Release of Windows Live Search
- September. 18, 2006
Release of Windows Live Search Well the day has finally come. Microsoft stepped up to bat and it’s hit in the air, it’s going, going it’s off the fence for a ground rule double. What I’m referring to has noting to do with the pennant race it ...
Pinging 101
- September. 15, 2006
The problem with content on the web is not one of creative but of visibility. In other words, how do you notify the world that you have new and fresh content online before any of your competitors do, and then get the world to actually visit your webs...
Simple SEO for Blogger
- August. 29, 2006
After my first month on being blogger I checked the number of pages I had indexed in Google by going site:manojjasra.blogspot.com and noticed that Google showed: Results 1 - 1 of about 30 and further down the page: In order to show you the most r...
StatCounter Integrates With Google Maps
- August. 18, 2006
Something I do everyday is log-in to StatCounter to see how some of my sites are doing, today I received the following message: "We''ve added a feature that lets you view your recent visitors on a Google Map. Click on a marker and you will be given...
Yahoo Releases New Crawler… Welcome Yahoo Slurp the Second
- July. 28, 2006
Today Yahoo announced the release of their new spider, Yahoo Slurp. Wait a second wasn’t their spider already called Yahoo Slurp? Yes it was, but this new version is apparently faster and more efficient that the old one. Isn’t that ...
Google Sitemaps Continue to Improve
- June. 23, 2006
I’ve been a fan of Google Sitemaps since their initial release last year. For myself, I felt that the true benefit of Google Sitemaps would be to provide insight as to various potential indexing issues with my client’s sites. However in t...
Ready Your Stations; The Battle has Just Begun
- June. 7, 2006
There is a lot of speculation and rumors floating about regarding the recent release of Google Spreadsheet, however, I highly doubt that Google is strictly going after the entire desktop office suite market. Personally, it looks to me like we are s...
Ads and Apps
- May. 18, 2006
When Apple first came to the market, their core product offering was hardware. That’s where the money was, because nobody was mass producing an affordable home PC. IBM was still run by clones in blue suits and white shirts. Apple wanted to not only ...
The Release of Google Co-op
- May. 16, 2006
Last week, Google released a few new products. One of the more interesting features within the new items released was Google Co-op. The premise behind Google Co-op is a product that allows so called "experts" to share their expertise. The first ...
The Battle for Query Generation
- May. 10, 2006
Yahoo! has just launched a new search technology on its AlltheWeb property that rivals Google's instant suggest feature in the beta release of Google Toolbar 4.0. The AlltheWeb Livesearch tool displays search results instantaneously for suggested key...
Wall Street for FREE: Online Publishing Pains
- May. 4, 2006
This week, the Wall Street Journal has done something quite revolutionary. As one of the most popular newspapers in the US, with a worldwide average daily circulation of over 2.6 million, it is second to only USA Today in domestic readership. In fact...
Innovate or Pay
- May. 2, 2006
Whether or not you attribute the discovery of radio to Marconi, Lodge, Dolbear, or Tesla is inconsequential to the truth that 100 years ago, the US government declared that the air had no individual ownership. People could own property, but all of t...
Google Sitemaps: Some New Updates
- May. 1, 2006
Last week was much-anticipated for me...not only did the NHL hockey playoffs start (with my favorite team the Edmonton Oilers taking on the Detroit Red Wings), but Google Sitemaps also rolled out some new features (strange that the two get me equal...
A NEW FACE FOR GOOGLE?
- April. 26, 2006
There is this old adage that everything is new in spring: new love, new blossoms, and new hay fever symptoms. Of course, there are always new reruns and new excuses to do nothing other than sit on the couch and watch the play-offs... For me, spr...
The Route to Online Success is in Design
- April. 24, 2006
Unlike the Kevin Costner movie, there are no guarantees that just because you build a website, people will come (at least, not the Chicago Black Sox). In fact, getting the right visitor is the primary concern for almost every Webmaster, SEO Marketer,...
Analytics: You can’t afford NOT to track
- April. 20, 2006
Budget, especially for smaller organizations, is often a major factor when researching which Analytics package to implement on a given website. There are business owners who continually push off the purchase of analytics until their company is financ...
Google Calendar Arrives
- April. 18, 2006
Google has released Google Calendar, a new shareable online calendar and I must say that it is actually pretty cool as it lets you organize your hours, weeks and months with relative ease. There are some great features, including: Gmail inte...
A Week of Announcements
- April. 13, 2006
It's the last shift before four days of golf, gluttony, and passive aggressive arguments - everything that is a family oriented holiday - and here I sit, virtually mired waist deep in articles about everything from the media market gone crazy to th...
Analytics: Advanced Analysis
- April. 6, 2006
Attending Omniture’s Web Analytics Summit last week has made me realize the extent of segmentation and analysis an analytics suite can provide for an organization. As stated in a previous article, about half of search marketers use analytics.&n...
Google Related Links
- April. 4, 2006
Google has released Google Related Links which is a new feature that would allow Google to add dynamic relevant content links to your website. These related links will be placed on the side of your site offering users with navigation to related cont...
Top 10 Search Engine Happenings Early 2006
- March. 31, 2006
As the first quarter of 2006 nears an end, I thought that we needed yet another Top 10 list. I mean after all, you can never have enough Top 10 lists… just ask David Letterman and he’ll tell you. We all know that with any Top 10 list, the rankings ...
Podcasts are the Handsome Prince to the Content King
- March. 30, 2006
And Sergey came down from the mount, screaming “Content is King,” and the masses cheered for keyword density. And with a motion, the Great Sea that is the Internet parted, and the masses cheered for keyword density. And the Webmasters rallied i...
My Last Article
- March. 23, 2006
The time has come for me to say goodbye to readers of my articles on Searchengineposition. I have decided to move on to other things, but I’ll still remain in the SEM industry. I was trying to figure out what my final article should ...
Performancing Blog Analytics
- March. 15, 2006
I read in a forum today that some users who are using Google Analytics are noticing that their sites seem to be getting removed from Yahoo! While this seems strange at first it does make sense in a way. After all, Yahoo! doesn’t want ...
