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May 31, 2005

Extra! Extra!

Hurrah, it's the end of the month. That means it's time for our monthly newsletter. This month we're featuring how to deal with the problem of dynamic sites by implementing a mod rewrite. We're also getting back to basics with our look at building a theme via silos.

All this and the usual news wrap up too.

Happy May everyone. See you tomorrow in June.

Posted by sesparza on 05/31/05 at 5:41 PM
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Internet Advertising

On Friday, May 27, John Batelle wrote a blog about the increasing amount of money spent on Internet advertising, "Online ads at 12.3 Billion this year". Batelle's blog references an article concerning Goldman Sachs' (among others) predictions on Internet advertising this year, "Goldman Sachs Predicts $12.3 Billion Online Ad Market In '05". Some of the interesting points are as follows:

1. In 2005, Internet advertising will reach $12.3 Billion.


2. 59% of US households will have broadband connections; in 2004 that number was 50%.


3. Online advertising could account for 7% of total advertising dollars by 2009.

These predictions are especially interesting from a pay-per-click perspective. If advertising budgets are focusing more and more on the Internet, pay-per-click has the potential to be utilized more often. We always encourage our clients to concentrate not only on organic listings but also on pay-per-click listings, and with increasing Internet advertising budgets, focusing on pay-per-click is good advice!

Posted by hgibson on 05/31/05 at 9:38 AM
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May 27, 2005

Ask Jeeves Q & A Session

According to Search Engine Roundtable, Jim Lanzone, the Senior VP from Ask Jeeves, will be answering questions in a live Q & A session, hosted by Cre8asite forums. You can visit the forum and ask him questions now through Monday. He will be answering questions starting on Sunday and continuing through Monday. Here are a few of the questions that people have posted thus far:

1. Whether Ask Jeeves abides by the “no follow” cue in links or whether it ignores this cue.


2. To describe any operational difficulties Ask Jeeves has had in acquiring new properties such as DirectHit, Octopus Software, eTour, Teoma, etc. And what have the benefits been in bringing them on board?


3. If there will be any free web-based email or IM programs from the Askjeeves.com website.

If you are interested in posting questions, please visit the following link:

Live Q&A Session with Jim Lanzone, VP of Ask Jeeves

Posted by hgibson on 05/27/05 at 2:36 PM
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Yahoo wants a piece of your mind

It's rare that I look at a product and say out loud, "this is cool." But Yahoo! Mindset is actually very cool. Being of the research mindset most of the time, I hate getting back SERPs full of stores trying to sell me something when what I want is information. Of course, those times when I am looking to buy, I want the search engines to give me stores without having to use a special search. Yes, I also expect the sun to rise and set when it's convenient for me, why do you ask?

Yahoo! Mindset is like a gift. Unlike MSN's hidden and somewhat confusing three slider system, it's a single simple slider that moves between shopping on one side and research on the other. The Yahoo Search blog warns that it's just a work in progress but even at first glance, this is awesome. My first search for "Superman" brought up a mix of history and movie news. Sliding it toward shopping offered me collectors galore, moving it back the other way pushed the Wikipedia entry up and at the extreme, offered several articles on Christopher Reeve.

Considering the statistics that say anywhere from 75% to 90% of people doing searches are researchers this is a very neat innovation. Kudos to Yahoo. The full breakdown of how it works can be found on the Mindset FAQ.

Posted by sesparza on 05/27/05 at 12:03 PM
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May 26, 2005

Google, now will you admit 302 hijacking is a problem?

I'm not even going to attempt to put it better than Danny does. He takes Google to task for ignoring the 302 problem and taking two days to fix their own instance of hijacking.

Funny, this type of inattention is exactly what made people get turned off from the portals of the past, when they lost focus on search quality. Yahoo seems to have fixed this redirect hijacking problem, but Google is still struggling with it?

Just go, read.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 05/26/05 at 4:02 PM
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AskJeeves answers

Today at AJ we see the release of two new features. Seeking to give a better result to the user the new features are answers and zoom.

The Zoom service works based on Teoma's already existing clustering technology. Offering three options--narrow your search, expand search and related names—the service works by identifying communities rather than just synonyms like other services. Searching for "Superman" for example, narrows to the Superman Logo, the History of Superman, the Superman movies, etc. It expands to Smallville, Wonder Woman, Supergirl, Superheros and so on. Related names give you Batman, Clark Kent, Christopher Reeve and Marvel heroes, Spiderman and Captain America.

