News Blog

So here we are, one quarter down and recession to go. Recession has become an unfortunate but popular topic in 2008. Some people follow strict definitions of what qualifies technically as a recession while others speak purely from opinion--or maybe they are speaking from the pinch they are feeling in their wallets. For most, they could care less what you call it; labels don't make the impact they are feeling any better or any less painful.

In most industries, when things slow, something has to go. Will that be cutting back on seemingly frivolous expenses, going to fewer industry shows, reducing ad spending, or worse, cutting jobs? Like many industries, search marketing firms are considering these choices as well, and rather hoping that this slowing, downturn, recession, or whatever you want to call it, actually presents more opportunities than hard choices.

Only time will tell, but I like to think the feeling that search marketing firms may be able to find opportunities during these trying economic times are spot on. But don't think this will just be a slam dunk--every opportunity also presents challenges.

Google's new teleportation, its search-within-search function, is getting mixed responses, at least from some site owners, who may be remembering occasions when teleportation in the Star Trek transporter went wrong. Earlier in the month, Google introduced the teleportation functionality as a way to better help searchers find information within a site by providing a search box below the snippet of the top listing, which performs a "site:" search on the domain of that listing using the additional search terms the searcher added in.

The "site:" advanced query is quite familiar to those within the search industry, but much less so to the average searcher. So bringing this functionality front and center for the searcher should be a well-received addition.

When I first saw this, I thought it was interesting--once I was able to get it to show up. It doesn't come up for every site, mainly big-name sites, nor does it come up for every search. One that it did come up for was searching for Amazon.com. After playing around with the teleportation search, I also began wondering how these big-name retailers would react and thought that some might not care for this new functionality. Why would they object?

Let me show you--except I can't use Amazon to do it anymore. According to the New York Times, Amazon is one such retailer that has already objected and asked Google to turn off this functionality for its site. It seems that most of the talk so far, like that happening at Search Engine Land (here and here), has been more about acknowledgment than anything else, but Rishi Lakhani's post at SEO Smarty shows that others have had similar thoughts as I.

Now, before we go much further, understand that I'm not suggesting ulterior motives here on Google's part or that this is even a good or a bad thing. For regular users, I think this will be well received, and Google pays a lot of attention to delivering the best user experience it can--but that isn't to say that there isn't going to be a potential upside for the PPC program as well.

So let's take a look at some examples of how this may impact results and get a feel for why some site owners may be less than thrilled with this functionality. Let's use national retailer Target as an example while we still can since its site is powered by Amazon. We'll try this on searches for plasma TVs.

Below we see the results that someone might see doing a search in Google just for "plasma tv" which includes eight paid search ads.

Google search for "plasma tv."

Below we see the results that someone might see doing a search in Google for "target plasma tv." Notice how there are no paid search results showing up, and not surprising, Target shows up in the top organic listing.

Google search results for "target plasma tv."

Then let's see what happens if someone searches just on "target." No surprise that Target.com shows up No. 1 again in organic results and still no paid search ads. What is different is the appearance of the teleportation, search-within-search, box showing up below the sitelinks in the Target result, labeled as "Search target.com."

Google search results for "target."

Then when we do a teleportation search for "plasma tv," we get the following search results. Notice that this creates the advanced search query "plasma tv site:target.com." Now the searcher gets Target.com specific search results in the organic area, hopefully relevant to the search, but also eight paid listings that Target is now competing with.

Google teleportation search results for "plasma tv" within Target.com.

This isn't all as cut-and-dried as this example may seem. The appearance of ads can vary widely from none to many. But for now it does serve as an example of at least one scenario that site owners need to be aware of.

So what does teleportation mean for the various players? Well hopefully, for the searchers, it does get them to what they are looking for faster and easier, but this can really vary as well and may or may not be more helpful than getting directly to the site.

