Tag: Search

Top Searches & Questions of 2011 (According to ASK & AOL)

Earlier this week, we looked at Bing’s year-end round-up (be it a little early) of the top searches of 2011. And the lists continue as today both AOL and Ask released their versions.

Ask’s fittingly come in the form of the top questions. They were also thoughtful enough to include a video about them.

“Because people come to Ask with specific questions we are uniquely able to understand what’s on consumers’ minds at any given moment, be it pop culture or politics,” said Doug Leeds, CEO, Ask.com. “For the first time, we’re looking at the year’s top questions to not only reflect on 2011, but also predict the newsmakers of 2012.”

Ask’s top celebrity search terms and questions for 2011 include:

1. Kim Kardashian: Was Kim Kardashian’s wedding fake?
2. Justin Bieber: Is Justin Bieber going to be a dad?
3. Lady Gaga: AreLady Gaga’s face implants real?
4. Beyonce: Did Beyonce fake a baby bump?
5. Kate Middleton: Who made Kate Middleton’s wedding dress?
6. Ashton Kutcher: Did Ashton cheat?
7. Michael Jackson: Was Michael Jackson murdered?
8. Selena Gomez: Is Selena Gomez pregnant?
9. Lindsay Lohan: Is Lindsay Lohan going to jail?
10. Charlie Sheen: What happened to Charlie Sheen’s teeth?

Top news search terms and questions included:

1. Earthquake in Japan: How big was the earthquake in Japan?
2. Hurricane Irene: What caused Hurricane Irene?
3. Steve Jobs: How much was Steve Jobs worth?
4. Royal Wedding: What did William whisper to Kate on the balcony?
5. Occupy Wall Street: Who started Occupy Wall Street?
6. iPhone: When will Apple release the iPhone 5?
7. Osama Bin Laden: Who killed Bin Laden?
8. Casey Anthony: Where is Casey Anthony hiding?
9. 10th Anniversary of September 11: What is happening on the 10th anniversary of 9/11?
10. AmyWinehouse: How did Amy Winehouse die?

Top political searches and questions included:

1. Barack Obama: Will Obama get re-elected?
2. Mitt Romney: What is Mitt Romney’s religion?
3. Sarah Palin: Is Sarah Palin running for president?
4. Michele Bachmann: Is Michele Bachmann crazy?
5. Anthony Weiner: Where can I find Anthony Weiner’s Twitter pics?
6. Arnold Schwarzenegger: Who was Arnold’s mistress?
7. Gay Marriage: Which states allow gay marriage?
8. Withdrawl from Iraq: When will the troops come home?
9. Iowa Caucus: When is the Iowa caucus?
10. Muammar Ghadafi: Who will lead Libya after Ghadafi?

Ask’s 2012 predictions list is as follows:

1. George Clooney wins his second AND third Academy Award
2. Dr. Oz surpasses Dr. Phil in ratings in a post-Oprah world
3. Green Bay Packers wins Super Bowl second year in a row
4. McDonald’s adds the McRib to its permanent menu
5. New York reclaims its spot as top the US travel destination from 2011 leader Orlando
6. Breakout star of 2011, Nicki Minaj, leapfrogs pop icon Katy Perry in album sales
7. Pippa jumps onto the list of top ten baby names of the year
8. Facebook goes public with world’s largest IPO
9. Tiger Woods retires from golf
And, finally…will the world end in 2012?

10. Spoiler alert! IT WON’T

And now on to the AOL side of things.

“AOL is one of the starting points for conversations on the Web and this year’s search results reflect that,” said Francis Lobo, Senior Vice President, AOL Search. “Using our data and insights tools, we captured the pulse of the 2011 online dialogue – from Casey Anthony and Charlie Sheen, to Ted Williams and Lady Gaga, our search results reveal the news, entertainment and pop culture memes that captivated consumers this year.”

News

1. Casey Anthony Trial
2. Gabrielle Giffords Shooting
3. Royal Wedding
4. Japan Earthquake
5. Arab Spring
6. Penn State Scandal
7. Osama bin Laden Death
8. Occupy Wall Street
9. Debt Ceiling Debate
10. European Debt Crisis

Celebrities

1. Charlie Sheen
2. Justin Bieber
3. Kate Middleton
4. Jennifer Aniston
5. Kim Kardashian
6. Tiger Woods
7. Lindsay Lohan
8. Amy Winehouse
9. Glenn Beck
10. Pippa Middleton

Memes

1. Ted Williams
2. Planking
3. Serene Branson
4. Anonymous
5. My Little Pony
6. Ancient Aliens
7. Nyan Cat
8. Rebecca Black Friday
9. Tiger Mom
10. Qwikster

Presidential Candidates

1. Barack Obama
2. Herman Cain
3. Michele Bachmann
4. Rick Perry
5. Ron Paul
6. Mitt Romney
7. Newt Gingrich
8. Rick Santorum
9. Jon Huntsman
10. Gary Johnson

“How…”

1. How can I pay off my credit card?
2. How tall is Katy Perry?
3. How can I stop snoring?
4. How did Valentine’s Day start?
5. How do you lock your scroll bar?
6. How much is my jewelry worth?
7. How many ounces in a gallon?
8. How do I change my AOL password?
9. How much should I weigh?
10. How did Punxsutawney Phil get his name?

“Is…”

1. Is Whitney Houston pregnant?
2. Is the iPhone 3GS free?
3. Is Dolly Parton her real name?
4. Is Cancun safe for tourists?
5. Is Roseanne Barr a nut farmer?
6. Is heartburn a sign of pregnancy?
7. Is shingles contagious?
8. Is Facebook going to charge?
9. Is there life after death?
10. Is rosemary good for stretch marks?

“Why…”

1. Why did Dick leave Big Brother?
2. Why did the original Becky leave Roseanne?
3. Why did William and Kate split in 2007?
4. Why did Paul Ryan found the Young Guns program?
5. Why did the chicken cross the road?
6. Why did Glenn Beck leave Fox?
7. Why did Ricky Gervais quit Twitter?
8. Why did Japan attack Pearl Harbor?
9. Why did my hair thin after giving birth?
10. Why did Jerry Lewis leave MDA?

