Often those of us in the search engine marketing field tend to through around many industry specific terms which we take for granted. We assume since we know what these terms mean, so should you, right? Well, in my humble opinion, that is not the correct approach nor should the attitude be prevalent in any SEO or PPC consultant. I have put together a list of some of the most commonly used terms with links to Wikiopedia and their definitions. In some cases there were no definitions yet in Wikipedia, therefore, I added a few pages with the definitions.
In the wake of the recent Google acquisition of YouTube, the video sharing web site, MSN, last week, inked their own deal with Blinkx, which provides comparable video search capabilities.
Yahoo released its new toolbar this week. This toolbar very well may begin to shift the balance of market share from Google with its page rank feature on its tool bar to Yahoo and all the new bookmarking features they are proving. The Yahoo bar goes way beyond the basics of book marking the title and web address. What the new Yahoo toolbar does is to capture a thumbnail image of a web site, and even save the full text of a web page. In addition, Yahoo gives a user the ability to add buttons right to the tool bar, such as favorites, where the tool bar searches for an IE icon, and if present on the site, adds that icon right to the toolbar as the button for the page.
Chris Sherman, Executive Editor of Search Engine Watch recently wrote, “Adding a thumbnail image to a bookmark helps recall—it's easier for people to remember an image of a page than it is to recall what a page is about from a simple title and URL.”
Just as other tagging properties that Yahoo owns such as Del.icio.us, users can tag sites using the tool bar. Yahoo will suggest tags to associate with a page, or you can set your own. However, there is a big difference between these tags and bookmarks and the shared bookmarks on Del.icio.us. These are not meant to be public, and will not be saved to your Del.icio.us account. However, one wonders if this tagging and saving of bookmarks may not just be used in some way to enhance the relevancy of search results, adding yet another powerful tool to the already impressive list of social networking applications developed or purchased by Yahoo.
In light of the recent Google and Yahoo click fraud settlements, one would think that click fraud was going to be more under control by these search giants. I just don’t see this as the case. Click fraud isn’t going anywhere, but rather those who take part in click fraud are simply getting more creative and smarter. Many online companies offer to pay employees to do nothing more than sit down and click on ads, or to type certain words into search engines for hours at a time. There are click fraud web forums where users can share their ideas, all in anonymity.
The search engines are getting very good at determining classic click fraud, such as clicking on an adword or sponsored listing, then hitting the back button and doing it over and over again. Also, they can now decipher the IP address of those clicking on an add and can see a pattern if the same IP address clicks on the same add time and time again. Thus, those who take part in this unethical and despicable act have come up with new practices to accomplish the goals of inflating competitor’s clicks, while extinguishing their budget. The other main goal is for web sites who have placed Google Ad sence Yahoo Content Match on their site to increase their revenue by fraudulently inflating the click rate on advertisers sites.
Just this week, the Washington Post reported, “From her home surrounded by cornfields in Dow City, Iowa, Jackie Park spends hours each day on her computer, earning half a penny every time she clicks on an Internet advertisement.”.
Google and Yahoo’s claims to have click fraud under control seems to be more of a PR statement than a statement of fact these days.
YouTube, Google's latest acquisition, removed 29,549 video files from its trendy Web site. A group of Japanese media companies, The Japan Society for Rights of Authors' had accused the video site of allowing its users to post television, music and movie clips without the permission of copyright holders. The media group also requested YouTube set up screening and other measures to block postings of unauthorized files
The Burns Convention, is a treaty which which requirreciprocityity with other countries copyright law, where contrastres must adhere to the copyright laws of other countries. As such, American companies such as Google, must not only respect the copyright law in this country, but those of other countries.
Google images is currently leveraging the social environment and users willingness to provide content to better label images for more efficient image searches. The product is called Image Labeler. Yahoo has Flickr, which allows users to add images and tag them online, but Google has taken a slightly different approach. They have turned this tagging into a sort of game, where you can earn points. Two users are paired, and shown images from various sites that have images already indexed in the engine. Each user enters descriptions, where they try and match their partner. Google claims that they are using the data collected from the users to better rank their index so that when a search occurs on Google images, more relevant results will populate the results.
The way the game works according to Google is:
You'll be randomly paired with a partner who's online and using the feature. Over a 90-second period, you and your partner will be shown the same set of images and asked to provide as many labels as possible to describe each image you see. When your label matches your partner's label, you'll earn some points and move on to the next image until time runs out. After time expires, you can explore the images you've seen and the websites where those images were found. And we'll show you the points you've earned throughout the session.
This is just another reason to optimize your images on your web site for search engines. The higher an image comes up on Google images, the more likely you will receive additional web site traffic, especially if your image is representative of your web site theme.