For Google, it means that searchers will have performed at least one more search on Google, instead of clicking through to Target.com immediately. And it may mean that it has gained an opportunity to serve up more targeted (no pun intended) search ads that otherwise may not have been served up (as we can see from the other Target focused searches which yielded no ads). Even more subtle here is the fact that many advertisers may not have bid against a big brand name to begin with. Currently, advertisers can use a trademarked brand as a trigger word as long as they don't use it in the ad itself. As much of the legislation in this area continues to be formed and reformed, who knows whether this will always be the case--but it would seem that teleportation search may provide an additional means to serve up ads around another brand without even needing the advertiser to use that brand as a trigger word.

But how might Target feel about this? Well, if it does help get searchers to their destination, then it might be happy with this. But it also might mean that its natural results are competing against paid-listings that it may not have been competing against under the other Target related searches. It also means that it may not be able to cull additional search information from its own site-search. While the quality of on-site search may vary from excellent to completely worthless, some sites invest heavily in their on-site search to not only deliver good results, but also to serve as insight into what their visitors are looking for. Being able to follow the search path, which they may be losing because of teleportation, may help improve the site experience.

Needless to say, Target might prefer to get people directly to its site and have people search on-site, which at least in this example allows it to serve up a richer experience.

Target.com on-site search for "plasma tv."

Good, bad or otherwise, what this means to site owners is that SEO may be more important than ever. Now, getting to the top listing may not be enough. Defending your brand may not be enough. Securing multiple listings through blended search may not be enough. What happens to the site that has excellent search, but terrible indexation in Google? Now more than ever, site owners need to focus on creating the most search-friendly site as they can to make sure that Google and other search engines can spider and index the site as completely as possible. For some sites, this is a huge challenge, trying to overcome legacy CMS and e-commerce systems. Fortunately, there are solutions like Netconcepts' own GravityStream proxy optimization that can help many sites overcome these obstacles, but GravityStream isn't for everyone.

One thing this clearly means is that site optimization is more important than ever. Optimization will help to make sure that the teleportation results for your site are highly relevant and speak to the searcher, hopefully gaining the click-through from the searcher. If you are like Target and experience millions of searches a year just on your brand name, then you don't want to leave your optimization to chance when it comes to teleportation.

The blogosphere and Twitter have been abuzz with talk about this article by Shari Thurow, published Thursday on Search Engine Land. The article warns of supposed dangers against the SEO tactic of "PageRank sculpting." Readers are coming away feeling reticent to employ the tactic, fearing retribution from the engines in the form of penalties. The article paints PageRank sculpting as poor usability and black hat. I can't be any more adamant about this: neither is the case.

No disrespect intended to the article's author, but this article is classic FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt). "Nobody ever lost their job by choosing IBM," the classic FUD saying goes. "Nobody ever lost their ranking by refusing to implement PageRank sculpting" is the FUD peddled in this article.

PageRank sculpting is a powerful tactic that is worthy of inclusion in any advanced SEO practitioner's toolkit. I have written and blogged and spoken in favor of the tactic. I stand by the tactic, as do many other top-notch SEOs, and most importantly, so does Matt Cutts.

Matt Cutts, the head of Google's Webspam team, has publicly condoned the use of PageRank sculpting on repeated occasions. For example, in this SEOMoz interview:

Does Google recommend the use of nofollow internally as a positive method for controlling the flow of internal link love?

A) Yes--Webmasters can feel free to use nofollow internally to help tell Googlebot which pages they want to receive link juice from other pages

(Matt's precise words were: The nofollow attribute is just a mechanism that gives Webmasters the ability to modify PageRank flow at link-level granularity. Plenty of other mechanisms would also work (e.g., a link through a page that is robot.txt'ed out), but nofollow on individual links is simpler for some folks to use. There's no stigma to using nofollow, even on your own internal links; for Google, nofollow'ed links are dropped out of our link graph; we don't even use such links for discovery. By the way, the nofollow meta tag does that same thing, but at a page level.)

Google has even used the technique on its own properties.

So my question to Ms. Thurow is: "Have you ever conducted any testing of the PageRank sculpting technique?" We at Netconcepts have, and it works.