November 30, 2011
Introducing the New Google Bar

Back in June Google began rolling out a new look and feel for Gmail, Search, News, Maps, Reader, and quite a few of their other products. Their goal was to create a unified look. Well today they’ve introduced the next stage in the process… redesigning the Google bar.

The new Google bar is supposed to help you navigate quicker through Google services, as well as giving you the capability to share stuff to Google+, while saving prceious browser space.

From the Google Blog: “Instead of the horizontal black bar at the top of the page, you’ll now find links to your services in a new drop-down Google menu nested under the Google logo. We’ll show you a list of links and you can access additional services by hovering over the “More” link at the bottom of the list. Click on what you want, and you’re off.”

The dropdown menu does require a few clicks to get to some of the popular services, but is manageable with the present icons. Also, the new dropdown menu does seem to have more uniformity, especially when you consider Google’s iPad app and Chrome’s tab page.

Some users aren’t a fan of the new bar:

@tcarmody
Tim CarmodyWTF, Google? You just got everybody used to the black bar (which was new!) and now you’re changing it up again? http://t.co/bbnoyfAN 37 minutes ago via YoruFukurou · powered by @socialditto

@SteveStreza
Steve StrezaAll I see is the Windows XP Start Menu. Google is literally turning into Microsoft. http://t.co/E1vQD8lc 36 minutes ago via Echofon · powered by @socialditto

@FmLuder717
Chris PenfoldHey, Google, whilst your integrating a new Google bar you can take out the utterly pointless Google + stuff. Thanks. 25 minutes ago via Twitter for iPhone · powered by @socialditto

While others welcome the redesigned bar:

@ClemensRettich
Clemens RettichGood to see Google continuing to push for consistency across its many products. This is a trend that must… http://t.co/dGRfOX4O 25 minutes ago via Facebook · powered by @socialditto

@cleverdevil
Jonathan LaCourI like the new Google bar – http://t.co/5UVndyDf – pleased to see Google stepping up its game. 35 minutes ago via Twitter for Mac · powered by @socialditto

@nsethi
Nikhil Sethinew google bar is starting to look like a standalone OS. 37 minutes ago via web · powered by @socialditto

What do you think of the new Google bar? Tell us what you think in the comments below.

November 29, 2011
Google’s “Not Provided” Referrals Growing In Percentage?

Last month, Google announced that it would begin encrypting search queries with SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) as the default experience at Google.com for users who are logged in to their Google accounts.

As a result, there is a lot data that was once available in Google Analytics for webmasters is now hidden. “When a signed in user visits your site from an organic Google search, all web analytics services, including Google Analytics, will continue to recognize the visit as Google ‘organic’ search, but will no longer report the query terms that the user searched on to reach your site,” said Amy Chang on the Google Analytics blog. “Keep in mind that the change will affect only a minority of your traffic. You will continue to see aggregate query data with no change, including visits from users who aren’t signed in and visits from Google ‘cpc’.”

“We are still measuring all SEO traffic. You will still be able to see your conversion rates, segmentations, and more,” she adds. “To help you better identify the signed in user organic search visits, we created the token ‘not provided)’ within Organic Search Traffic Keyword reporting. You will continue to see referrals without any change; only the queries for signed in user visits will be affected. Note that ‘cpc’ paid search data is not affected.”

Naturally, SEOs were not thrilled with the move. WebProNews talked to a handful of well-known industry vets about the subject recently:

Conductor has put together some research (hat tip: Search Engine Watch) indicating that the percentage of sites’ natural search traffic that is being labeled “not provided” by Google has grown dramatically since the change was announced.

“The percentage of traffic (not provided) grew from less than 1% in the week immediately after the launch, to 8.875% of traffic from Nov. 18-Nov. 20th (although not a full week.),” says Conductor’s Nathan Safran.

As you can see, that’s a pretty significant jump, especially considering that Google downplayed the change’s impact as “affecting only a minority of your traffic.” Although technically, 49% would still be a “minority”.

It’s worth noting that Google is doing everything in its power to get people using actual Google accounts. Namely Google+. The more Google can grow the amount of people with accounts and profiles, the more likely people are going to be using Google signed in, so it would be no surprise whatsoever to see that percentage of “not provided” keep going up.

A second graph from Conductor shows that while the number has gone up significantly since the change was first made, that growth does seem to have slowed down a bit. This graph references what Safran calls “5 high traffic websites – 2 online retailers, 3 service providers”.

While the first graph shows that overall, the percentage is close to 9%, the second graph shows that it clearly varies from site to site. Safran points to a recent survey from SEOmoz, which had the number as high as 12% for the average.

Google’s Matt Cutts had estimated the effects to be in the “single-digit” percentages.

November 29, 2011
PageRank, Stephen Hawking & Pizza

Today’s video round-up features some PageRank eduction from Matt Cutts, NMA’s take on the Ndamukong Suh situation, Stephen Hawking dicussing YouTube Space Lab, and much more.

View more daily video round-ups here.

Matt Cutts talks PageRank split possibilities:

NMA does Ndamukong Suh:

Stephen Hawking welcomes you to YouTube Space Lab:

New Domino’s Pizza iPad app:

Little Printer:

Hello Little Printer, available 2012 from BERG on Vimeo.

Google Maps goes indoors:

Google Maps goes inside the airport:

Google Maps goes inside IKEA:

NYC Timelapse:

November 29, 2011
Google Has “Exciting” Scraper Related Stuff in the Pipeline

Google Webmaster Central tweeted out a new Matt Cutts video today, discussing the Panda update and scrapers. The specific question addressed is: “I understand that the recent farmer update (Panda) gives a penalty for poor content. Given the penalty scrapers have been outranking original sites. Should webmasters spend time in fighting scrapers directly or work on the poor content?”

“My advice would be to really concentrate on the quality of your own site,” says Cutts. “It is the case that sometimes scrapers can be returned in Google search results, despite our best efforts. And it is the case that sometimes you see scrapers more or less often, but it’s also the case that Google has been working on trying to find and fix the problems related to scrapers.”

“We’ve got engineers working on that,” he says. “They’re going to keep working on that. We’ve actually got some good stuff in the pipeline that I’m pretty excited about.”

Now, it’s worth noting that the actual upload date of this video is August 8, though it was not released as a new video until today.