Instead of a simple white box answer, the new answer service works more like Google Q&A, giving the best response then offering further answers once you clickthrough. Putting the query in the form of a question seems more likely to trigger the answers than keywords do. Again to use the "Superman" example, the AJ Answer reads in part "One of the most beloved characters in comic book history, Superman was created in 1938 by artist Joe Shuster and writer Jerry Siegel."

It's a nice offering from the newly flush with cash search engine. Hopefully it will entice more people to try out AskJeeves. SEW has a more detailed explanation.

Posted by sesparza on 05/26/05 at 10:52 AM
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Just a short post to point out an interesting article. Jean Veranis of Technologies du Langage examines TrustRank in detail. It's a great, deeply thoughtful look at the new patent and what it really means in terms of implementation and the search industry. While there is much about the post that is open to debate, particularly his conclusion that the whole fuss and bother is much ado about nothing, there is no doubt that Jean has brought up many good points.

Posted by sesparza on 05/26/05 at 10:39 AM
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May 25, 2005

New and improved.

New: Yahoo offers personalized movie recommendations.

It's easy to use and some what addicting. You're asked to give your approximate age, decide if you watch more art film than mainstream films and grade a few starter films then Yahoo will offer up recommendations for films currently in theatres, films on television and films being released to DVD or Video along with reviews and ratings from critics and Yahoo members.

Chris Sherman thinks the recommendations are quite good. I disagree. Or perhaps there just isn't anything playing these days that I'm willing to watch.

Improved: Google Deskop is now available in several more languages

A Google Blog post today announced the releases of desktop searches in French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, Chinese (simplified), Chinese (traditional), Japanese and Korean.

What do these services have in common? Mindshare. The more you're convinced to use one service the more like you are to hang around and look at their ads.

Posted by sesparza on 05/25/05 at 10:15 AM
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May 24, 2005

Crisis on Infinite Earths

Microsoft's Bill Gates revealed the seriously cool looking MSN Virtual Earth was in development. It's a direct challenge to Google's newly renamed Google Earth (formerly Keyhole) and integrates Yahoo-like layers with satellite pictures.

Or so the demo suggests.

Here's the problem. We don’t actually have anything from Microsoft yet beyond promises of how much better things to come will be. Sometime this summer is not really a good reason to be excited now. The Google method to releasing—that is, develop something then slyly link to the beta without a lot of fanfare is a better way to do it. Microsoft, please make a note of that and actually try it. That way, people will stop referring to your products as vaporware.

In the end, it just doesn't seem important. While playing with Google Maps Satellite view is fun, it's not really that useful when trying to get from Point A to Point B. For that a traditional view works better every time.

Posted by sesparza on 05/24/05 at 5:05 PM
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May 23, 2005

Learn to work smarter

Search Engine Roundtable reported this morning that the ODP announced that they would be closing the site status check part of the Resource Zone forums. As always, Danny had an excellent perspective and an even more interesting suggestion. Make the OPD a wiki.

Wikipedia, of course, is the enormously successful community authored encyclopedia project. Editors of Wikipedia serve to police the edits but anyone can contribute. Since the stated purpose of the Open Directory Project is to be "the definitive catalog of the web", wouldn't it make sense to have as many hands in the creation as possible? Promote the current editors to quality checkers instead and let anyone add a link.

Google Blogoscoped points out that both ODPedia.com and ODPedia.org are available.

It's worth a thought.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 05/23/05 at 3:15 PM
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May 19, 2005

It's mine. They told me so!

My Google is being released today. Though, as Danny says, some might scream portal, really My Google resembles My Yahoo or My Jeeves as an aggregation of Google services into one place. If you have a Google account (Gmail, Groups or Answers logins will suffice), you can sign up for the page. Danny linked to screen shots or you can check out the information page.

Currently on the page: Gmail, News, Weather, Stocks, Driving Directions and Movies. Considering the vast numbers of portal junkies out there, this is a long needed move by Google to grab some of the eyes that would otherwise live their lives out on Yahoo's homepage.

For myself, I can't remember the last time I saw Google's homepage. As a Firefox user, all my searches go through the imbedded search box in the upper right. Still, this has the potential to lure me back.

Posted by sesparza on 05/19/05 at 3:19 PM
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May 18, 2005

Google Adsense for RSS feeds

If you have an RSS feed on your blogs (and you should), Google's AdSense would like to live at the bottom of your posts.

