What makes search powerful is targeting. Searchers prequalify themselves for your products or services. Pretend you are an interior design firm. You may try to capture the phrase "interior design," but it would not be as targeted as a phrase like "interior design firm" or better yet "hire an interior design firm." The first person may be looking to spend $4 or just browsing, but the last searcher showed some real intent to buy.

The more targeted your terms are the better your conversion rate will be. Short terms are where a great deal of the fat rests. People false clicking, buying tons of links, spam central...looking for the deep targeted terms can help you out a bunch.

Dan Thies, of SEO Research Labs, recently created an Excel Spreadsheet to help you calculate the value of different phrases. It requires that you assume a % of relevancy for different terms, and then multiplies those terms by their search distribution to help you see how much targeted traffic each term gets. The idea is discussed in more detail here.

My Site Level Search
My other site uses Atomz to power it's site level search. On smaller websites people usually fail when they place something in a search box. To illistrate how randomly people search consider the some of the following random searches which all were performed multiple times last week on my other search engine website.

Last Week's Random Site Level Searches
[ blank query ]
adult galleries
grindstone lakes
how long a person can stay wihtout food
marry rich

I could guess that some of those searches might have been performed by some automated bot, but some were probably performed by people. Certainly those random searches did not find what they wanted on my site, and likely others shared the same fate. It is better to guide a person to performing the task you want while they are engaged in the active window vice give them the oportunity to stray to randomness via a search box.

How Competitive Are Your Keywords?

You can not gauge competitiveness of a term based upon the total number of search results for that term. The best way to tell is to evaluate search results. Pages which have had professional optimization done (page copy & linking campaign) are easy to spot after you know your industry well enough.

Three quick ways to tell how fierce the competition is for any word are by checking the associated ads (price, quantity, and search quantity), using advanced operators, and by viewing the linkage data for the top ranking websites.

Checking Ads

Using Advanced Search Operators
A simple mention on a page is not enough data for a page to be competing.

Page Title
A mention of a phrase in the title is a good indication that the page may be competion.
Google Search: allintitle:"seo book"

Inbound Link Text
The words being in the anchor text in the inbound links is an even better indication of competion.
Google Search: allinanchor:"seo book"

Inbound Link Check
Recently I noticed a simple tool at IBL Check.com, which oddly enough checks the number of inbound links to the top few websites. Once you click the link to check who is linking to each site it pops open a little window showing the URL of each of the links.

McDar Keyword + Link Tool
Another link tool which can tell competition by keyword exists at http://www.mcdar.net/KeywordTool/keywordtool.asp. The McDar keyword + link tool checks the the top 10 Google search results for the number of pages in each site, the number of site backlinks, and the position of that site on the allinanchor Google search for the same keyword.

Link Tools to Build a Linking Campaign
A quicker way to build a link campaign is to evaluate link data on a more mathematical or higher level. A couple inexpensive link tools I think are neato are Linktree (free) & Optilink ($149.)

Danny Sullivan takes a closer look at the recent Google changes in a piece titled "Google Loses Tabs In New Look, Gains Web Alerts & Personalized Search Results"

Also last week I forgot to cover the fact that Maquest is beta testing an entry into the local search market. You can try out the mapquest here.
(further MapQuest review on ResourceShelf)

After months of testing (and me thinking I was part of another test) Google has unveiled its new look search. The new Google is a less cluttered, more crisp looking search result page. In addition the Google home page has lost its tabs and now just has small words above the search box. The Google Directory no longer is listed on the home page and the Google Directory category listings are no longer appearing in the search results. Google appears to be distancing itself from the Open Directory Project.

Froogle has been added to the home page as well as the SERP pages. To list your products in Froogle for free be sure to fill out your Froogle Feed. Froogle also has a "recent items found" list underneath it's search box.

Google Groups are also showing the new AdWords format.

View the new look Google SERP.

People have been discussing the new look Google at WMW.

