon

Right now, web publishers of all stripes are busy developing video to entertain or inform visitors. The best video content engages your visitors and encourages them to spend additional time on your site.

In the rush to develop your site, you may not have focused on other traffic opportunities for your professionally-produced video. That rich video content can provide additional revenue streams outside your own domain.

In the old world order, this is called syndication. As an intellectual property holder, you sign contracts which grant licensing rights to others. In return, these licensees pay you based on where the video is shown, audience levels, specific channels, number of plays, and time periods.

In the age of YouTube, your audience is getting used to finding videos there and across the web. Thus it makes sense to solicit help from your site visitors. Encourage them to embed your videos on their own sites, blogs and pages. With ad pre-rolls and sponsorships attached to your own videos, you'll earn incremental revenue from this extended audience.

Fortunately the barriers to hosting video have fallen lately. Since you already host video on your own site, consider extending that support when it's embedded on other sites. Check out StreamingMedia.com, one of the better resources for tips and contacts.

Why go through this effort? Dan Rayburn presents a wake-up call in Broadcasting & Cable, telling publishers they should not “risk their videos' being marketed by other media outlets like bloggers and those who can drive traffic and awareness.” Publishers are advised to control their content distribution, so they can easily adjust their advertising as well.

External distribution isn't reserved for the biggest publishers anymore. It's true that some entertainment companies have been reacting to YouTube in recent weeks and going it alone. However this is an important matter for all video producers who want to maximize traffic and revenue opportunities – wherever their video appears.

Posted by on 12:58 AM | Permalink

February 27, 2007

vFlyer and "The Year of the Widget"

Online classifieds content and distribution platform vFlyer announced a new product line that could represent a shifting direction for the company. It has come out with a line of widgets that it will offer to companies and individuals to display products or inventory on their websites or blogs.

Previously, vFlyer's main product was a "virtual flyer" that let anyone create a multimedia-rich and professional looking classified listing. Rather than being a classifieds destination, It distributed these flyers out to existing classifieds marketplaces and aggregators. Up to ten flyers are free while higher price points, including a subscription, are available for larger volume sellers such as car dealerships or real estate professionals.

This was and still is an attractive seller-centric tool in a marketplace where such a thing is lacking. But the penetration possibilities are only so great according to Oliver Muoto, vice president of business development for vFlyer. Though it's a nice tool for any business or individual to establish a relatively easy and inexpensive web presence - a microsite of sorts - it doesn't address the other portion of the marketplace that is already online.

The new widgets have this segment in mind. Anyone with a website or blog can plant these widgets on their site to display products or inventory in new ways. The widgets will likely grow in number but for now mostly include photo slide shows. Monetization of the widgets will be similar to the virtual flyers according to Muoto, in that they will be free for a certain amount of products and contain various price points for upsells to new features and higher volumes.

This should gain the most traction in the real estate and autos verticals. Here, multimedia is important due to the margins and valuable leads that have forced sellers to be more progressive with online marketing (for the most part). The need to get that coveted lead in these verticals has also made promotional tools like this more price inelastic.

Muoto believes the demand in the marketplace for new functionality that is easy and cheap to integrate to any website will make this "the year of the widget". He also hopes the buyer-centric nature of these widgets will cause them to market themselves in a viral way, as each one displays the vFlyer logo and a link to go to the site and create your own.

The widgets involve simple HTML code and come with directions on how to set them up, but this extra step to actively plant a new piece of programming on your blog or website could be an adoption barrier. If the attractiveness and need for such a tool in the auto and real estate verticals is strong enough as mentioned above, it should outweigh this adoption barrier though. Much of the product's success will hinge on this.

More details can be found in the press release.

Posted by Mike Boland on 10:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Search Headlines & Links: Feb. 27, 2007

Want a snapshot of the day's search marketing news? Here we've collected today's top news stories posted to the Search Engine Watch Blog, along with search-related headlines from around the Web:

From the SEW Blog:

Headlines & News from Elsewhere:

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 10:34 PM | Permalink

Value of Search Rankings Explained

What is that number one organic search ranking worth? A question often asked but rarely thoughtfully answered.

Stoney deGeyter gives a very thoughtful answer to the question over at Internet Search Engine Database.

Give it a read and post an opinion here.

Posted by Frank Watson on 8:55 PM | Permalink

Gmail Domain At Risk

Seems Google's Gmail domain maybe in jeopardy. Following the English court decision against Google, the British company is coming to the United States to further challenge the search engine's ownership.

Jason Lee Miller of Web Pro News outlines the story well.

