Over 500 people and companies who offer search engine optimization services were asked about how their models. Turns out, it’s most common to charge $100 to $150 per hour, in the US. But by-the-hour consulting is only one of four nearly co-equal ways of charging.

Also popular is project-based pricing, where the average price is between $2,500 to $5,000, in the US. That’s also the same average price for those who buy on a monthly retainer basis. Fixed prices on a contract basis is also a popular way that SEO is sold, but no averages were provided.

The survey was conducted by SEOmoz and compiled into the infographic below by AYTM:

Want the infographic for yourself? You’ll find it, along with more details about the survey and findings, at SEOmoz here: SEO Pricing: 600+ Agencies Share Costs of Services & Pricing Models.

Need to learn more about SEO? Then be sure to see our list of resources, including a background video, on our What Is SEO / Search Engine Optimization? page.

Google was actually advertising Quality Rater jobs in late 2004, but today the Quality Raters don’t actually work for Google; they work for contractors such as Lionbridge, Leapforce, Butler Hill and possibly others. According to Lionbridge’s Internet Assessors Program job page, it has more than 4,500 people around the world rating search results. Leapforce’s website doesn’t indicate how many are in its program, but the job listings page includes opportunities with names like “Search Engine Evaluator,” “Social Search Engine Evaluator” and “Search Quality Judge.”

The Quality Raters’ work has become more widely known over the years thanks to a couple occasions when the guideline document that Google provides as part of their work has been leaked online. (See our posts in March 2008 and October 2011.) Webmasters have also noticed unique quality rater referral strings, indicating when one of the evaluators had visited a website.

After Jennifer Ledbetter posted about the program last fall, one current Quality Rater contacted Search Engine Land wanting to explain and clarify some of what’s been written and said about the program. Since then, with a couple breaks for holidays, I’ve traded numerous emails with this person … who, in addition to working for Lionbridge as a Quality Rater, also happens to work for a US-based search marketing agency.

To help ensure that this person, whom I’ve never met, is actually a Quality Rater, I asked for some screenshots from inside the website where the rating work is done. A couple of those are inserted within the interview, and here’s an image of the rating tasks home page showing an empty task queue.

Below, we talk about the hiring process, what Quality Raters look for when they examine websites, details of the different evaluation tasks they do and much more.

Q&A With A Google Search Quality Rater

SEL: Tell me how, when and why you got started with the Quality Rater program.

Quality Rater: I first started with Lionbridge in May of 2011. I was looking for work because my then current employer had told me I was taking a pay cut, so I needed a way to add income. I began searching all the normal places for job listings and came across one on Craigslist for a Quality Rater. It sounded cool, so I sent them my resume and they got back to me the next day saying they were excited to have me and if I could just pass a few simple tests I would be hired. That was the easy part.

Did the job listing specifically mention Google?

The listing didn’t mention anything about Google but as soon as they contacted me, they said I would be doing work related to Google.

So, you knew it was Google-related. At what point did you know that you’d be rating Google’s search results?

I knew before I got hired.

One thing I think the SEO community is missing is that this program has nothing to do with SEO or rankings. What this program does is help Google refine their algorithm. For example, the Side-by-Side tasks show the results as they are next to the results with the new algorithm change in them. Google doesn’t hire these raters to rate the web; they hire them to rate how they are doing in matching users queries with the best source of information.

Let’s talk about the hiring process. There’s some kind of test. Was it difficult?

I had six days to complete both parts of the test, with the second part opening after I passed the first test.

The tests turned out to be a 24-question, essay-response theoretical test that asked questions based on a PDF they had sent me. The questions were designed to test my ability to take the rules and apply them to situations that weren’t covered in the PDF. One that I vaguely remember was about spam and what to do if the site didn’t show any signs of spam, but it gave off a spammy feeling. It was the hardest test I have ever taken (for a reference point, I’m a Literature major who has taken graduate-level courses).

Only after having passed that test did I get to take the practical exam, which had more than 140 questions. This test had actual results that I had to rate. In order to be hired, I needed to score a 90% or higher in each of the four categories (which were Vital, Useful, Relevant and Off-Topic or Useless). Ideally, these represented the actual tasks that I would receive as a rater.

What were the questions like?