One major change which will go highly unnoticed by most people is that there is no longer an interest bar to show relative click through rates between different ads participating in the Google AdWords program.

The single biggest difference with the new Google search is that the ads tend to blend seamlessly into the content. Google is perhaps doing this to fight the potential text ad burnout that we may face in the near future if all text ads look extremely similar.

Google does not spider every page of the web everyday. They can not keep a full accurate view of PageRank updated in real time. Google Guy has hinted at the fact that PageRank display updates are just that, DISPLAY UPDATES. PageRank is updated far more frequently when links appear from major websites which are frequently spidered by Googlebot. Recently a guy got arrested for an alleged Google extortion attempt. I was one of the few sites on the web that had wrote about the new AdSense autoclick software before the man was arrested. The lead editor of Internet News called me up and talked to me. He linked into my page about the subject in his article which appeared on Internet News, Earthweb, and even in foreign language translated websites.

If you search Google for SEO Book normally my home page lists at #1 and my buy now page lists at #2. Due to the articles linking to me recently appearing on the home pages of exceptionally powerful websites my autoclick software page now ranks at #2. This happened within a couple days of the articles.

As the autoclick articles fall into the archives of those major sites their link value will decrease, but for now those links are still adding a good bit of link equity into my site.

AllTheWeb has recently switched to the Yahoo! index. Many of the advanced search features that were on AllTheWeb are no longer available. Currently Lycos is still being powered by the old AllTheWeb index. Greg R. Notess of SearchEngineShowdown wrote an article about AllTheWeb changes. People at Webmaster World are also running a thread on the recent AllTheWeb changes.

Side Note: A little while back Hotbot dropped AllTheWeb from their search options. Now they only include Ask, Google, and Hotbot (Inktomi).

When Google recently updated the AdSense TOS they included the following statement:

multiple ad units may be displayed on each Web site page, but no ad unit shall contain any advertisement in common with any other ad unit.

Currently there is no guarantee that repeat ads will not appear on a given page though. Part of the ambiguous nature of the language is that Google does not want to revise the terms of service more than once per quarter. Look for Google to add the new multiple ad feature soon.

The muti AdSense ad topic is being discussed over at WebmasterWorld. Also, Google working on voice activated search.
(thanks Garrett)

Shopping.com is one of the largest shopping search engines on the web, and the first to file an IPO.

"Shopping.com Ltd., which runs Web sites like epinions.com, filed with U.S. regulators on Tuesday for an initial public offering worth an estimated $75 million." - source Yahoo News

Kanoodle to Factor in Click Through Rate Contextual Ad Placement
Kanoodle is to improve the value of their contextual advertising product by factoring click through rate into ad positioning. Kanoodle is the first search engine to offer exclusively contextual advertising. They are extending their lead in this market by adding many value added features that other search engines have not yet added.

The company's new proprietary system, ClickFactor, has an approach similar to Google's in that ads move higher or lower on the list based on how many users click on them. However, it's different in that advertisers can learn their rank, the factored index and the bid needed to get the desired placement, according to Lance Podell, Kanoodle's president.

source Clickz

Many people can create large lists of keywords manually, but its really slow. A few weeks ago I thought about creating a tool which would allow me to enter keyword groups in a sequence and then have all posibilities of them automatically generated in a list. (Microsoft Excel does this, but there was nothing on the web which really did this.)

In Google broad matches compete with exact match listings, so this tool will help a little there, but not a ton. This tool really helps with Overture though, because they place exact match listings in front of broad match listings (which they call advanced match).

1. Find your keywords using free keyword suggestion tools.

2. Give this new keyword list generator a try. The keyword list generator can also do your AdWords wrapping and set your bid price.
3. Prune out bad keywords that do not make sense.
4. Filter out common negative keywords if you are using broad match.
5. You may want to use Dynamic Keyword Insertion for your ad titles if you are placing the ads on Google.

Thirsty? Want Some Java?
On a few of the forums people have stated that Google has been following some Java links with a new spider by the name of "Googlebot/Test." There is an ongoing post at WebmasterWorld and Shawn of Digital Point also posted a detailed post about it.

