Mix Bag O Search Engine News

Jan 6th

Search Engine Milestones for December (via Search Engine Watch)

#3 PPC player FindWhat completes aquisition of Meva Merchant, delays talks with Espotting on merger, and is to start using IntelliMap broad match technology later this month.
Sign up now for $5 bonus ($50 minimum credit purchase required.)

24/7 Media search is partnering with Lycos for its ad program. press release
ePilot gearing up for beta testing regional ads.

Ego ad agencies do horrible search engine marketing.

Shopping search results 2003 are in.

Paid Inclusion has a so so outlook. (I suggest using a blog instead)

Lots of news on top searches 2003
Google Yahoo

and of least importance to those walking the Earth: Macon online is at #5 for Macon AGAIN...to them I tip my hat.

Google's House of Cards

In "Google's House of Cards" Nate Elliot states that the lowering quality of clicks from AdSense ads is erroding the ROI on AdWord accounts. He believes a second set of bids should be applied to AdSense ads which allow advertisers to bid on those ads at fair market value (less than the price of other ads).

While it may be a bit more work for the search engine marketers, Google already has this feature.

Set up your account and ucheck "the content sites in Google's network" box. This will disable content sites.

Set up a second account (with your lower bid prices) and enable the content sites.

Sure its a little more work, but why should Google harm itself and its content providers to provide a feature which is already there?

About AdSense Review

Jan 4th

My end goal is to be a marketing book publisher who helps businesses succeed on and off the web. In addition I also want to use the interent to change social policy I disagree with, or to teach my why my disagreement is wrong.

In the short term duration I am trying to fund a portion of my learning with Google AdSense ads. I keep reading tons of marketing books and thought it would be worth it to review the first book about AdSense on the web.

In short I would view information from the official Google AdSense site if interested. You may also want to subscribe to Audri and Jim Lanford's newsletter if you are interested in learning about AdSense, but I do not recommend buying the guide. If you would like you may read the full review below. 10 Quick Steps to Making Perfect Google AdSense - eBook by Audri and Jim Landford helping people to make sense of Google AdSense. For me this eBook was a total let down. I suppose the target audience for this eBook was not SEO firms.
They cover many of the common questions and give a few good tips about Google AdSense, but most of the valuable information included in this guide is available free elsewhere. Namely

In addition you may want to sign up for Audri and Jim's free newsletter. It is strong on trying to sell SiteBuildIt products, but it covers most of what is in their eBook for free.
There is not a bunch of information on this topic since it is brand new and Google has disclosure policies which prevent certain details from being told.
Some of the things I think that would have helped improve this eBook would be

  • talking about gaining the permission asset with your page viewer
  • introduce specific techniques to improve pageviews
  • more specific testing techniques

For an absolute starter this ebook might be alright, but if you know anything about SEO it is not worth your time. The hardest thing about AdSense is just getting accepted. Beyond that most everything else is trial and error. Apply to join Google AdSense

  • Over 100 training modules, covering topics like: keyword research, link building, site architecture, website monetization, pay per click ads, tracking results, and more.
  • An exclusive interactive community forum
  • Members only videos and tools
  • Additional bonuses - like data spreadsheets, and money saving tips
We love our customers, but more importantly

Our customers love us!

Oveture Seperates Content Match Bids

The biggest gripe most people have with Google AdWords is that niche specific products must compete for market share with general merchandise using the broad match feature. Overture places exact matches above broad match ads.
Its seems Overture is going another step further to make its product more user friendly. Later this month Overture will allow seperate bidding for its Content Match product. While implementing this change they will also remove the 20% discount they initially offered and are expanding the product throughout the Yahoo! network.

Open an Overture account today and get a $50 signup bonus.

Thanks to Michael Wong

Visual Search Engines

Jan 3rd

Recently the media has picked up on a story about Vivismo clustering technology. While I think the categorization of search results may be a great feature, most of the time the key feature is quality of results.

If people search for things and can not find them they learn to search smarter. By using tools which visualize search extensions we will begin to notice patterns and thus become smarter searchers.

I think SEE ALSO (Teoma, AltaVista, and AllTheWeb all have this feature) is a great feature for search engines to have, but the visualization of the search will not take off any time in the near future, the quality of results still needs to be the focus of innovation.

Some software companies charge for a service I rarely think is worthwhile free, but sometimes it is fun to play with a search engine such as Kartoo. If companies want to spread their ideas and software they would be better off having it web based and free...so the idea is quick and easy to spread.

Alexa Stats are Crazy Today

Just a reminder that Alexa is only a representation of traffic and not the actual traffic levels to a website.

Less than 1% of web users have installed the Alexa toolbar
The Alexa system is easy to manipulate

and as a bonus today the stats are all out of wack...

These stats were from 6:40 PM eastern for my Search Marketing Info site.

How does the reach rank go way up with relatively constant page views per user to see your overall pageviews go way down? Thats right, Alexa is not worth much.

Page Views rank:

Today 18,074
1 wk. Avg. 625,017
3 mos. Avg. 3,999,599
3 mos. Change -3,847,978

Reach rank:

Today 18,074
1 wk. Avg. 19,143
3 mos. Avg. 24,375
3 mos. Change + 63,574

Blog Search Engines & Blog Directories

From Research BUZZ...

Useful little listing of Blog Search Engines and Blog Directories...

There are only a few major players in this field. Look for this to change drastically this year with the advent of other blog directories such as Kinja

Yahoo Using Inktomi

Jan 3rd
posted in

Many people have claimed to have seen this on a limited basis, but I have been seeing Ink on Google for a while today. I was first tipped off by my friend at Just Paper Roses.com. I have asked some other people and the switch appears to be only be seen by some.

People in the past have been happy with Google search (Google is one of the top brands in the world right now). With Yahoo branding the hell out of Yahoo search they want people to think Yahoo search. They do not want people thinking Inktomi or Google. It really would not make sense for them to announce a change. With Google's recent massive algorithm shift and upcomming IPO this would be a good time to switch search results.

Again, only some people are seeing the shift, but today is the first time I have. Time for me to tweak a few pages :)

Inktomi relies more heavily on page criteria vice links. The problem with really optimizing a page up for Inktomi is that one might trip the believed over optimization filter of Google. To give you an example of how easy it is to optimize for Inktomi take a look at this search for "website copywriters." Somewhere in the top few pages you will see my Website Copywriters on Search Marketing Info page which is rather short and has low link popularity.

There are a few techniques I would recommend:

1.) optimize the pages each for different terms by search engine. If one sold 5 HTP, they could optimize Inktomi for 5 HTP, and they could optimize the same page for 5 Hydroxytryptophan on Google. This should help you pick up traffic in the short term while you

2.) build a solid linking campaign which will eventually lift you in both engines for the desired terms

Some people may recommend making pages in two different versions (one for each engine), on a rare occasion I may try this. I do not recommend building an entire site this way though as it will make updating confusing. The end goal should be to generally have a strong enough link network that you can do well on both engines.

PageRank Update

Dec 31st

While it is uncertain how much longer (or to what level) Google is and will be using their PageRank algorithm, Google has updated PageRank on some of its servers just before the new year.

RESOLUTION: get top rankings...everywhere!

The SEO Vent

Dec 30th

Often times people come up to SEOs with rehashed boring old ideas they view as exciting and original. I will not usually work for a share of future profits and I will not build your online Canadian pharmacy website for you...

read The SEO Vent

Pages






    Email Address
    Pick a Username
    Yes, please send me "7 Days to SEO Success" mini-course (a $57 value) for free.

    Learn More

    We value your privacy. We will not rent or sell your email address.