Duplicate Content can get You Banned
- March. 1, 2006
By now everyone should know that duplicate content can (and likely will) get you penalized if not banned in the search engines. But many times, we get questions asking what exactly duplicate content is? For example, we recentl...
Promote your site with Wikipedia
- February. 23, 2006
I am always looking for new ways to promote my clients websites. And sometimes “regular” link building just isn’t enough. I mean, you can spend hours and hours looking at competitors and searching out new opportunities only to find t...
Google’s New Spider - Friend or Foe?
- February. 16, 2006
Ever since we first heard of Big Daddy, Google’s new data infrastructure I’ve been watching for anomalies across the Googlesphere. And there was something interesting that began even before Big Daddy was announced. There was a new...
BMW.de Got Banned & So Can You
- February. 8, 2006
By now you’ve probably heard that BMW.de was removed from the Google index for spamming. They were using a combination of Javascript and Doorway pages to rank for terms they shouldn’t have ranked for (such as used cars). What BMW.de...
Google Base - SEO Opportunity
- February. 1, 2006
When you own a website your quest generally is to be top ranked in Google. Whether its in the top position or merely above the fold, ideally you want to be where the most eyeballs will see you and hopefully click on your link. But ma...
Is Link Building Dead?
- January. 25, 2006
I’ve been thinking about links a lot lately. Wondering how important they are. After all, we’ve been preaching link building to clients for quite a few years now. And every so often someone will come along and say “yes but with t...
Artful Link Building - Link Baiting
- January. 18, 2006
Since the early days of search engines, inbound links have been important tools used to gauge a site’s importance. In fact Google is built on that premise and even has an algorithm - the PageRank algorithm - which is used to determine that link...
CES Google News
- January. 13, 2006
As you are probably already aware, the CES (Consumer Electronics Show) was another smash this year. The buzz word at the show was “convergence” and I wrote about it recently here. While I’m not terribly impressed with Google’s offering...
Googles BigDaddy Datacenter
- January. 5, 2006
Last month Matt Cutts mentioned that there was a new datacenter Google was testing, however he didn’t get into too many details about what it was or why they were testing it. Today, Matt unveiled “BigDaddy” (the name they gave it) in his blo...
Using Feeds to Promote Your Site
- December. 29, 2005
I love web feeds, also known as RSS or XML feeds. They are so flexible and can provide you with so much information. That's why in this week's article I'm going to explain how you too can develop a deep admiration for feeds. This is because the use ...
Google News Means Change
- December. 21, 2005
There have been a couple of interesting bits of Google news in the past few days. These announcements could dramatically change how search is perceived on the Internet. The first is the huge Google/AOL deal. For $1 billion Goog...
Search 2006 - Predictions
- December. 14, 2005
So it’s that time of year again. The time of year when I look forward to determine what I see as the big trends in search for 2006. And like every year you will find some that you agree with and some you may not. But before you...
Yahoo!s Site Explorer
- December. 8, 2005
There has been a handy webmaster/sem tool at Yahoo! for some time. One that is probably the most helpful tool in helping you understand how Yahoo! sees your site. The tool is called Site Explorer and today I’m going to show you what it...
The Value of Links
- December. 1, 2005
With the recent Google update, nicknamed Jagger, and for the past year or so, many in the industry have been saying linking is not important, or that large numbers of links just don’t cut it anymore. In fact, the Jagger update may lead one t...
Are Search Engine Results Seasonal?
- November. 24, 2005
The other day I was checking search engine rankings for a few of my clients. I was noticing some trends with their results in Google. It seems as if their rankings had gone up for a few months during their peak seasons. Then when th...
Proper Sitemap Usage
- November. 23, 2005
Sitemaps are great things. Not only do they provide searchers with a way to easily navigate your site, but they also let search engine crawlers find all your content. As such, sitemaps have become a regular tool in the SEO arsenal.&nbs...
State of Search Fall 2005
- November. 17, 2005
It’s been almost 6 months since I last sat down to take a look at how search is doing. At that time I was looking for relevant and timely information on a Tsunami that happened off the California coastline. Prior to that I had written ...
Writing Articles to Improve Positioning
- November. 10, 2005
I’ve been writing articles here for over 3 ½ years. That’s over 300 articles I’ve published on the topic of search and its impact on our world. And over that time I’ve watched our search engine referrals and visitor sessions climb each...
Is a Google Sitemap Necessary?
- November. 3, 2005
During a call with a client today an interesting question was posed: Is there any value in submitting a Google Sitemap? For those who don’t know, Google now offers users a way to submit an XML based sitemap of their website to help e...
The Invisible Web Still Exists
- October. 27, 2005
It was February 2001 when we first introduced you to the idea of the Invisible Web. Since then the term has taken off and has come to symbolize all that web content that is out there, yet inaccessible to search engines. Yet even in today’s...
Branding is Big and Growing
- October. 20, 2005
I listened to the Yahoo! earnings call this week and one thing struck me as quite interesting. The use of branded keywords in paid search is growing. In fact Yahoo! claims that its top 200 advertisers use Yahoo! paid search to promote their brands...
Know your Online Audience
- October. 13, 2005
In an article published by our Head Sponsored Search Strategist there is a great point made on the importance of targeting your audience if you are trying B2B marketing online. I highly recommend reading it even if you aren’t a B2B marketer. ...
Integrated Search Marketing - Possible?
- October. 4, 2005
Our company president wrote an article about integrated online marketing campaigns and how some companies tend to focus on specific areas of search engine marketing without considering the other areas. Then our Head Sponsored Search Strategist ...
Some Optimization Quick Tips
- September. 29, 2005
Often I review many different sites a week. As part of that review I have some standard things I look at - Does it have meta tags? Are they unique on every page? Does the site use a sitemap? And so on. In this article I’m go...
The Importance of Analytics
- September. 15, 2005
I was recently reading some new research out which discusses the ROI being generated by PPC and SEO.While the conclusions were no real news to me, what I did find interesting (And somewhat concerning) was that half of the respondents didn’t measure, ...
Taking your site global? Read This
- September. 7, 2005
The trend these days seems to be going global. While a few large companies already have global sites, some smaller companies are looking to other countries as well. The problem with going global, however, is that if you begin to duplic...