Affiliate marketers and others using Java to cloak links will soon need to use redirects and a robots.txt file in place of the Java to keep Google from spidering your cloaked links.

Quietly at 8:08 pm Friday (Pacific time) MSN announced the launch date for its upcomming search product.

MSN Search Sooner than Expected!

SEATTLE, March 19 (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. said on Friday that a new engine for its MSN Search service will start up in July, another step in its plan to challenge Google Inc.'s pole position as the Web's top search destination.

Advertising on the Upcoming MSN Search

Instead of including paid listings within search results, which critics say results in misleading search results, MSN said it will display paid listings separately at the top and to the right of search results generated by its search engine.

Redetzki said MSN will list three paid listings at the top of every search result, of which at least two will be advertisements sold directly by MSN.

(source Yahoo! News thanks to RustyBrick)

You can see how MSN will be displaying search results at MSN Search Beta. People have been discussing the new MSN search at WMW.

What is Yahoo! Webrank?
The new Yahoo! Companion Toolbar is providing a ranking system by the name of Yahoo! Webrank. As I read through the details as to how their new ranking system worked they had two words over and over again: anonymous & sophisticated. There was no real description as to whether it worked like Direct Hit or Alexa or how exactly it will influence the search results.

The Web Rank values are calculated using a sophisticated scoring algorithm provides a measure of the popularity of the Web page or Web site that you are visiting.

Yahoo! Companion helps Yahoo! find new content
This new tool has a feedback loop which can be used to alert Yahoo! of the existance of new content which is not yet in the Yahoo! Search index. Want to know more about Yahoo! Webrank? Yahoo! gives very little data on how Yahoo! Webrank will work, but you can visit the Yahoo! Companion Webrank FAQ page.

Install the Yahoo! Companion
With many webmasters already having the Google toolbar it remains to be seen what type of distribution Yahoo! will be able to obtain with it's new toolbar. Download the new Yahoo! Companion with Webrank features.

Google has been given some negative press for their lack of clarity in all parts of the Google AdSense program. Off the start they only allowed one account per person. They then shifted to allowing multiple accounts for the same person. They now allow channel level statistic control.

They have upgraded AdSense in many ways. They now offer

• Channel level tracking. - "Detailed reporting is here! We've introduced the concept of channels as a way for you to gain insight into the performance of Google ads on your pages. By grouping pages into channels, you can compare performance of a banner versus a skyscraper, track clicks on your automobile pages versus your motorcycle pages, or get results for each individual website you manage. You'll see page impressions, clicks, and earnings data for individual channels or for any combination of channels.

  Channels are defined by a unique tag in your ad layout code. You can add channel code to any of your pages, simply by copying and pasting the appropriate ad code into your web pages. This will allow you to track performance, and will give you valuable information that will allow you to optimize the performance of AdSense on your site." Learn moreabout channels at the AdSense FAQ page.

• Downloadable CVS reports.
• The option to display a solid color instead of public service announcements when ads can not be served.
• Google has also began to support AdSense ads in framed web pages.
• Comming Soon: New public service announcement AdSense ad layouts. Google most likely decided to make this change to prevent PSA ads from lowering the clickthrough rates of their targeted AdSense ads.

Recently reported at the Search Engine Journal

Yahoo has begun beta testing Yahoo News 2.0, a new News Search Engine which unlike the current Yahoo News, draws in news stories from thousands of online news sources indexed by Yahoo. News Search now combines articles from Yahoo! News and over 7,500 crawled news sources around the Web.

Give Yahoo! News 2.0 Beta a try.

Kanoodle has launched their new contextual based ad program which offers far greater control of ad placement (as compared to other contextual based networks) from any and all angles.

Interested in placing ContextTarget ads on your site?
Read more or sign up for Kanoodle ContextTarget.

