Ask

For months I hear nothing about Ask, from Ask, or regarding Ask. No one reached out. No one made an effort to talk to Ask's loyal brand evangelists who had stuck by Ask through stupid marketing decision after stupid marketing decision. And then when Ask does make its return to the blogosphere, I'm being told that my report was bullshit. Where was the support?

Jim tried to explain was that the reason he hasn't reached out bloggers and brand evangelists sooner was because he was waiting until he had something to say. In March, he was still new and didn't feel like he has much to add to the conversation.

I didn't agree. In March, I needed Jim to step up and explain that the "rumors" were false.
If Jim would have spoken up maybe the conversation regarding Ask.com would be different. Maybe I would have allowed myself to believe him that they were still a true search engine. But he didn't, and as a result, the love and faith that I had in Ask.com left. What if by going silent for all those months you had officially alienated everyone who believed in you? What if it was too late now? What if people had moved on and didn't care?

Jim said that they would be reaching out now and trying to get their fans back.

He had to know I wasn't buying it. I was practically yelling out of frustration. Susan was Skypeing me and cheering me on to not let him off the hook. Robert Esparza, our VP of Operations, came in the room to make sure that I was okay and probably to find out from Susan who in the world I was speaking to like that.

I didn't mean Jim any disrespect, and I think he and Nick both know that the reason I was getting worked up was because of how passionate I was about the brand. The fact is, I don't believe them that Ask is trying to improve its status as a general search engine. They're not focused on core search. They're focused on buying their way into verticals. And that's not good enough.

Just because you're not asking users to pose queries in the form of a question doesn't mean you haven't become a question/answer based search engine. By focusing your energy on research and health and all the Smart Answers instead of improving the algorithm, you're branding yourself as the place to go for clear cut answers. It's not about searching for information. It's about looking things up. That's not search. That's not competing. That's getting away from being a core search engine.

How did the call end?

With Nicholas Graham serenading me with Waiting For a Girl Like You and then Jim purchasing the song for me on iTunes. I'm serious.

Is Ask.com serious about search? I don't know. But at least for now it seems they're serious about reaching out to bloggers. I guess that's a start. I haven't come around and forgiven Ask, but I'll continue to watch what they're doing and where they're going. With any luck, I'll be able to break out my once beloved-Ask.com messenger back once again. Until then, I'm still a broken-hearted former Ask.com evangelist.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 06/26/08 at 11:57 AM | Comments (1)
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March 4, 2008

Goodbye Ask.com: A Brand Evangelist Hangs It Up

This is the hardest blog post I’ve written to date.

Barry Schwartz twittered this morning that he had news that would make me sad but wouldn’t elaborate. I thought he was about to take me to task for the somewhat critical post I wrote yesterday regarding Ask.com. Then, a few hours ago the story went live on Search Engine Land: IAC Cuts 8% of Ask.com & Kills Search Engine (via WSJ.). That bullet was followed with another: All Things Must Pass. Gary Price, a good friend and industry mentor, has left Ask.com.

My heart was shattered, with very real tears streaming down my face. And though I’ve since dried them, as I write this I can feel them creeping back up. Ask was personal to me, and those who know me understand that.

If you read the first story, you’ll hear that Barry Diller’s IAC is laying off 8 percent of the Ask workforce and killing the innovative engine, replacing it with a useless replica of their 1996 question/answer model. Gone is the progress we’ve seen over the last year. Gone is the best blended search platform of all four major search engines. Gone is the pioneering engine that Google and Yahoo used to steal hot ideas from. Gone are the ideas we were promised to us for the future, promises that were led and rooted in Jim Lanzone. Everything Ask heads loved about Ask.com has been taken away.

I’m heartbroken over the loss of an engine I loved and intensely angry at Barry Diller, the man who never understood the gem he had in his hand, and in return, threw it away when it wasn’t making money as fast as he wanted it to. This was a decision based on money, not about users, not about search, not about anything other than Barry Diller’s bottom line. This was not Ask’s choice. This was forced upon them and I think that’s important to remember.

When the news broke, I twittered my feelings and put up status messages on the various online messaging services I subscribe to. And though most of the community seems to feel my sadness, I received a couple of somewhat flip remarks telling me that “money walks” and that Ask was never competitive anyway. They don’t get it. Today’s news fills me with a sense of enormous loss for two reasons:

1. I must bid farewell to a search engine that I loved and believed in.
2. I must bid farewell to a company that has betrayed me and all of its users.

I’ve joked in the past about how Ask.com has often treated me like an abused partner. Regardless of the stupid things they did or how much they’ve insulted me over the years, I’d always come back. I’m not coming back from this. I will no longer serve as a brand evangelist for the Ask brand. I can’t support them in their decision to turn back the clock to 1996. You can’t devolve, throw away the trust your users placed in you, turn your backs on your biggest supporters and then expect people NOT to be betrayed.

And that makes me incredibly sad because I know today’s decision is not what the people at Ask.com wanted. It’s what Barry Diller wanted. And it hurts to fight so hard to see an engine succeed only for someone else to come along and throw in the towel for them. As I stated before, Ask.com was personal to me. I stuck by them through the years and prided myself for being a diehard brand evangelist, speaking out on their behalf at any opportunity. I can’t tell you the amount of Ask selling I’ve done over the years. But that stops today. With this decision, they’ve lost me. For good.

If I could ask Barry Diller for one thing, it’d be this: Now that you’ve dismembered Ask and its heart, be man enough to just kill it once and for all. Don’t tell me that you’re “restructuring” or “refocusing” or “realigning”. That’s even more insulting than what you’ve already done.

Users didn’t want a question/answer-based search engine 12 years ago and they certainly don’t want it now. If you’re going to remove the soul from Ask, do me a favor and remove the whole thing. Don’t leave a shell to tarnish the memory of everything that Ask was able to do since the rebranding. The sellout version of Ask is NOT the engine that lived under people like Jim Lanzone and Gary Price, and how dare you try to market this move as anything but what it really is: Your attempt to pad your pocket at the sacrifice of others.

You’ve won. Enjoy your money.

Susan and I will wear our Ask.com shirts for BC’s Casual Friday this week and then I’ll retire it. It’s time to find a new search engine to back, one that deserves my support.

Goodbye Ask.

(Pictured alongside some of my friends at Ask.com during SES San Jose 2006.)

Posted by Lisa Barone on 03/ 4/08 at 2:35 PM | Comments (18)
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March 3, 2008

Lose Diller, Not The Ask.com Engine

In case you thought the lack of Friday Recap last week was due to me still traveling and not getting into the office until late, it wasn’t. I didn’t Recap because of the rumor that the IAC is ready to drop the Ask engine* and start outsourcing their search to Google. Seriously, it was like being shot in the face. Should the day ever come when Ask throws in the towel…well, let’s just say Susan isn’t going to let me near the blog for months in fear I’ll start ranting and simply never stop. Also, please have someone stop by my apartment to make sure I am there and not, say, chained to the Ask headquarters or Barry Diller’s yacht. Thanks.

Search Engine Land has now officially (and thankfully) reported the rumor as false, but I was upset enough about the speculation to be keep an eye on things through the weekend. The post that especially caught my eye came from Search Engine Roundtable this morning when Barry reported that the early sentiment from the forums was that people wouldn’t mind if Ask suddenly disappeared and rolled over to the great behemoth that is Google. Barry even went as far as to say that loyal Ask users are “losing patience” and that while he hopes Ask holds on, he “hopes less” these days.

Oh my goodness. That sound you hear? That would be my heart breaking over one of Ask.com’s biggest brand evangelists jumping ship.

I’m usually in agreement with Barry Schwartz, but I totally disagree here and I was actually quite surprised to hear someone like Barry take that stance. Barry has always been a steadfast supporter of Ask.com. I think the loss of Jim Lanzone has shaken up a lot of people, and Barry seems to be one of them.

Don’t get me wrong. Is it a punch in the stomach every time Ask does something stupid, fails to capitalize on a golden opportunity or when Google gets the fame for creating blended search? Yes, it does. But that comes with the territory of being an Ask head and true supporters aren’t going anywhere. Just take a look at the reactions over at WebmasterWorld and the Cre8asite forums. Do those people sound happy about the possibility that Ask is about to be swallowed up and Google-ized? I don’t think so.

The truth is the search industry needs a small, innovative engine like Ask. Ask is the kind of company that keeps everyone else on their toes. They give Google complete concepts to steal from and everyone else ideas to “borrow”. You know all those search refinement tools we’re seeing sprout up? Those were ideas first tested in the Ask engine. How freakin’ awesome is Ask3D? Wicked awesome! Who has the cooler company culture – Ask or Google? I’d say Ask. They’re not perfect, and arguably not even competitive, but Ask is doing a lot of things right. Let’s not pretend their loss would not be felt simply because users are “frustrated”. Google users are frustrated, too. Searchers in general are frustrated.

If Ask disappears and Yahoo is on the verge of falling apart, what does that leave searchers with – Google and Microsoft? And maybe a little Mahalo? I want more than that.

I don’t think Ask.com is going anywhere. They’ve put too much work into their new algorithm and Ask3D to call it quits now. All that said, I do wonder if they’ll ever get anywhere with the way they’re going right now. There will always be one thing factor holding them back – their CEO Barry Diller.

Truthfully, Barry Diller never got Ask.com. He’s always looked at the engine as something that was holding IAC back. Fine. Then give it to someone who is passionate about it and who will challenge things. For all this grassroots support Ask is supposedly “losing”, they also still have a hell of a lot of it left. People want to see Ask succeed. Get rid of that ad guy you just put in charge (no offense to Jim 2.0) and give the engine back to someone who knows search and its users. Getting rid of Jim Lanzone was the worst decision Barry Diller could have made for the engine or the Ask brand. It was a decision based on advertising dollars and didn’t take into account what Ask is really about – its users and the brand evangelists. Barry Diller will never know what it takes to grow Ask because he’s not one of those people. Someone needs to get the engines out of his hands, ASAP.

