Search Engine Optimization

September 13, 2005

Ruling Handed Down on Kai Fu Lee Case

Bloomberg reports that the judge ruled today that Dr. Kai-Fu Lee, the subject of a bitter court battle between Google and Microsoft, can recruit for Google in China without violating his non-compete agreement though he cannot perform other tasks at the new facility, including setting budgets or working on research and development projects.

Update: Both Google Blog and Microsoft have weighed in to claim this ruling as a victory. The tale of the two headlines (guess which is from whom):

Judge clears way for Dr. Lee

The Court found that Dr. Lee "misled Microsoft" and misused confidential information.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 09/13/05 at 11:01 AM
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September 8, 2005

Andy Beal rejoins the blogosphere.

After a two month vacation from blogging, Andy Beal, formerly of Web Sourced and Search Engine Lowdown, has returned with a new blog, Marketing Pilgrim. Andy's long been one of the best minds in SEO blogging and we're all glad to see him back in the saddle.

Search Engine Lowdown, Andy's old blog, is now updated by the ever entertaining and insightful Garrett French, himself a former Web Pro News writer.

It's like two great blog for the price of one. I love a good deal.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 09/ 8/05 at 9:03 AM
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September 2, 2005

Please, sir, can I have some more?

Okay, I'll admit it; I'm a sucker for musicals and musical parodies. As my poor, long-suffering coworkers will tell you, it's Broadway nearly everyday at my desk. So when people like the dynamic duo over at GreyHatNews mix up a pretty good parody…well, I'm pretty much always going to find an excuse to link to it. If only because, hey, if I have to have it stuck in my head, so do you.

For those who aren't able to sing along to Oliver, there's always the fine folks over at the Onion to brighten up your day. Their intrepid reporters have ~~fabricated~~ unearthed the next stage in Google's quest to organize the world's information. Read all about Google Purge. Because if Google can't have it, ain't nobody going to have it. (I really apologize for the grammar of that sentence.)

Happy Friday, everyone.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 09/ 2/05 at 11:28 AM
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August 30, 2005

SEO Book sued by Traffic Power

Aaron Wall, owner of SEOBook.com, was been served a cease and desist and has had a lawsuit filed against him. The claim states that "proprietary and confidential information" was published on the website but fails to state exactly what the information is supposed to be.

When I saw this yesterday, I thought it was interesting but didn't really have any comments. Today, I still don't have anything to add but since Search Engine Watch has a very informative post on the subject, I really don't need to.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 08/30/05 at 2:19 PM
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August 29, 2005

Unicode characters in MSN Search

Welcome to the search game, MSN. Here's your list of things to avoid and the ways your competitors (including the algorithm to beat, Google) have screwed up before and try not to do too many things wrong your first year.

What's on the list? Well, here's an example as provided by Barry at Search Engine Roundtable.

Unicode in results is messy and doesn't add value to the results. Google did away with it in 2003 and Yahoo fixed it in March of '05. So get with the program, MSN. We know that you're new but your grace period is closing. Learn from the guys who've gone before and get the rookie stuff fixed.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 08/29/05 at 4:20 PM
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August 25, 2005

AOL News second only to Yahoo! News in popularity

AOL News, which uses a combination of Google News results, Topix.net information and human editing, is now more popular than both of its sources. AOL boasts a unique audience of 16.5 million according to a Nielson//Netratings report for July. Only Yahoo News is still more popular.

AOL News as relaunched in June along with the release of the new AOL.com portal.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 08/25/05 at 11:32 AM
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August 23, 2005

Not that it's not cool…

Matt Cutts is, um, happy about Google winning the NIST challenge. Says Matt, World-class machine translation makes me hot.

Actually, I can't laugh too much. I have to agree that I'm looking forward to the day when machine translation is good enough to make world-wide communication a breeze. It'll make everything harder for SEOs though. Before you only had to compete with those in your language. When we all read the web in our native tongue, just imagine the duplicate content issues.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 08/23/05 at 10:48 AM
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August 19, 2005

Google UI tests

Matt Cutts goes over a couple user interface tests for the SERPs. He discusses the purpose behind the tests and gives screenshots examples of each. Then he very carefully and clearly states no you can't pay for these. It's all algorithmic.