Interested in buying ContextTarget ads?
ContextTarget financial ads (as shown on CBS Marketwatch) have a minimum bid of 50 cents, other categories may have different prices. Here is the ContextTarget FAQ page, and Shari Thurow recently did a review of the Kanoodle Context program.

If smaller companies like Kanoodle can add enough features and distribution they will force larger pay per click search engines to follow suit.

Google Local Search

Many other search engines think they have the perfect solution for advertisers. Some forget how far ahead of the curve Google is. Today Google launced a new local search at local.google.com. "For now, Google will not display local advertisements on the service, but it plans to do so in the future." - News.com

Google did provide hyperlinks to Yahoo! Maps and MapQuest when I search for "Papa Johns 16803," but you get regular search results if you try to find Carmen in San Diego.

Recently Yahoo! added its SmartView service to Yahoo! Maps.

Who Cares?
GoGuides recently acquired Links2Go. On the GoGuides home page:

We are pleased to announce that in a deal with the former search engine Links2go, Inc we have acquired full ownership in their name links2go. GoGuides will issue a press release in the near future detailing our development plans for www.links2go.com. Links2goTM

Holly Mamma!
Dallas Mavericks owner reports he owns 6% of the outstanding shares of the meta search engine Mamma.com and their stock price goes up by over 20%. Where is the mathematical logic in that?

Hear no Evil, See No Evil
The new Norton Personal Firewall blocks not only pop-ups, but also paid listings on major search engines. What are the odds pay per click search engine stud Kevin Lee is not happy?

Unlike pop-ups that are despised almost universally (resulting in the proliferation of pop-up-blocking software and toolbars), paid search listings are often more relevant than spam-filled algorithmic search results. Maybe the Norton team will wake up when a whole bunch of Norton Personal Firewall purchasers call tech support wondering where those relevant links went.

Cybersquatter

- Person(s) who grab a domain name which could be of certain potential value based on other aspects of the internet. In the past some cybersquatters would take a domain the day it expired on some people. Many cybersquatter sites also place porn where an original high traffic domain existed. The other common cybersquatter technique is to use misspellings to ruin the brand image or monitize a small amount of traffic.

If the domain SEO book was available about 5 months ago then why in the hell would I make an offer to this cybersquatter who spammed me wanting to sell SEObookS.com?

I take it as a compliment that he recognizes I am building a website that is starting to get a fair amount of traffic. I will not pay him 1 cent for his domain though.

Perhaps I am not concerned with my brand image, or my brand image may be a lack of concern... INBOUND SPAM:Dear Mr. Wall,

Hereby I would like to invite you to make an offer on the domain name
SEObooks.com.

As you know, SEO is the abbreviation for search engine optimization, which is
currently a booming market. Since almost every webmaster wants more traffic,
they will want to buy books that cover the subject of SEO.

Please send your offer by April 1st, 2004. Should you have any questions, please
don't hesitate to contact us.

I look forward to your prompt response.

Best regards,
Quincy Beeker
Founder of DNKing.com

Korvezeestraat 12
2628DA Delft
The Netherlands
Email: sales@dnking.com

REPLY: Hello Quincy
how much would you be willing to pay for dnkings.com?
thanks
aaron

Me TOO! Yahoo gets its own Booble.

Me Three! Does Rumsfield sound like a boob? (audio clip)
(transcript available @ StevenBerlinJohnson's blog)

I'd bet a dollar he does!

Google is rather random with the update cycle for the Google Directory. Many people have speculated that they want to dump the mirror of the Open Directory Project in favor of some other type of directory - perhaps maybe an internally created directory.

The Google Directory is a clone of the Open Directory Project, which is the largest free directory on the web. Anyone is free to create their own local copy of the Open Directory Project by using a feed from the RDF dump which is usually updated multiple times a month.

Gooogle last Updated the Google Directory in early November of 2003, and we can probably assume it will be many more months before it updates again...

The new Google Directory data is showing in some of the search results, but is not in all of the searchable directories on all of the servers...