*Okay, maybe the lack of Recap was just a little bit due to the fact that Lisa didn’t get into town until Friday afternoon. She was, however, very saddened about the Ask rumor. She hearts Ask.com and wants it to stay around forever.

[Normally, this is the point as an editor where I'm supposed to tone down Lisa's ranting but in this case, rant on. People need to quit picking on Ask! --Susan]

Posted by Lisa Barone on 03/ 3/08 at 5:27 PM | Comments (3)
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February 27, 2008

Just Behave, A Look At Searcher Behavior

My brain is completely behaviored out at this point. Consider this your warning. I apologize in advance to the speakers. Please don't judge them by my blogging. Speaking of which, the line up is moderator Gord Hotchkiss (Enquiro) with speakers Michael Ferguson (Ask.com), Laura Granka (Google) and Ben Hanna (Business.com).

Gord says this panel's going to be a little bit different. I have fear. Oh, no. This is going to be mostly Q&A? No fair!

We have different types of memory. Long term memory is like writing something in your personal journal. We rewrite memory every time we recall it. There's another type of memory called working memory which is short term. There's not unlimited capacity in working memory [See the previous explanation of how many things you can track at a time from yesterday.]

We use search to fill up our blank slots. We have relationships with brands and different brands mean different things to us. Each triggers something that we associate with that brand. It's not just a blank slate when you see brands on a search page, there's already baggage attached.

When we start down the decision making process, we have thousands of options open to us. We like to think we're rational beings [again, see yesterday] but what we do is cut it down to four or five. That's bounded rationality.

[Actually, just assume you can go read the Search Marketing and Personas panel from yesterday for Gord's presentation.]

Michael Ferguson is up next.

He explains that we don't see everything in reality, we throw out a squadrons of simpletons and that interprets reality into a shorthand. The brain really only looks at one trillionth of things at one time. If we had to take in everything, we'd never cross the street or get out of bed.

Transactive memory (theory by Daniel Wegner) is knowing what other people know. It's that you don't need to remember everything or learn everything because there's a collective brain forming. For example, each of your friends is good at something, so you can do to them for their level of expertise and you don't need to do it all yourself. [It's like they say. Surround yourself with smart people and get out of their way.]

[I enjoy that the Ask guys are always all about theory and big ideas. It's not practical but it's always interesting.]

Search is becoming part of transactive memory. The engines are taking more chances and taking on the role of experts. They're bringing people in and trying to anticipate needs. He shows the Google page for the Rolling Stones, it's got a news, video, image result. He also shows off the Ask results page, also with their information.

They're moving towards giving you more information up front but there is still a lot they don't do. The next step is social networks. They're fun and goofy but they're also good ways to find other people who can be your memory.

A lot of what we're seeing is that individual pages need to evolve to be more like a person. Even for quick transactions there should be a personality, it should be trustworthy, it should be distinctive and helpful. It needs to be approachable and referable.

Ben Hanna from Business.com steps up to the plate and says he doesn't have the same production value of the last presentation. Hee.

He's going to cover the difference between B2B and B2C and share some observations from his perspective. Two things to keep in mind. People are people and peope are influenced by content.

People are people: You're the same person that you when you're at work or at home.

On the other hand, people are influenced by context. We can't see or do everything so we kind of just respond to what's salient. Social situations create discontinuity in thought and behavior. We might be aware of it or we might not.

Context can affect:
-risk taking vs. conservatism
-being action-oriented vs. passive
-Persistence on a task
-Beliefs about others (Stanford prison studies.)
-Beliefs about our selves
-sense of time
-speech patterns
-and much more.

At the end of the day you end up with multiple Mes. You have work!you, home!you, family!you, chef!you. etc.

What this means for search behavior is that you're affected by context. In a work context, you're under higher pressure, you've got a higher average risk, you're looking at a rationalized and formal process. Your experience is higher, your requirements are more specific.

More information helps people that are less expert. Google helps in an earlier phase but more expert users might go to a more niche site. Think about your audience and the context in which they're searching.

Laura Granka rounds out our short presentations.

They do usability studies, eyetracking, field studies diary studies. They use anonymized search logs.

Online search is an acquired skill. They have to meet several challenges.

Expressing needs as a query is hard. They can express themselves in a paragraph but they can't boil that down to a single line query. They usually start too broad. They're starting to add refined queries at the bottom to address this.

Rephrasing your search needs is not always intuitive. Even if you know what you want, you can get stuck in a rut and not get to the right wording.

Familiar brands matter. They search for familiar sites. Navigational queries are failures for Google (?)

They ran a little experiment reversing the top ten results, sticking number one at number ten to see if anyone would notice. Not so much, apparently. Selecting a good result is hard.

Users don't always know what's searchable online. Particularly true of local search. People don't expect their local services to have any kind of presence online.

Sometimes people just want a quick answer. Weather, time in another part of the word, simple facts.

[Once again, I'm going to skip the Q&A. Barry's over at the other table, maybe he'll cover it.]

Posted by Susan Esparza on 02/27/08 at 5:33 PM | Comments (0)
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January 14, 2008

Jim Lanzone Booted For Focusing On Core Search, Not Ads

Funny thing, I’m not so great at hiding my emotions. I know; this is something you’ve probably picked up on over the past two years. If you read the blog or follow my Twitter feed, you know when I’m mad, you know when I’m sad and you know when I’m excited about something. Some people like that about me, others wish I’d just shut up.

Lisa stalkers probably know that there was one piece of news that greatly affected me last week. It was the surprising announcement that search guy Jim Lanzone would be stepping down as CEO of Ask.com and replaced by Jim Saffka, a marketing guy and the one responsible for Dr. Phil’s annoyingly mushy Match.com commercials. The announcement was a really big shock to a lot of people. As Barry Schwartz noted, many viewed Jim Lanzone as the heart and soul behind Ask.com. He’s the guy who pushed for Ask3D. He was making things happen and he brought an incredible amount of excitement and passion to the team. I’m sure the new Jim will do a great job, but people will definitely miss the face of Jim Lanzone and the huge smile he always carried.

So why was Jim Lanzone replaced?

Today the New York Times gave this reason:

“…the move reflects Mr. Diller’s belief that what Ask needs was better high profile advertising. Mr. Safka, indeed, is seen as more marketing oriented, while Mr. Lanzone was more interested in building Ask’s core search engine as well as creating flashy features that will differentiate it from that other very very very large search engine.”

Wait. So we lost Jim because he was focused on improving the core functionality of Ask.com and making it a better search engine instead of just creating gaudy ads? Are you serious? It seems to me that it was Jim Lanzone’s job as CEO to improve Ask, not just to use advertising to “trick” users or promise things Ask can’t deliver. The idea that he would be chastised for that seems completely appalling and makes me wonder if Barry really just killed the bright face leading Ask simply because of his marketing team’s inability to create commercials. Maybe he should have reorganized the marketing team instead.

It just doesn’t make any sense, and to be honest, it makes me incredibly sad. We need people like Jim Lanzone to keep challenging us. Say what you want about Ask.com but it’s inarguably better since the release of Ask3D, a concept that was largely spearheaded by Jim Lanzone and is being mimicked by every one of the major search engines. Sure, we’ve all given Ask crap about their, at times, offensive commercials, but I don’t think the answer to Ask.com’s problems is to put a marketing guy in charge to give us something to chuckle over. Ask needs a search guy who understands users and what they want and fights for them. That’s how you build brand loyalty and trust.

This new strategy outlined by Barry Diller is somewhat confusing. Does he really think that he’s going to build his search engine through advertising? That he’ll be able to build trust in a brand by focusing on smoke and mirrors without having someone there to fight to better the actual product? If Barry is so worried about increasing revenue and building market share maybe he should take some notes on how Google built their brand. They sure as hell didn’t do it through advertising. They did it by creating the most relevant search engine and then layering other applications on top of that.

Ask’s focus should be on building out their verticals and specialty tools. That’s where they’ve always been the strongest. I know Ask.com wants to be seen as an all-purpose search engine but the way to get people in and attract eyeball is to show them the flashy stuff first. Let them trust you before you try and sell them the whole farm. Use the verticals to reinforce the relevancy you’re looking to build.

The news of Jim Lanzone’s departure from Ask was saddening, but the reason provided is even more disconcerting. It makes me question whether or not the people behind Ask really get it at all. I know people like Gary Price get it. I know his vision for the search engine is very much aligned with what users want. But what about the higher ups and the ones making the important management decisions? Does Barry Diller get it or did he just throw away the soul of Ask on a misstep? I once questioned Barry’s reasoning for firing Jeeves, but I get that now. I wonder if I’ll look back at this decision a year later and finally get that too. Maybe, but I don’t think so. If Ask is going to suddenly become all flash and no heart, I’m not sure I want to watch that evolution.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 01/14/08 at 4:13 PM | Comments (5)
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December 4, 2007

Universal and Personal Search – This Changes Everything

Whew, okay, lunch over. And by lunch, I mean mad scramble to write up the morning sessions. Not that it mattered since I couldn't post them. Also, what's up with the press room not having wifi? How am I supposed to prove that I'm worth anything? (Quiet, Lisa.)

Next up is an awesome panel of speakers: Gordon Hotchkiss,Enquiro Search Solutions; Bill Slawski, KeyRelevance; and Greg Boser, WebGuerrilla LLC. Moderator Jake Baillie will be keeping them in line as they dig into the topic of blended search. (I know the title says Universal but that's a Google product and I like to at least pretend the other engines matter to SEOs. You can stop laughing.)

Gord Hotchkiss is up first with a look at the user's perspective. He begins with the Golden Triangle--the famous eye-tracking study that shows if you aren't number one, you aren't anywhere. The biggest variant is how relevant the top ads are.

When you add universal search, things change quite dramatically. "Chunking" took place instead. You notice something is different. You notice images before you recognize text so you start your scan at where the picture is, then the text next to it to see if it is relevant. Very seldom do you scan one result and then click. Instead, you look down, look up and then scan across. It's an E shaped scan instead of an F shape scan.