Yahoo has recently launched a new service called “Yahoo Search Submit Express”. This program has a little SEO, a little pay per inclusion and a little pay per click, all rolled into one. Essentially you pay a fee of $49 for the first URL, and $29 or $10 for each additional one, and the Yahoo team reviews your URL with in 48 hours. They keep coming back every 48 hours to see if the content has been refreshed. That is the PPI component. When your link is clicked on you pay a flat fee of $0.30 cents. That is the PPC component. Keyword rich titles, content, alt tags, and the link all come into play as well as off site factors such as inbound links. Traditional SEO methods will still help your site rise higher in the SERPs, but having budget in your account should in and of itself help you attain higher rankings than you would be able to without the program.
We at Rock Coast Media conducted a test with one of our URLs that placed highly for some terms but not top billing. Over the course of one week, the time it took to extinguish our $50 test budget we saw a ranking improvement in 25% of our keywords. This by no means is a conclusive test, and clearly is not a large enough sample to indicate the over-riding affect of this program in the long run, but at least for now, we know for a fairly low PPC rate and some solid SEO practices there is just another tool to increase your rankings in Yahoo. This information should have the caveat attached that in no way did we see any shift in Google, Ask, AOL, or MSN as a result of the program. Thus only 28% or so of the searches conducted on the internet for our key terms were impacted.
There is such a thing as inducement. There is also such a thing as innovation. The big question for Google the new owner’s of YouTube is whether providing a technology that allows others to upload their video clips for everyone to share, where there is little or no monitoring of who actually owes the copyright to the videos. Has YouTube opened a Pandora’s Box, or has it simply gone the way of the VCR and allowed a video footage to be displayed and replayed time and time again.
There is the US Supreme Court's decision in the Grokster which creates liability to any company who provides a means to intestinally allow others to violate copyright. However, that case dealt with a for profit company. YouTube was not such a company before the Google purchase, but now with the $400+ dollar a share juggernaut behind it, YouTube may just fall into the area of a Naptser file sharing and not a Sony VCR.
Search Engine Strategies 2006 and the Google Dance
Now that we are a few months removed from the last big Search Engine Strategies convention, and the talk is shifting to New York for SES NY07, I thought it would be a good time to post this video which I found on YouTube from SES San Jose 06.
SES San Jose, was the place where many of us where introduced or had our knowledge vastly expanded on the new social search environment. I personally learned about a very cool site for travelers who are going away, called Trip Planner, which is powered by Yahoo. Oh, and the Google Dance was not bad either, can't wait to see what they do in NYC in a few months.
How to add a video like this to your blog If you would like to know how to add video features such as the one found on this blog, it is very simple. First you need to sign up for a YouTube account. Then search the video engine for just the right clip. Once you find the video you want to add, click on the blog this video on the bottom left of the page. You will be taken to a page where you need to add your blog to the site. Once you do that, the video will automaticly appear in your blog admin section. All you need to do is publish the posting. I hope this helps.
In a recent post by Daniel Fischer, on his blog, he addressed several questions that relate to the search industry. One question that I found of particular interest was “How do I see a demographic location of search engines queries?” I know many web site owners and small web designers who are not true SEOs ask this question all the time. Google has come to the rescue with a great tool. Google’s tool is located at http://www.google.com/trends. This tool gives you the ability to view the popularity of certain keywords by geographic area. For example if I wanted to find out how popular the keyword personal injury lawyers in Boston is, I could enter, Boston, personal injury lawyers and view the trends. I think you get the picture and see how powerful such a tool can be to those web site owners who want to find out what users in their area are searching for. This could become a very powerful tool to assist in optimizing one’s site for Google local as well.
Are SEO tools making express warranties about the capabilities of their products or is it mere puffery? I believe that an argument can be made based on who receives the advertisement and based on their knowledge of the SEO industry that a reasonable person can take certain statements made by tools as a promise to return specific results, and not just a sales pitch which should be dismissed in the same manner one would dismiss a statement by a used car sales person.
According to an email advertisement that I receive almost daily from Site Pro News, “IBP is a proven tool that helps you to get top 10 rankings in Google, Yahoo and all other major search engines.” The ad further states, “it helps you to get at the top of the search results. IBP tells you in three easy steps what you have to do to improve your web pages for top 10 search engine rankings.”
As an SEO consultant, I know how ridicules these claims are, and I would certainly not take them as a warranty, but I fear that many of the recipients of these types of emails will indeed rely on such promises as fact. I know very well that onsite optimization is not as simple as tweaking your code, and copying someone else title tags. I know for example, you need to write unique content that not only uses your keywords, but you need to surround those terms with like terms. I know for example that offsite optimization might require submission to directories, but I also know that a listing in Yahoo or http://www.business.com/ is much more advantageous then a listing on http://www.4do.org.