@googlewmc
WMXNew webmaster video: Should I spend more time on improving my content or on fighting scrapers? http://t.co/naZeRPGW 1 hour ago via web · powered by @socialditto

On August 26, Cutts tweeted:

@mattcutts
Matt CuttsScrapers getting you down? Tell us about blog scrapers you see: http://t.co/6HPhROS We need datapoints for testing. 95 days ago via Tweet Button · powered by @socialditto

“So we’ll keep working on the scraper side of things,” Cutts says in the video. “My advice for people who may have been affected by the ‘Farmer’ or the ‘Panda’ update is to concentrate primarily more on the quality side – the content side – thinking about how can you either improve the quality of the content if there’s some part of your site that’s got especially low quality content or stuff that was really not all that useful, then it might make sense to not have that content on your site. Things along those lines.”

See eHow’s strategy.

“So if you think about it, the fundamental problem, if you’re affected by this particular algorithm update, is that Google is thinking that your site is not providing as high quality content as some other sites,” he says. “So the best thing to do is to concentrate on the root of the issue. To concentrate on trying to make sure that you have the highest quality content so that Google sees that and can assess that, and then you don’t have to worry nearly as much about the scrapers, because you’re doing much better.”

November 29, 2011
British Library Makes 300 Years of Newspapers Searchable Online
The British Library and BrightSolid Online Publishing have teamed up to digitize up to 40 million newspaper pages from the British Library’s collection over the next 10 years. There is also a searchable online newspaper archive that consists of three million pages of newspaper content originally funded as part of a £3m contribution from JISC in addition to the millions of pages coming from the BrightSolid contribution.

“We have scanned millions of pages of historical newspapers and made them available online for the first time ever,” the project’s creators say. “Search millions of articles by keyword, name, location, date or title and watch your results appear in an instant. Compare this with hours of painstaking manual searching through hard copies or microfilm often requiring a visit to the British Library in North London and it is easy to appreciate the ground breaking nature of this project.”

The collection covers most runs of newspapers published in the UK since 1800. “The scale of the newspaper publishing industry from the early 19th century onwards is enormous, with many cities and towns publishing several newspapers simultaneously, often aimed at distinct audiences depending on social status, geographical location and political affiliation. The first stage of this project focuses on runs published before 1900 and will include titles from cities such as Birmingham, Derby, Manchester, Nottingham, Norwich, Leeds and York, along with local titles from London boroughs,” the creators say. “Newspapers which aimed for county circulation – from Staffordshire to Sussex – will also feature prominently, providing an unrivalled picture of provincial life spanning the whole of the 19th century.”

What you can search with the service:
- News articles
- Family notices (births, marriages, deaths, engagements, anniversaries, birthdays, congratulations)
- Letters (to the editor)
- Obituaries
- Advertisements (classifieds, shipping notices, appointments, illustrations, editorial cartoons, etc.)
As part of the process, each page is segmented into “classified zones” designed to help users search more efficiently.

The team behind the project has been scanning up to 8,000 digital images per day from the original bound newspaper pages. This includes what the team calls “some of the rarest and most fragile newspapers”. Some pages, the team says, are as big as two feed wide.
November 29, 2011
Google Talks About Its Evolution and Future

Google is no stranger to putting out videos about search. They put out webmaster help videos all the time, but earlier this year, we got a rare look into the inside of how Google shapes its algorithms. There wasn’t a lot of groundbreaking information in that, but it was interesting to see nonetheless.

Here’s that video:

Similarly, while not a lot of new information is provided, Google has released a new video about the “evolution of search,” which is kind of a documentary-style six minute look at how Google has evolved over the years, as told by Googler like Amit Singhal, Marissa Mayer, Ben Gomes, Jack Menzel, and Johanna Wright.

Here’s the new one:

Google has also released an accompanying timeline:

Click to enlarge

The last part of the video is about “the future of search,” and that’s always a hot topic, given that Google controls such a dominant portion of the search market. Webmasters would do well to listen to what Google has to say about where search is going.

“The truth is that our users need much more complex answers,” says Singhal in the video. “My dream has always been to build the Star Trek computer, and in my ideal world, I would be able to walk up to a computer, and say, ‘Hey, what is the best time for me to sow seeds in India, given that monsoon was early this year?’ And once we can answer that question (which we don’t today), people will be looking for answers to even more complex questions. These are all genuine information needs. Genuine questions that if we – Google – can answer, our users will become more knowledgable and they will be more satisfied in their quest for knowledge.”

“Our goal is to get you to the answer you’re looking for faster and faster, creating a nearly seamless connection between your questions and the information you seek,” says Gomes on the Inside Search blog. “That means you don’t generally need to know about the latest search feature in order to take advantage of it— simply type into the box as usual and find the answers you’re looking for.”

Perhaps not a lot of takeaways you can go out and apply to your site right now, but it does give you an idea of the kind of search engine Google is striving to build, and the better you can solve real problems with your content, the more Google is bound to like that content. You can go back and look at Google’s list of questions for assessing quality, and get that much.

November 28, 2011
Top Searches of 2011 (According to Bing)

Bing has revealed its top searched terms for 2011, and believe it or not, Justin Bieber takes top prize. Then, in the number two position, it’s Kim Kardashian of course. You know, the stuff people need information about.

Bing is the “decision engine,” and clearly people had a lot of decisions to make about Bieber and Kardashian.

“From rising stars and weddings to intense trials and natural disasters, Bing has captured history through the searches that mark the year’s most important people, places and moments in time,” a spokesperson for Bing tells WebProNews.

So here’s that list of most searched people:

1. Justin Bieber
2. Kim Kardashian
3. Jennifer Aniston
4. Lindsay Loahan
5. Jennifer Lopez
6. Britney Spears
7. Katy Perry
8. Megan Fox
9. Lady Gaga
10. Miley Cyrus

The most searched consumer electronics were:

1. Xbox and Kinect
2. Kindle
3. Playstation
4. iPhone 5
5. iPad
6. Wii
7. iPad 2
8. Nook
9. Windows Phone 7
10. Macbook Pro

No Android devices. I wonder if the results were different for Google searches.

The top three news stories were:

1. Casey Anthongy Trial
2. Osama bin Laden Death
3. Hurricane Irene

Top Celebrity Events:

1. Royal Wedding
2. Final “Harry Potter”
3. Kim Kardashian Wedding

Top Finance Quotes:

1. Real estate agents
2. Cheap
3. Coupons

Bing also shared this year-end video:

Bing looks at a few more vertical trends in this blog post.