Within half a second, there is a difference between the universal and regular. Images get more attention and then the result next to the image. Two seconds in, the attention is still on the result with the image.

Images create boundaries on the page. You don't usually scan lower than wherever the image it. It created a mental "fence" and thus the hot spots appear above the image.

Switching over to personalization, does it work? They did a survey and tracked people researching the iPhone. Afterwards, they personalized the third, fourth and fifth results. Versus the non-personalized control search, they saw an increase in time spent, fixations and clickthroughs. Personalization gains attention and it will move scanning patterns.

When combined, the universal search with the image still gets first attention, then they move to the personalized result. What does it mean to the PPC side? The lowest listing became the hot spot. You're changing the focus away from the top of the page. Eventually the improvements will have to catch up on the paid side but they aren't there yet.

Personalized search scanning is much more diffuse than the non-personalized. Your search strategies have to change from query based to user based.

They have a webinar next week with a bunch of bright people. Register on their site.

Bill Slawski is up next for the webmaster's side. He's going to talk about the stuff behind the scenes. I'm ready to not understand anything.

3's of Universal and Personal Search
Search processes: crawl, index, & serves
Data Types: structures, semi-structured and unstructured
Query Types: informational transactional, navigational
Data collection: Users queries results
Data selection: users queries repositories
Profile building: searchers, site and queries
Profile types: implicit, explicit and contextual

Crawling and Extraction: Not just about keyword number but also about facts and information. Not just about individual words but going to be more about the whole context, parts of pages instead of word to page to document

Indexing: User information, web history, browsing information, feeds, more information from a broader base.

Serving: Aggregated user information may influence what you see. Like spelling corrections

Data Types: Structured Data-- it's database built. You see this a lot in local search. Usually a rigidly defined format, like a phone book.

Semi-structured data -- requires more work to figure out. Things like associating you with your phone number without explicitly saying so but you could be found in a directory.

Unstructured Data -- your information is contextually based. It's on your web site, perhaps but it isn't in the same kind of structured form as the first two kinds.

Most query types are informational in nature. You have to think about how people are looking for you and formulate keywords that way. Personalization can help figure out what a user means when they search for an ambiguous word (Java = programming, coffee, an island.)

A search engine can figure out that people who search for a certain type of thing, might also appear in other things. They might compare that one query returns the same sort of things as another query and then determine that they're related. Sites can build profiles too--category types, traffic volumes, good and services offered, keywords, locations. This information can come from ads shown, analytics, search tracking.

Profile creation methods--Explicit--filling out a form, specifically request alerts.

Implicit--serch engine derives information from search sessions, search and web browsing history, clicked ads

Contextual has more to do with the information other than what was entered--what time of day, what location, what your intention was.

Bill asks "Do any of you have ecommerce sites? Do you ever Google your customers after they buy something?" (Greg says "Stalker." I agree. Leave me alone, I gave you my money now go away.)

Choose your keywords before you make your videos and choose your images. Think about each of the three types of queries and strive to hit them all. Write for a search engine like it's a third grader. Make it really easy for a search engine to extract the data it needs.

Focus on the people who will you’re your products instead of the products themselves.

Greg Boser wraps it all up.

The biggest issue really has to do with the fact that there isn't even a consensus of what blended search should look like. Ask is much more about giving you lots of options and where and when and how. Google is more father knows best, it's still 10 things they're just slightly different 10 things.

Greg says Google needs to commit to it full fledged and just go for it. Give up the tabs and just let my use personalize it over time. Trying to figure out what made something pop up is nearly impossible because it's still so random.

He's been spending a lot of time at Ask because he thinks their approach is going to win out. Their results are kinda crap and their market share is too low right now but the UI is right one.

Go do Marissa Mayer's three favorite Universal searches on Google then go do them on Ask and see how much better it is.

Do searches in each vertical and learn how they work. The idea that you can just throw it up and will work isn't going to work. You need to play with it. Get into how each thing works. Use Ask to learn. When you use Ask, you'll get more non-typical results and you'll see what your competitors are doing better.

You can ruin your whole life obsessing over this mess that is Google Universal and Personalization.

In reality personalization isn't spying on me from afar. Greg points out that he does searches all the time that he doesn't click on. That doesn't make it a not successful search.

Gord: I 80% agree with you. Ask can afford to mess around with the interface because no one uses Ask. They built a type of search that works very for one type of search.

Greg goes off for a bit on Google lying about being a portal.

Q&A

Why is there an Ask ad on Google?

They bought it? No one seems to understand the question. Now we're fighting about whether or not every query is discover. No Greg, it isn't. I'm sorry.

Will we get used to personal/universal and then the Golden Triangle will return?

Gord: If its relevant to you, you're going to look at it, whether it's image or video or whatever, sponsored or not.

Follow up: Do you think users will look where the information is, not where the triangle is? Maybe the triangle is BS.

Greg: It's trained behavior. The SERPs have been the same since 1996. Maybe it'll revert back, maybe we'll learn something new. Sometimes the best solution is hurry up and wait.

I've been seeing a lot more related search lately. Do you have any comments?

Greg: That's back to the arrogance again. Going to page 2 is a failure for Google. You can't do personalization and not get my input. Yahoo's doing it too, they're suggesting it as you type.

Gord: I think it goes back to the Ask philosophy of we're going to give you options right away whereas Google is more incremental.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 12/ 4/07 at 5:15 PM | Comments (0)
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Duplicate Content Issues Duplicate Content Issues

I know someone thinks the title of this panel is clever and...okay, it is, but it is also a very mean thing to do to someone as compulsive as I am. I keep wanting to correct it and it's painful to just leave it like that. Duplicate contents hurts more than your rankings, people; please, think of the obsessive compulsives!

Tackling those tricky issues today are representatives from the four major engines: Rahul Lahiri, Ask.com; Derrick Wheeler, Microsoft; Evan Roseman, Google; and Priyank Garg, Yahoo. Aaron Shear moderates.

Aaron introduces Rahul Lahiri first as being from "Ask Jeeves". Rahul is quick to correct him, "Ask.com". Heh. Everyone still misses the butler.

Rahul says he's going to go quickly. Oh dear, I haven't had any coffee yet. This could be a problem.

He begins with the standard definition of duplicate content: Same content on multiple URLs. Why don't search engines like it? It impairs the user experience and consumes resources that could be better served crawling content that's unique. Duplicate content carries a risk of losing valuable votes because your links are spread out over multiple URLs instead of on the expert page. At Ask.com, duplicates are eliminated at all stages: crawling, indexing and ranking.

Contrary to belief, it's not a penalty; it's more similar to not being crawled. It's performed on indexable content, templates aren't included. It's not a concern for supported ccTLDs, like for example a site used in UK only search. (Same web sites on different ccTLDs are okay.)

They filter when the confidence factor is high. They have a low tolerance for false positives.

Some sources of duplicate content:

• Multiple URLs with the same content
• Printer Friendly pages
• Dynamic pages with session IDs/URL variant
• Content syndication
• Localization
• Mirrors

Scraping is the big concern. He asks for a show of hand of people who have had their content scraped--practically the whole room raises their hands.

Duplicate URLs might be necessary for Branding but avoid meaningless parameters and sub-domains if you can.

Rahul urges webmasters to act on the areas that they're in control of, particularly in the area of printer friendly pages. Block Robots from printer friendly pages. Even though many printer friendly pages are quite useable, they're not going to hold visitors because they present no path into the rest of the site. So block it and make sure that the in-site page is the one presented. Aaron asks when you're blocking from printer friendly pages: how do you do it? Rahul says put it in its own folder and robots.txt it out. Otherwise, make sure it's in the head section Meta Robots.

How do you make content unique? He puts up two nearly identical pages with one image name different and one word different in the title. It's nearly impossible for a spider to tell which is the original. Add unique Titles and Meta Descriptions. Add value to syndicated content to make it unique.

All JavaScript pages are a challenge for Ask.

He says you need to make it hard for Scrapers. Mark your territory--use your brand name, use absolute links, host images locally and take legal action when necessary.

If your content gets tossed for duplication, you need to content them for a re-inclusion request.

Evan Roseman is up next. He's going quickly too. Woe.

Why is Google so down on duplicate content? Users don't like it, it uses resources, it uses resources on your server and they're concerned with original authorship --they want it from the person who created it instead of secondhand.

He says URL like a name. Earl. Go ahead and imagine that every time I type it, okay?

Much of what he covers is similar to Rahul. He does point out that www vs non-www is not as much of an issue for Google as before and mentions that you can specify in the webmaster tools. Session IDs and URL parameters can split the PR between them.

Google's goal is to serve one version of the content in search results.

Hmm, interestingly his slide says that dupe content is generally just a filter and it won't destroy your site. I guess that means occasionally it isn't and it will? Now he says it's 'definitely not a penalty'. So which is it? Definitely or generally? Inquiring minds, Evan.

For exact dupes, use a 301, like in the case of tracking URLs and www vs non-www.

For near duplicates, use noindex/robots.txt such as clones of other sites. If you syndicate content, he repeats, make sure you're adding value.

Domains by country:

• Different languages is not duplicate content
• Use unique content specific to the country
• Use different TLDs (also specify in Webmaster Tools) for geo-targeting

Put data which does not affect the substance of the page in a cookie instead of in the URL so that they don't have to try to figure it out. URL parameters are problematic and can cause duplicate content.

What can you do if another site takes your content? Include an absolute URL. If you're syndicating, send out different content than what you keep.

Don’t worry about scrapers or proxies too much, they don't generally (there's that word again) affect your rankings. [Please tell blog search that, they seem to trust everyone else more than the original author.] If you're concerned, file a DCMA against the other site.

You can let them know about any issues at the Webmaster Help Discussion Group

If you're having trouble with your RSS replacing your rankings, let the discussion group know and they'll help.

And then the mics go out, so I get to catch up, yay!

And we're back. Priyank Garg is up next. He skips back about five slides because they're repeats of the other two.