Posted by Frank Watson on 8:27 PM | Permalink

Redrum Returns to NYC: Informal Gathering of Interactive & Search Marketers

We had fun meeting those of you who showed up the last time we did this, so we're doing it again next week. Rebecca Lieb has the details on the ClickZ Blog, but the short version is that if you'll be in New York next Tuesday, March 6, and feel like stopping by for a drink with other like-minded search and interactive marketing professionals, we'll be gathering at Nolita House, at 47 E. Houston St.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 5:35 PM | Permalink

Should You Bring Search Marketing In-House?

A common question for any company doing search marketing is whether to bring those efforts in-house. In today's SearchDay, in-house SEM Duane Forrester takes a look at what goes into making that decision, and offers some tips on how to go about putting together a team once you decide to take the plunge.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 4:00 PM | Permalink

Flash and HTML Text Copies = Duplicate Content?

There is a thread going in Google Groups about Flash and Getting Indexed. This discussion focuses on techniques for providing search engines an HTML text file to chew on instead of trying to parse the flash itself.

Deepa was concerned that this might be seen as a spammy duplicate content technique by the search engines. The consensus in the discussion was that this was in fact good behavior, provided that the text content matches up with the content of the flash.

Of course, the trick part is that it's not completely natural for the text content to line up exactly with the content of a movie. They are different mediums that benefit from different treatment. So there is going to be some variance in the content due to that simple fact.

Perhaps the thing to do, if you insist on having Flash on your site, is to write an HTML page about the same topic as the Flash, and target that page at users who do not have the ability to view Flash. Write the page as if you were trying to accomplish the exact same things as you are doing with the movie.

The words may differ some, but the intent would be exactly the same.

Posted by on 1:56 PM | Permalink

Is Social Search All About Consumer Conversations

Adotas columnist Adam Broitman gives an interesting overview of effective marketing methods in social search.

His discussion of new industry catch phrases such 'consumer conversations', the 'speed of search' and 'monitoring buzz' is worth a read.

Posted by Frank Watson on 1:40 PM | Permalink

SEO Mind Crime? More Anti-SEO Ignorance

UK marketing firm Warrington Web Works is the latest to declare that SEO is dead. Warrington's CEO Anthony Fallon is basing this statement on the fact that he was able to quickly rank for the entirely meaningless keyword "SEO Mind Crime." While Fallon's assertions that creating relevant content is important will not be disputed, it's been argued again and again that content alone is not enough, especially in competitive industries.

Fallon's "SEO Mind Crime" takes the example of an SEO firm that guaranteed a top ten position on Google for three years, asking £15,000 (US$29,000). As has been done many times in the past, a single example of a less-than ideal SEO contract is being held up as the norm, and tarnishing the entire industry.

I'm assuming we'll see the "SEO Mind Crime" rebuttal from the SEO community in 3...2...1...

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 11:34 AM | Permalink

Cramer Picks Ask and Yahoo Over Google Short Term

Google is Jim Cramer's internet darling, but for the short term he announced selling some of your Google stock and taking some of the future profits from Ask and Yahoo.

Both on his television show, Mad Money, last night and on TheStreet.com, Cramer stated Google's stock was stagnating right now (though saw it as a solid long-term play) and recommended Yahoo and Ask.

Yahoo's new PPC platform, Panama, has helped increase revenues, and Ask has a good mix of online properties and solid management, Cramer said, which make both stock worth investing in right now.

Posted by Frank Watson on 11:21 AM | Permalink

Ning Launches Build-Your-Own Social Network Service

Social networking startup Ning has launched "Your Own Social Network on Ning," a customizable platform that lets users pick and choose elements to add to their hosted social networks. Ning, co-founded by Netscape founder Marc Andreessen, launched in October 2005 with the promise of allowing anyone to create social media apps. With this new release, the company has succeeded, according to GigaOm's Om Malik.

Services include "video aggregation, photo albums, weblogs, forums, sausages and sauerkraut," quips Malik in his review of the new service, noting that the end result is "a 15-minute Social Network."

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 11:04 AM | Permalink

Harry Potter Learns Spell To Stop Ebay

I wonder whether Kramer still considers EBay his number one internet stock (he made this announcement on Mad Money last night) - now that Harry Potter had learned the spell needed to stop EBay selling nonauthorised electronic versions of the JK Rowling books.

Indian courts ruled that EBay must cease allowing selling of the electronic versions of the Potter books which the author has never allowed.

