Google announced that they are rolling out a new technology to better understand word relationships and extend their snippets on longer search queries.

Starting today, we're deploying a new technology that can better understand associations and concepts related to your search, and one of its first applications lets us offer you even more useful related searches (the terms found at the bottom, and sometimes at the top, of the search results page).

Note that they claimed that this is "one of its first applications." If they can improve relevancy with integrating this technology directly into the core search algorithms then it will lower the importance of on page optimization (since you only need to be close rather than use the specific words that were searched for). Such a change would likely decrease the traffic to low authority sites held up largely by strong site structure and on page SEO, while increasing the amount of traffic going to high authority sites and well branded sites that are poorly structured from an SEO perspective.

I am not sure if this sort of algorithm change would favor shorter or longer content pages. In most cases I would guess longer pages if they were kept on theme, and broken up to relevant chunks. The expanded snippets on longer search queries show a lot more information directly in Google's search results, which helps thicker pages show off their offering more than thinner pages, but cedes more control of the information over to Google as they can show close to 250 characters in the search results.

If the technology was applied to anchor text it might also limit the value of anchor text manipulation by boosting up the value of related phrases (if Google knows that the word Salesforce is relevant to CRM then they might count that anchor text more).

Greg Sterling noted that this change came from the Orion technology that was purchased by Google from Ori Allon in 2006. He also interviewed them:

I spoke yesterday to Google and Ori Allon. To the extent that I understood his discussion of the way Orion’s technology had been applied to refinements here’s what’s going on at a high level: pages are being scanned in “real-time” by Google after a query is entered. Conceptually and contextually related sites/pages are then identified and expressed in the form of the improved refinements. This is not solely keyword based but derived from an “understanding” of content and context.

It is hard to speculate if/when this technology will move from sideshow to becoming a big deal. The current usage is fairly trivial, but it could get much more well ingrained into many parts of the relevancy algorithms.

As search engines get more sophisticated with how they show word relationships (on branded and non-branded search queries) that is one more thing that can be optimized, though likely one that will require a holistic marketing strategy to optimize, because you will need to create a lot of co-citation (or some other signal of relevancy) across many pages on the web.

A couple years ago Lord Maurice Saatchi described their brand strategy as being built off of One Word Equity.

In this new business model, companies seek to build one word equity - to define the one characteristic they most want instantly associated with their brand around the world, and then own it. That is one-word equity.

It is the modern equivalent of the best location in the high street, except the location is in the mind.

Phorm, a UK company that partnered with BT to run secret trials to target ads based on usage data, was roasted by the media with article titles like Phorm’s All-Seeing Parasite Cookie.

Google, which has long stayed away from behavioral targeting due to privacy (and negative publicity) concerns, announced they are jumping into the behavioral ad targeting market:

Google will use data it collects about what Web sites users visit and what it knows about the content of those sites to sort its massive audience of users into groups such as hockey fans or travel enthusiasts. The data won't be drawn from users' search queries, but from text files known as cookies that Google installs on the Web browsers of users who visit pages where it serves ads.

DoubleClick, AdSense, Google Toolbar, Gmail, Youtube, Blogger, Google Groups, Google Checkout, Google Chrome, Google Analytics...there are lots of ways to track you, even if you do not want to be tracked. Google will allow users to opt out of such targeting, with yet another cookie, but if you clear cookies then you are back in the matrix again.

And while Google claims they are not using search queries in their current behavioral targing, Danny Sullivan wrote:

Google confirmed in a session I moderated at the Omniture Summit last month that they have tested behaviorial targeted ads using past search history data. Again, that doesn’t seem to be part of this release, but it could come in the future.

As discovered during early Google research titled The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine:

we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers.

Indeed. Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the world wide web, spoke out against behavioral targeting:

"People use the web in a crisis, when wondering whether they have a sexually transmitted disease, or cancer, when wondering if they are homosexual and whether to talk about it … to discuss political views."
...
"The power of this information is so great that the commercial incentive for companies or individuals to misuse it will be huge," he said. "It is absolutely essential to have absolute clarity that it is illegal."

If Google continues down this path unquestioned, then in due time you may not be able to get health insurance because of a web page you viewed or a keyword you trusted Google enough to search for. Better luck next life!

So here we are on Tuesday, March 3 rd, and I’m still trying to fully digest the implications of Aaron’s “Heavy emphasis on Brandings” post from last Wednesday, February 25. The data that was presented, the context that was provided and the labyrinth of insightful user comments that were spawned left me reeling for days. So much so that I wouldn’t be surprised if the annals of SEO history associate February 25, 2009 as the infamous “Aaron Wall” update.