He mentions a few reasons why search engines WOULD want duplicate pages:

• Site restricted queries
• Back ups
• Alternate document formats
• Multiple languages

Some other kinds of duplicate content:
Accidental duplication like session ids in URLs (a URL is a URL is a URL to search engine) and soft 404 errors -- make sure your 404 errors return a 404 error not a 200 okay. [See also our tedious explanation of the same.]

"Dodgy" forms of duplication:
Replicating content across domains unnecessarily
Aggregation of content found elsewhere
Identical content on the same site.

Approximate dupes may be filtered (real estate sites that just change out the city/state.)
Weaving and stitching (mixing and matching phrases, sentences paragraphs, and sections from different sources to create 'new" content) is also duplicate content.

Basically the same tactics work for Yahoo as for the other engines in keeping duplicate content out (robots.txt, meta, 301 dupe pages.) They support wildcards in robots.txt. Site Explorer allows you to Delete URLs or paths from authenticated sites.

Use Robots-nocontent <div>tag on non-relevant parts of the page. The tag can be used to mark templates or syndicated content that's useful in context for the user but not for search engines. (More information on the tag can be found at Ysearchblog.)

Dynamic URL rewriting available: ability to indicate parameters to remove from URLs across the site. Leads to more efficient crawling, better site coverage, more unique content discovered, fewer crawler traps and cleaner URLs that are better for users to read.

The trouble with all these engine specific solutions is that they are engine specific. I like it better when they get together and come up with standards. Sure you can rewrite your URLs just for Yahoo but then where are you in Google?

Last up is Derrick Wheeler. He's adorably brought his own mouse and mouse pad. His job is in house SEO for Microsoft.com but he says that he expects to get questions about Live Search, Office, why things don't work. He doesn't know the answers though, so it won't help.

Aw, today is his one month anniversary with Microsoft. Happy anniversary!
Major accomplishments:

• Signed up for benefits
• Find the cafeterias
• Return to his office without getting lost
• Can finally remember a couple people's names

There are over 27 million pages on Microsoft.com--it took three weeks to discover them all. It's just a little site, really. They've indexed about 7 million of them. In Derrick's view, every duplicate content page is keeping one good page out of the index.

Review your site and make sure that you know what's there. Find duplicate content there before the spiders get there. Know your parameters and which you can drop for search engines. Do a regular crawl report that includes referring URL, fetched URL, redirect path with type, landing URL with status code, Title, Meta Description, Meta Keywords. Sort by Title then landing URL and review them for dupes.

Ew! He's got a picture of spiders in a trap. EW.

Detect engines and strip out parameters that you don't need. He doesn't consider that "bad" cloaking. Remove session IDs. Smartpages.com stripped out session IDs and went from 1,000,000 pages indexed to 10,000,000 pages indexed. (A few months later, someone turned them back on and their page count fell. Whoops.)

Look for things that might be causing problems, like dynamic breadcrumbs, related products, etc. They might be helpful for users but you're probably going to get into trouble.

Q&A

Aaron: When you make changes in your rewriting can you fix it easily?

Yahoo: We validate and let you know if there's a failure. The returite starts ttaking effect in the system over a period of time. In the first few months, it's reversible, after that it gets hard.

If I did a 301 to clean this up, how soon do I expect results?

Yahoo: as soon as we start seeing it--a few weeks but it can take a while to percolate
Google: Same thing, as we recrawl, we'll incorporate. Up to a couple months.
Ask: Same.
Microsoft: Derrick's experience is 6 months to a year for full effect if you're 301 to a new site.

If you do a site: command in Google to find www vs. non-www and you come up with different counts, should you 301 the smaller number to the bigger?

Evan: First he wants to emphasize that the site colon estimates are just that, very rough estimates. He wouldn't take them as the golden number. Very very rough. Aside from that, pick whichever form you like better and they'll take it.

Is Google planning on following Yahoo in how their tools are developing?

At Google, we try to do the best we can detecting these things (that Yahoo allows webmasters to correct) automatically. Can't say when or if they'll be following on the allowing webmasters to specify.

Do breadcrumb navigation with a cookie instead of URL parameters. Aaron says that you can detect search engines and strip out parameters. Evan jumps back in to say that Google requests please don't do something special for us. Let us figure it out and if there's a problem contact us.

On what scale do you think Proxy sites (sites entirely duplicated with just a phone number different so they can track PPC calls) will affect your organic results?

Evan: In most cases, they're not outranking the original sites. They're not that popular. We do see them. If they're causing a problem for you, contact Webmaster Help.

What is the line of near-duplicate/duplicate?
Evan: I think you're looking at it from the wro9ng direction. Create unique, useful content and you'll be fine. [The room laughs. That requires work!]

Derrick: It's like the Supreme Court decision on obscenity; you know it when you see it.

Can I report copyright issues through the spam channels?

Priyank: Spam is more subjective. The DCMA is the right channel.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 12/ 4/07 at 1:02 PM | Comments (1)
See more entries in Ask, Blogging, Google, Live Search, Microsoft, SEM Events, Search Engine Optimization, Search Engines, Yahoo, pubcon07

November 7, 2007

Creating a Powerblogging Toolset

While my battery is dying, Marshall Kirkpatrick and Tris Hussey are here to talk about a Poweblogging Toolset. Toolset? Like the SEOToolSet? No? Never mind.

Marshall Kirkpatrick starts things off by introducing himself.

Powerblogging Basics

Tris says that these are the core tools you must be using. If you’re not, start now.

• Web Browser: Firefox or Flock
• RSS Reader: Bloglines, Google Reader or FeedDemon

Marshall joins in to talk about RSS, and according to him (or at least his slide), RSS feeds the need. He lists some of his favs:

• Google Reader/Mobile
• NewNewsWire (Mac)/FeedDemon (Win)
• Netvibes/Pageflakes
• Zaptxt
• Gmail Webclips
• Use feed consolidators to give you hot news
• aideRSS
• FeedHub

Every opportunity you have to see a headline increases the likelihood that you’ll clickthrough and won’t miss stuff.

Tris expands on the stuff Marshall listed. A must have add-on are the new feed aggregators like aideRSS and FeedHub. You export your feed list and it analyzes the content from all those feeds and tells you what the rest of the Internet is talking about. These aggregators help focus where your eyes can go. I have no idea what Tris is talking about but I’m definitely going to look into that when I get back to my hotel later tonight.

Marshall doesn’t use the kind of aggregators Tris talked about. He’s okay with leaving RSS feeds unread and declaring feed bankruptcy.

Building Relationships

Twitter is paying my rent – Marshall Kirkpatrick

He wrote a post a few weeks ago titled “Twitter is paying my rent” after noticing that he’s gotten 45 percent of his stories from stuff he’s picked up in Twitter. It was real high value stuff. He had 6 posts on the front page of Digg. Similarly, on Friday, he threw up a post on RWW about a conversation he had with an old man in a coffee shop who mentioned something he read in the paper, which Marshall then blogged and got a huge amount of traffic from. Grow your circle.

Blogging is about relationships in many, many ways. Your comments and your links to other blogs go a long way. When someone links to you, comment and say thank you. When you read something that you like, link to it. It forges a connection between you and someone else. That’s how you get stories, that’s how you get feedback, how you get Diggs, Stumbles, etc. That stuff all feeds into itself and gives you a rich blogging experience.

Marshall talks about the emails you get from people proposing to do a link exchange with your site. That’s cute, but there’s a better way to exchange links. It’s by linking to people you like. This helps your readers and puts you on other people’s radar.

Another set of resources he finds essential are the right search engines. He uses Ask’s Blog Search (w00t!) because they have the lowest amount of spam. They only index feeds that have a certain number of subscribers. (Really? Do they only index certain blogs? Interesting.)

Other search engines to monitor: Technorati, Google Blog Search, Google Custom Search Engine, and IceRocket. All of these searches have RSS feeds. Use them!

If you can organize your RSS feeds, make those your quick hits so you can flow through them quickly.

Other stuff to add to your blogging toolset: A Flickr account for photos and a microphone for recording. Pictures, video and audio make for richer blog posts.

Toolset Intangibles

There’s also that other stuff that helps your blogging like your speed and thoroughness, adding value, opinion, being sincere, and having passion and integrity.

If you’re not first, you can be the smartest.

Tris says one of things that bugs people the most about TechMeme is that when a big story breaks there’s 30 different posts but no one is saying anything new. If you can’t add any value to a discussion, don’t even bother commenting on it. Your readers can read that anywhere. Your readers what to know that Apple said this and this is why you care about it. They’re looking for the opinion.

For full throttle problogging use Paint.net or The Gimp for imaging editing and use offline blog editors like Windows Live Writer (Tris’ favorite), Ecto, Mars Edit, ScribeFire and Flock.

Wrap Up & Question and Answer

• Read, Read, Read
• Write, Write, Write
• Link, Link, Link
• Comment
• Blogging is still about passion and relationships; successful power bloggers keep feeding these.

Snitter is the best Twitter app out there.

How many blog entries should you post a day?

Tris says to do no more than 3-5 posts a day, unless it’s a real breaking news item that you have to publish. Beyond that people will just skip over your posts. You can watch your stats to see how people are interacting with your blog depending on how many posts you published. You can schedule your blog entries so that they’re published at regular intervals and readers don’t feel bombarded.

The final lesson from the boys: Scotch and blogging do mix.

We are definitely in Vegas, Toto.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 11/ 7/07 at 12:17 PM | Comments (2)
See more entries in Ask, BlogWorld Expo, Blogging

October 23, 2007

Ask: No Blended Search Result Without Proper Capitalization

I find myself in a mild state of shock, disbelief, confusion and it’s not because of the So Cal fires. I don’t even know how to start this. I guess I’ll start from the beginning.

I read an interesting post by Jeff Woelker yesterday. The posted pondered whether Ask.com dropped by the ball with its recent commercial touting the blended search results users get when they perform a search for singer KT Tunstall. Jeff was impressed by Ask’s blended search results and wanted to share the commercial with friends. However, when he tried to find it, he couldn’t. It was nowhere to be found. Bummer.