The Internets Impact on Tragedy
- September. 1, 2005
Sometimes it amazes me how involved the web is in our daily lives. Take the Hurricane Katrina tragedy that is unfolding in front of us. I live about as far away as you could from the southern US coast, yet I feel as if things are unfolding nea...
Google On The Desktop
- August. 24, 2005
If you follow Google at all then you know that they recently released a fairly major upgrade to the Desktop Search application. But what you may not know is how much this new application, and others from Google, affects the competitiveness o...
The future of search is Vertical
- August. 18, 2005
Some co-workers just came back from the SES in San Jose and one thing that they said that made me take notice was how much the search engines were pushing verticals. Now before I get too far I should mention that what you and I may conside...
Building an Effective Website – Pt.7
- August. 11, 2005
In this series of articles, we decided to go back to basics when getting into the web space. In Part 1, we were introduced to a fictional company that wanted a website. In Part 2, we went into more detail on the site, including picking...
Building an Effective Website – Pt.6
- August. 4, 2005
In this series of articles, we decided to go back to basics when getting into the web space. In Part 1, we were introduced to a fictional company that wanted a website. In Part 2, we went into more detail on the site, including picking a d...
Building an Effective Website – Pt.5
- July. 28, 2005
In Part 1, we were introduced to a fictional company that wanted a website. In Part 2, we went into more detail on the site, including picking a domain name while part 3 gave some tips on picking a web host, and part 4 dealt with some i...
Building an Effective Website – Pt.4
- July. 22, 2005
In this series of articles, we decided to go back to basics when getting into the web space. In the first article, we were introduced to a fictional company that wanted a website. In Part 2, we went into more detail on the site, including pick...
Building an Effective Website – Pt.3
- July. 14, 2005
In the previous 2 articles, I touched on what you should do if you wanted to set up a new website. In the first article, we were introduced to a fictional company – Ekko Heating and Air Conditioning, which has a new product which it wants ...
Building an Effective Website – Pt.2
- July. 7, 2005
This is the second part in a series of articles discussing the considerations which must be made with regards to a new website. Last week I talked about getting your message figured out. Even before you go out and buy a domain or figure out hosting,...
Building An Effective Website - Pt. 1
- June. 29, 2005
With today’s search engines, there doesn’t seem to be an end to how much data they can index. It seems as if everything that could be found online is found online. And with the growing popularity of local search, you may be thinking to yourself that...
Google Speculation
- June. 22, 2005
We live in interesting times. The World Wide Web is growing so fast, and has embedded itself so much into our lives that we may wonder how we got along without it. After all, the multi-billion dollar industry that employs me and everyo...
The True Power Of Search Engines
- June. 15, 2005
This is a true story. If you live on or near the west coast of North America you likely had a stressful hour or so this past evening. This is because a tsunami warning had been issued for all coastal areas between the California/Mex...
Other Online Sources
- June. 9, 2005
Last week I wrote about the different market shares that the main engines have, and how maybe many online marketers put too much emphasis on Google and should focus on others. Today I’m going to go even deeper and say that perhaps focusing o...
Search Engine Rankings
- June. 2, 2005
If you frequently browse any of the main search engine forums you know that probably 75% of most search marketer's efforts are on Google, at least in terms of organic or algorithmic search. That is probably because Google is a tougher nut to c...
Why PageRank Is Important
- May. 26, 2005
Ever since the Florida Update SEO and SEM firms have been speculating on what Google did and why they did it. We developed our own theory in which we believe Google used some of the Applied Semantics technology to build one of the world’s large...
Rank Checking Tools
- May. 19, 2005
It seems like every few days there is a new search engine patent out there. Just yesterday a Yahoo! patent was discovered which appears to indicate they have some sort of semantic algorithm they are or soon will be using, in addition to other n...
Hosting Multiple Domains
- May. 4, 2005
As I was performing a review of a recent new client, I came across an interesting issue which I thought I’d share. Over time, the client has purchased multiple variations of their domain name and simply parked them on their web server and pointed...
Google Search History
- April. 20, 2005
I almost missed this one as there was an obscure post relating to MSN and they mentioned it as an aside but Google now has a new way to help you manage your search history. If you go to Google labs you'll find a new tool called "My Search History" w...
Hosting Frustrations
- April. 14, 2005
If you are a hosting company you may want to stop here because I am going to rant a bit on hosting. This is not a hosting issue in general, but there are specific cases where I become frustrated with web hosting companies. Take a case which happened...
Google Patent
- April. 6, 2005
If you haven't already heard, there is a new Google Patent circulating which outlines what may be happening within the Googleplex in terms of rankings now (and in the future). The fact that most people in our industry have tuned in on seems to be th...
Why Blogs are Good
- March. 30, 2005
I have been waiting for Yahoo! 360 since I knew it would be coming out earlier this year. I am excited for this product because I think social networking of this style is the key to offering us more relevant search results. By doing some non-obtrusi...
Value of RSS Grows
- March. 28, 2005
If you do any searching on Yahoo! regularly as I do daily, you may have noticed that there has been a slight change to the search results. Of course, if you are looking at the page you won't likely see it, unless you can read the HTML as it is execu...
IAC/Ask Jeeves Implications
- March. 21, 2005
By now you are well aware that Ask Jeeves has been bought by InterActiveCorp - A company which has been very active in the past. We've been watching them for some time now and knew that an acquisition such as this was around the corner. If you look...
Yahoo goes communal
- March. 16, 2005
I don't often get excited about new search technology. Ok I do get excited but not overjoyed. Ok in some cases I do. My point is, I'm very happy to see Yahoo! entering the blog/communities space. I've been talking internally how the engines need to...
Google News Goes Custom
- March. 11, 2005
You likely have already heard of this, but if you use Google news you can now customize how the Google News home page looks. You can add more or less stories, and even add custom sections, based on keywords (of course). My first question i...
Do you want your own blog?
- March. 8, 2005
Blogging seems to be all the rage today. I can say that I am swept up in it myself, working on 3 of my own blogs plus contributing to countless others. It's a big question that we hear from clients these days - what's this blogging thing, and how do ...