(Found on The Search Engine Journal)

What does a Server Side Include do?
Server side includes allow you to (dare I use the word) include a remote file in the current page. The server constructs the page on the fly. When a browser or search engine spider comes through they see the whole page as one unit.

Why Should I use Server Side Includes?
They make it extremely quick to update navigation and other common page elements by only changing one file.

Are Server Side Includes Evil?
Server side includes were a bad thing in the past. Slower server speeds would sometimes cause errors when a spider spidered the page. With faster server speeds the server side include is no longer a problem. On sites with a large amount of traffic SSI will slow down your server speed ever so slightly.

What do Server Side Include Requests look like?
<!--#include file="navigation.htm" -->
if the SSI file is in the same directry as the file calling it, or
<!--#include virtual="/globalnavigation.htm"-->
if the SSI file which is to be included is in the root directory. Using virtual causes the server to look for the file location based on the root URL.

How do I use a Server Side Include?
To use server side includes you must change your file path to .shtml .shtm or something with the .s at the begining to tell the server it needs to construct the page. Place the include file in the code where you want it to show on the page.
Note: you can controll the layout using an external CSS sheet if you like.

Why Changing Filepaths is Bad
The problem with changing filepaths is that you can lose much of the inbound link popularity you have built up with your site. Any links to the root domain will still be there, but interior links fall away. Blindly changing filepaths is extremely bad:

• You lose link equiyy.

• People who were linking to you end up owning a bunch of broken links.

How do I Use SSI without Changing FilePaths?
Our good friend .htaccess is here again to save the day.

Here is the .htaccess file you should use to allow a server to parse .shtml and parse other file extensions as .shtml

AddType text/html .shtml

AddHandler server-parsed .htm (.htm is whatever extension you are using)

AddHandler server-parsed .shtml

Options Indexes FollowSymLinks Includes

• More on server side includes (SSI)

• More on .htaccess
• More on using .htaccess for server side includes (SSI)

Scumbag of the Year Award

I know its a bit early to give this one out, but there is a guy who has taken autoclick software to a new level. His new software, which goes by the name of Google Clique, is based on the Holland Engine - the mass email spam software.

• Holland Engine was the originaly written to allow spammers to conceal thier orginating IP from mailservers and to keep it from apearing in email headers.

• Holland Engine is the core of LincolnSX, the most powerfull mass-emailing software, running at rates of 5 Million emails per day per machine.
• Holland Engine will actually tunnel through the internet and connect to the desired IP address from, not your IP but rather from another, the one at the end of the tunnel. It is this tunneling that makes LincolnSX so valuable, and now we bring it to you with Google Clique.
• And for you technicaly challenged, NO, THIS IS NOT PROXY/SOCKS, and maybe you should be looking elsewhere if you are looking for such an amatuer solution.

Notice he is selling software for $1,000 down and is too damn lazy or cheap to hire a proof reader. Granted I am a horrible speller, but I am not trying to get you to spend a grand as down payment for software that steals. This is from his "interview" with Google.

I take this two mean one of two things, either they were feeling me out to see if this was for real or they are just oblivious as to how serious this software really is.

He also plans to launce a product by the first of April which goes by the name of Reaper. Reaper will aggressively autoclick on a competitors site to get them removed from Google AdSense program.

here is his WhoIs data.

Ouch to GoClick

I have stated time and time again that it is a good idea to work with larger and more developed technology companies when dealing with pay per click distribution. I have got many emails from people saying the second tier pay per click search engines have given them a raw deal one way or another.

What is the problem with pay per click?