And he wasn’t the only one disappointed by that. There was apparently an entire thread on a KT Tunstall discussion board regarding the missing video. Crazy, right? I mean who knew KT Tunstall had fans?

I found myself agreeing with Jeff. I think it would have been smart for Ask.com to put the videos of their (awesome!) new commercials online and allow users to share them with their friends. Let’s get that whole viral thing going. I thought maybe I’d try to help Jeff out and see if I could find the commercial myself and then send him the link.

However, now I have an entirely different problem with Ask regarding that commercial. A huge, huge one.

In the commercial, a magic hand appears to perform a query for KT Tunstall. And when the search is pulled up, viewers see a beautiful blended search results for the artist, complete with pictures, audio clips, concert dates, and lots of other wonderful unique-to-Ask things. In the commercial, Ask.com is shown as being truly awesome.

Here’s what happened when I did a search for [kt tunstall] in an attempt to find the video.

Um, hello? Where is the blended search result? There are no pictures, no video, nothing besides 10 blue links. Ask, you lied to me!

I calmed down and thought, okay, how about Kt Tunstall?

Nope.

I tried a few other permutations and discovered that the blended search result will only appear 100 percent of the time if a user types in “Kt tunstall” or “Kt Tunstall”. Apparently, capitalizing that initial K is a really big deal.

Are you kidding me?

Ask, I love you more than any other SEO blogger in the whole world loves you, but this is not okay. You need to be better at meeting user expectations. Your blended search offering is by far the most impressive out there. You’re schooling everyone. But you can’t run a commercial to get people excited about what you’re doing and then drop the ball. You have to deliver what you’re promising. It’s the only way searchers will ever trust you.

Stuff like this is incredibly frustrating to searchers and is a sure way to alienate them. Either you’re going to make them feel lied to because you didn’t deliver what you promised them you would, or you’re going to make them feel dumb because they couldn’t replicate what they saw on TV. You don’t want your users to feel betrayed and you definitely don’t want them to feel like they’re not smart enough to use your search engine.

And what’s worse is that when the search fails on your engine they’re going to go try it on Google and Yahoo. And when you’re not running your totally awesome blended search result, their offers are better.

Google:

Yahoo:

It’s simple. If you’re going to run a commercial showing users how great results are for a specific query, it has to match up to what they’ll see in real time. And you can’t make their success rest on whether or not they used correct capitalization. That’s ridiculous. Guys, I don’t care if you have to hand edit the results for KT Tunstall; I won’t tell anyone. But make sure you’re delivering what your commercial is promising. Don’t make me hurt you.

Update: Ask's Gary Price assured me that this was just a rare technical glitch and that Ask's blended search results are definitely NOT case sensitive. I tried my searches again and all of Ask's superior blended search results appeared, so it looks like he was right. Thanks for the taking the time to look into this for me, guys!

Posted by Lisa Barone on 10/23/07 at 2:57 PM | Comments (3)
See more entries in Ask

October 22, 2007

Weekend Update

How was your weekend?

Mine was super awesome. On Friday, I met Boyz II Men, there were pumpkins and pumpkin bread on Saturday and on Sunday, my Red Sox earned a spot in the World Series. Can you say huzzah?

But now it’s Monday and it’s time to revisit all that search engine optimization stuff. Let’s do it.

Google News Facebook Application

There’s a Google News Facebook application. Do you know what they call it when the two gods of the Internet join forces to give you free stuff? They call that “awesome”.

According to Google, once added, the Google News beta application will allow Facebook users to choose from a bunch of pre-selected topics (Entertainment, Technology, World News, etc), identify some keywords, and then browse and share stories with their friends. Depending on how many categories you choose, you’ll typically get between 1-3 stories per topic. It’s basically a Google Alert plugged directly into your Facebook profile.

I’ll never use the application but I do find it interesting that Google is now developing official applications to work inside Facebook. They do seem to be bumping up their socialness lately, don’t they? I wonder what we’re going to see next? Will Google relaunch Orkut as is rumored or will we instead see more pairing of the Google and Facebook awesomeness? You’ll have to stay tuned to find it if the two Web powerhouses combine their powers for good or for evil. I’m sure it will all be in our Facebook News Feeds in no time.

WebmasterWorld Members Bothered by New Ask Commercials

Over at Search Engine Roundtable, Barry Schwartz tells us that some members feel that Ask’s “Instant Getification” commercials are taking a shot at Google. Personally, I don’t think they are. They’re simply showing you that the experience you get from using Ask’s blended search outfit is considerably richer than the ‘10 blue links’ you get from the other engines. At least one WebmasterWorld member, however, disagrees with me. Member Rj87uk thinks Google “would have something to say” about these commercials.

What are they going to say? That the Ask commercials are right and perfectly illustrate the kind of search experience you get from Ask.com? They’re not saying anything untrue and they’re really not picking on Google. Just a white label search engine. Users will interrupt that engine as being whatever engine it is that they currently search on.

Props to Ask.com for releasing some awesome new commercials. I’m sure you’ve seen them. After all, they’re everywhere!

Jakob Nielsen: First Two Words Most Important in Headlines

Passive voice is the key to writing good headlines, according to Jakob Nielsen, who says because users scan Web content in an F-pattern., those first two words of a paragraph are absolutely vital. Get rid of those filler words and hurry up and tell readers the most important things up front.

I suppose that makes sense, considering that most users are scanning your pages and not actually read them. Jakob argues that the first 2 words of your page title could be the highest-impact ROI-boosting design decision you make for your site. Yowsa, no pressure now. This is why I often ask Susan to help me write my titles. I still haven’t mastered that skill.

On a similar note, you should also read Matt Bailey’s post on Content v. Creative – Where does the Customer Count? It’s a very good read.

Fun Finds

In case you don’t live on the West Coast and haven’t yet been hit by a newspaper, California is on fire, causing much of the state to smell like a giant fire pit and my lungs and eyes to be coated in ash. (There was also that branch the Santa Ana winds put through my bedroom window, but we won’t even go there.) If you’re looking for some eerie pictures of what’s been going on over here, Danny has them over at Daggle.

Social Media Explorer offers up 8 Things Conference Officials Don’t Advertise. My favorite was number 8:

“No matter how comfortable the chairs, your butt will be numb.

There’s a lot for the conference organizers to cram into a day. Count on breaks that are too short, sessions that are too long and chairs that make you Google “sciatica.”

So true.

BlogHerald tells us that b5media will be hosting an additional teaching day at BlogWorld & New Media Expo next month in Vegas. I’ll be doing some liveblogging at the event so I am super psyched about this.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 10/22/07 at 12:44 PM | Comments (6)
See more entries in Ask, Google, SEO, SEO Tips & Tricks, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media

October 8, 2007

Ask.com & Its Continued Identity Crisis

I’ve got a question for you. When you think of Ask.com, what comes to mind? And, I don’t mean the commercials. I mean the engine itself. When you think about Ask’s search engine, what sorts of things do you associate it with?

This may be the Gary Price influence, but I think of Ask as the librarian’s engine, almost encyclopedia-like. Ask is that really smart friend I have hidden in the closet that I can call upon whenever I need some quick information. Ask is the friend I would call if I was sitting in that Who Wants to Be a Millionaire chair and needed the Phone a Friend option. [I'd call my dad. --Susan] I trust Ask to confidently give me the right answer and help me win a truckload of money. And then I could stop renting. Sweet!

But I think that’s how a lot of users associate Ask because they’ve become so familiar with Ask’s Smart Answers and quick information. Ask.com hasn’t become my default engine (yet), but it is where I go when I’m looking for fact-based/reference information. If I need to know what day Columbus Day falls on this year or how to convert ounces into pounds or what the weather is like in San Jose today, I use Ask. They’ve done a pretty good job of branding themselves as that, and it’s been successful for them, especially with blended search entering the mix.

Given that, you can imagine the head scratching that occurred when MarketingVox revealed that Ask would partner with Entertainment Tonight and The Insider to include Ask product placements on their fine celebrity gossip-filled programming.

Ask is entering the gossip space? What are they thinking?

Well, I’ll tell you. According to Jim Lanzone, the folks at Ask have been noticing a rise in the number of users searching for celebrity-related information, attributing it to the success of sites like TMZ and Perez Hilton. (Jim says that Perez is a big Ask.com fanboy, hee!) By brokering deals with ET, Jim hopes it will help build the Ask brand.

Build it as what? The go-to engine for celebrity gossip news and information on who’s dating who today?

Fine, I can somewhat understand the idea behind this. I can also appreciate that these types of OMG-I’m-totally-bored-at-work searches are becoming increasingly popular thanks to people like Perez; however, is that really Ask’s audience? Are these the people coming back to Ask.com everyday? Is this who Ask should be targeting?

I don’t think so. And just like that, the bad Kato Kaelin commercials are flashing through my brain all over again. It’s just another sign of Ask not knowing its audience and releasing something that makes everyone question their sanity for trusting them in the first place.

It feels like Ask is going through an identity crisis. They just can’t seem to figure out who they are, and because they don’t know, they can’t tell us either. It’s time for them to figure out who they serve and stick with it.

I’m all for Ask doing product placement. I always get a kick out of watching TV and seeing someone reference Ask or getting a visual of the Ask logo. Remember that show Treasure Hunters and the heavy Ask placement? That was great because Ask was showing its users that it's intelligent and is able to help you find information. Remember their ad placement on MTV’s Road Rules? Again, it was Ask being helpful while appealing to a younger, more influential audience. These were effective product placements. Showing an Ask logo while some blonde reporter is talking about Lindsay Lohan (Long Island, represent!) is not reinforcing the Ask brand. It’s going to confuse readers. Are you educated and trustworthy or are you dumb and vapid? I don’t think there’s room to be both.