Continuing their quest to monetize anything that doesn't have an ad on it already (and if it can be pried up with a crowbar it is not nailed down), Google has released a new beta form of Adsense for RSS feeds. The Google blog announced the service and pointed out the best practices page and the application. Forum discussion is already lively at Webmaster World and it's sure to get more so.

Posted by sesparza on 05/18/05 at 9:50 AM
See more entries in Branding, Pay Per Click

May 17, 2005

Republished Content vs. Unique

The question of content is one hotly debated in many forums. While some maintain that there is no better way to increase your rankings, others shun it in favor of aggressive link building. Because the balance lies somewhere between the two, it's impossible to ignore the value that properly search engine optimized content will have. Today's Search Engine Watch article, Search Engines and King Content, is a look back at the What is Content panel from SES New York. Panelist's suggestions included utilizing every opportunity place optimized content, keeping articles short and on topic so as to appeal to your human visitors as well, and always using your own unique content rather than reprinted content.

The article goes well with Barry's (RustyBrick) post on Search Engine Roundtable. Jumping off from a thread at SEO Chat regarding the merits of unique content vs. reprinted articles, Barry notes that the equation boils down to a simple point: Do you want to link back to an expert or do you want to be the expert?

Posted by sesparza on 05/17/05 at 12:49 PM
See more entries in Design, SEO Tips & Tricks

Supreme Court rules on wine selling. So what?

The US Supreme Court struck down a law that barred wine from selling on the internet and shipping across state lines in New York and Michigan. Why am I mentioning this in an SEO related blog? Because if you were a winery or a reseller, that's exactly the kind of thing that you're going to want to write about. This would be a chance for you to write an optimized press release and a news article for your site, describing in keyword rich language precisely what the decision means, explaining your opinion and announcing that you would be happy to ship to the affected states. The article would be useful to your consumers and be noticed as expert by the search engines.

Commonly site owners, when told they should add more content to their pages, will complain that they don't know what to write. But the truth is opportunities are knocking down the door to create new, exciting and search engine relevant content. Every webmaster will keep a close on eye industry related announcements. The trouble is that while many react to a change in law or new technology, many will not use the opportunity to generate relevant content for their site. While you should never produce frivolous press releases announcing your new hair cut or the mental state of your cats, you should look at industry news as not just information but as an opportunity.

Posted by sesparza on 05/17/05 at 10:54 AM
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May 16, 2005

Google Be Gone

It seems like it's a case of cutting off your nose to spite your face but at least one webmaster has had enough of Google. Dr. Karl-Friedich Lenz decided that the Web Accelerator was the last straw. In a short blog post, he cites his opposition to "enemies of freedom" who are "gaining influence and want to turn the Internet into one big surveillance instrument," something he feels that the controversial Web Accelerator only facilitates. Google's mission, of course, is to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."

But Dr. Lenz goes beyond just disallowing Google from indexing his pages. He also redirects any clicks from Google SERPs to Yahoo instead of the URL for which they were intended, totally breaking the intent of the results. His blog explains how he did it for both the robots.txt and the .htaccess.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 05/16/05 at 1:27 PM
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MSN Toolbar and Desktop launches

After five months in beta, MSN has released their toolbar with desktop search. Only for Windows based IE 5.1 or higher, the toolbar is MSN's response to the Google Toolbar and desktop search. Learning from user feedback, the toolbar and desktop search have incorporated a greater degree of control as well as promising an option for tabbed browsing. Curiously, as Amit Agarwal noted, the desktop search won't index .pdfs by default, instead requiring an extra plugin.

Today's Search Engine Watch article has a good overview of the product. Their opinion can be summed up using Microsoft's new battle cry: It just works. No more, no less.

Posted by sesparza on 05/16/05 at 12:12 PM
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May 13, 2005

Robert Scoble, SEO? No.

Robert Scoble's blog today was a fun little ride through the misunderstand of SEO. I appreciate that Scoble is the man for Microsoft and I'm not denying that he's got serious chops in the blogging department. But he needs to keep his hands out of SEO because he sounds silly when he doesn't know what he's talking about.

Take these two recent entries.

No RSS feed? It's a genetic marker for "lame site"
Okay, so, yes Google just released their patent emphasizing freshness but "Which sites invariably are at the top of the list? Sites that change often."? What? Having good content not just new content is the key. Freshness will get you noticed by FreshBot but it's not a magic pill to get you to the top of the rankings. And what does having an RSS feed have to do with anything? A promise of content to come doesn't mean anything to a search engine who wants to know what is there not what will be there.