When you go with a smaller network you generally have a lower quality of traffic and slower feedback loops. You will not be sure if the problem is your site or the pay per click network. The wrong pay per click partner can hurt you on both the distribution of ads for your site or on your site. GoClick feedback from an angry former affiliate by the name of Britton Keene:
I signed up with GoClick.com at the beginning of last year. It seemed too
good to be true. One of the highest payout rates in the industry. If it sounds too
good to be true; it usually is. This was no exception. They paid me the first two
months then, when I wasn't logging in to check stats anymore, they dropped my rates down from the $0.02 per search to $0.00 per search and the $2.50 cpm popups down to $0.25 cpm. I noticed this in March of 2003, over 5 months after they reduced my rates. I contacted them and Mr. John Babina, proprietor of GoClick, promptly responded that their terms of service state they can change the rate at any time and for any reason. So, without notice, they did so in August and have been getting free traffic from my network of sites ever since. When I filed a report with the Better Business Bureau against them I received this e-mail from Mr. Babina:

This is official notice that we are hereby terminating our affiliate relationship
with the account holder at this email address. (under our affiliate terms:
"goClick may adjust affiliate parameters and payouts or terminate
an affiliate at any time for any reason. All decisions on content, rates, payment
or termination will be made by goClick and all decisions are final.")

Don't get me wrong, I am all for small business. I just think it may not be in your best interests to look for cheap traffic before you know your conversion system and setup work on larger systems. Even then, smaller pay per click search engines may not be worth the time they take to manage unless you automate much of the process.

I recently started posting again over at The Search Engine Journal. If you have not visited recently, The Search Engine Journal is working with the Kelsey Group to promote a new Paid Search Survey which your feedback will help improve. If you buy pay per click advertising, feel free to participate.

The Kelsey group is one of the main data aggregators of information about the growing local search industry, and this quick survey is looking more at general paid search practices.

Bonus: Getting Cheap Feedback

Survey Monkey is free for up to 100 responses a month. Their more full featured survey costs as low as $20 per month.

If you do not appreciate how valuable feedback is, or how hard it is to get feedback then juist look at how few comments are posted on this blog. Yesterday I had over 1,000 page views and 0 comments.

Crazy Days Stock Report

Today the register wrote an article about jailtime for those who were selling non existant Google Stock. I know you are hesitant to want to read any article on Google from the Register, but its ok. Andrew Orlowski did not write it.

LookSmart shares rise due to increased distribution and guidance.

Recenlty Ask Jeeves shares rose when they bought Excite, Iwon, MyWay and doubled their distribution.

Business search provider Verity's stock is down heavily on the day.

FindWhat has been on a terror, doubling over the last year.

And so all will know, Yahoo! was about even on the day.

ps: Google is still a private company. If you have bought Google stock you wasted your money. Martha Stewart allegedly was not involved in the sales of the bogus Google shares.

Ethical Search Engine Optimization

What does that mean?

What does it mean to be ethical? Does that mean you produce the best results for clients? Does that you mean you follow all search engine guidelines? Is it possible to deliver the best returns to your customers at the best price while following all search engine guidelines?

Certainly ethical search engine optimization can not be a "yes" to all the above questions. That my friend would be a panacea.

When refering to search engine optimization ethical is an empty tag. Ethical search engine optimization is like the empty statement "Support the troops." It is the leaders and their policy that makes the war.

How can search engine optimization companies working for companies with giant sweat shops claim they are ethical?

I have never got a single page banned, but I am not a fan of the ethical tag. Neither is Chris Ridings:

I am not ethical within the search engine related industries because within those "ethical" is a tag. It's a tag that says "I'm better than them", but never goes on to say why. It's a tag that practically never comes with a definition of exactly what ethical means within the industry. Nowhere does it say in black and white everything that is and isn't allowed. Nowhere does it define the decision process for solving the gray areas.

One could say that the tag was meaningless, but that would be wrong. For within the search engine marketing world "ethical" itself stands amongst the kings of marketing speak.

Continue the discussion on ethical search engine optimization at SearchGuild.

The about page is the best page of every and any website you go to. It lets you know if it is a bunch of spineless corporate tirds running a site or a normal human.

I am neither...

Who Are You?
Aaron.

Could You Be More Specific
Yes.

What is Your Full Name?
Aaron Matthew Wall.