I know Ask is looking to increase market share and awareness, but targeting the gossip niche isn’t the way to do that. That’s not what Ask.com is. It’s now what its users expect or want. I used Ask to find factual information. When I want gossip, I head to a more vapid search engine, like Yahoo.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 10/ 8/07 at 2:53 PM | Comments (2)
See more entries in Ask, Branding

October 2, 2007

Successful SEO, Bloglines 3 Releases, Facebook As a Fad & Fun Stuff

The 7 Secrets of SEO Success

I know it’s not Friday and that search marketers aren’t supposed to have any fun on run-of-the-mill Tuesdays, but Quality Nonsense posted a great chart that I feel like needs to be posted today. It does a pretty good job of highlighting the 7 areas you must master in order to successful at search engine optimization. Plus, I’m feeling a bit lightheaded today and the pretty colors sooth my soul:

Accurate, eh? Go clickthrough and visit the site. Their chart is interactive, this one is not.

Bloglines’ Rollout Trifecta

Clearly, my semi-departure from Bloglines has shaken up the Bloglines creators. I say this because ever since I left they’ve been rolling out some great stuff trying to entice me back. Here’s what they’ve been up to:

• Better Personalization -- My recent email buddy Eric Engleman discussed some of the new and old personalization features available to Bloglines users. Users can mark individual feeds as read, entire folders as read, take advantage of a new remember view (this is actually pretty cool) and use Feed CSS. Eric outlines a number of great Bloglines features, so if you’re a loyal Bloglines user or even just thinking about switching over, make sure to give it a read.
• Bloglines Mobile Beta -- Bloglines Kelvin Nishikawa lets us know that the Bloglines Beta has gone mobile. You can access it at m.beta.bloglines.com and take advantage of new features like an improved Start page, the ability to Pin (aka Keep It New) and pagination. The Classic version of Bloglines, which is the one I’m still using, isn’t available over there yet, but the guys assure us it will be there soon.
• OpenID - Bloglines Beta and Bloglines Classic will both now support OpenID, where a user can create an identity online and then use that identity at any OpenId-supported site. If you’re not sure what OpenId is, you can go read Rob Emanuele’s entry on the subject, or, if you do know, you can head on over to id.bloglines.com and get started.

Is Facebook Just a Fad?

Last week it was rumored that Microsoft was offering Facebook $300-$500 million for a small percentage stake, and this week Steve Ballmer is making waves calling Facebook “faddish” and saying it’s not much more advanced that GeoCities. How quickly the rumor tide turns.

My favorite Steve Ballmer on Facebook quote is this:

“There can’t be any more deep technology in Facebook than what dozens of people could write in a couple of years. That’s for sure.”

Fun Finds

Donna spills the beans that SEO job board SEO Vacancies now comes with an RSS feed to help search marketers keep better tabs on the new opportunities available to them. It’s like job hunting 2.0!

Over on Sphinn, Todd Mintz wants to know why there’s been so little coverage of the SMX conference going on in Denver. Sorry, friends, that’s what happens when Bruce doesn’t sent me to a show. ;)

Pronet Advertising shows how Conde Nast is using Reddit. Mmm, Reddit.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 10/ 2/07 at 4:21 PM | Comments (4)
See more entries in Ask, SEO, Search Engine Optimization

August 31, 2007

Friday Recap

My apologies for the lack of Recap last week. I was going to write one, I was…and then I decided that after 4 crazy days of liveblogging and running around in San Jose, going home and getting some sleep would be a good idea. Don’t hate me; hate Susan. What did Susan give you last week? A whole bunch of nothin’.

A ginormous THANKS to our friends at Ask.com (hi, Patrick, Jennifer, Erik & Gary!) who were kind enough to send over some fun goodies for me us. During and post-SES, we have acquired two awesome Ask3D T-shirts, a my-life-is-now-complete Ask.com Messenger bag (!) [So jealous. --Susan], a collection of cute pens and an Ask.com pad. And I mentioned Jim Lanzone said my name during the keynote, right? I’m in Ask heaven.

Thanks again, guys! Now everyone else go try out Ask3D. It’s awesome.

While we’re on the topic of schwag, while I was busy blogging and working really hard last week, apparently everyone else was cruising the exhibition hall for goodies. You can check out my BFF Tamar Weinberg’s holdings over at Techipedia and it looks like Stoney deGeyter and his team did pretty well too.

Ralph Wilson saw a bunch of SEOs standing around and decided to capitalize on the opportunity by sticking a camera and a microphone in their faces. Ralph asked search marketers to go on camera and demonstrate Google’s mating call. The results were hilarious. (If you look closely, you can spot me chatting with some of the BC gang in the background!). Google’s not so scary now, is it? ;)

It appears that many of our favorite search marketers are still in a state of delirium following last week’s big SES show. Joe Whyte crafted a horribly frightening Letterman-esque What if SEOs mated piece, Rhea Drysdale drafted her own SEO Dream Team, and Pat Sexton created a somewhat uncomfortable video illustrating how to open a beer with a lighter. These people need sleep, especially Pat.

The Healthy Living blog tells us that 45 percent of Americans fall asleep on the job, 39 percent are kissing their coworkers and 18 percent of employees are sneaking back into work at night in order to snoop around. Dude, who’s hiring these people?

While we’re talking about weirdo employees, fear not, fellow coffee drinkers. With these simple instructions even the Eyes-Open Sleeper guy can make a decent pot of coffee. Mmm, coffee…

Hitwise reports that the Flavor of Love casting site was among the most visited Web sites within the TV category last week. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t make me proud to be a woman. Or a human.

Family Hack gives us an effective little trick to help you retrieve that wedding ring you just dropped down your drain. Hurry, if you fish it out quickly the wife won’t know it was missing in the first place and you won’t have to spend tonight on the couch!

This week I learned that sometimes when you need a panda-sized hug, only a panda will do. And look, four totally cute orphaned hedgehogs adopted a brush as a mother. I want to adopt them all!

Also totally cute: Origami Yoda!

What’s not cute is this robotic devil kitten that is so going to come to life at night and eat your children’s little faces. Don’t believe me? Go rent Chucky.

Alan Weisman took a look at what the world would look like without us and well, it makes me feel kind of crappy. Enjoy!

A 17-year-old unlocked the iPhone and traded it in for a Nissan 350z plus three 8GB iPhones. Dude, the kid got a car. A nice car! In other news, 11 more months until my crappy little Chevy Aveo is paid off. I so poor.

I’m not so amused by this but I know Susan will whine cry comment if I don’t mention it, so here goes: Some crazy people constructed the craziest tree house ever (take that Sullivan!). It’s circular, comes with appliances, and should roll down the hill really nicely when it comes detached from whatever is holding it up and kills the small children living inside. [I'm going to comment anyway. I want that tree house.--Susan]

Other fun things I learned this week: Always believe someone when they say their sick, the law of the Reverse Savage, M&M’s come in varying degrees of strength, and the 10 love songs that can end your relationship.

Things I Learned From BoingBoing This Week:

• I don’t have a land line, but I want that blue phone.
• Horns and fingers/toes are better in sets of 6s.
• People can do awesome things with Post-Its. I just use mine for leaving notes. I am so lame.
• Spiders are so gross. Spiders. Gross. Ah!
• Finally, a visual to help you figure out how much foam goes in that yummy cappuccino. That would be your “kap-oo-chee-noh”.
• The Red Sox have the curse of the Bambino to worry about, but the Yankees have the curse of the…squirrel? And which team is more hardcore? [Dodgers! Go Blue!--Susan] - It’s like a tic with you. That’s what I thought.

Have a great Labor Day weekend, everyone!

Posted by Lisa Barone on 08/31/07 at 4:19 PM | Comments (2)
See more entries in Ask, Fun Stuff

August 21, 2007

SES San Jose Keynote with Jim Lanzone

I am surprising alert for today’s second day of Search Engine Strategies San Jose. Perhaps it’s because I’m such a good girl and I went to bed super early last night or maybe it’s because I’m super psyched for this morning’s keynote with Ask.com’s Jim Lanzone. I heart Ask.

[Okay, total star struck moment. Gary Price (!) just introduced me to Jim Lanzone (!), and when I said my name, he recognized it and commented, “Attaboy, Ask.” Dude, I’m famous!]

Okay, now to the real action.

Jim starts off the keynote by alerting us that Danny has started a drinking game. Every time Jim says “3D”, someone has to have a drink. Hee!

I missed Chris’s question in all my giggles (sorry!), but Jim tells us that Ask.com is all about trying to find a balance between art and science. He says when they started Ask3D, they hit on this idea that touched on the three elements of search. They found through their tests of AskX that users seemed like to like this approach. User metrics for engagement and retention soared so they knew they were onto something. Search has always been about the ten blue links and then leaving users for dead. What Ask started to see was the need for original context. Giving users the right thing at the right place at the right time. Give them more content, more options, more tools. The reaction to that has just been phenomenal.

Chris asks if Ask.com is seeing an increase in marketshare. Or if maybe it’s too early to tell.

Jim comments that market share is always something to look at it, especially at an annual basis. He comments though that too much gets put on market share relative to a company’s own growth. He wants to know how Ask itself is growing. He laughs that when Ask first launched 3D, it was touted as their attempt to topple Google or their way to gain market share, it was never portrayed as Ask’s effort to improve search or push the category ahead. Jim says he wants to improve things for users. Ask truly wants to help you get what you’re looking for. Market share will take care of itself.

Aw.

Chris questions Jim about Ask’s partnership with Google. When is it time to look at them as a partner and when is it time to look at them as a competitor?

Ask.com is Google’s largest global partner. They’ve been partners since 2002 and it was controversial then because Ask was the first of Google’s big competitors to choose them over Overture. He says that this year if Ask chooses to renew with Google (or even if they opt to go somewhere else) it’s going to be a multibillion dollar deal. He says that when Ask looks at search they’re not just competing for users. They have their own point of view on search and that creates some co-competition – where they partner on ads and compete on search.

Chris comments that Ask had a near death experience in the dot com bomb. What kind of changes did Ask make?