According to our tests, there are plenty of occasions where it can be a valuable tool, if used wisely. For example, if you have an e-commerce site and the category pages contain three links to every single product page--the product name as a text link, the product image thumbnail as an image link, and the words "View Product" as a text link--you could nofollow the image and "View Product" links and funnel more PageRank through the much more contextually relevant product name-based text links.

If SEO is going to be respected as an experimental science instead of black magic, it needs to be implemented with an experimental approach and all tactics tested for effectiveness (within the bounds of what is acceptable according to the engines). With SEO, you don't just "set it and forget" using the purported "best practices" as defined by the SEO bloggers and speakers (and sure, feel free to include me in that set).

So if Ms. Thurow wrote this piece without any testing, it's just unsubstantiated opinion--and I wholeheartedly disagree with it. :)

And I'm not the only one either. Just take a look at the other prominent SEOs who have countered via blog posts (like "Why There's Nothing Wrong With Sculpting Your Pagerank" and Sphinn comments and desphinns (click on the "Who Desphunn This" tab to see the "desphinns").

I was all ready to highlight what seemed like a very insightful comment on this blog by a co-founder of the advertising company CultureFish Media on the merits of Baidu, China's leading search engine. But then I remembered Rick at CNET Asia had asked readers for reasons to love Baidu. Lo and behold, the same comment appeared there under the name of a different CultureFish exec (and prominent blogger).

This wouldn't bother me at all, except that the comment includes personal reflection, such as this passage that appears verbatim in both posts: "Maybe I will get more bullish on Google when they get around to assigning someone to answer my phone calls or when their operator tells me that their marketing department does not have a phone number." A quick Google search didn't turn up any more copies of the same comment, but what's the deal guys?

The comment first appeared under Lonnie B. Hodge's name on Rick's Little Red Blog. Hodge is CEO of CultureFish and The Professor at Onemanbandwidth, a long-running China media blog. There, Hodge has criticized an article that painted Baidu inaccurately as an "upstart" engine and may have been inaccurate in its portrayal of Baidu's music search. (Mea culpa: By reporting on articles with similar material, I may have perpetuated inaccurate numbers, if they are indeed inaccurate.)

On Sinobyte the comment appeared under the name of David DeGeest, one of Hodge's coworkers. The comment was different only in that it fixed a few typos and was prefaced with a good rebuke of a xenophobic comment that had appeared above and managed to misspell "develop" while saying "men from the east" aren't that smart.

Whoever wrote the comment, its laundry list of reasons users and especially advertisers might like Baidu is informative. I just wish credit had been given to whoever was the original author. (Also there's a "next week" below that doesn't work on the second posting since it was more than a week after the first.) Here's the list:

1. They now devote more than 10% of revenue to R&D.
2. They are innovating at a terrific rate: They have instant messaging in the works, the Answer service similar to Naver/Yahoo, a developing financial section similar to Google, some new social media acquisitions coming that will modernize them and likely steal a load of Tencent's traffic.
3. They have advertising solutions that can be tailored--as opposed to Google cookie-cutter stuff- for any biz.
4. They have a 30% no-count rate for click-throughs on ads (Google is 10%) to fight click fraud.
5. They have opened their API to new analytics companies (they will formally announce a partnership with Omniture next week)..
6. Their bulletin board system just surpassed the 200,000,000 post mark.
7. They dominate mp3 download searches and are leveraging that into BRANDED deals with music companies and artists. IF you took away ALL their mp3 searches that everyone ******* about, you'd only take less than 8% of their market share...
8. They are not the Yuppie stuffed shirts running Google. I have access to decision makers at Baidu and don't have to wade through layers of people who think they are too important deal with me....
9. They are open to new ideas: our company now has a strategic partnership with PRNewswire and are co-investigating a tool with Baidu that will change the face of online news releases....

After all, I find this to be a pretty persuasive list, though I won't likely switch to Baidu anytime soon, while they're still censoring large portions of search results, even though I realize that's not a top concern of many Chinese users. I had e-mailed CultureFish's public address hoping to get in touch with DeGeest to clarify some information before I discovered the repetition, by the way. I'd still be curious to find out about some sources, especially for the music downloading issue that I've written about.