We’re looking forward to seeing how Google’s year-end list stacks up to Bing’s, given its much larger market share, as it would represent a better picture of what people are truly searching for. I’m guessing Bieber and Kardashian are still pretty high up on the list.

November 28, 2011
Google Panda Update: Tweak Launched November 18

Google tweeted out sometime on Friday that there was a tweak to Panda that affects less than 1% of searches. Here’s the tweet, in the form of a “weather report”:
(more…)

November 21, 2011
Is Google+ Imperative For SEO?

We all know that Google has over 200 signals it uses when ranking content, but you know what Google loves to rank well when its relevant? Google stuff.

Should Google rank its own properties over others’ sites? Tell us what you think.

While there have been plenty of complaints and much regulatory scrutiny into this topic, that’s a discussion for another article. The fact remains that Google gives businesses and sites plenty of tools and resources where you can actually use Google’s own search results to your gain.

One example of this would be Google Places. It’s simply a great tool for consumers to find local businesses. How often do you use the phone book these days?

Another example would be YouTube. It may be hard to get your site to rank for certain keywords, but Google loves to put video results on page one when relevant, and Google just so happens to own the world’s biggest video site. Even if this means they’re technically ranking their own stuff for visibility, you can benefit from this by using YouTube and videos to promote your business.

I’m not going to go through all of these examples, but suffice it to say, you should be trying to be found in Google’s various other search engines, besides straight up Google Web Search. These can in turn get you found in results from regular searches via universal search.

Google+ has introduced a whole new realm of SEO possibilities based on getting found via Google’s own properties.

For one, Google ranks Google+ posts in search results, and they often appear on the first page.

The +1 button obviously helps your search visibility cause. Google made it clear from the beginning that this would be a search signal. If enough people like your content enough to give it a +1, it must be good right? Why not bump it up in the rankings.

Direct Connect lets consumers find your brand’s page pretty easily from the Google search box.

Google likes “freshness” now. Stuff that is recent can appear higher in rankings these days. Google+ updates tend to be recent, and can be very rich in content, depending on how much you put into them. They can also spark conversations and sharing, which should all help your cause.

Google+ is also what Google wants to replace Twitter with in realtime search. You can bet that this will come back sooner or later. Google is failing its mission in search without it.

Google+ now has trending topics. It will hardly be a surprise if this finds its way more into the Google Search experience in one way or another.

You can optimize your Google+ Profile itself. Kristi Hines at Search Engine Watch has a great article on this. This image she shares drives the point home.

It’s become quite clear that your Google profile matters tremendously in Google search now. Watch this video from Matt Cutts last year, well before the launch of Google+ and the loss of the Twitter firehose.

“We’re also trying to figure out a little bit about the reputation of an author or creator on Twitter or Facebook,” he says.

Of course, now things have evolved a bit. Enter Google+ – a direct way for Google to get access to YOU.

Also enter authorship markup. Google has been pushing this as a way for content authors to send Google direct signals that content is indeed connected to them specifically. Now, we see author pictures appearing next to Google search results on page one all the time. And guess what those link to. The Google+ profile. This is why in an article a while back, we called your Google profile the next ranking signal.

Here are some clips from Google instructing you how to implement authorship markup:

By the way, Google also recently added circle counts and comments to authorship.

Google+ Pages are of course available now for businesses. If you haven’t started using them, what are you waiting for? And don’t be like McDonald’s and set one up only to not add any content. It’s not worked so well for them so far (although I doubt McDonald’s is too hard up for search traffic).

And don’t forget about the analytical benefits you can get from Google+.

At BlogWorld a couple weeks ago, Chris Brogan said, “Google doesn’t index all of Facebook right now. It’s a lost cause for SEO, they’re also no longer indexing Twitter. Google does index anything publicly for Google+”

One thing you will do well to keep in mind is that “Google+ is Google.” This is a mentality that Google has expressed on more than one occasion. If you’re ignoring Google+, you’re ignoring Google. Remember, if you want Google to RESPECT you (give you more search visibility), you should probably respect Google and the means you’re given. Google+ is only going to get more integrated with every aspect of Google.

Have you had an impact in your search visibility since using Google+? Let us know.

November 19, 2011
Know Exactly Where That Big Ol’ Jet Airliner’s Headed, Thanks To Wolfram Alpha

Using data from the Federal Aviation Administration, knowledge engine Wolfram Alpha is making it easier to learn about all of those planes flying over your head at any given time. If you’ve ever seen a plane soaring through the sky and thought about its destination or its place of departure, this is the tool for you.

The broadest and possibly the most whimsical way in which Wolfram Alpha’s FAA data can be used is with the search query “flights overhead.” Wolfram Alpha will then provide you with information on just that – all the flights that are currently flying over you head (with a small 5-minute delay due to FAA restrictions).

If you’re on a mobile device, then it will use your location data to pinpoint exactly where you are and give you the most accurate portrait of the flights in your area. If you’re searching from a desktop, it will do its best to pin a location from your browser.

The “flights overhead” query gives you a list of all the flights that could technically be seen from your location (on a clear day of course). Not only that, but it lets you knows things like the plane’s altitude, flight angle and model as well as provides a sky map for the more visually oriented folks out there.

You can click on any of the flights listed to find out more information about them like departure time and location, destination time and location, flight capacity, flight altitude over time, and even the history of that particular plane (previous flights). Right now, the Pittsbirgh Jet Center flight 79 that’s flying over my head left from Dupage Airport in West Chicago and is en route to Charleston, South Carolina. It’s a Cessna citation CJ3 with two jet engines and is carrying anywhere from 3 to 9 people. Cool huh?

The blog post about this new feature talks about some of the more practical uses, other than just knowing about the planes flying in your vicinity. One of the cooler uses of the information is to find out exactly where you were when you took that picture from your window seat. Once your plane lands, you can plug the time of your photo, along with the flight number, date, and airline information into the engine. This will give you a pretty accurate description of what you were flying over when you snapped your mid-air shot.

Since all the info comes from the FAA, this real-time flight search will only work with planes having at least one stop in the U.S.