The first thing Ask did was narrow the focus. They bought a 7 person search engine named Teoma and integrated it into the site. From there, it was all about product. By the time they were sold to IAC, all of their gains had come from product usage.

Chris asks if Jim is worried that Ask is going to become “the IAC search engine”.

Jim doesn’t seem that concerned. He says on the one hand, they prioritize and actually give IAC less favoritism. In fact, AskCity ranks higher on Google. Ask looks at the IAC companies as sources of data.

What kind of approach does Jim take with the leadership within Ask?

They put a lot of emphasis on bringing the right brain and the left brain together. Seventy-five percent of their employees are engineers or technology people of some kind, but they don’t just hire from Stanford (unlike some people). Each project has a lead and the leads come from all different Ask.com teams.

Interesting to note is that most of Ask’s employees still hail from the Edison, NJ offices. Because they’re still sort of in the backwaters, they put a lot of emphasis on the combination of art and science and making sure things really hangs together as a product. They pay a lot of attention to the forum factors.

Chris comments that it seems like this year, we’ve had another outbreak of concern regarding privacy. What Ask has done with AskEraser is one of the most aggressive approaches. How does Ask see the whole privacy issue?

Jim quips that it’s been a slow news summer based on how much publicity AskEraser has received. Jim says (somewhat paraphrased):

Privacy is important for some people, but most people aren’t going to go crazy to make sure that nothing happens. For people for who [privacy] is that important, we’re going to take the whole thing off the table. You tell us you don’t want us to track anything and in a couple of hours all that stuff will be gone. That’s the approach we took. It may be an issue but let’s not get into all the nuances of it. If it’s important to you, let’s just take it off the plate.

Nice.

Chris talks a bit about social media and how people forget that Ask was personalizing things long before anyone else.

Jim comments that just because it’s new to you doesn’t make it new in general. StumbleUpon took what Ask was doing to a whole new level by adding video. He says Ask just got Darwin’d out. This is what the next generation of search is. The first ten years were about creating a giant bookmark list, then it was about finding the needle in the haystack, this is where we are now.

What implications will Ask3D have on search engine optimization?

Jim (again paraphrased):

I think a lot. What surprises me is that 50 percent of usage [for Ask3D] isn’t in the Web results. If we were worried about market share we certainly wouldn’t have done 3D. Our image search channel usage has gone way down because people are finding what they’re looking for on that page. One in 10 searches comes through the Search Suggestion box. It’s changing the way users interact with the page. Some of the emphasis needs to go to the content coming into the page. There’s good news too, of course. We put content where our competitors put ads. There’s more content on that front page. It gives the editorial part a chance to grow.

3D is just the start for Ask. They have things in the works that just take everything further. It’s not just about tweaking the results, they’re thinking about the entire experience. When you start thinking that way it takes you in a new direction.

When would a search advertiser want to go with you and your networking rather than Google? Jim says:

1. Results are placed on the page when the yield would be higher. The ads are placed when they’re likely to make more money.
2. You have direct access to the data. If you combine our Web site and our network and our syndication network you’re probably talking about 10 percent of all the searches in the US. There’s a lot of money to be made in tuning specifically for ask.
3. A new reason to come with our Ask is that our contextual network is seen by 71 mill users.

Chris: How sophisticated do you think the big brands are with their search marketing? Where are the big players?

Jim says it hasn’t been great. They’re buying a lot of the SEM firms and bringing them in house. He says they still have a lot to learn. The larger ad agencies, specifically, still have a lot to learn about online. It’s not just about search.

Chris: You mentioned AskCity earlier. You’re doing a lot of interesting things in the vertical areas. How do you see these vertical areas as being important separately and also combined into 3D?

Users are still finding images through the main search, not by going into the Image channel. That’s why Ask focuses on verticals, it’s not because they want to compete with verticals, it’s because every day they break out the channels users are searching for and it’s travel or health, etc. It’s more than just ten blue links. They don’t want to leave people for dead.

What kinds of things is Ask going to do with mobile?

Ask wants to bring the Web onto the mobile device. People don’t want to scroll through links. Pages aren’t being customized for mobile. He says that he doesn’t think mobile is all about local. If you want to get someone’s batting average during dinner, you want to do it. They’re focused on bringing the Web to mobile.

Talking about wireless carriers, Jim says it’s easy to understand why they’d like to keep it as a walled garden but that they have to adjust. Ask is a brand that millions of people use and like, can’t we all just get alone? There is a lot Ask can do for them to loyalize the carriers' user base and help them make more money.

What about Ask and personalization?

Jim says Ask is going to be doing a lot more with personalization but that they take a different approach than the other engines. He notes that just because I’ve searched for surf music in the past doesn’t mean that I’m into surf music and that I want to be recommended it all the time. He says there’s a lot on the personalization side that is overblown about how much it can do for you. The sweet spot in enhancing the value of results is in the collective where Ask puts their best first guess out there. Following that they have 50 million users a month who are using those results. They’re really trying to perfect a collective search effect. That’s where the value is going to come from.

Jim says one of things he’s learned is that it is very hard to get people to customize on the Web. It’s hard to get them to read directions (hee!). The number of people who are going to go through all those steps is going to be very small.

Chris reminds Jim that he has a clip to show and with that Jim debuts one of the new Ask commercials. And then he says my name. And I died. I am so totally famous.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 08/21/07 at 11:54 AM | Comments (1)
See more entries in Ask, Branding, SEM Events, sessanjose2007

August 20, 2007

Universal & Blended Search

It’s time for this morning’s Universal & Blended Search session. In case you’re confused, “blended search” is what they call Universal Search when it's by anyone but Google. All caught up? Good.

Chris Sherman is moderating the session with Greg Jarboe (SEO-PR), Sherwood Stranieri (Catalyst Online), Bill Slawksi (Commerce360), David Bailey (Google), Erik Collier (Ask.com) and Tim Mayer (Yahoo) speaking.

Greg Jarboe is up first and calls Google Universal Search (GUS) the biggest thing to hit search since the Florida update. This means that even if you are new to the search sphere you’re not at any kind of competitive disadvantage to the old dinosaurs who have been doing this for years and years (like Bruce!).

Greg shows the audience the effect GUS has had on the search results with a few screenshots.

He notes that back on June 29 (aka the day after my birthday) if you did a search for [iphone], you would have noticed that the fourth result in Google was a News Result with an Apple-created YouTube video in the 8th position. Greg polls the audience on whether they thought Apple’s nicely planted YouTube video was intentional and a sign that Apple understands Universal or if it was just a happy accident. Personally, I think it was just a fluke, but then again, I’m bitter.

Since images are appearing in Google results, Greg says that site owners must absolutely start optimizing their images to appear in the engines, especially images for key executives. You don’t want a photo of your CEO and his girlfriend to appear on the front page of a user’s SERP, or at least not until his divorce is final.

More examples of GUS in action:

• A search for [Hillary Clinton] yesterday showed a News result ranked at number 4, with YouTube videos, blog posts and three totally unflattering photos appearing below the fold. Greg blames the unflattering photos on the right wing conspiracy (heh), but then says we can’t quote him on that. Oh well, already did.
• A search for [hurricane dean] shows News results are ranked number one, with a myriad of blog listings at the bottom of the page. He predicts in the next few days we’ll begin seeing images and videos because that’s the stuff users are going to be looking for. Because we like looking at pictures of destroyed stuff.

What does all of this mean? It means that all the rules of search have been rewritten. Universal search changes what appears in the “golden triangle”.

Search remains the number one way journalists obtain additional information for a story. If you’re not optimizing your press releases for search engines, please come to the Bruce Clay Simi Valley headquarters next week so that I may kick you. I promise it won’t be too hard, just enough to leave a mark. Media relations should be focused on the top Google News sources. Google News Report and Newsknife will both tell you which news media optimizes their results better.

Always include a JPG with your news release, as 90 percent of journalists say that visuals are somewhat or very important to them. Even better, an image acts as the eye candy that will catch readers' attention and make them click on your story. This means that even if you’re sitting at position four, your story is far more likely to be read than the story positioned at number one with no photo.

Something else to keep in mind is that though Google doesn’t incorporate video into Google News right now, a recent interview hints that they’re working on it and it probably won’t be too long before we start to see it.

Greg talks a bit about using social mapping tools to help identify the most influential bloggers in your niche (ME!). With millions of bloggers out there, it’s important to pitch your stories to the influential ones. Who cares what the Susan Esparzas think about you anyway?

A few years ago there was a panel at SES that discussed how the vertical creep was being ignored by searchers and search marketers. You can’t afford to do this today. You cannot ignore Universal Search. Google is making specialized and vertical content more visible through Universal Search, and it will act as a huge boom to those who pay attention to news, video, image and blog search. What Universal Search does it take the different verticals (silos) and slides them together. Your company needs to start collaborating.

Up next is Sherwood Stranieri to talk about apples, oranges and Universal Search. Mmm, oranges. (Apparently I am unable to spell “oranges” today. It’s only day one and my brain is already fried. This can’t be good.)

Sherwood notes that Universal Search compiles results from multimedia and news resources in order to create a single search results page for consumers. There are a few variations on the theme. There is the Ask3D approach which divides results into sections (Microsoft and Yahoo do something similar. [Yeah – only theirs sucks]), and then there is Google which stacks everything into a merged list.

Sherwood mimics Greg’s earlier statement and says that blended search changes the game. He even goes as far as to call Google the “game changer” because it’s the format most disruptive to the status quo. [I’m sorry, but since when does “disruptive” equal “game changing”? If anyone is changing the status quo (and for the better) it is Ask.com. Google is barely even implementing Universal Search right now.

Fine, Lisa rant over.]

Sherwood focuses his presentation around Google’s Universal Search and Video.

Previously, video had been spread virally, but now it’s in search so we have to start looking at it. How does GUS compare videos and text-based pages? Do conventional search engine optimization ranking factors come into play (indexability, content, linking)? What about metrics like views or comments? These are all things we have to look at.