In all seriousness, though, this really is a big deal, especially for folks like me who spend their days attempting to optimize mainstream “Big Brand” web sites for a living. I’m fortunate enough work for an interactive agency that takes SEO seriously, and my team strives to deliver a truly comprehensive approach to SEO – blending site-side factors, link building, social media elements, and analytics. We usually do a pretty darn good job, despite the myriad of obstacles and pitfalls associated with trying to implement SEO for a large, lumbering, Fortune 500 web portal. And sadly, like many big firms out there, we have occasionally chalked up our shortcomings to a lack of implementation and cooperation on the part of the client. It’s that typical “not our fault, it’s a crappy big brand site” copout that many of us have heard a thousand times before.

Then along comes Aaron with his revelations about Google’s recent algorithm shift and its ramifications for big brands, and all hell breaks loose:

• I immediately spiral into self-doubt regarding me and my team’s marketing abilities
• I start scrambling to deconstruct this alleged algorithm shift
• I start emailing all of my senior team members asking them to attempt deconstructing the algorithm shift
• they roll their eyes and one of them tells me stop sending so many random emails at 10 o’clock at night

I’ve calmed down a bit since then, but I’m still hard at work trying to figure out exactly what levers have caused certain “Big Brand” sites to skyrocket in the SERPs while others remain mired in search engine mediocrity. As with most things in life, the best course of action is to introduce a bit of the old scientific method, systematically isolating variables in an attempt to identify predictable patterns that can be replicated.

After taking a high-level look at each of the keywords outlined in Aaron’s post, and the corresponding brand sites that made the jump onto the front page, several possible culprits become apparent. Here are a couple that jumped out at me:

Social Media Signals – companies like University of Phoenix have made a concerted effort to engage users via social media channels, and those social reverberations could be a key facet in Google’s newly refined algorithm, especially if some of those reverberations include mention of the phrase “online degree.”

Increased weighting of anchor text within internal site linkage – companies like American Airlines seem to be leveraging both their own internal site pages as well partner sites to increase the volume of anchor text occurrences for the term “airline tickets” (although they’re missing out on some seriously low-hanging fruit by failing to optimize the alt. image attribute on their global logo image link). If Google has decided to increase the potency of this element, then large brand portals with voluminous amounts of internal pages and partner sites (or branded micro sites) could gain an upper hand for highly competitive terms.

Increased sensitivity to offline marketing campaigns – Perhaps Google’s algorithm is getting better at recognizing site traffic associated with offline marketing campaigns. This would extremely difficult to do without having direct access to a site’s analytics data (although Google Analytics conspiracy theorists are convinced that this is already the case for sites using GA) but perhaps Google is using signals such as the relative volume of specific search queries (e.g. branded queries like “State Farm”) and somehow tying that data back to terms that the algorithm associates with the given brand query (e.g. State Farm = Auto Insurance).

Disclaimer: I haven’t been able to actually test these hypotheses out thoroughly or with any real semblance of scientific method. After all, it’s only been five days since I read the post, and I do have other things to do besides ponder the ramifications of this alleged algorithm shift (it’s 10pm so I have to start annoying my team with random emails again).

Besides, Google’s results could roll back at any moment, rendering all of these insights (nearly) moot. Still, if you’re in any way involved in optimizing web sites for big brands (or if you just want to improve your eye for SEO) it’s probably a good idea to start doing a little scientific testing of your own.

If you liked this post (or even if you thought it was a flaming pile of dog excrement) feel free to reach out to me via my Twitter handle: http://twitter.com/hugoguzman11

Jason "SEO is dead" Calacanas, founder of Mahalo, used "SEO is dead" as a publicity stunt to help launch his made for AdSense scraper website. In the past we have noted how he was caught ranking pages without any original content - in clear violation of Google's guidelines. And now he has taken his spam strategy one step further, by creating a widget that bloggers can embed on their blogs.

The following link list looks like something you would find on an autogenerated spam website, but was actually on Hack A Day, a well respected technology blog with lots of PageRank.

• Note that the links are not delivered in Javascript and do not use nofollow.
• The links are repetitive and spammy.
• The links have no contextual relevance.

This activity is in stark contrast to Google's webmaster guidelines:

Your site's ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to you. The quantity, quality, and relevance of links count towards your rating. The sites that link to you can provide context about the subject matter of your site, and can indicate its quality and popularity. However, some webmasters engage in link exchange schemes and build partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. This is in violation of Google's webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact your site's ranking in search results. Examples of link schemes can include:

• Links intended to manipulate PageRank
• Links to web spammers or bad neighborhoods on the web
• Excessive reciprocal links or excessive link exchanging ("Link to me and I'll link to you.")
• Buying or selling links that pass PageRank

The above links not only appear on hackaday, but Mahalo is actually creating a "Mahalo Blog Network" that cross links to other Mahalo promoting blogs and exists for the purpose of flowing PageRank into high paying Mahalo pages.

Back around the last time Jason was calling SEO spam, he was promoting Weblogs Inc., and his blog revenues relied heavily on selling PageRank from his blogs to casino websites.