I guess it will always be fun to look up in the sky and imagine where a plane is headed and where it came from. You can then begin to imagine the people on that plane, and their lives, and why they are headed to wherever they are going. It’s a daydreamy type of activity, but one that tons of people have done, I assure you.

Now, if you want, you can know for certain where those sky ships are headed.

November 18, 2011
Site Authority, SOPA & Tumblr

Today’s infographic round-up explores the SOPA “Internet blacklist bill” that everyone’s talking today, as well as site authority and the growth of Tumblr.

View more daily infographic round-ups here.

Internet Marketing Infographic by Vertical Measures

Tumblr Numbers:

November 16, 2011
SES Chicago 2011: Social Media Rapping and Takeaways

Search Engine Strategies Chicago is currently underway, and attendees are tweeting their takeaways from the sessions.

This year there was rapping:

Here’s the keynote from Mikel Chertudi:

Here are some of the interesting points made that people found worth sharing:

@joshdaire
Josh DaireGreat idea – use SEM Rush on your competitor websites for keyword research. @sammichelson #SESChi @SESConf 7 minutes ago via Twitter for Android · powered by @socialditto

@kathleenkinser
Kathleen K. AtkinsRT @joshdaire When doing local SEO rem zip codes, streets, events, areas, regions rather than just cities @sammichelson #SESChi @SESConf 12 minutes ago via Echofon · powered by @socialditto

@beehivestrategy
Beehive Strategy93% of all buyers online or in stores use search prior to making a purchase @ArnieK #seschi 32 minutes ago via yoono · powered by @socialditto

@mywebthoughts
Jonathan JeterGoing to #seschi can improve your #klout http://t.co/bMoOUnYH 40 minutes ago via Twitter for iPad · powered by @socialditto

@azeckman
Ashley Zeckman“53% of time on the internet is content consumption.” @Leeodden #SESCHI 1 hour ago via web · powered by @socialditto

@Brafton
Brafton News 93% of buyers (online or in store) use #search prior to making purchase, 86% search for non-branded queries #SEO #seschi 1 hour ago via Twitter for iPhone · powered by @socialditto

@Brafton
Brafton News Interactive marketing budget allocation will reach $76.3 billion – #Search represents 43%, #SocialMedia is 6% (Long live #SEO) #seschi 1 hour ago via web · powered by @socialditto

@RPWard
Ryan WardWho cares about someone with 8million followers. It’s the people with authority that matter. #seschi 1 hour ago via Twitter for iPhone · powered by @socialditto

@peterstringer
Peter StringerMore on G+/SEO: “We’re all concerned about brands starting to dominate Google’s search results.” – Arnie Kuenn, Vertical Measures #seschi 1 hour ago via Twitter for iPhone · powered by @socialditto

@JoshuadKatz
CrowdSourceQUOTE OF THE DAY – “Anything that can be viewed by search, can be optimized” @leeodden #seschi 1 hour ago via web · powered by @socialditto

@LynneKurdziel
Lynne KurdzielMost people come to your site 5-8 times before there’s a conversion to a sale/donation #seschi 2 hours ago via web · powered by @socialditto

@LynneKurdziel
Lynne KurdzielAverage conversion for PPC is .1% with clicks also weighted toward people who click more often in general. Small user set; diversify #seschi 2 hours ago via web · powered by @socialditto

@KarlRibas
Karl Ribas“it’s not natural to have 80% of your site’s links point to your homepage w/ the same anchor text” – @lorenbaker #seschi 2 hours ago via HootSuite · powered by @socialditto

@emcgillivray
Erica McGillivray86% of people don’t search for a brand – @ArnieK #seschi 2 hours ago via web · powered by @socialditto

@emcgillivray
Erica McGillivrayInstant follow button vs just a link to your website is less clicks & easy. Creates a fluid experience – @brightedge #seschi 3 hours ago via web · powered by @socialditto

@emcgillivray
Erica McGillivray68% of marketers have generated leads from at least 1 major social media network – @andreafishman #seschi 3 hours ago via web · powered by @socialditto

@leeodden
Lee Odden22.5 % of all Facebook driven sales paths have Facebook and search clicks involved @aarongoldman #seschi 1 day ago via HootSuite · powered by @socialditto

November 16, 2011
Old School Search Engines: Where Are They Now?

We thought it would be fun to take a walk down search engine memory lane and look at what some of the search engines from the times before Google’s domination are up to these days. Remember the days when the search industry wasn’t dominated by Google or even the combination of Google, Yahoo and Microsoft?

I’m going to look at results for the same query across each one just as a comparison. I’ll use the classic “level 4 brain cancer” query that we’ve looked at on Google various times throughout the content farm/Panda update discussion this year.

We first used this example to show where non-authoritative information was being surfaced for important health-related queries in Google, prior to the launch of the Panda update.

Ask Jeeves

Ask Jeeves was founded in 1996, and eventually became Ask.com, although it’s still Ask Jeeves in the UK. While there was always an emphasis on Q&A, this is very much the case these days. Here’s what it looks like:

The results:

Alta Vista

AltaVista was founded in 1995. Eventually it was purchased by Overture, which was taken over by Yahoo. Last year, Yahoo indicated that it would be shutting AltaVista down, but so far it is still live, delivering Yahoo results with an AltaVista logo. Here’s what it looks like:

The results:

AlltheWeb

AlltheWeb came out in 1999. It was eventually bought up by Overture, which was taken over by Yahoo. It was just earlier this year that Yahoo simply started directing it to search.yahoo.com.