[Sidenote: It’s really distracting to me that everyone keeps referring to Google Universal Search as GUS. I’m waiting for this really hip, game-changing guy named Gus to be carried through the door at any second. (Will he be played by Dule Hill? --Susan)]

To determine how Google is ranking video, Sherwood created a test subject out of its client A&E Television. A&E has thousands of video clips across three TV channel sites. Many rank in Google currently, some authorized, some pirated. Putting the pirating issue aside for a moment (arrrrgh), Sherwood and his team looked at how the video content was actually ranking.

He uses the creepy show as his example:

GUS Page 1:
Page 1 shows a healthy mix of videos and conventional Web listings.
Data was collected for page 1 videos, as well as Web page listings on pages 1 and 2
Both search engine optimization-specific and video-specific stats

Sherwood examined the videos that were ranking for the Criss Angel query and examined the traditional search engine optimization ranking factors like PageRank numbers, incoming links, keyword phrases. Everything looking the same regardless of where the video ranked.

From there, he looked at just the video factors, things like the number of views, comments, tags, etc. He determined that the number of views a video gets definitely contributes to its ranking, but that wasn’t the complete picture. Not surprisingly, in order for a video to rank well, it takes the combination of search engine optimization factors AND video factors. It is the mix that determines placement.

It makes sense that it’s not just the number of views that will cause a video to rank high because otherwise the SERP would be clogged with old videos and the new stuff would never get a chance. Also, you have to think that Google can use tools like Google Hot Trends to determine whether a video is hot and therefore deserves to be ranking.

There are a few loose ends.

• Video statistics themselves (Google can read the number of views and comments).
  For Google to be able to add in the video metrics, it needs to be able to recognize the info on the page. Dan Crow from Google Crawl Systems presented information indicating that it can.
  Google has to warm up for the indexing on one of these Video portal sites.
• Bad News: This is why there are only a few portals are in GUS.
• Good News: It is likely video factors are being read into the equation.

Next up is Bill Slawski who I met last night for the first time. Huzzah!

Bill comments that he doesn’t see Universal Search as a revolutionary process, instead he thinks of it more as an evolutional (I’m with Bill). It’s only evident if you’re looking for it.

Bill pulled up a search for [spider] on the four major engines to see what the results looked like. Google and Yahoo had 10 blue links, Microsoft had 10 blue links and some images, Ask.com, of course, totally rocked.

He talks about Google’s Universal Search patent and how it originally suggested that Google would list alternative results in the right hand side where the ads currently are. Obviously, this isn’t the Universal Search we’re seeing now but it was the prototype back then.

Bill again comments that Universal Search is like an evolution. The timeline going something like this:

Infoseeks’ blended search (1995) > Vertical Creeps into Organic Search > OneBox Results and UI Experiments > Universal Search.

From here Bill gets very technical. I tried to follow along but he’s (a) way smarter than me and (b) he talks fast. Here’s what I could pick up:
Log Data is collected and organized as triples (u=user info, q=query info, r=information about repositories). This info varies based on the country, language, time of day, etc. You want to learn how to rank really well in this specific vertical and try to rank for what people are searching for. That's how you get into Universal Search.

He comments that Yahoo also had some old patents that discussed blended search. They talked about using labels to personalize results. It didn't use terms like tagging, user annotations, though.
How does the information get from a Web page to an index? If you want to rank for a definition you want to make sure you include the words “definition” or “glossary” on the top of the page. You want to make sure it’s easy to distinguish one set of definitions from another.

One of the motivations of providing Universal Search is to enhance the user experience and to make it easier for users to find what they’re looking for. It changes search engine optimization a bit. Why should someone come to your Web page if they get the answer straight from the SERP? Bill says chances are if a user finds something interesting, they’ll click through to the rest of your site.

Next we hear from the engines themselves. Each rep gets 5 minutes.

Up first is Dave Bailey from Google. Hey Dave.

He reminds us of Google’s mission statement to organize the world’s info. He thinks Universal Search is just an extension of that mission. Google wants users to have a single search box to rely on and to get results for anything they’d like. Why just one box? Because people have busy lives. I mean, some of us have to cover 16 SES sessions in 3.5 days. Google doesn’t expect you to remember about all of their different verticals.

There are also certain pages out there that are special. He uses the query [arctic butterfly sensor cleaner] as an example. (What? You totally search for that everyday, don’t you?)
There’s a OneBox up a top with product results and then a YouTube video about how to use it lower.

If you search for [origami crane], you see images at the top of the results, plus a MetaCafe video. A search for [Cranston RI] brings up a map from Google Local.

What Google is doing with Universal Search is digging deeper to find relevant results and then using smarter ranking techniques to determine where the media belongs on the page. Does the video belong at the top of the page or does it below lower down?

A query comes in and Google sends it everywhere. Each vertical does it best to determine how they should handle the query. Do we want to include blogs? How are the books results?

What does it mean to search engine optimization?

Dave must be on another planet because he says it will be business as usual. He assures us that things aren’t changing as radically as some SEOs think they are. Web results will always dominate the page and many universal results are just Web results anyway.

However, do think about creating quality content in other forms. Create useful video content, include images, enhance your Google Local listing, upload product listings to Google Product, etc.

Up next is Tim Mayer to show some of things Yahoo has launched recently.

Tim says if you cover up the logo it’s difficult to differentiate one search engine from another (um, it is?). He says Yahoo is moving to a better optimized user experience. It’s about getting the best result from the Web in the number one spot.

Recently launched Yahoo features:

• Music Artists Shortcuts – Go to official page, hear clips, get lyrics, etc. It’s very different from previous years where the purpose of the SERP was to send the users off as quickly as possible. Here, Yahoo is encouraging interaction.
• Movie Shortcut – Show times, Reviews, Trailers, etc
• Hotel Shortcut Inline – Blends the additional content with traditional results courtesy of an expand arrow.
• Consumer Electronics Shortcut: People want to buy a camera but they don’t know which one. Yahoo offers suggestions, most popular brands, most popular products, to help them narrow their search. Clickthrough rate is very high because users are exploring the topic and looking for help.

Next up is Eric Collier from Ask.com. Before he starts, I just want you to know that my toes are frozen. Yes, I’m done whining.

He shows the audience the Ask 3D interface. The point was to highlight the vertical content more because users weren’t taking advantage of it. They also want to get as much above the fold as possible and get users their answers as quickly as possible.

He explains the 3 panels of the new Ask interface:

On the left hand site you have the search box (complete with search suggestions) and the Narrow/Expand your search options. In the middle you have the Smart Answers and organic search results. On the right rail is really where they get into blended search.

Types of content sources include encyclopedia, blogs, television, narrow your search, search suggestions, health, video, music, etc.

How has this changed user behavior?

Ask has seen a huge jump in user satisfaction, a 30 percent drop in users clicking through to the second SERP, 15 percent drop in users sessions with more than one search. Users really are coming and getting what they want in that first page of results.

What should search marketers expect?

• A larger percentage of SERPs with blended results.
• User location will play a larger role in SERPs.
• Expect to see fewer web results in the SERPs (I agree, which is why I didn’t agree with Brian’s assertion that Universal is “business as usual” for search engine optimization).
• Blogs, images and videos will take online reputation into account when ranking.
• Pay attention to other search drivers – Search suggestions, related search, etc.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 08/20/07 at 3:09 PM | Comments (4)
See more entries in Ask, Google, Live Search, SEM Events, Search Engine Optimization, Search Engines, Yahoo, sessanjose2007

August 14, 2007

Attaboy, Ask: Two Fun New Ask.com Finds

Days like this warm my soul. Days when I can praise Ask.com for being creative and innovative, instead of having to lash out in response to another poorly thought out advertising attempt. Ah, rejoice in the serenity.

Yes, today, Gary Price and the Ask.com alerted me to two new, fun Ask finds that are definitely worth mentioning: A brand new Ask commercial that doesn’t suck (or insult women!) and a new Health Smart Answer that is 10 times less frightening than what Google Health is shaping up to be (no, I will NOT download my medical files to Google, but thank you for asking).

A Simpler, Smarter Commercial

Okay, so some of us have been programmed to wince as soon as we hear the phrase "new Ask.com commercial" but this time it’s really not necessary. The commercial doesn’t suck. And it isn’t insulting! In fact, it actually highlights their features. Oh my goodness, so many huzzahs!

Don’t believe me? Check it out:

It’s simple and sophisticated. There are no chorus lines, no strange dog/monkey hybrid, and no half-naked girls. Actually, there are no words at all. It’s a silent depiction of a searcher using the Ask engine and taking advantage of all of Ask’s unique features. It’s a commercial designed to distinguish Ask from its competitors by showing how much better its tools are. Seriously, a new calm has come over my body knowing that, even if it’s just for today, I can trust Ask.com again.

I really hope Ask decides to take a similar route with its next batch of commercials because, as Gary pointed out, Ask has many more features and services that could very easily be featured in the same manner. When it comes to search, Ask.com is still trailing behind Google in regards to the size of its index, but they really are doing better almost everywhere else.

New Health-Related Smart Answer

The timing of this release is particularly interesting considering today’s lengthy New York Times piece about Dr. Google and Dr. Microsoft and their plans to “improve the nation’s health care” (What? You didn’t know it was a search engine’s job to fix the entire health care system? They balance the national debt next week!).

Ask’s offering is completely different than what Google and Microsoft is suggesting, because while Google and Microsoft want to house all of your medical records and then put ads on them, Ask just wants to help searchers find the answers to their medical questions.

The new Ask Smart Answer works just like all of their other Smart Answers. Perform a search for virtually anything health related, such as [lung cancer], [bird flu], [prozac], [Vitamin E] or just name a part of the body ([eye]) and Ask will populate a Smart Answer will a collection of great information, links and images. And of course, the 3D component of their search, which we highlighted a bit yesterday, acts as a great complement by providing additional images, videos, dictionary information, news, news images, and even related blog posts (!) when appropriate.

Gary noted in his post at ResourceShelf that a search for [first aid] will a