Are you looking for that edge online? Something that your competitors don't have? Forget wasting all your energy on a great design and developing superior content--it's not what you know, but who you work with.

Sooner or later, most of us in the industry get an e-mail, either passed on by someone we know, through our own e-mail, or possibly through one of our own sites that offers to help us achieve success online. Most of these are fairly nondescript and rather generic.

Then the other day, I had one passed on to me that was more than just a couple of lines of loose promises. This one proclaimed: "I specialize in getting sites listed at the top of Google in organic listings."

And it went on, even specifying that, "After the first month, it is only $300 month." And apparently, "That's all there is to it."

OK, so this one actually perked my curiosity. I couldn't help but go check out the site.

I looked around for a bit and was almost ready to just mosey on by when, midway down on one page, it caught my eye, the claim of all claims, the one that I had heard rumors about, but until this day, had never actually come across in the wild: special relationships.

Could my eyes have deceived me? No, there it was, in the fine HTML print: "We have special relationships with the search engines."

OK, by now you must be on edge as to the power that these special relationships could possibly muster. And there, like a beacon in the night, "...indexed within 2 weeks..."

Wow. So 1990s.

For those of us in the industry, this brings both a chuckle and a sad realization that there are still people out there who will play into the desires and fears of Web site owners, offering some magical potion that will be their ticket to success.

OK, this one was particularly sad and amusing because of the two-week window. I mean, talk about working some miracles! Let's face it--it's 2008--in this day, you would almost have to work to not have a site (or even a fair amount of a site) be indexed within two weeks.

Sadly, this is one of those things that gives search engine optimization a bad name. Just because someone claims to perform SEO, doesn't mean that they can, nor should that then be a negative reflection on the industry.

Certainly there are those who, after working so long in the industry, have established connections with those at the search engines, as peers do in nearly every industry. This does not equate to special powers to get the engines to overlook offenses or to serve up rankings based on these relationships. And if it did, I have to imagine that it would cost a bit more than $300 a month.

For anyone who doubts this, Google itself has stated its view on the matter.

As for the provider of the services that I found so amusing, well, with several pages with identical title tags, I have to question their expertise in SEO. As for their relationship with Google, it appears that only their home page has any PageRank, and seeing that it is a PR1, they might want to renegotiate their special relationship as they are clearly getting the short end of the stick.

I'd meant to note this earlier, but SEO Hong Kong posted a summary of some findings when Chinese Internet users were tested comparing China's leading search engine, Baidu, with the newer Google.cn.

In a test conducted with Chinese subjects, eye scanning on Google.cn was more focused in the upper left hand corner compared to Baidu despite the fact that both search engines have nearly identical page layouts. Baidu users also scrolled down the page more than the Google users, but clicked on less sponsored listings--less than 1 percent compared to 3 percent for Google. ...

On Baidu, less than 45 percent of all clicks took place in the first 3 organic listings. This was much less focused than Google.cn where over 70 percent of all clicks took place on the top 2 organic results alone. Baidu pages also had significantly longer reading times--an average of 55 seconds--compared to 30 seconds on Google.cn.

The blog says the test was conducted by Enquiro. This result would seem to suggest that Google, like when it's compared to other English search engines such as Yahoo, seems to get users to what they want more quickly. I'd caution, however, that there may be a complication in that the test subjects may have been more familiar with the Baidu layout and were thus more interested in culling more information from familiar locations on the page. Both sites have exceedingly clean front pages.

(Credit: Google/Sinobyte)

I thought I'd give the two a comparative whirl with a simple search for something a Chinese user wouldn't necessarily need to search for: what is the exact date of the Spring Festival/Chinese New Year in the Gregorian calendar. The result? Google wins, giving me the date, as well as an icon indicating this is the coming year of the rat. It also links to a board for Spring Festival greetings...