If you take a closer look at the law, specifically the Uniform commercial code, Chapter 2, which governs the sale of goods, you will find statutory regulations directly on point. One such rule states that if a reasonable person relies on the promises of an advertisement and the advertiser has reason to believe that such a person will rely on their statements, than an express warranty will be created. If such a warranty exists, one of two things needs to happen. Either 1.) The company must make good on its promise, or 2.) A suite can be brought for breach of express and implied warranty, breach of covenant of good faith that is inherent in every commercial contract, and several other legal causes of action.
The bottom line is these tools do not and can not do what they promise. If a jury finds that a reasonable person would rely on the promises, IBP, Web Position, and others could find themselves in a world of trouble. However, the flip side for all of us in the SEO industry is that we are the ones who will take the real hit, as consumers are going to link us, the SEO consultants to the companies who put out the tools and that could be a disaster for all of us.
While YouTube had been negotiating with Google for the sale if the web portal, the music industry has been fighting with YouTube about copyright infringement. Just hours before it was announced that Google purchased YouTube for $1.65 billion dollars, YouTube made a huge deal. They agreed to license content from two key record companies. Just last month, one of these two companies accused YouTube of violating copyright laws and suggested the company owed Universal Music Group millions of dollars. The deal will allow YouTube to post music videos from its user base that has copyright protection under the DMCA and US Copyright Act in exchange for a share in the revenue. Interestingly one of those key record companies, Sony/BMG also made a similar deal with Google to populate its video sharing service, Google Video.
The deal allows the record labels to reap some of the revenue from PPC campaigns on Google and its content network. Google will now develop, based on the agreement YouTube made, a technology to identify copyrighted content in videos so the labels can filter out material they don’t want on the site.
“The enormous popularity of these video sites made it clear that a large number of people absolutely love these sites, and so connecting artists with their fans using this viral video platform is incredibly important to us,” said Thomas Hesse, Sony BMG’s president of global digital business.“
In the world of search engine optimization and delivering the most relevant and user friendly web pages, images play a huge role. From a user standpoint, an image is worth a thousand words, and users certainly are not going to read 1,000 words. However, they would much rather view a picture. The better optimized the picture file is the quicker the page will load and this gives you a double dip at enhancing your site.
Your web site loads faster which makes users happy by not having to wait, as well as spending a few extra precious seconds reading your content
Search spiders will not choke on slow loading pages, and are more likely to index your page and images.
Images not only add a great esthetics value to a web site, but can also be a source to bring more users to your web site. If a user searches for an image using the Google image search, and your image ranks highly for the search term, a user may click on the image which will take them to your web site. One way to help your rankings is to use surrounding text that correspond to the image captions (alt tags) as well as the image file name. A great tip is to create an image and set it on the page as a background to the table cell, then add the appropriate text on top of the image using .CSS to format it properly so it looks as if it is all one image. The user will not know or care that it is not one image; the image itself will have a smaller file size and load faster; the search engines will pick up the text on top of the image and apply some relevancy to the image while indexing both the image and the text.According to the Google Images FAQ section: ÂGoogle analyzes the text on the page adjacent to the image, the image caption and dozens of other factors to determine the image content. Google also uses sophisticated algorithms to remove duplicates and ensure that the highest quality images are presented first in your results.Â
You may have a favorite search engine. Do you prefer Google, Yahoo, MSN, Alexa, or maybe some niche engine no one knows about yet? If you do have a favorite, chances are you have downloaded that search engine’s toolbar. What you may not know is that once you download that toolbar, in exchange for the ease of searching from any internet page you are on, you have agreed to allow personal tracking of the web sites you visit and what terms you use to find those sites. This data is then used in many ways. One such way is to increase the rankings of sites you visit via keyword reference. The search engines will assume if you have visited a site based on a search, those sites are relevant to your search. With the tool bar though, the search engines can also track how long you stay on a site and use your online behavior as an indication of the usefulness of a site.
I would have thought that with the proliferation of these toolbars and the ease in which they can be added to your browser of choice, more people would be using them. However, ComScore has reported that of all web searches out there, only 12% are originating from a toolbar. This number is bound to change significantly with the release of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 7. The current beta version has a Google toolbar built in. This must be the result of some settlement in one of their anti-trust cases, or surely they would have added an MSN toolbar. In either case, it will not be long before user behavior becomes a major aspect of the new social search environment, and a major factor in the ranking of web sites for key word phrases.
Last Thursday, a Federal court dismissed a law suit against Google, for allowing companies to buy an ad on the Google network which brings up the company's ad when a direct competitor's name is queried. The court found this practice did not violate any trademark of the queried company, where Google is not displaying nor using the trademark's name or logo, but rather a user is simply searching for it.
Google is the only search engine that currently allows an advertiserer to buy a competitor's name. I would think that Yahoo and MSN may re-evaluate their stand on bidding on competitors terms, even if those terms are registered trademarks.