Search as a platform
- March. 7, 2005
One of the highlights of this year's Search Engine Strategies conference in New York (aside from the fact that I got to go to New York and see the city) was the keynote speech by Jerry Yang, co-founder of Yahoo! While the talk was interesting and he...
Google Calendar?
- February. 23, 2005
If you are a regular reader of these articles, you know I have been speculating on the future of Google and commenting on other recent developments. Recently, I came across an interesting blog post, thanks to a co-worker. In the post, the author stat...
PPC Click Fraud
- February. 21, 2005
A few days ago, I received an e-mail from our Sales Department with a link to the latest internet article spelling out the appallingly high rate of PPC click fraud on the internet. The article used the often quoted "50% of clicks are fraud" and paint...
Searching for relevancy
- February. 2, 2005
I read an article the other day from a well known technology site which said that in order for search engines to move forward they have to improve the relevancy of search results. Google moved a step in the right direction with the Florida...
Future Search Markets
- January. 25, 2005
It is ironic that Google launched TV search yesterday, because I was thinking about where search will go, and I think it will follow a similar pattern to television. When I was growing up, we only had 2 channels until I was about 12 or 13....
MSN search using RSS
- January. 20, 2005
In the "That's cool but what's the use" category, a new entry from MSN. In order to perform this experiment there are a few prerequisites; A news aggregator or a browser that supports reading feeds, or some other way of reading an XML or R...
Google the ISP?
- January. 19, 2005
Recently, in the news, there was a post about a job listing on Google's site. They are apparently looking for someone with experience in "identification, selection, and negotiation of dark fiber contracts." Does this mean that Google wants to become ...
Local search has a long way to go
- January. 17, 2005
So I changed search engine hats over the weekend. I became a user researching a product I wished to purchase. It was an electronic gadget so I was able to easily find lots of information on what I was looking for. I was looking for a devic...
Search 2005
- December. 30, 2004
2004 has been quite a year. We saw the emergence of 2 major players in search debuting their own technology, while the third recently doubled the size of its search index, and filled its founder's pockets with money. We also saw improvements...
Black Hat or White Hat?
- December. 23, 2004
I was at the recent Search Engine Strategies conference in Chicago, and was fortunate enough to attend the seminar entitled "Black Hat, White Hat and Lots of Gray" and it really opened my eyes. Depending on which definition of black hat or white...
Desktop Search and Search
- December. 10, 2004
As you have probably heard by now, Yahoo has entered the desktop search fray, planning to release a Yahoo! branded desktop search in January. This now means that there are close to 1 dozen vendors supplying free desktop search. While this ...
Online Opportunities Part 2
- December. 8, 2004
Yesterday, we looked at the current online opportunities out there for someone who has a web-based business they wish to promote. Today we cover what could be (and probably will be) the next great online promotion tools. If you've watched ...
Online Opportunities Part 1
- December. 7, 2004
When a business goes online, the first place they look to is usually a search engine - either for free organic listings, or paid listings via one of the major players like Google AdWords or Yahoo!s Overture. And while these are generally the first pl...
Keyword spending up this holiday season
- December. 6, 2004
A company by the name of Fathom Online tracks online keyword spends and sorts them by category. According to Fathom, spending on keywords in November was up over October in all categories except 2. The average cost per keyword in November was US$1.6...
The Big 3???
- November. 22, 2004
When you mention the Big 3 in our industry, you don't think Ford, GM and Chrysler (unless you are an SEM firm in Detroit). If you are in the search industry when you hear the Big 3 you think of Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft. Speculation is ra...
Search Writes the Yellow Pages Obituary
- November. 18, 2004
The news piece was buried on page 36 of the business section in a major Canadian daily newspaper. It was just one paragraph, a mere 46 words, announcing that the Yellow Pages Group had signed a deal with Google, making their information available on ...
Do We Want a Smarter Search Engine?
- November. 18, 2004
SEARCH ENGINES ARE KNOCKING ON the door of the future. The 800-pound gorillas of search and brash new upstarts like Blinkx and Gurunet are working to find a way to make search more intuitive, ubiquitous, and intelligent. Someday, search will be int...
Google Does it Right, and Still Makes Money
- November. 18, 2004
We’ve done 3 studies now on how people react with search engines, and one finding that has been consistent across all three studies still amazes me. All other things being equal, Google dominates as the search engine of choice. In the latest survey G...
Why Microsoft doesn't need to compete
- November. 10, 2004
There are many people in our industry who are wondering why Microsoft is taking so long to get into the search game. After all, Google has stolen the market from under their noses. With such a commanding domination of the desktop market, a...
New Spam Tactic
- November. 2, 2004
I work on a few different blogs in my spare time, some of which are work related - to see how and where I can get them to rank, and some are just for fun. On one of the blogs I am more involved with, I noticed a bunch of comments posted from "Cheap ...
Google Browser?
- October. 27, 2004
Gbrowser.com - it is a domain name that Google recently registered. This led many people to believe that Google is developing its own internet browser. This seems to be backed up by the fact that they recently hired a bunch of development heavyweight...
Securing Your Computer
- October. 26, 2004
I write articles like this every so often to reinforce the point of how vulnerable the internet still really is. Despite the fact that software makers work diligently to try and help protect us from ourselves, especially when it comes to the ho...
New Yahoo! Features
- October. 20, 2004
It all started when Yahoo! dumped Google earlier this year in favor of its own algorithmic results. I hadn't paid much attention to Yahoo! until then (because if it was in Google, it was in Yahoo!). Sure I knew some things about it. Like getting a di...
Google Desktop Search
- October. 14, 2004
For some time now, most companies have been saying that the next big search product will be desktop search. Who was going to come out with it first and how good was it going to be? Well HotBot, believe it or not, was one of the first. They...
Windows Marketplace
- October. 13, 2004
If you are wondering where to buy Windows compatible hardware or software components, you may not need to look any further. Microsoft recently announced a new addition to their online presence. A site called the Windows Marketplace, on whi...
A search engine to watch
- October. 6, 2004
Outside of our industry, not many people know who Bill Gross is. He is one of the driving forces behind one of the most recent changes in the web to make a huge impact. I am talking about paid listings. Before Goto, paid advertising on th...