(Credit: Baidu/Sinobyte)

Baidu also links to its festival page, which gives us a history of the holiday, but it's significantly harder to find the most simple fact you might be looking for: the exact date. On the other hand, Baidu's page gives you a nice history (translated) of the holiday.

Google is also rumored to be experimenting with a more, say, cluttered home page for the Chinese market, along the lines of the leading Chinese search engine Sohu.com. I'd love to see comparisons of user experience including Sohu's Yahoo-esque portal. Yahoo itself, so far, is something of an also-ran, with a live beta online. Why it advertises that it's a beta and doesn't just launch with continual improvements the way Google has is beyond me.

With the recent admission by Matt Cutts to Stephan Spencer that Google is using Adobe Systems' Search Engine SDK technology, a new set of optimization opportunities opened up.

That fairly definite confirmation of how Google reads text within Flash files makes it possible to create Flash .swf files with some level of search engine optimization.

"It used to be the case that we had our own, home-brew code to pull the text out of Flash, but I think that we have moved to the Search Engine SDK tool that Adobe Macromedia offers," Cutts said. "So my hunch is that most of the search engines will standardize on using that Search Engine SDK tool to pull out the text."

This has long been the suspicion of Flash developers and SEO professionals concerned with .swf files, but to my knowledge, this is the most direct and clear confirmation to date. The implication is simple but important: if Web developers--and specifically Flash developers--have the ability to test .swf files during development for textual SEO parameters, then Flash files can be designed to offer specific text to search engines.

While the concept is simple, the practice may not be. Flash is a complicated multimedia program with tremendous flexibility and many layers of content. Also, parent Flash .swf files can load secondary, child .swf files ad nuaseum, and this is a very popular, load time-friendly technique. The path between viable textual content and the "front" of a given Flash presentation can be very intricate.

There have been tests measuring what sort of text can be discovered by the Search Engine SDK program, much of it dealing with where in a Flash movie it resides, when the text crosses the stage, and what sort of text is most likely to be read. While there may never be absolute rules for optimizing text within a Flash file, now that it is known with fair certainty how Google reads Flash text, more testing is in order.

Well-designed Flash content can be a fantastic user experience. Google may not be pursuing this content, but it certainly has opened the door to the possibility. The ball is in Adobe's court to continue to develop and improve the SDK tool, but this is a great opportunity for Flash designers interested in SEO or for search engine optimizers interested in Flash.

Despite the shortcomings of the current Search Engine SDK software, (it would be nice to see an update, Adobe!), it is quite likely that SEO standards can be developed for dealing with Flash text so that Flash files can "tell" search engines about their content with more clarity.

Games always seem to capture a lot of attention this time of year, in part because of kids and toys for Christmas or adults and getting together for the holidays. It would seem that search marketers enjoy games, too. While this often revolves around contests or challenges to get a site to rank No. 1 in the SERPs, at PubCon this year, SEOmoz even got some search marketers to unplug long enough to play an SEO version of Werewolf.

With only a week before Christmas, I couldn't help but wonder what games might be dancing around in search marketer's minds. While these classic renditions probably haven't made it to the shelves yet, maybe this will plant the seed for next season.

When it comes to games, it's hard to beat the classics, of course...so here are 10 searchized-games for search marketers:

Connect Four Reciprocal Links — (based on the classic Connect Four game), This game is based on the outdated concept of reciprocal linking. The winner is the one who can create the biggest reciprocal linking circle. Of course, this game is purely for fun.

Battleship Text Link Buys — (based on the classic game of Battleship) This text-link-buy smack-down game puts each opponent in the role of seeking out the other's text link buys and reporting them to Google. The one who sinks the other's PageRank first is the winner.

Keyword Scrabble — (based on the classic Scrabble game) Keywords are a foundation of the search world. Players take turns building on keyword phrases, earning points based on the smallest keyword phrase that achieves the highest rank in Google, Yahoo, or MSN.