Do the venture capitalists that invested in Mahalo support such Google gaming and PageRank selling strategies? When will Google act on this blatant violation of their guidelines? Jason has a clear history of operating outside the spirit of their guidelines, and if Google lets this slide then many other people are going to start spamming them too. Google has an obligation to protect searchers from such devious behavior, lest they let it slide and promote the creation of more spam.

Update: This Looks Worse Than I Originally Thought!

While leveraging blog sidebars to pump PageRank and anchor text is pretty bad, at least it was not in the editorial content of blog posts. But it looks like many Mahalo employees not only put links in their sidebars, but they publish posts that consist of little but a link laundry list pointing at various seasonally hot parts of the Mahalo site.

The above is just a small sample of such posts promoting Mahalo. There are probably hundreds or thousands of suchs posts floating around the web. What makes that strategy any better than the "evil" Pay Per Post strategy that Jason Calacanis was allegedly against? I guess it is only bad when someone else is profiting from it.

Are the big networks trying to lock up their data?

It would appear that some big players are trying to muscle in between the user and the webmaster by limiting the webmasters access is to valuable statistical data.

The excellent SmackDown blog has a post about Google reportedly testing Ajax results in the main SERPs.

Sounds innocuous enough, right?

Trouble is, what happens to existing tools? Plugins? Rank checkers? Stats and other referral tracking packages? All tools that rely on Google passing data in order to work.

Many tool vendors would likely adapt, but as Michael points out, what happens if all the referral data shows as coming from Google.com i.e. no keyword data is passed?

Browsers do not include that data in the referrer string, and it is never sent to the server. Therefore, all referrals from a Google AJAX driven search currently make it look as if you are getting traffic from Google’s homepage itself. Now, while this kind of information showing up in your tracking programs might be quite a boost to the ego if you don’t know any better, and will work wonders for picking up women in bars (”guess who links to me from their homepage, baby!”), for actual keyword tracking it is of course utterly useless.

Perhaps the only place you'll be able to get this data is Google Analytics? Is this the next step - a lock-in?

It has happened before.

Remember the changes to Adsense? Google introduced a new form of tracking code that can't be tracked by third party tools. However, that data is available within Google Analytics.

This obviously puts other tracking vendors at a competitive disadvantage, and signals to the webmaster community just where the ownership of that data lies.

Data Lock In

There appears to be an emerging trend, of late, whereby networks are leveraging their power against the interests of individual webmasters in terms of data ownership. Having been locked out themselves for a few years, the middle men are trying to squeeze their way back in again.

Take a look at the new contracts of GroupM, the worlds largest buyer of online media, as detailed in GroupM Revises Terms For All Online Ad Buys, Claims Data Is 'Confidential' on MediaPost:

The wording in GroupM's new T&Cs, which are attached to all the insertion orders and contracts it submits to online publishers beginning this year, amends the current industry standard by adding, the following: "Notwithstanding the foregoing or any other provision herein to the contrary, it is expressly agreed that all data generated or collected by Media Company in performing under this Agreement shall be deemed 'Confidential Information' of Agency/Advertiser......Experts familiar with online advertising contracts say the term is a smoking gun, because it raises a broader industry debate over who actually owns the data generated when an advertiser serves an ad on a publisher's page. Is it the advertiser's data? Is it the agency's data? Is it the publisher's data? Under the current industry standard, the data is considered "co-owned" by all sides of the process, but some believe the new GroupM wording seeks to shift the rights over data ownership exclusively to the advertiser and the agency.

The article also suggests that other ad providers may follow suit. What this may mean is that your can't leverage data in other ways. You might not even be able to collect it.

Whilst this issue has popped up again of late, it is nothing new. There has long been a battle for consumer data because it is so valuable. The ad networks can create a lot of valuable data as a by-product of their advertising placement, because they can leverage network effects and scale in the way the individual webmaster cannot. Naturally the next step is to lock it up and protect it.

The cost of protecting that data may come at the webmasters expense. As the MediaPost article says, who does the data belong to? The publisher or the ad network? Both?

Traditionally, it's been both. But that might be about to change, if the above contract is anything to go by.

Forced Partnerships

Incidentally, other contracts really push the boat out when it comes depriving webmasters of control. Techcrunch reported that the Glam Network, a large ad provider made up of advertising affiliates, includes this little clause in their contract:

10. Right of First Refusal
a. Notice. If at any time Affiliate proposes to sell, license, lease or otherwise transfer all or any portion of its interest in any of the Affiliate Websites, then Affiliate shall promptly give Glam written notice of Affiliate’s intention to sell....

Essentially, if you want to sell your website, and you've agreed to these terms, then Glam have first right of refusal on the sale! Nice.

What this all might lead to is less ownership, less control, and less flexibility for the individual webmaster when dealing with big networks.

Or perhaps, in the case of Google, they're going to find other ways to pass data and just haven't outlined how yet.

One to keep a close eye on, methinks...