Optimizing Dynamic Sites
- October. 4, 2004
Ok, you have a huge database driven site, and based on our previous article about URL rewriting, you have implemented some form of rewriting which helps to get all your pages found. Now what? Well it's great if a crawler can get deep into ...
Another new search engine
- September. 30, 2004
Sometimes it is surprising to see a new search engine enter the market, considering the current market space. Three search engines account for over 90% of the referrals, while another dozen or so account for about 7%. So when a new one comes out, it ...
The butler is back with changes
- September. 21, 2004
A tanned fit butler now greets you when you go to Ask.com. He also brought back a few new features that he acquired during his sabbatical. On the home page you will see a "MyJeeves" button. This has some very interesting features. Ones I'm sure the ...
Some Recent News
- September. 15, 2004
There are some new and exciting changes happening in our industry. This article outlines just a few of the most recent. Google Local Google has recently added new features and a new look to its local search. The new look now includes maps on resu...
There is a new king on the horizon
- September. 14, 2004
It was almost 4 years ago that we published an article on why content is king on the internet. And content has been king ever since then. Even after the now famous Florida Update when Google put even more emphasis on site content as oppos...
Is Google Broken?
- September. 13, 2004
I wrote about this topic last year, but it seems to have come to surface - the fact the Google may have hit their limit on the number of pages they can index. As you probably already noticed, if you watch the web closely, Google doesn't se...
Google Enters Chat - Sort of
- September. 8, 2004
Will it go portal or stay search? Will it get into desktop search or instant messenging? Will it offer its own free operating system? These are all theories about the future of Google that I have heard lately. Today I heard of a new applic...
The on demand world
- September. 7, 2004
Every day I receive hundreds of emails from Google news about the changes in our industry and the internet in general. And my first response is always "wow that is so cool – it's going to make our lives so much better." In essence, what is h...
URL Rewriting
- September. 2, 2004
During my typical work week, I get called into many consultations where clients, or prospective clients, need help understanding what a URL rewriter is and how to effectively implement one to improve search engine rankings.A lot of times, prospective...
Microsoft Research
- August. 31, 2004
If you haven't visited Microsoft's research site lately you might want to take a look. Aside from the fact that they've recently changed it a little, you may want to browse the current list of projects they are working on. I did, and here are a few t...
The Growing Pains of Search
- August. 27, 2004
The Growing Pains of Search Ahh…our fledgling little industry is growing up. The little search marketing companies are unfurling their new wings and trying to peer over the edge of the nest. Suddenly, VC firms are looking at search...
Search 2nd most popular
- August. 27, 2004
In a somewhat surprising shift in online usage, a recent study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project and comScore Networks, search engines usage accounts for the second most performed online activity. While email reigns as the most...
What Could Google Be?
- August. 26, 2004
A couple of days ago I wrote an article speculating on what Google could do now that they have raised so much money. Last night I came across another article speculating on other things they could do, based on some recent hirings they have...
Internet sales tax a reality
- August. 25, 2004
When I first started hearing about an internet tax a few years ago my first that was, "yeah right, how are they going to collect and enforce it, and who is going to get all of that money?" Well, it appears that Michigan has answered some o...
What now for Google?
- August. 24, 2004
What would you do if you have almost US$29 billion in the bank? If you are Page and Brin of Google, you look at the competition. At least, that is what I would do if I have that much money burning a hole in my pocket. So what should they b...
Desktop search heats up
- August. 6, 2004
With the recent acquisition by Microsoft of an integrated Outlook search tool (Lookout) we saw Microsoft's first move into the desktop search space. Sure they have been talking about it for over a year, as part of the eagerly anticipated n...
MarketingSherpa new research
- August. 5, 2004
According to new research performed by MarketingSherpa, 81% of companies using online marketing find both organic and paid listings to be somewhat-to-very-effective. It is interesting to note that most of the people surveyed only found organic search...
SEI Reports
- August. 3, 2004
One thing that has always disturbed me about "traditional" reporting software was that it did not differentiate between rankings on one engine versus rankings on another engine. For example, we get much more traffic to this site from Google than we d...
Terra Sells Lycos
- July. 28, 2004
Bought for $12.5 billion in 2000, Lycos is a steal today at a mere $170 million. That's right – TerraLycos will again just be Terra, as it has reached an agreement to sell Lycos to an as yet unnamed Korean company. The writing has been on the wall ...
The Future of MetaSearch
- July. 23, 2004
There is a new application out which, to me at least, indicates where the future of search is going. It is a desktop application called Blinkx and it is pretty amazing. What caught my eye about this product was that it is probab...
What is modem hijacking?
- July. 21, 2004
While this is not a search related article today, it is an article which I think needs to be written to help others who may not know about the potential threats out there. This one is important because the end result is probably the extreme to which ...
Google's Picasa
- July. 20, 2004
If you go to the Google homepage, chances are you will see a link to download their latest offering, Picasa - an image sorting and cataloging application which you download and install like any other desktop application. While this may be ...
Search engine news w/e July 16, 2004
- July. 19, 2004
Normally, I write these summaries on Friday. Granted it has been a while, but somehow last Friday disappeared on me. I was at the office all day, but it just seems like I got here in the morning and before I knew it, it was time to go home. &nbs...
Dynamic Pages and Search Engine Rankings
- July. 14, 2004
All too often, we come across sites which are powered by a content management system. While a CMS can be an invaluable tool to those who need to manage a large amount of data, many Content Management Systems can cause problems with search engine posi...
New Website Research
- July. 12, 2004
A research group called the Customer Respect Group has just released a study outlining how well 100 websites do when dealing with their customers.The sites surveyed included Microsoft, Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Chevron, Ford and General Electric to name ...
Investors are a funny group
- July. 8, 2004
It was recently reported that Yahoo made over US$112 million dollars in the second quarter of its fiscal year. That's more than double the US$50.8 million it made the same period last year. You would think this would be good news to shareh...
Reputation Management
- July. 6, 2004
If you monitor the SEM industry at all you may have noticed a lot of buzz the past week or so about reputation management. That is, using the web to influence your (or someone else's) reputation, either positively or negatively.Reputation management ...