I like that Matt is unambiguous about this. It's better than dealing with a lot of unfounded speculation about the UI tests being ads or paid listings.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 08/19/05 at 4:23 PM
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August 17, 2005

Busy week news week (for August)

After the slowdown last week during SES, this week has already brought us a great deal of exciting news stories. I'll try to catch some of them up for you right now.

Google:

Lost their suit with Geico. The judge ruled that while using a trademarked name as the trigger for an ad wasn't illegal and using a trademarked name in an ad text wasn't illegal, it was illegal to use the trademark as both the trigger and in the ad text. Google claims to be pleased with the outcome.

Purchased Android. World gets ready to welcome their new robotic overlords. Okay, so really Android makes wireless software but wouldn't sentient robots have been more fun?

Yahoo:

Is hand-editing high traffic SERPs? Webmaster World thinks so. So do we.

Updates Yahoo Local, making it even better.

Ask Jeeves:

Opened up their paid listings program to everyone.

Still discussing rebranding. Keep the butler, I say! Loren Baker disagrees and says to get rid of him. Nothing is finalized according to Barry Diller.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 08/17/05 at 9:37 AM
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August 16, 2005

So how big is your index?

Just in case we were all ready to fall under the spell of 'bigger means better' that all this Yahoo vs. Google squabbling about index size can cast, Barry points to a very good reminder that it is relevancy not size that counts.

MSN, it seems, is indexing Ask Jeeves SERPs. But wait there's more. Not only are they indexing AJ's SERPs they're also indexing their own. Check out Search Engine Roundtable for screenshots. Go ahead, I'll wait.

See? Now, just a little message to MSN. Guys? Really, you don't have to stuff pages in to make us respect you. Giving back results that matter is much better. So figure out how to block those pages from being indexed and don't try to claim them in a catch up battle with Yahoo and Google. It's all nonsense anyway.

I promise, I'll respect you more in the morning.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 08/16/05 at 2:14 PM
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August 12, 2005

Yahoo responds on Index Size, Stands by number

Yesterday, John Battelle said he'd talked to Google engineers who claimed to be confused by Yahoo's claim of a 19.2 billion page index. Today he updates with Yahoo's response and points out that it is quite possible indeed.

He also notes that while Google's front page still reads 8 billion, that number is over a year old. Since we know that Google hasn't stopped indexing that span of time, it's not absurd to think that, particularly with the influx of pages following Google Sitemaps, Google's 8 billion number is very out of date and very much under reporting their index size.

And so it goes.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 08/12/05 at 10:04 AM
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August 11, 2005

John Battelle on Google's response to Yahoo's update:

I asked Google to go on the record with their concerns about Yahoo's index and whether they believed the news was in fact accurate, and Google agreed. The quote, which I can only attribute at this point to a "Google spokesperson," is as follows:
"Our scientists are not seeing the increase claimed in the Yahoo! index. The data we have doesn't support the 19.2 (billion page) claim and we're confused by that."

In This Battle, Size Does Matter: Google Responds to Yahoo Index Claims
John promises more details to come.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 08/11/05 at 9:58 AM
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August 10, 2005

New Blog to Read

Search Engine Watch reports that Google Engineer Matt Cutts has started a blog where he will talk about life at Google and the joys of working on the index and on quality control. From the looks of entries like Step into my Shoes, it should definitely be an interesting read.

"You really don’t want to get the sincere email from me," he says. From the look of the reply he sent a recent complaint? He's not kidding.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 08/10/05 at 4:31 PM
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August 5, 2005

Complicated Math, Simple PR

"MSN search results are determined independently and objectively by an algorithmic search engine. We believe our algorithms are competitively designed and more intuitive in order to return the most precise results for consumers." So says MSN Product Manager Justin Osmer in response to a story on News.com but reporter and blogger Elinor Mills suggests that those famous algorithms are just a little biased.