SEO, blogger style
Here Scoble tells of an instance when just changing the title tags caused his friend to rank #1. Pardon my skepticism but title tags just aren't that powerful.

Still, all's well that ends well, as Danny stepped up to point out the error of Scoble's ways. And here we see the huge difference between blogger SEO and professional SEO. Taking the time for educating yourself about the basics helps so much.

Posted by sesparza on 05/13/05 at 2:47 PM
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Interesting Thread

The Crea8asite Forums and Kim's blog, Usability, SEO and Web Design, are two of my favorite resources for getting a broader view of website design, blending as they do SEO and usability. The blog post Search Engine Optimization Wins Over User Centered Design and the thread It's the SEO that counts, not user centered design address this particular mixture head-on. Both reference the somewhat puzzling article from C|Net entitled Is search ruining the web?

The author of the article doesn't really answer her own question and has the typical outsider view of what SEO really is (hidden text? Spammy keyword tags? A Jedi uses not these things.) and she confuses breadcrumb navigation with properly written title tags but it's a good discussion starter as you'll see when you read the thread.

Posted by sesparza on 05/13/05 at 10:26 AM
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Yahoo vs. FindWhat ends in mistrial

The lawsuit between Yahoo (as Overture) and FindWhat regarding questions of patent infringement ended in a mistrial this week when the jury was unable to decide on all counts. Yahoo chose to regard it as a victory, claiming that the undecided elements were not the most important ones.

It wasn't a very good week for FindWhat anyway as they were named in another lawsuit regarding alleged securities fraud. The initial complaint came from Zucco Partners according the filing.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 05/13/05 at 9:52 AM
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Toolbar release keeps controversial feature

This week Google released their Google Toolbar 3 from beta. Included in the release is an updated version of the controversial Auto Link feature. In response to some but not all of the complaints levied against the feature, the updates include a different look for the inserted links and an option to select from several different online retailers as opposed to the pre-selected ones of the initial release. Preferences can be set with a right click on the inserted link and remain set until changed.

The Google toolbar can be downloaded on toolbar.google.com but it remains an IE application. Users of Firefox are redirected to a page encouraging them instead to use a third-party open-source "Googlebar" which is a fairly faithful replication though there are some elements missing. Most of those can be easily added with separate extensions.

Posted by sesparza on 05/13/05 at 9:32 AM
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May 11, 2005

Google Content Blocker.

Inside Google and Google Blogoscoped have the scoop on the newest beta with the Google name. Google Content Blocker is the answer to that biggest pain for advertisers: actual content distracting web-users from looking at the all important ads.

From the information page:

What is Google Content Blocker?

Google's mission is to organize the world's advertising for maximum exposure to Web users. Unfortunately, annoying Web content often overwhelms the page, causing many users to become distracted and overlook the ads.

That's where Google Content Blocker comes in. It effectively blocks all Web site content, leaving only the advertisements.

Don't worry, there is a privacy policy and a promise to not be evil. The product is in beta, of course.

Make sure to read the whole site; it's hilarious.

Posted by sesparza on 05/11/05 at 9:11 AM
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May 10, 2005

Google Web Accelerator

Google's newly released beta the Web Accelerator has had a tumultuous first week. On May 4, the day of its release, Search Engine Watch gave an overview of the product's feature. Before the day was out, people were reported problems and the forums were up in arms. Accusations of bandwidth stealing and the usual 'Google doesn't have the right to my content' cries gave way to security issues like the unintended deletion of accounts and pages returned of private login pages. Blog posts and forum threads sprung up everywhere, full of speculation, accusations and condemnation.

Melissa Mayer, Google's director of Web products, acknowledged the bug and says they are working on a fix. In the meantime, Google has closed the beta though you can still reach the download page.

I've refrained from commenting thus far simply because it has only been a single week. Like any beta product there are bugs and concerns to work out yet. Google's reputation as a company permanently in beta however, hurts them here. People expect more from a Google beta project and the Web Accelerator doesn't match up.

Having used the WA for a week or so, I'm largely unimpressed and find it breaks things quite often and doesn't save me all that much time. Hopefully as it develops, Web Accelerator will become a much less evil and more useful application. In the meantime, I'll just wait out the extra half second.

