As email filtering gets better many of the true scammers of the web are shifting to distributing adware on websites. As terrorism is used to help politicians push their agendas, fear marketing and the concept of security are only going to grow in importance online as well.

Google vs Microsoft

Google already highlights some websites that might distribute malware in their search results and promoted research showing that Microsoft computers were twice as likely as Apache servers to distribute malware. In addition Google bought GreenBorder, perhaps to help them make an anti-virus / anti-spyware software program.

GreenBorder's Ulfar Erlingsson moved over to Microsoft Research. Microsoft is also pushing a suite of integrated anti-virus and anti-spyware service.

All Search Engines Link to Scammers

In May McAfee did a study on the safety of search results, noting that the paid search ads are far more likely to scam consumers than the organic listings by over a 2 to 1 ratio:

The improvement in search engine safety is primarily due to safer sponsored results. The percentage of risky sites dropped from 8.5% in May 2006 to 6.9% in May 2007. However, sponsored results still contain 2.4 times as many risky sites as organic results.

What is spam? What is a scam? Whoever is the trusted source for those limits gets to shift markets overnight. Google shows warnings near organic results leading to bad sites, but you never see that warning on an ad. The fact that the ads are over twice as likely to lead you to a scam as the regular search results shows the value of being trusted as the security police.

What People Forget About Efficient Ad Networks

Up to some point efficiency comes easy, but after you get to a certain point increased efficiency comes in the form of hidden risks, hidden costs, and outright fraud. It is a reflection of the nature of capitalism. Many of the tools that aim to protect you are hypocritical beyond belief. For example, SpamArrest, an email spam protection service, ironically spammed people via email.

How Valuable is Security?

As data collection gets more aggressive, and ad networks sell ads to scammers, being the company that is trusted for security is a big deal from a financial standpoint. Calling something unsafe gives ad networks another chance to monetize the user experience.

• In the past Microsoft incorrectly labeled one of my sites as a phishing site.

• My girlfriend just got a new laptop, and at the top of her IE browser was a huge Norton banner stating fraud monitoring is on.
• Verizon recently launched a service that redirects typos so they can cash in, just like VeriSign tried to do.

How to Protect Yourself From the Security Wars

• Use a short memorable domain name on a common TLD, so few capture typo traffic intended for your site

• use home grown software if possible
• keep your software updated
• place community and interactive parts of your site on isolated domains or subdomains if they are known to get cracked (like PHPBB)
• only link to trustworthy sites (if you have a community section keep it clean as well)
• build signs of trust (links, subscribers, usage data)
• minimize the amount of cursing done on your site or it might get flagged as being pornography, like mine recently did...as noted by an SEO Book reader who sent me this image from the Kansas City airport

The type of people who subscribe to sites are also the type of people who write about that topic. If you have built up trust and a following your ideas spread faster than the competition. It builds on itself to the point where you can sell out in 8 minutes or 2 minutes. Selling out gives the perception of scarcity and creates more demand. Viral free marketing creating more free marketing...that is as good as it gets.

In many cases the quality of the idea does not matter as much as who said it. If a no name person launched Truemors would it have become popular enough to where I would have just linked to it as an example? If a no name site with no following, little traction, and no marketing budget does something great how will it spread?

As an SEO one of our primary goals is to get more search traffic for targeted search terms. Search traffic is typically far more valuable than other traffic sources because it is so targeted. But non-search traffic is perhaps the single most reliable sign of quality. As Google controls a larger portion of the overall traffic flow across the web, they risk creating self fulfilling prophecies where low quality sites continue to rank only because they already rank.

If you were Google, and discovered that 98% of a site's traffic comes from Google.com might you want to give that site a bit less exposure? I would. Maybe those algorithms do not exist now, but eventually they could.

If you have a site that earns far beyond your living costs, and it is almost entirely reliant on search for income, then one of the best moves you can make for the sustainability of that site is to lower the percentage of traffic that comes from search by creating other traffic sources. The other traffic sources may not be as profitable on a CPM basis, but as you diversify you lower your risks. It doesn't matter how the algorithms shift if your site is strong in every signal of trust they could possibly measure.

Frank mentioned this NYP article about how some companies are buying sites outright rather than increasing their AdWords bid prices. I expect this to be a large and growing trend for at least a couple years. As Google gets more efficient at pricing the ads they increase the value of the top ranked sites that sit alongside those ads. Internet Search Metrics, quoted in the NYP article as Internet Search Management, is providing audits on the competitive landscape of search

ISM's audits track the top 4.5 million search phrases on Google and Yahoo!, a total of 7.3 billion searches a month, to determine which companies across 50 business sectors pop up most frequently in the top three or four positions in natural search. ...

The ISM audits, to be released in London, break down which of 50 business sectors are locked up - that is, have large chunks of natural search dominated by a handful of companies - and which are wide open.

I have not yet seen any of the reports, but the network is still young. If you love marketing, are in tune with web trends, and are well funded I am guessing that many of the markets that appear locked up are still wide open.

It is easy to appreciate how under-priced some SEO services are when you look at what people are willing to pay for other traffic sources. $11 million in domains changed hands at the recent TRAFFIC conference, and $52 million more would have if the owners will willing to let them go! Once domains get properly developed their value quickly increases. Business.com was claimed to be overpriced in 1999 for 7.5 million, but now is up at auction for $300 million plus. Business.com is not much more than a thin arbitrage play, with a great name, great branding, and great marketing, all funded by the power of search.

To appreciate how much marketing and sales they do, consider that they only employ 6 editors to run the entire directory, while having around 100 employees. Without SEO/SEM that domain would not have the leverage needed to get syndication distribution partnerships, have strong revenues, custom ad deals with Google, or command such a high multiple.

I have spent $10,000+ buying a non-type-in domain name that someone paid $8 for. I have done it more than once in the last month. Why? Synergistic value in branding, associated perceived trust, and market differentiation...which are all important in a crowded marketplace.

Are domains overpriced? If you pay retail and don't have a plan for them, maybe. If you have a good plan and develop them (or buy below retail in a growing market) you should do well. As ad dollars continue to move online almost all markets are growing markets.

Sure a lot of people think you are at the mercy of Google as an SEO, but in certain markets people EXPECT to find certain sites. Google has to rely on showing some partners in their organic results to sell paid search ads against. If you look at Google's personalized homepage tabs they also offer a I'm Feeling Lucky button that adds the most popular items to that tab. If you create a tab for your keywords does Google push your feed? If you get the right name and market the hell out of it, I think your rankings, traffic, and business model are at least as defensible as type in traffic or just about any other business model.

As SEOs we tend to undervalue some of our assets because the work we do for clients is so valuable relative to the rates we charge. After a few hours of work you can offer most clients strategies that increase their non brand traffic by at least 10 to 20%. But when you hear that Business.com might get $350 million for something making $15 million a year, it makes it easy to want to heavily reinvest into creating a real brand of your own, instead of working on a group of smaller projects.

If you get a scalable business site up to $30,000 a month in free cash flow, then reinvest all of that into marketing and branding for a couple years, it is possible to build something that generates at least a few million a year and sells for at least 8 figures. At that point you can retire if you want to, but I will be 30 in a few years, so I need to start pushing harder. :)