Posted by Frank Watson on 10:57 AM | Permalink

Forbes.com Joins Quigo's Ad Network

On the heels of its glowing review in the NY Times in which it was credited with forcing Google's hand on transparency of publisher sites, contextual ad provider Quigo announced that it has signed Forbes as a distribution partner, according to ClickZ News. The multi-year, exclusive relationship with the media giant calls for the white-label delivery of content-targeted advertising using Quigo's AdSonar Network. In recent months, the company has also struck partnerships with ESPN.com, CareerBuilder.com, the New York Daily News and others.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 10:47 AM | Permalink

Yahoo Adds Another Rep To Help Online Forum Communities

First there was YahooSarah - an online persona who helped forum communities with announcements and assistance with YPN and Panama?Overture issues - now we also have YahooPete.

Yahoo's involvement in online communities and social networks has grown of late and the introduction of YahooPete displays further commitment on the part of Yahoo to develop social networking.

Posted by Frank Watson on 10:37 AM | Permalink

Search Engines Are Allowed to Reject Ads

A Delaware court made it clear that search engines are allowed to reject an ad as part of their protected right of free speech, according to law professor Eric Goldman. The Langdon v. Google case was brought by an advertiser whose requests to buy political ads were allegedly rejected or ignored by Google, Yahoo and Microsoft because they attacked other candidates.

Goldman believes the precedent-setting influence of the case is limited, but it should help search engines deflect future cases filed by advertisers that go against their editorial policies.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 10:26 AM | Permalink

February 26, 2007

Search Headlines & Links: Feb. 26, 2007

Want a snapshot of the day's search marketing news? Here we've collected today's top news stories posted to the Search Engine Watch Blog, along with search-related headlines from around the Web:

From the SEW Blog:

Headlines & News from Elsewhere:

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 10:42 PM | Permalink

Niched Portals and Vertical Search: The Catch Phrases of 2007

Seems 2007 is going to be the year of niched portals and vertical search.

Microsoft is buying Medstory, a health information search engine, and furthering their move into niched portals and vertical search. In China they have started development on a job search engine.

Yahoo is doing the same thing: business search in China, community portals covering specific audiences like Pontiac owners, investors and health sites.

Yahoo seems to be using the portal, community model with search ads as part of the monetization. Though they are trying to develop a business search engine as their primary perspective for the Chinese market.

Yahoo has created entertainment community pages for the Oscars; car fan sites using the manufacturers as support and advertiser.

This seems to be a repeating theme in the two months so far of 2007. Let's see where this all ends up.

Posted by Frank Watson on 4:56 PM | Permalink

Mobile Game Site, Hovr, Using Ads to Pay For Free Games

On a twist of the old free internet access, cell phone game provider Hovr is providing free interactive games to downlaod onto your phone in return for putting ads at the beginning and end of play.

The Hovr Promise states:
No Hidden Subscriptions
No Hidden Charges
No Spam
No Selling to Third Parties
No Telemarketing

This could be popular with the huge number of children who have cell phones. Like ringtones, kids love games for their phones. To make them interactive uses part of the popularity of the PSP - beating your friends online. Which advertisers can monetize the space will be the test.

Posted by Frank Watson on 4:29 PM | Permalink

Google Mixes Videos in Organic Result

Looks like Google is experimenting with including videos in the organic results. Razvan Antonescu while searching in Google for “nightwish videos,” was served a Plusbox with a link reading “show video," in the search results right along with the textual snippet from the Google Video entry. He includes a screenshot of the results showing the video delivered right in with the serps. Plusboxes have been used previously for finance and maps. They are a good way for users to navigate to the video (or other type of) content without having to shift to the specialized engine. I was unable to replicate Razvan's results but will be on the lookout for additional instances.

Posted by Amanda Watlington on 3:33 PM | Permalink

Avinash Kaushik Interview

I recently had the opportunity to conduct a phone interview of Avinash Kaushik. Avinash provides his usual clear focus on using web analytics as a tool to grow your business.

From an SEO perspective, getting clear data about what's happening on your site can be a very powerful way to focus your efforts. For example, I worked on one site that knew that they were getting half of their business from one set of pages, and drew the conclusion that they should continue to focus on the search terms that were driving the most traffic to those pages.

Using Web Analytics, I was able to show them that the most common search terms for those pages were not the terms that were driving the business. The had, in fact, been trying to improve their results on search terms that were not growing their business.

Avinash is extremely knowledgeable about using web analytics as a tool, and offers a bunch of great tips to use those tools more effectily. He also has a great blog on the topic of analytics.

Posted by on 3:00 PM | Permalink

Microsoft Acquires Medical Search Provider

The New York Times reports that Microsoft has agreed to acquire MedStory, Inc., a Foster City based start-up. MedStory has built it's own search engine focused on the medical space. They use AI methods to scan medical journals, government documents, and data available on the Internet.