MSN Search Improvements
- July. 5, 2004
By now you have probably heard about the new MSN search look. Launched July 1 of this year, MSN appears to have reworked their ranking algorithms somewhat so that results are displayed in a different manner. Also, they have changed the app...
Local Search Offerings: Google and Overture
- July. 2, 2004
The two biggest sponsored search providers, Overture and Google, have both stepped into the local search arena and are offering solutions for local advertisers and the web users conducting geographic-specific searches. Google has two local s...
A look at Google
- June. 26, 2004
This is the second in our series of articles which give a snapshot of the engine and why it may or may not be important in the overall scheme of things. We started with Yahoo! as it arguably one of the most powerful sites on the web. Next we profile ...
AskJeeves Site Submit to end (Finally)
- June. 24, 2004
A few months ago, when Yahoo! launched its own branded search engine, it took some people by surprise. Many were thinking that it would simply roll the Inktomi database into the search results and re-brand them. Even though they had their own crawler...
How does Google do it?
- June. 23, 2004
I read an interesting article the other day in which they interviewed one of the chief IT people at Google and a point was made which I hadn't really considered. They were talking about managing the cluster of servers that is Google, and how much wor...
There has been lots of recent news
- June. 22, 2004
Like any industry ours has its peaks and valleys when it comes to mergers, acquisitions or news in general. Last week, there was virtually nothing happening. This week, already, there were some fairly major announcements. Some of the biggest and po...
Is targeted advertising a good idea?
- June. 16, 2004
Many people don't realize that all of those toolbars that you install in your browser do more than offer you handy links to your favorite search engine. In fact, they also track your online usage. While some people don't mind, there are ot...
Search engine news w/e June 11, 2004
- June. 11, 2004
This week there were some significant changes in the search engine realm. Changes which will have implications for months and years to come. While we know that the search engine world is ever changing and evolving, some of the changes taking pl...
Ask Jeeves Gears Up
- June. 10, 2004
By now I am sure you have heard that Ask Jeeves bought a small unknown company called Tukaroo. What you may not know is that Tukaroo was in the business to build a search application which could search both your desktop and the web in a seamless "end...
Why use landing pages?
- June. 9, 2004
About a month ago we brought you an article on the art of PPC bid management. In it we explained how, based on our research, bidding on broad terms might not be as effective as more specific targeted terms. However, if you need to build up your custo...
Internet Address Registrations are up
- June. 8, 2004
63 million. That's roughly the number of registered domains on the web right now. That works out to about 1 domain name for every 100 people on the planet. The growth is likely due to the increased numbers of root domains available, such as .INFO an...
Google and Yahoo! face off
- June. 4, 2004
There has been lots of speculation lately as to when Yahoo! could realistically challenge Google for web supremacy. In fact, the battle lines have been drawn and over the past few months and Yahoo! has made some inroads into the Google dominated s...
New search engine forums available
- June. 2, 2004
Anyone familiar with search is familiar with searchenginewatch.com. It is one of THE sources of reliable search engine information on the web (outside of our site of course ;) ). One thing that the site has been lacking is a way to communi...
Is a Yahoo! Directory submission worth it?
- June. 1, 2004
I've been reading a lot in the forums lately about whether or not a paid directory submission to Yahoo! is worth the US$299 submission renewal fee. After all, it's not like it used to be where if you were listed in Google and had a Yahoo! directory l...
MSN has some ambitious search plans
- May. 28, 2004
When we recently profiled what the future of Microsoft search would be, I don't think we really appreciated the scope of the project. Being a search marketing company, we were most concerned with how MSN search would impact our industry. A...
Google testing new spider?
- May. 27, 2004
It all started when I was approached for help in determining if there were issues with a client not being indexed as soon as it should have. My first thought was, outside of a server configuration error, that there must be a roadblock to indexing whi...
Search is hot…and getting hotter
- May. 25, 2004
If there was ever a time to be concerned about online advertising spending, now isn't it. According to recent numbers released by IAB and PricewaterhouseCoopers, spending on online advertising is up almost 4% from the last quarter of 2003, and up alm...
Google Desktop Search?
- May. 20, 2004
Anyone who is familiar with Google knows that the company is synonymous with search. In fact, to "Google" someone or something is another way of searching for them. This phrase was recently made popular on many hit TV shows. Google recentl...
Google likes banner ads?
- May. 14, 2004
I thought we’d seen the death of banner ads. In my opinion there was so much negative feedback from web users that I thought for sure that the whole banner ad issue was as dead as popup ads. Of course they still appeared from time to time...
The art of bid management
- May. 10, 2004
If you manage a paid campaign on the internet, you have probably used, or thought of using, a bid management software package. These tools are godsends for those who must keep on top of large (and sometimes expensive) paid campaigns. If you are deali...
Search Engine Mission Statements
- May. 6, 2004
With the recent Google IPO, I have been doing a lot of speculating as to what Google will do with that money. We know that, in order to remain competitive, they have to be able to easily bankroll new initiatives. So I started to wonder just what Goog...
What does a Google IPO mean?
- April. 29, 2004
So by now I'm sure you've heard - Google has filed papers to start the IPO process. The filing states that the initial offering will be US$2.7 billion (yes billion) dollars. That's a lot of money for such a relatively young company. Keep in mind that...
Want a Piece of the Google Pie?
- April. 28, 2004
While the rumored Google IPO seems imminent, I started to wonder - does the average Joe have a shot at buying Google stock when and if it happens? I am not saying whether or not I think it is a good idea, I am simply wondering... If I really wanted a...
Looksmart: Why they are still around
- April. 23, 2004
I thought Looksmart was supposed to have disappeared by now? Raise your hand if you thought that, after they ended their distribution deal with MSN in January, Looksmart would be phased out. In December 2003, we outlined new features that Looksmart w...
Google partners with Real Player
- April. 20, 2004
It seems odd that a search engine and a media player would partner in a distribution agreement. After all, what benefit would it be to either Google or Real to offer their downloadable products together? Surprisingly there could be many benefits for...
Different results in Altavista/MSN/Yahoo!
- April. 7, 2004
A team member of ours did some checking recently comparing results between Yahoo! and its search subsidiaries and found some interesting results. So much so that it begs the question: Why are there different results between the sites? I am...