Excite

Excite was founded in 1994. Ten years later it was acquired by Ask Jeeves. Now it’s owned by IAC, which also owns Ask. Here’s what it looks like today:

The results:

Lycos

Lycos was founded in 1994. In 2000, it merged with Terra Networks to become Terra Lycos. In 2004, Lycos was sold to Daum Communications. In 2010, it was sold to Ybrant Digital. Here’s what it looks like these days:

The results:

HotBot

HotBot was launched in 1996 by Wired Magazine, and is now owned by Lycos. Here’s what it looks like these days:

The results:

Infoseek

Infoseek was founded in 1994, and was eventually bought by The Walt Disney Company. It then was rolled into Go.com, but has been replaced by Yahoo’s search, which is interesting, considering that Yahoo’s search has been replaced by Bing. Here’s what it looks like:

The results (they simply redirect to Yahoo search results):

WebCrawler

WebCrawler is a metasearch engine. It launched in 1994, was bought by AOL in 1995, and sold to Excite in 1997. Infospace acquired it in 2001. Currently its results pull from Google, Yahoo and Bing. This was actually my go to search engine before discovering Google. That seems so long ago. Here’s what it looks like today:

The results:

DogPile

DogPile is similar to WebCrawler, and is also now owned by Infospace. It was launched in 1996. Here’s what it looks like today:

The results:

Mamma.com

Mamma.com, a metasearch engine, was launched in 1996. The company eventually purchased Copernic, and changed its name to Copernic Inc. In 2009, Copernic sold Mamma.com to Empresario.

There’s currently a message on the Mamma.com saying that a new version is on the way. Here’s what it currently looks like:

The Results:

The moral of the story: a lot of search engines think eHow has the best result for “level 4 brain cancer”. That includes Bing and Yahoo. Google is going with Harvard’s MGH Brain Tumor Center for its top result for the query. Blekko is going with Cancer.org. DuckDuckGo is going with medical-answers.org.

When was the last time you used any of these old school search engines? Let us know in the comments.

November 16, 2011
Yahoo Recipe, Shopping & Entertainment Vertical Features Introduced

Yahoo has introduced some new vertical search reatures for recipes, shopping and entertainment searches.

If you search for a food item + recipes, a window will appear on top of the search results page with popular choices from “leading food sites”. You can also filter by ingredients.

The shopping vertical utilizes a similar approach, with the window and the tab.

“The new entertainment results on Yahoo! Search present you with immediate answers about your favorite movies, music artists, celebrities and news stories,” the company says. “To read latest news, watch a popular video, or even see what people are saying in the Twittersphere, find it all in one convenient place within Yahoo Search.”

When asked if Bing’s search index plays a role in the results for these verticals, Caroline Tsay, Senior Director, Search Product Management at Yahoo tells WebProNews, “Bing does not play a role in these new experiences. We use our own technology to find the content – from across the web and from our partners – users are looking for, and assemble them into these new user experiences.”

“We may introduce more vertical search tabs for specialized content, depending on what our users are looking for,” she says. “Any new vertical search tabs will automatically appear based on the user’s search term and the search results content.”

Re-emphasizing Yahoo’s independence as a search engine, despite being powered by Bing, Tsay tells us, “Yahoo has amazing content in almost every major category like sports, finance, local, celebrities, movies, television, music etc. In the past we have used this content for properties like Yahoo! Sports, but never really used it for Search. Now we have started building a parallel index called the content index, which provides every bit of information about entities. We are using this content index to build these amazing experiences. This does not come from Bing – its proprietary to Yahoo!, and our secret sauce for the Search products of tomorrow. No other Search engine can have such an amazing content index.”

November 15, 2011
Google Antitrust Complaint Filed With FTC

ShopCity.com, a network of local shopping sites, has filed an antitrust complaint with the Federal Trade Commission against Google. The company shared a copy of the complaint with us. It says:

For most of its existence, ShopCity’s growth has been thwarted by unjustified Google penalties and anticompetitive Google prefacing. These matters were realized in writing with the Commission staff months ago, but the staff has not followed up in any respect.

It goes on to talk about how Google has been engaging in anticompetitive tactics since 2006, and that a number of injured vertical competitors have complained, but none have “received a CID or any other compulsory process necessary for a serious investigation.”

It then goes on to talk about Google penalizing Foundem and JC Penney in different ways, with Foundem getting worse treatment because of being a vertical competitor. More on the Foundem and JC Penney stories here and here respectively.

“The yawning chasm between the reality of Google’s penalty conduct and the pretense of Google’s public proclamations of no manual intervention demanded some further explanation and Google tendered an explanation of sorts shortly thereafter,” the complaint reads. “Matt Cutts, head of Google’s web spam team, acknowledged that the company had a program for imposing manual penalties and conceded that Google also released such penalties manually. Most manual penalties expire in thirty days, Cutts asserted. Google also imposed algorithmic penalties, Cutts said, which the company would not release manually. Cutts gave no explanation as to why Penney suffered a penalty of only a few weeks for blatantly cheating in a way that hurt consumers, while Google’s competitors like Foundem languished in the ‘penalty box’ for years for no transgression other than competing against Google.”

It goes on to talk about Google launching Universal Search, pulling in results from its various verticals into the main results, the famous Yelp complaints, and things of this nature.

All of this appears to be aimed at establishing Google’s alleged history of anticompetitiveness, something that has also been a topic of discussion in the Senate.

At its core, the main direct complaint appears to be that Google places its own results above ShopCity’s. “Based on relevance and quality, a ShopCity listing (for, say, a plumber in Midland) might rank near the top of search results (Because of Google’s preferencing, ShopCity could place no higher than the slot behind all of Google’s preferences listings.),” the complaint says. “But Google then took the extraordinary step of dropping all of ShopCity’s listings, generally to the fifth page of search results or beyond, relevance notwithstanding, where few users would ever find them.

Interestingly, when I perform a search for “plumber in midland” I don’t see any Google results whatsoever. Here’s what I see:

The same search on Bing actually does place Bing’s own local results above all else, despite the complaint saying, “Contrary to recent bleating by Google apologists who claim that other horizontal search providers also preference their own vertical offerings, Microsoft and Yahoo rarely placed their own captive local search results at the top of the page ahead of a ShopCity listing.

It’s a similar story with Yahoo:

To be fair, this is only one example (I’m sure there are indeed instances where Google puts its own results above ShopCity’s).

Bloomberg shares a quote from Google about ShopCity. A spokesman is quoted as saying, “This company was violating Google’s guidelines against duplicate and auto-generated content — which our users tell us they don’t like. We twice offered the company advice on how to improve their websites.”

Clearly, ShopCity doesn’t feel it’s getting the RESPECT it deserves from Google.

November 15, 2011
Google Verbatim Search Launched
Google announced that it is rolling out “Verbatim Search” today. This is a new search tool designed to make up for the absence of the “+” search operator that existed until recently.

Last month it became known that the “+” operator was no more. People were not very happy with this. Google says less than half a percent of searches actually utilized this, but you wouldn’t know that from the outpour of anger that came following this news.