This marks the next step in Microsoft's strategy to expand their presence in the health care market. Last year Microsoft acquired Azyxxi, a software system for quick display and retrieval of patient information from multiple sources including scanned documents, X-rays, M.R.I. scans and ultrasound images.

I would expect that you would see much more of this from Microsoft. It's a great area for them to focus on, as it allows them to build their overall search market share through vertical search building blocks.

Posted by on 2:35 PM | Permalink

Yahoo Finance Carries Article Calling For Semel's Replacement

Just like the advertisers who cannot filter publisher partner ads, Yahoo Finance is running an Seeking Alpha article calling for the replacement of their CEO Terry Semel.

The article details a few of the faux pas Yahoo! has made during Semel's tenure.

Not buying Google in 2002 may be the biggest, but Seeking Alpha's Plan B is a fairly detailled article of missteps made by Yahoo over the past six years.

Posted by Frank Watson on 12:50 PM | Permalink

MSN Rectifies CPC Bug

Microsoft adCenter fixed the bug that boosted many people's CPC late last week, a company employee said today.

All CPC and billing errors have been corrected, according to the Microsoft employee. "The problems on the backend have been fixed and all accounts should be credited back the overcharges."

We will keep everyone posted on any further information from MSN and anyone having problems should post them in the forums so the adCenter rep can run them down.

Posted by Frank Watson on 12:31 PM | Permalink

NY Times: Google Content Will Report Publishers, Allow Separate Bidding

The New York Times reported today that Google will soon allow advertisers separate bidding for individual publishing partner sites.

Citing Kim Malone, director of online sales and operations for Google AdSense, NYT stated "in the next few months, Google's advertiser reports will begin listing the sites where each ad runs, Ms. Malone said. She added that advertisers on the Google networks would soon be able to bid on contextual ads on particular Web sites rather than simply buying keywords that appeared across Google's entire network."

This change in the information Google will provide their advertisers should have a huge impact on which sites many advertisers elect to bid on.

The NYT article was outlining the transparency of small engine Quigo.com that already offers this feature. Many of the smaller engines have offered this feature for some time, but Google had never opened up to allow insights into individual publishing partners; the content program was in or out - no options.

This new change will be interesting to watch. If some of their publishers are eventually dropped due to lack of advertiser interest where they end up could be future problems for other engines.

Posted by Frank Watson on 11:10 AM | Permalink

comScore Defines Panama Effects

ComScore Networks has found that Yahoo's new ranking model has increased click through rates on its ads, at least initially. The study, based on the online behavior of comScore's U.S. sample of 1 million Internet users, compared the first two weeks after the launch of the ranking model to the previous week, and found a 5-pecent lift the first week, and a 9-percent lift in CTR the second week.

ComScore also found that Yahoo's search ads are gaining ground as a percentage of total clicks. Prior to the Panama launch, ads held 10.1 percent of clicks, which increased to 10.6 percent of total click volume in the week ending February 11 and 11.1 percent in the week ending February 18.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 10:10 AM | Permalink

SEMPO Board Named

This year's SEMPO elections are complete, and a new board of directors for 2007 has been named:

  • Chris Boggs, Avenue A/Razorfish
  • Massimo Burgio, Global Search Interactive
  • Fionn Downhill, Elixir Systems
  • Dave Fall, DoubleClick Inc.
  • Duane Forrester, Sports Direct
  • Sara Holoubek, free agent consultant
  • Gordon Hotchkiss, Enquiro
  • Bill Hunt, Global Strategies International
  • Kevin Lee, Did-It
  • Jeffrey Pruitt, iCrossing
  • Tanya Rietze, Hewlett-Packard
  • Dana Todd, SiteLab
  • Dave Williams, 360i

The 13 board members were picked by SEMPO members from a record 37 candidates. Eight members are returning from last year: Boggs, Holoubek, Hotchkiss, Hunt, Lee, Pruitt, Todd, and Williams. The remaining five are new to the board this year. One-year terms for board members will begin in mid-March, when it will elect officers.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb on 9:10 AM | Permalink

February 25, 2007

Blinkx offers a way to search the contents of Web videos

Jason Pontin of The New York Times has written a feature story about Blinkx today entitled, "Millions of videos, and now a way to search inside them." Among the interesting factoids in the article is this one: "Today, owing to the proliferation of large video files, video accounts for more than 60 percent of the traffic on the Internet, according to CacheLogic, a company in Cambridge, England."

Posted by Greg Jarboe on 1:29 PM | Permalink

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