Posted by sesparza on 05/10/05 at 11:58 AM
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May 6, 2005

Update on RustySearch

Barry has released some preliminary statistics on his brand-blind test. The results so far are all very close but Yahoo has an ever so slight lead (26.1%), followed by Google (25.6%), Ask Jeeves (24.7%) and MSN Search bringing up the last spot (23.7%). The post on Search Engine Roundtable has a pie chart showing relevancy between the four and a graph of the voting trends. Most people seem to find relevancy a yes or no issue, choosing either 5 (most relevant) or 1 (least relevant) most of the time.

We first discussed the brand blind relevancy test on April 13th and followed up on its release three days ago.

Posted by sesparza on 05/ 6/05 at 11:55 AM
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May 5, 2005

Building a Google-Killer

"There's companies that are just so cool that you just can't even deal with it." Bill Gates seems to take Google's popularity personally. Certainly he's not taking it lying down.

Fortune has a long article on Microsoft gearing up to fight Google. From Gates' recognition in December 2003 that Google was a serious threat, to Chris Payne's two hour presentation on why Microsoft needed its own search engine fast, it's a deliciously intimate article that conveys a sense of the panic that must grip Redmond at the name of Google.

But while the article is good at comparing the two companies, it doesn't seem to know very much about the basics of search.

From the article: Another advantage for Gates & Co. is that search engines are still technologically primitive. They can't understand context, for example; if you type "chip," they can't tell whether you are looking for a snack food or high-tech equipment.

The concept of latent semantic indexing apparently hasn't penetrated as far as the Fortune reporters.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 05/ 5/05 at 2:43 PM
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May 4, 2005

SES Toronto Coverage

Search Engine Strategies begins today in Toronto. Discussion, as always, will go on at Search Engine Watch forums and Barry (RustyBrick) will be blogging sessions both at SEW forums and at Search Engine Roundtable blog. The first two sessions are already up. For a look at Cleaning Up Spam & Other Messes you can hit SER or the thread at SEW.

For the Organic Listing forum, again your options are the SER blog entry or the SEW thread.

Posted by sesparza on 05/ 4/05 at 9:48 AM
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May 3, 2005

RustySearch: The Search Engine Taste Test

Last month, we pointed out the white-labeled search engine idea by Barry (RustyBrick). Now he's built it and put it up so that everyone can try it. The official rules are at The Search Engine Relevancy Challenge. The RustySearch engine pulls from the top four search engines, Google, Yahoo! Search, MSN Search and Ask Jeeves.

Officially the release is tomorrow but here's the breakdown from the Search Engine Roundtable blog post.

1. Go to RustySearch (will open in new window)
2. Enter a search phrase and click search
3. Click on the title, the URL or the "rate this result" link. The site will open up in a framed window, so do not open the result in a new window.
4. At the top, there is a frame that says, "Rate the relevancy of this Web page for 'search phrase here'". Rate the result from one to five, one meaning a very poor relevancy and five meaning an excellent relevancy.
5. After you click a radio option, it should read, "Thanks for your input! Your vote (and many others) will decide who, really, is the search engine king!"
6. Then click on the button to take you back to the results
7. Continue on by rating the next result on that page, or search on a different result.
8. Repeat...

Posted by sesparza on 05/ 3/05 at 10:54 AM
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Ask Jeeves denies spyware claims

Following a rash of claims that Ask Jeeves is downloading and installing their toolbar without the consent of the computer user, Ask Jeeves has sent a letter to Danny Sullivan explicitly denying those charges.

The letter further denies that they are identified by Microsoft as spyware. The charges were first brought by anti-spyware advocate Ben Edelman in his article Does Jeeves Ask for Permission? Danny's original post on the subject is here.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 05/ 3/05 at 10:39 AM
See more entries in Rumors, Search Engine Optimization

May 2, 2005

MSN: Coming up from behind

Last month, we pointed out the MSN Search team interview where they said they thought of themselves as a small scrappy start-up. It seems that the Seattle Times agrees. Today's article on MSN Search reads like every "come from behind to win" sports film ever. I could almost hear the strains of Queen's We are the Champions towards the end there.

All joking aside, MSN has indeed come a long way in two short years and only continues to get better. Having the force of the MSN network behind them is a huge boon that gives the search team an advantage as relevancy through personalization becomes the new Holy Grail of search. Like Yahoo! they have a great deal of very detailed information on their customers. They have to be working on many ways to capitalize on that.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 05/ 2/05 at 11:10 AM
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