We speculated that Google probably wanted to do something related to Google+ with the “+” queries, and sure enough, last week they announced Direct Connect – a way for searchers to use the “+” to bring up Google+ Pages.

At Pubcon last week, Google said it might soon roll out some kind of replacement for the “+” operator, and now they’ve already made good on that. Verbatim will be available via the left panel on search results pages under “More search tools”.

When you use Verbatim, Google says it will use the literal words you entered without making the normal adjustments like:
- making automatic spelling corrections
- personalizing your search by using information such as sites you’ve visited before
- including synonyms of your search terms (matching “car” when you search [automotive])
- finding results that match similar terms to those in your query (finding results related to “floral delivery” when you search [flower shops])
- searching for words with the same stem like “running” when you’ve typed [run]
- making some of your terms optional, like “circa” in [the scarecrow circa 1963]
One interesting nugget from Google’s announcement is that they’re applying “similar ideas” directly to their algorithms, “such as tuning the accuracy of when our query broadening seach improvements trigger.”
November 15, 2011
Bing Editors’ Picks Bring Human Touch to Search Results

Bing launched a new feature called Editors’ Picks, which it describes as a “guide to great sites”. There is a dedicated page for all Editors’ Picks that can be used as a portal, but results from this will also become available when applicable during the regular search experience.

“Editors’ Picks are small collections of relevant sites that our online editorial experts think will be useful to you, but may not always make it to the top of the search results page,” says Kristen Kennedy, Managing Editor of Bing’s Editorial Team.

Essentially, it’s a human-edited directory with a very limited number of listings. At the same time, however, the “Editors’ Picks” results become available via a tab for relevant queries. For example, if you search “tech conferences,” you will get the tab as an option, and then be able to view the listings.

“The job of Bing editors is to enhance your experience on Bing,” she adds. “For example, when we know you’re looking for something really specific — like ‘How to use a semicolon’ or ‘Free clip art’— we’ll provide a list of editorially selected sites on that specific topic (in addition to our algorithmic results) to help you find what you’re looking for faster.”

There are currently 140 topics Bing is featuring editors’ picks for. They are open to suggestions for more topics.

November 14, 2011
Google Algorithm Changes: Google Lists Ten New Ones
Google put out a blog post highlighting ten recent algorithm changes. Don’t get too excited about the SEO possibilities though, because Google only listed the ones it deemed non-gamable.

These are changes that Google has made over the past couple of weeks. Here’s the list, as explained on Google’s Inside Search Blog:
- Cross-language information retrieval updates: For queries in languages where limited web content is available (Afrikaans, Malay, Slovak, Swahili, Hindi, Norwegian, Serbian, Catalan, Maltese, Macedonian, Albanian, Slovenian, Welsh, Icelandic), we will now translate relevant English web pages and display the translated titles directly below the English titles in the search results. This feature was available previously in Korean, but only at the bottom of the page. Clicking on the translated titles will take you to pages translated from English into the query language.
- Snippets with more page content and less header/menu content: This change helps us choose more relevant text to use in snippets. As we improve our understanding of web page structure, we are now more likely to pick text from the actual page content, and less likely to use text that is part of a header or menu.
- Better page titles in search results by de-duplicating boilerplate anchors: We look at a number of signals when generating a page’s title. One signal is the anchor text in links pointing to the page. We found that boilerplate links with duplicated anchor text are not as relevant, so we are putting less emphasis on these. The result is more relevant titles that are specific to the page’s content.
- Length-based autocomplete predictions in Russian: This improvement reduces the number of long, sometimes arbitrary query predictions in Russian. We will not make predictions that are very long in comparison either to the partial query or to the other predictions for that partial query. This is already our practice in English.
- Extending application rich snippets: We recently announced rich snippets for applications. This enables people who are searching for software applications to see details, like cost and user reviews, within their search results. This change extends the coverage of application rich snippets, so they will be available more often.
- Retiring a signal in Image search: As the web evolves, we often revisit signals that we launched in the past that no longer appear to have a significant impact. In this case, we decided to retire a signal in Image Search related to images that had references from multiple documents on the web.
- Fresher, more recent results: As we announced just over a week ago, we’ve made a significant improvement to how we rank fresh content. This change impacts roughly 35 percent of total searches (around 6-10% of search results to a noticeable degree) and better determines the appropriate level of freshness for a given query.
- Refining official page detection: We try hard to give our users the most relevant and authoritative results. With this change, we adjusted how we attempt to determine which pages are official. This will tend to rank official websites even higher in our ranking.
- Improvements to date-restricted queries: We changed how we handle result freshness for queries where a user has chosen a specific date range. This helps ensure that users get the results that are most relevant for the date range that they specify.
- Prediction fix for IME queries: This change improves how Autocomplete handles IME queries (queries which contain non-Latin characters). Autocomplete was previously storing the intermediate keystrokes needed to type each character, which would sometimes result in gibberish predictions for Hebrew, Russian and Arabic.
Google said last week that it aims to be more transparent about algorithm changes going forward, and intends to announce major updates as they launch, much like they did with Panda and the recent freshness update.

Google also says it is testing algorithm changes that will look more closely at ad-to-content ratio for the portion of a page that resides “above the fold.” Expect this to be a more critical signal in 2012.
November 14, 2011
Google Search and Advertising News You Don’t Want to Miss

There have been a lot of major points of discussion surrounding Google and the company’s impact on businesses, marketers and websites over the course of this past week, and that includes things on both the search side of things as well as the social side (though sometimes these are directly related).

What should Google be doing to improve search and advertising? Comment here.

The two major events that kicked off all of these topics were the launch (after months of waiting) of Google+ Pages for businesses, products and brands, and the PubCon event in Las Vegaas, where Google’s Matt Cutts and Amit Signhal spoke about search.

If you’re looking for tips on effectively using your Google+ Page, read this. If you’re looking for how to just set one up, read this. This piece discusses setting the Page up with your AdWords campaigns.

On the PubCon front, the most noteworthy piece of news was that Google is testing algorithms that determine how much content vs. ads are above the fold on a page. Expect this to be an increasingly significant factor in Google rankings. It raises a lot of questions though, and we discussed here.