What is This Site?
A daily journal of SEO news and tips from a kid (sidebar: at least at heart a kid - old people suck) who is really interested in search.

Why Are You Interested in Search?
I am fascinated with the concept of helping people find their purpose in life. Giving people access to information does that. Search engines do that.

Do You Have Any Ulterior Motives?
Yes.

What Are They?
I would like to help sculpt social policy to increase the functionality of the world around me and the enjoyability (is that a word?) of life on Earth. For example, I would like to make available HONEST FEEDBACK about the effects of antidepressants.

Where Did You Come From?
Ask again later.

Are You Smart?
All indications say no.

What is With These Answers?
Ask Jeeves gave out a new magic Ask Jeeves Ball. I like to play. Its fun...

Is There Anything You Are Sure Of?
I have not used deoderant today (I am sure I say this most days.) I guess in a sense that means I am sure that I am not sure.

Neat-O
Even with my limited experience in the ad world I have been able to reduce AdWords cost per customer acquisition from over $70 to under $5.

Longwinded
I feel I could write a ton of tips on ad writing, but that would just read like an ad...

One ad problem that frequently is a complete bust is that people fail to offer a consistant message throughout the sales process.

The ad copy shoud match the consumer intent.
When the consumer clicks through to the page it should be obvious that they are in the right spot. The page copy needs to match what that ad promissed.

Customer benifits like Free shipping may improve your click through rate, but an order processing fee of $1.99 may allienate your users at the shopping cart. Consistancy builds trust. It allows you to lock in customers and increase profits down the road. The web is all about building a reputation and delivering on your promises.

Shorthand
An effective ad campaign is consistant from begining to end.

Good stuff from the Isearch list. If you move your site and want to know if search engines will be able to see your 301 redirects (or want what shifty competitors are doing) you can try Rex Swain's HTTP Viewer

(thanks to Skip for the post)

There has been a rather active conversation going around the web about the new Yahoo! Content Acquisition Program. Most people are not looking at the topic through the eyes of Yahoo! though.

Yahoo! knows that they are not going to be able to build a better mathematical based search engine than Google can. Yahoo! has no hope competing head to head fighting Google at its strengths.

Yahoo! believes through creating an editorial reviewed hybrid search they will be able to raise their relevancy. Yahoo!'s new Site Match program is just one more way to raise income to pay for the large editorial job at hand. My longer and more boring review of the Yahoo! Content Acquisition Program.

Both are easy... nuclear power is much more boring though as you can not see or feel the feedback loops other than on some stupid panel or display.

As a former nuclear reactor operator I find it fascinating to see this page as one of the most rapidly spreading ideas on the web.

What in the hell does that page have to do with SEO?

A bunch. It does not matter that her pages are structured improperly and have bunk titles. It does not matter that her site is hosted on a free host. Her site is still getting a ton of distribution.

How Did She do It?

She has an interesting idea worth spreading. Her broken english and the story of CHERNOBYL are exeptionally powerful at painting human emotions. One or two bloggers found it and the idea spread. Ideas that spread win.

I would also bet that her page ends up with a PageRank of at least 5 within a month or so. If she wanted to use that PageRank to support her motorcycle club she could.

How Can My Ideas Spread?

Most sites can add free extras or use an external site which is an authoritative topical hub to gain link popularity. The web is just a big happy (or not so happy) social network.

Think of your topic from one level up or from a different perspective. Why should competitors or fans of your topic link to you? Why should college professors link to you? If you can find out good answers to these questions you are likely on your way to success.

Google AdSense is a program which has left just about everyone in the dark. If I adverstise with Google AdWords and opt into contextual based adversiting, I will not know what sites my AdWords ads appear on as AdSense ads.

Google does separate out the AdSense ads into their own group for tracking purposes, but it does not show any more than group level details.

On the publisher side AdSense publishers were also left equally in the dark. They had no way to track what ads and formats were performing best...until AdSense Tracker came out. Dan Grossman recently created his product which will show what AdSense ads are being clicked on and performing. Each page that is to use this feature need a snippet of java code placed on it. The java interfaces with a single MySQL database used to track everything.