According to Mills, the top results for "Dr. Lee court documents Google Microsoft" at Google tend to favor Google's side of the story focusing on results containing Google's contention that the whole suit is a charade. Meanwhile over in MSN Search, the top results are about Microsoft's recent court victory. Mills used the metasearch engine Dogpile to determine this alleged bias.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 08/ 5/05 at 11:06 AM
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August 4, 2005

Coming Next Week: MSN Keywords

August has been a very busy month so far, with the release of Ask's PPC service, Yahoo's publisher network and ClickZ being sold but the changes aren't done yet. MSN will be announcing their PPC product next week (possibly an SES announcement?)

MSN Keywords will be a beta project, because releasing in beta is what the cool kids do. The WSJ article notes that the actual US testing won't begin until October and it will be an invitation only beta of 500 members.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 08/ 4/05 at 9:41 AM
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August 2, 2005

Search Engines Not Identical

It's tempting to think that Google, Yahoo and MSN deliver essentially the same results with only slight spins on the data but new data suggests that might be wrong. Chris Sherman reports on the divergence of search engines. A recent study by Dogpile and researchers from the University of Pittsburgh and Penn State University reveals that the top four engines overlap on first page results merely 1.1% of the time.

From the article:

73.9% of Ask Jeeves first page results were unique to Ask Jeeves
71.2% of Yahoo first page results were unique to Yahoo
70.8% of MSN search first page results were unique to MSN search
66.4% of Google first page results were unique to Google

Dogpile, of course, is a meta search engine with a vested interest in proving that you should be searching more than one engine for every query but that doesn't make these findings any less interesting or important for every search engine marketer. Considering the wide gap between engines, it's doubly important that you ensure your clients have visibility across all engines. Optimizing for multiple engines is getting harder all the time.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 08/ 2/05 at 9:41 AM
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ClickZ, SEW and SES sold.

Just before dashing off to meetings, Danny Sullivan announced that JupiterMedia is selling the ClickZ portion of their network, including Search Engine Watch and Search Engine Strategies Conferences, to Incisive Media.

Danny points to the press release for more details but assures that things will continue as they always have for SEW and SES.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 08/ 2/05 at 9:26 AM
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July 25, 2005

Cyclical Internet Use

Every webmaster knows that some times of the year generate more traffic than others and now they have confirmation. ClickZ today cites a study done by the Online Publishers Association.

The study points to increases in searching at the beginning of summer--probably coinciding with vacation planning and of course, retail picks up near the end of the year for the holiday season.

Don't cancel your Adwords campaigns just yet though. Lower searching numbers doesn't mean that advertisers should pull their spending. Says Michael Zimbalist, president of the OPA, "Search is bought differently; it measures time, so you can't correlate the spending patterns."

Posted by Susan Esparza on 07/25/05 at 10:14 AM
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July 19, 2005

Microsoft Sues Former Exec and His New Employer--Google

Google is opening a new division in China and hired Kai-Fu Lee, who as of Monday is the former corporate vice president of Microsoft's Interactive Services Division, to run it. Predictably this did not make Microsoft very happy and with practiced ease, the MS lawyers have filed suits again both Lee and Google.

ZDNet carries the story:

In the suit, Microsoft seeks monetary damages as well as an injunction upholding the noncompete clause and other provisions of Lee's contract, including terms barring him from sharing Microsoft trade secrets.

As the article notes, there has been a steady stream of Microsofties leaving for Google since the search companies rise to prominence. Additionally, both Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer have announced that they intend to beat Google at their own game. So maybe we should be looking at this less as a suit over trade secrets and more as a shot across the bow.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 07/19/05 at 3:27 PM
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July 14, 2005

Pixsy: Image Search Engine

According to Search Engine Watch, there is a new image search engine named Pixsy. It provides access to images which ordinarily would not be found by other search engines; it searches for images in blogs, mobile blogs, social networking services, and other websites.

This is a great find if you are interested in image searches for images which are not available in other search engines.

Posted by hgibson on 07/14/05 at 9:24 AM
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