Twister Search Career — (based on the zany classic Twister) Like any industry, the search industry often features moving from one company to another. In this game, instead of colored circles, the playing mat features company logos. Just like the Web industry, each player must reach out and touch a number of different company logos, constantly moving from one company to another without falling down.

SERPs Memory — (based on the age-old game of Memory) Test your visual and memory skills by viewing a listing of top-10 SERPs from Google, Yahoo, and MSN before they disappear, and then matching up the listings across the SERPs. The one who gets the most matching results across the engines wins.

Spammer Mouse Trap — (based on the fun game of Mouse Trap) Ever wonder what a day in the life of Matt Cutts would be like? Find out with this exciting game where you get to build a trap to catch search spammers.

Search Operation — (based on the nerve-racking game of Operation) Search marketers have to have nerves of steal when every move they make can result in a site plummeting in the SERPs. Test your skill by removing bad bits and pieces from a Web page; but be careful--alert the spiders and you may get a shock.

Stratego Search Position — (based on the battle strategy game of Stratego) Search marketing, like most forms of marketing, is often a matter of strategy. Position and move your Web pages to overthrow your competition, gaining stronger search positioning, winning more site visitors, and achieving the highest ROI.

The Game of Life Search — (based on The Game of Life) One of my favorites growing up, this version has you go through the life of a search marketer, mastering your trade, building your skills, moving from company to company and site to site to achieve your search life goals.

And quite possible the grandest game of all...

Search Monopoly — (based on the classic game of Monopoly) This game can provide hours of fun and is one of the most involved of search games. Chose your playing piece, from exciting favorites like white hat, black hat, Googlebot, Slurp, or MSNbot, and work your way around the game board, accumulating Web properties. Beware--landing on a Made-For-AdSense site or SPLOG can cost you, as can landing in the Google sandbox. Pull a Chance card and find that "Matt Cutts caught you buying Text Links. Lose two PageRank points and wait a turn to file for re-inclusion." But it isn't all bad...pull a card from the Community Chest and you may find that you "Win a one year SEOmoz Premium Membership," or "A free pass to SMX." The winner, of course, is the one who accumulates the most Web properties and finishes with the largest amount in VC funding.

As far as I know, none of these games exist yet, but a lot can happen between now and next year.

*All of these game concepts are based on related games that are the property of Hasbro. Until these games exist, you'll just have to buy the classics and pretend or modify to make your own.

There is still time to capture search traffic, even though the holiday season is half over. Here are some great tips that will give you a quick impact to encourage more shoppers to visit your site.

• Add a few keyword-rich links to your home page: In P.J. Fusco's article "Holiday Shopping: Wrap it Up," she had talked about how you shouldn't "trash the current navigation structure, rather embellish it with a few additional links containing well-targeted, keyword-rich anchor text. Doing so helps create one- or two-click shortcuts that efficiently channel search-referred visitors to all your great gifts and goodies." Did you remember to add one or two highly visible links on your site, directing traffic to your holiday specials?
• Revise your meta descriptions for the holidays: Are you promoting a holiday sale or specific items on your site? If so, don't forget to polish your meta descriptions so that searchers will recognize the keywords they're looking for. Last-minute holiday shoppers will be attracted to descriptions that speak to them, so remember to mention seasonal search phrases to encourage them to click through to your site. After you do this, make sure to make a list of the pages you affected so you can change them back after your New Year's Day sale.
• Be social: In my post "Last-minute tips for retailers for the holiday shopping season," one of the tips I had mentioned related to social media. The great news is that it is not too late to get out there, create viral content, and build your network of friends. Whether it's on YouTube, Facebook, Del.icio.us, Flickr, Digg, etc., it can be as easy as giving a killer list of gift suggestions on UnSpun or Sk*rt. For example, the Great Gifts for Teenagers list was featured on the UnSpun home page recently. Note that with UnSpun, Amazon.com "employs" (probably through Mechanical Turk) an army of folks to spam the heck out of your list with Amazon products; it tends to happen a few days after you create the new list.

Well, there you have it. Just a few tips and friendly reminders that you can still ensure your holiday season is an SEO success.