To give you example of questions asked:

Query [crispy cream], English (US)
URL: http://www.treblebooster.com/

It would then be up to me to visit the page — something that I want to stress, because blogs out there have been saying that a rater can rate the page without visiting it — decide if it fits the query and then assign a rating. It really is up to the rater, but the correct answer here is Useful because of the spelling. If the user had typed “Krispy Kreme,” than this result would be off-topic, but because it is “crispy cream,” and the guitars on this page are called Crispy Cream, this could be the page the user is wanting.

There were 143 just like that. It was good times.

Do you have any direct contact with anyone at Google, or do you only communicate with Lionbridge?

I have no contact with Google; it’s only Lionbridge.

After you get hired, is there some kind of training?

After I got hired there was a weekly, two-hour webinar along with training modules to complete. It was very intense training. During the first four weeks, I was required to comment on every rating I gave. These comments were then reviewed and commented on, giving me feedback on my ratings.

At what point do you get the raters’ handbook?

I got this the moment I got hired.  It basically is just a list of tasks we perform along with examples of how to rate them.

How does Lionbridge (or Google) describe the handbook?

They refer to it as the guidelines, not a handbook.

While we are on the subject of guidelines, one thing that really impressed me was how they have more than one rater looking at a site. I believe (I’m not sure, I’m going off the comments left by other raters) that there are about six raters looking at each task. If I rate something as useful but another rater says it’s off-topic, we must come to an agreement (through comments and debate) before the rating is submitted.

How much do you make and how often do you get paid?

I get paid $14.50/hour and I am paid once a month. I’m only able to work a max of 20 hours a week and a total max of 80 hours a month.

In one of the recent articles about the Quality Raters, it says you can only work for a year and then you have to wait three months before you can re-apply. Is that true?

I know they say you can only be a rater for a year, but everyone I’ve talked to says that, as long as they get their hours in and keep up the quality they are allowed to rate.

Is the schedule completely up to you, or do they give you assigned hours?

I schedule my own hours; as long as I get at least 10 but no more than 20, I stay on pretty good terms with them. They are very strict, but allow you to make up hours that you missed. So, if I only did four hours the first week, I could make up the hours by doing 16 hours the next week. Still only allowed 20 hours a week max, so if I miss more hours than I can make up, I’m out of luck.

They also tend to be really strict about their productivity goals. There is a certain number of tasks that I must complete every minute, depending on the task type. If I fall short of those goals, I am put on probation, during which I can not work. If my quality isn’t up to par, they fire me. It’s a very controlled work environment.

You mentioned there about getting fired “if my quality isn’t up to par.” How do you know if you’re doing a good job? It seems to me that in a lot of cases, rating search results is pretty subjective.

Results are subjective, but they have a quality center that shows your progress over time. They track how many returned results you have, how long it takes you to take care of a troubled rating, etc. While the rating is up to me, it has to be similar to what other raters have said. So, they track quality based on staying within the time period for rating tasks and the number of tasks you have returned to you.

They return tasks to you — what does that mean?

It means that there has been a disagreement on the rating and you have to go back in and come to an agreement with the other raters.

So, the rating of search results is a group project. Is it difficult to come to agreement?

Sometimes it’s harder to agree with raters, especially if they haven’t read the guideline like they should or if they are just starting out. However, after enough exchanges, they have a moderator come in and choose which rating matches it best. This moderator looks at our comments and makes a decision off of that.

How often does that happen in your experience?

Not very often. Most of the time if you give your reasoning for why you rated something one way, the other raters will agree with you. Most of the time, these types of disagreements occur when something is either slightly relevant or off-topic. Once in a while, someone will think that a page is spam that isn’t, or the other way around. I’ve only had a moderator step in once.

What do you know about the moderators? Are they Lionbridge employees?

Yes, they work for Lionbridge. From what I know of them, they used to be raters and then got promoted.

Do you only look at organic results, or are you also grading ads/PPC landing pages?

We look at any type of page on the web. Most of them are organic results, but some of the tasks are geared towards more ad-related topics.

Do you remember an example of an ad-related task?

Not really. Most of what they were was placement on the page, order in which they are presented and which one would I click, etc.

Do you look at Google Places results and other Universal results, like News or Videos?