Gmail privacy concerns?
- April. 6, 2004
I'm sure you've already heard, but Google is getting into the email business. We speculated about Google email a few months ago, but were unsure about the whole mail thing. It seemed to be a change in a direction that Google wasn't used to. After all...
Net IQ Buys First Place Software
- April. 5, 2004
An interesting press release hit my inbox today, so I thought I would outline it as it likely affects most webmasters or site owners. Two of the most well known software packages designed to help site owners achieve the most out of their w...
Users and the anonymity threshold
- April. 2, 2004
We recently completed a focus group study session and published a whitepaper on our results. We decided to study how people search and this week our President published an article on the white paper and its results. You can download the whitepaper fr...
Why MSN won't buy AOL
- March. 25, 2004
You may have seen the online headlines this week "MSN in talks with AOL execs to buy AOL from Time/Warner." At first glance you may think "wow that would make MSN pretty powerful." After all, while AOL's customer base is shrinking, it is still substa...
Been banned by Yahoo!?
- March. 19, 2004
It is interesting to watch the varied reactions to the new Yahoo! search. As a spectator I can sit back and take it all in and form my own opinions. I can then apply my ideas to my clients and watch them succeed. One such topic of interest of late is...
What's going on with PPC?
- March. 18, 2004
Times are definitely changing in the search engine world. Search engines are evolving their PPC components just as much as they are changing their algorithmic search. Two weeks ago we outlined the changes involving the new Overture Site Match and Xch...
What is RSS?
- March. 15, 2004
By now you have probably heard lots of talk about RSS news feeds or XML news feeds. In fact, if you look at our home page you will see that we offer a link to our own XML news feed. So you've probably been wondering - what the heck is an RSS news fee...
What to do with Yahoo!
- March. 11, 2004
Chances are, if you have a website and were previously paying for an Altavista listing you received something like this: "AltaVista's Paid Inclusion Program has changed. A New sign-up is necessary for existing AV express inclusion customers to becom...
Search engine news w/e Mar 5, 2004
- March. 5, 2004
It has been a while since we've done one of these. I felt it was time, considering the incredible amount of change happening this week, no doubt as a result of this weeks search engine strategies conference in New York. So, where to begin. Yahoo! ha...
Ask Jeeves is Growing
- March. 4, 2004
It has been a while since we looked at Ask Jeeves. I've always liked Ask. They have a really nice, clean interface and a unique way of looking at search (by allowing users to search in the form of questions). Recently, they announced, after Yahoo! a...
Overture's new Site Match
- March. 2, 2004
Last week we saw the launch of the new Yahoo search. Gone are the days of Google results being displayed in the Yahoo listings. Similar to the Paid Inclusion services offered by Inktomi for the past few years, Overture is now jumping into...
Yahoo! Submissions
- March. 1, 2004
You gotta love webmaster forums. While they can be a double edged sword in that sometimes you get contradictory information, from time to time you find tidbits of gold which make your life easier. I am referring to a post in the WebmasterWorld forum...
New internet usage research
- February. 23, 2004
Nielsen/NetRatings reported today that in January 2004 1 in 3 American's (about 114 million) used a search engine. Of that, Google reigns supreme with almost 40% of the audience. Following close behind were Yahoo! search and MSN search at 30% and 29%...
Yahoo! Pricing Models
- February. 19, 2004
One day after the change and we are already trying to figure out how Yahoo! is going to monetize on its new search offering. We have always felt the only way Yahoo! would enter algorithmic search was to sell it, as opposed to Google's free listings. ...
Yahoo changes search
- February. 18, 2004
I am glad I am not a betting man, or I am sure I would have big guys named Vinnie and Freddie knocking on my door looking for their money. I have been trying to guess when Yahoo! was going to change results providers virtually since the time they bou...
Privacy policies and trust
- February. 16, 2004
If you do business on the web, chances are you have put in place an online privacy policy. Something stating that you will not share personal information and so on. In fact, in many cases you are required by law to have such a policy in place. But do...
Lycos leaving search
- February. 12, 2004
There are few internet web properties that were making news in 1998. Lycos was one of them. Once a powerhouse in internet search (and one of the hottest properties on the web) Lycos was soon bought by multinational Terra Networks to become TerraLycos...
What is Google up to?
- February. 9, 2004
You have heard us talk about the Google dance and how, during the period known as the dance, Google performs an update to its index. Many webmasters and SEO's alike tend to lose sleep during this monthly ritual. There is even a website devoted to th...
Google Florida update - 2 months later
- February. 3, 2004
By now, if you market on the web, you know all about the Florida update, and have likely heard of the Austin update. But in case you haven't - a little reminder: Back in November 2003 we began to notice a fairly major change occurring in the Google ...
Time to think summer
- January. 29, 2004
Today, January 29th I'm sitting at my desk looking out the window at the snow. We have a blizzard warning up as I type this Marketing Monitor. We are to expect between 8 and 10 cm (about 3 inches) on top of that same amount of snow we've received dai...
Site rankings gone?
- January. 27, 2004
As you may already know, a good part of my job is researching how the organic search engines work. Trying to figure out how the algorithms work in ranking pages is crucial to our day to day operations. Occasionally, we come across sites which seem to...
Mapping the web
- January. 26, 2004
Did you ever wonder what the internet looked like? In other words, from your home or office, did you ever wonder how many "hops" you go through to get to your final destination? For those who don't know, a "hop" is the distance between you and the ne...
Keyword Analysis reviewed
- January. 20, 2004
If you are a regular to search, you have no doubt noticed the changes in Google lately. If you have a site, you DEFINITELY know that Google changed. Chances are you lost some, if not all, of your rankings due to the Florida Update. You have probably ...
Google gets into email
- January. 19, 2004
In a somewhat interesting move, Google appears to be moving into the email market, to a certain extent. Reuters recently announced that Google appears to be developing systems to offer targeted AdWords on emails sent to those who opt in for emails a...
Yahoo versus Google
- January. 16, 2004
You know it's big when it's on the evening national news. Last night as I was watching our national news, a story came on about Yahoo and Google and how there is a war brewing between the two for supremacy on the web. The way the story was presented,...