About that those raters…

Also at PubCon, Cutts reportedly discussed that recently leaked raters handbook. WebmasterWorld user Tedster paraphrased :

Webmasters tend to put a slightly skewed angle on this. The quality raters are actually rating a SERP (that is, a particular algo configuration) as a quality control measure for the algo team. Their ratings do not directly change rankings- but they hep the algo team see if the algo worked as planned or not.

Also, note that this document is not for the spam team. They also have a training document and use human quality raters – but that document has never been leaked.

Morris Rosenthal, who had sites impacted by the Panda update shared some inteteresting thoughts in relation to that.

Page Speed

Prior to PubCon, Cutts also tweeted out a video discussing how Google determines Page Speed:

He says it really only affects the rankings in about one out of a hundred searches, and it’s really only a big issue for about one in a thousand sites. This is pretty interesting considering the emphasis Google has placed on this element over the past year or two.

Transparency and Communication

There were plenty of other takeaways from the Google PubCon Q&A that are worth noting. In a nutshell, Googlebot is getting smarter and better at determining what types of content reside on a page, and at the same time, Google (at least according to Google) is getting better at transparency and communication with webmasters.

Specifically, they said they intend to be more transparent about algorithm updates and announce them as they go (as we’ve already seen them do with the Panda and Freshness updates).

They also gave a few pieces of advice, such as suggesting you tell Google when you publish content using email alerts and seting up pubsubhubbub in Webmaster Tools to help them better see that you publish the content before scrapers scrape it. Also, they emphasized that doorway pages are a bad idea.

Did you know…

A couple of facts they shared: Google has spam fighters in 40 languages and keeps an excel sheet of 500 sties from a thread in the Google Webmaster Help Forum where webmasters report Panda issues (presumably the one discussed here).

Freshness

While the “Freshness” update may have taken hold the prior week, SearchMetrics released a list of the top winners and losers in terms of search visibility. While there was no clear pattern to the types of sites negatively impacted by it, there were quite a few news sites on the winners list. That’s not to say all winners were sites of this nature. The top winner was actually Last.fm.

Advertising

There were several Google ad-related developments over the week. For one, Google announced that in the coming weeks, AdMob developers will be able to make their in-app inventory available on Google’s Ad Exchange).

The company announced that mobile site optimization is now a factor in mobile ads quality, as it rolls out to all advertisers. On the Google Mobile Ads Blog, product manager David Nachum wrote, “Ads that have mobile optimized landing pages will tend to perform better in AdWords — they will generally drive more mobile traffic at a lower cost.”

Then of course there is the ability to tie your AdWords campaigns to your Google+ page.

Is Google headed in the right direction? Do you consider these developments to be good things? Tell us what you think.

November 13, 2011
Google’s Algorithm Testing Raises Questions About “Above the Fold”

At PubCon in Las Vegas, Google’s Matt Cutts and Amit Singhal held a webmaster Q&A session with attendees, and referenced (among many other things) some algorithm testing that they’re doing, which we may see the results of in 2012. This involves Google’s algorithm examining what appears “above the fold” on a content page, and more specifically, what appears in the way of ads.

What is acceptable to have above content on a page? Tell us what you think.

As we discuss this, it’s important to keep in mind that as of right now, this is something Google is testing. There hasn’t actually been an update roll-out of this nature to my knowledge, so the effects would not necessarily have been felt by “infringing” sites yet, but from the sound of it, it’s coming.

As far as what actually happens in terms of fallout, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, but this is still something site owners and webmasters should be thinking about and possibly preparing for.

Now, this concept of ad-to-content ratio is not new, and it has in fact been a topic of discussion surrounding the controversial Panda update (which Google calls “a positive change across all of its known measurements,” by the way). In fact, following the Panda update, Google (Singhal himself actually) came out with a list of questions that “step into Google’s mindset,” as to how they’re looking at the issue of quality.

On that list is: “Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?”

At PubCon, Cutts is quoted as saying, “If you have ads obscuring your content, you might want to think about it…Do they see content or something else that’s distracting or annoying?” and that they’re testing algorithms that determine ”what are the things that really matter, how much content is above the fold.”

Now that part about “what are the things that really matter” could certainly apply to things beyond ads, and this in itself raises a lot of questions.

Here are some questions the whole discussion raises. Some of the answers may become clearer in time, and others webmasters will no doubt be left to speculate upon (feel free to contribute your thoughts in the comments).

Questions:

– Is “above the fold” determined solely by sizes elements of the design?

Screen size has an influence on this. Google did say that mobile (along with social) is the future. It’s certainly going to be a good idea (as it already is) to keep the small screen in mind.

– Is Google going to specifically look at the size of ads above the fold?

Look at EzineArticles, for example (one of the sites negatively impacted by the Panda update – granted, they’ve taken numerous steps to improve as a result). This article page has 7 ads above the actual content (the body). The top ones are very small in terms of space – just a few pieces of text. Even the ones that appear below the title aren’t enormous by ad standards, and technically are smaller than the 750-wide ad standard, but are they distracting to the content?

eHow is probably in better shape on the ad side of things (Demand Media also noted in on their earnings call the other day, by the way, that they were not impacted by Google’s recent “Freshness” update).

– Is Google looking at things like spacing above the fold?

If not, AdSense ads could be most heavily impacted by this, because of the small formats.

– If this is taken into account, how will it be impacted by mouseover pull-downs and things of this nature?

– Will Google run into false positives based on pull down menus and things (javascript, ajax, etc.) – on the page, counted as content above the fold?

Granted, Google says it is getting smarter at understanding the content on the page in this regard. But how smart?

– Will large images above the text hurt you, or is this counted as the content?

For example, many of our article pages will use a relevant image above the article. It’s just one of our templates that we’ve worked into our design:

– In a case like this, do headlines need to appear above the image?

– Will all of this effectively enable Google to really determine webmasters’ sites’ designs to some extent?

It can be very hard for a business to thrive online and not be visible in Google, so businesses will (and already do sometimes, for that matter) feel obligated to make sure their design is pleasing enough to Google to avoid being lost in the search results.

– Will webmasters bow down to everything google ever says?

Please feel free to weigh in on any of these, and share what you think of the direction Google is headed in, in the comments section.

Top image credit: Mike Souza (via Flickr).

November 10, 2011