AdSense Tracker is a low quality bait and switch site that I no longer link at or recommend in any way.

(found on Search Engine Journal)

Recently Yahoo! announced its Content Acquisition Program. Search Engine Watch did a review of the changes.

Yahoo! is to increase the size of its search database through the use of more aggressive crawling, Site Match, and human editors looking to find ways to include portions of the hidden web.

Yahoo! recently rewrote much of the Inktomi core which will allow them to

• better process 3 and 4 word querries

• easily change the algorithm in the future
• easily turn stemming on or off

AltaVista and AllTheWeb are now using the same indexes as Yahoo!, though they are still powered by their own algorithms.

When Yahoo! reviews a site for Site Match they store data that the page has been quality reviewed. These sites may receive a ranking boost for being reviewed. This move alone would make paid inclusion seem exceptionally biased. Yahoo! is offsetting this by randomly reviewing other sites in its index.

Many people are concerned as to how this website review boost will effect the purity of the index, but any bonus that may be given will not be too large or Yahoo! would earn a bad reputation and a bunch of negative press in a time period where they are trying to aggressively expand their distribution.

Yahoo! believes they can offset some of their additional charges by opperating more transparently with webmasters when issues related to search come up.

Some good info about SEM, websites, and the future of search.

Nick Scevak of Jupiter Media recently showed a yummie pie graph which showed

• 16% of businesses surveyed outsourced search engine marketing

• 15% do not do search engine marketing
• 69% do search engine marketing in house

This shows some amazing room for growth potential within the industry.
Nick also stated that his biggest fear with paid search is that we may have unrealistic expectations based on amazing performace and returns for early adoptors.

Cheryle Pingle of Range Online Media stated that a large portion of the current growth in search is due to the growth of the economy.

Michael Sack of Inceptor stated that of the term space the bulk of commerce comes from a few hundred thousand terms. He believes this year that large companies will begin to buy out markets to place them out of the reach of smaller businesses.

Geoff Ramsey of emarketer.com also had many yummie pie graphs. His graphs he showed at the SEMPO meeting showed that

• from 2000 - 2003 the search marketing industry has increased about 10 fold

• from 2002-2003 search engine marketing had a 145% year over year growth rate
• 22% of US households have broadband
• Yellow Pages currently make $14.3 billion annually, whereas paid search is currently only a 2.2 billion dollar industry.

Also at SEMPO Google announced that it is now supporting search engine marketing and sponsoring SEMPO as the rising complexity and competition in the industry is preventing many business owners from being able to functionally use the marketing systems.

Fredrick Marckini of iProspect quoted a stat from StatMarket which stated the average retail web site conversion rate is 1.8 - 2.0%

Greg Boser of WebGuerrilla also provided a few good link tips on the day. When buying links, 501 C organizations are a good place to look. He also stated that he has seen unlinked URLs in TXT files count as backlinks. Some other good link ideas offered by others include trade organizations, tools, and specialty directories.

Yesterday at the SES New York conference Dan Boberg (of Overture) stated that Yahoo will be meshing its paid inclusion programs and branding them under the Overture name. He said we would be hearing more about it in the comming days and weeks.

Yesterday Overture also announced the release of Overture Site Match, which allows you to submit sites to Yahoo, AllTheWeb, and AltaVista for a $49 review fee and a category based cost per click of $0.15 or $0.30.

If your site already has great rankings for your primary keywords then there is absolutely no reason to join this program with your main pages.

Sloppy affiliate marketing has added tons of junk to search engine indexes. Overture (and Yahoo) firmly believe that using an incremental fee based inclusion program helps aid the relevance of their index. Affiliate marketing via search has essentially no cost. By introducing incremental cost to clicks, a search engine can improve the user experience. A site which is not properly targeted and smooth will not be hard to afford these fees.

Most affiliate marketers will not be able to afford these fees, and thus the index.

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