Dealing with spam
- January. 15, 2004
I received an email the other day from our automated spam filter on our mail server. The numbers were quite surprising (Notice the time period): From Jan 11 04:02:49 to Jan 13 14:19:12 Total number of emails processed by the spam filter 2081...
Yahoo reports 4th quarter earnings
- January. 14, 2004
Do you know what I wish? I wish I was an executive at Yahoo! right now. Because I am sure that they are getting hefty quarterly bonus checks right now. Yahoo reported its first full quarterly earnings after its Overture acquisition and to no ones su...
Why is Google so fast?
- January. 13, 2004
Perform any search on Google today and you should see results in about 1/4 second. If you see anything over 1/2 second than there's a problem. In fact, except for when the Florida update occurred, I rarely see results take longer than 4/10 of a secon...
Alternatives to search engines
- January. 12, 2004
There was a fair bit of hype over the past couple of weeks regarding "new" search engines like Vivisimo and Grokker. In fact these aren't new; we told you about Vivisimo 2 ½ years ago.Despite this, I thought I would share with you my favorite Meta ty...
How big is too big?
- January. 8, 2004
It was about 20 years ago when Bill Gates proclaimed that he wanted to see a personal computer on every desk in the world. Flash forward to now, and we see that is almost the case. Personal computing growth has exploded in the past decade. In fact, s...
Yahoo change impact
- January. 6, 2004
I know, you are probably tired of hearing about this from us by now, but we feel it bears repeating. As you know, the inevitable changeover should happen this month. (I had previously said January 13th but I recently found out that is too soon and th...
2003 online sales
- January. 5, 2004
2003 turned out to be a banner year for online retailers. Overall, there was a 27% increase in revenues generated from online sales versus the same time period in 2002, according to research firm ComScore Networks. On-line retail spending during the ...
Netscape rises from the ashes
- January. 2, 2004
Just when you thought the battle was over, Netscape is back for round two. Last year we told you about how Netscape had been doomed to a slow and painful death by AOL, because they had licensed Internet Explorer from Microsoft as part of a lawsuit se...
The web is a soap opera, and we are its biggest fans
- December. 31, 2003
It was like a soap opera this year, looking back at the news we brought to you. Microsoft tried to buy Google, but Google said no, so Microsoft said "fine - if we can't buy you, we will crush you." They then began working on their own algorithmic eng...
Internet usage increasing
- December. 30, 2003
Recent studies completed by Nielsen/NetRatings between September and November show that internet usage overall, as well as the number of new internet users continues to grow. While average page views decreased from September to November in the...
There is an interesting new engine out there
- December. 29, 2003
In the ever complex world of competitive search it is nice to see a new algorithmic engine come along. It seems almost weekly that you hear of a new PPC engine - someone else out trying to figure out how to make a buck in the hot pay-for-p...
Looksmart in the New Year
- December. 24, 2003
There will be a number of changes around the corner for Looksmart in 2004. Some of their new features are already rolling out. Below is an overview of the new features.Beginning in January 2004, MSN will be removing the Web Directory Sites section of...
Yahoo Inktomi Anniversary
- December. 23, 2003
It was one year ago today, December 23, 2002, when Yahoo! announced that it planned to acquire Inktomi. Which leads to the question - What has changed? The answer is; not much on the organic front. Yahoo! still displays Google as its' prim...
Search engines like India
- December. 22, 2003
India has long been a place to turn to if you need inexpensive quality programming. Microsoft has done it for years. Now it appears that others are looking to India as well including search engines. Google recently announced plans to set u...
Kanoodle ramping up to compete
- December. 17, 2003
Kanoodle has announced that they plan to introduce a service similar to Google's in which advertisers can pay to have ads placed on category pages related to the products they sell. In an effort to compete with Google and Overture's target...
UK web advertising increased
- December. 16, 2003
UK web based advertising dollars spent has increased by 85% over the same period last year. According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) UK, web based advertising grew to 151.6 million pounds (US$264.3 million) in the first half of 2003 from...
Yahoo switching to Inktomi?
- December. 15, 2003
I took a leap a few months ago, predicting when Yahoo! would change search results providers. I thought my theory was sound, but apparently Yahoo! seems to have a few different ideas.I figured, based on their history of rolling out new features a few...
E-tailing keeps growing
- December. 12, 2003
November was a record month for online retailers. Shoppers spent 55% more online this November than the same period last year. The study is based on a collaborative effort from Goldman, Sachs & Co., Harris Interactive, and Nielsen/NetRatings.&nbs...
Looksmart announces layoffs
- December. 11, 2003
We knew that this day would come. Earlier in the year, Looksmart confirmed that MSN was ending their agreement to supply listings. Now, just a few weeks shy of the actual last day of the contract, Looksmart has announced that it plans to layoff ½ of ...
Notes from SES Chicago
- December. 11, 2003
Hello from the Windy City. The first Search Engine Strategies to be held in Chicago wrapped up today. Attendance was very good and the sessions were probably the best I’ve seen. There wasn’t a dud in the batch. Of course, the main topic of conversati...
Google Florida Update
- December. 9, 2003
November 16, 2003 will be a date to remember in search engine history. It will be remembered as the day that Google raised the bar on search engines. It is the day that they changed the rules as far as ranking pages and returning search results. As p...
Google and Trademarks
- December. 8, 2003
Google is now involved in a long running legal issue which is sure to stir up some emotion over web advertising. I'm not talking about the Florida Update, although it did stir a lot of emotion and even more lost sleep than the average Google Dance. ...
New forum for Overture ads
- December. 2, 2003
It was inevitable. Web based advertising had to begin to creep into non-traditional web properties. What better way to maximize exposure and ROI than displaying PPC ads somewhere other than on a search engine or website? Overture has rece...
Need help to increase online sales?
- November. 26, 2003
A Jupiter Research study was recently completed. This study asked users what would encourage them to visit and/or buy from an e-commerce site. The focus of the study was to find out if a personalized website encouraged shopping. That is, a site which...
Spam or Advertising?
- November. 25, 2003
A couple of months ago, I wrote an article about spam in which I asked the loa