Yes, we do. I can think of many tasks where it shows the map of what a user was looking at before they typed in a query, and we are then to rate the results of that query based on the map they were looking at. We also rated news based on how current it was, how relevant it was to the query, and if it came from a trustworthy source. As for videos, we had to watch the video to determine if it was a match for the query and rate it Useful, Relevant, Slightly Relevant, or Off-topic.

That part about Maps is really interesting. So, in that task, they were putting you in the middle of some process — you’re not just doing tasks that involve standalone searches, but sometimes taking into account what has happened before? Does that also happen with other searches, too?

Almost all of the tasks given have to do with user experience. Even with just the basic searches, we are given the user’s language and location before we can rate a page. It’s not about if a page fits a query, it’s about if a user would find the page useful. The Maps queries (called local queries) are the only ones that give what the user was looking at before searching, but we are supposed to keep in mind what a user is expecting to see from that query with every task type. For example, if someone was in Seattle and typed in the query “weather,” they would find a page showing the weather in Florida slightly relevant; however, someone in Tampa would find it useful.

Aside from the collective rating that you described above, do you ever have other communication with other raters? Are there official or unofficial places where you can chat back and forth?

There are lots of places — forums and such on the Lionbridge site — where raters can talk to each other, but I never interact with them. I was always stressed getting my hours in for the week, so I didn’t have time to mingle.

Can you share a specific example of one of your recent tasks?

I can’t think of the exact URLs I rated, but the keyword was “Nike Women’s Running Shoes.” It gave me a list of 20 URLs to rate (10 on each side) [Ed. note: he's referring to the "Side-by-Side" tasks mentioned earlier.] and I visited each one in order to determine whether they were vital, useful, relevant, slightly relevant, or useless. With a recognized brand name like that, it wasn’t hard to determine quality. For example, I think the Nike site was one of the options, so that would get a “vital” rating. I remember a couple of sites sold the shoes, so I gave them a “useful” rating and the Wikipedia entry on Nike was giving a rating of “slightly relevant” because I believe not many people searching for Nike Women’s Running Shoes want a history of the company.

Do you click through and review all ten results that show up for a given task?

I always click all the links simply because I’m not good enough to tell what the site is about by just reading its description. No one is good enough, that’s why they give us the links.

When you click through from a Google search result page, what are you looking for on the web page that you visit?

When looking at a site, I always check for spam signals first — keyword stuffing, hidden text, sneaky redirects, and the like. Once I know it’s a good site, I start to look at the page as a person who would type the query in Google and whether or not the content on the page would help me fulfill my needs. There are some tasks that ask about design and layout and the like, but for the normal URL rating or Side-by-Side tasks, I really just look at content and figure out if it would be a worthwhile page for a user to see.

Do you ever look at the source code or anything like that? Are Raters asked or trained to look at source code of the web pages being rated?

There is a quick primer on looking at the source code in the guidelines, nothing in depth. Basically we look for hidden keywords and other spammy tactics discussed in the guidelines.

You mentioned URL rating tasks and Side-by-Side tasks, but also some that involve design and layout. What are those tasks like?

Design tasks ask if the page has a good ratio of main content, supplemental content, and ads. It also asks about the overall design, is it easy to read, clear communication of information, and the like. It’s not about whether the page is beautiful or amazing, but whether or not the normal user could find what they need on the page without getting lost.

Do they give you a single web page and ask you to rate its design, or are you still going through a page of search results and then rating design?

They are specific tasks, not part of rating a URL.

Are spelling and grammar part of the design-based tasks?

Spelling and grammar are something we look at in all tasks (at least I do) but there’s not a ding for it.

When looking at design and layout, do your criteria change based on the type of site you’re looking at? For example, a web page on a big brand site might be expected to have a more professional design than some small business sites.

Like I said before, it’s more about the layout than the actual design. A company with a simple design would be rated just as well as a big company with a professional design as long as the information is clear and presented in a way that is easy to understand. To give you an example, a page where you can tell what the main content is with ads taking second page in the design would get a high rating. A page where the ads are confused with the main content, where you can’t tell the difference between content and ads would get a low rating.

How many different kinds of tasks are there? The guidelines I’ve seen begin by saying “you will work on many different types of rating projects.”

There are a lot of different tasks but they are all grouped under four main groups: URL, Side-by-Side, Experimental, and Result Review.  The big one there is the Experimental tasks which have a ton of different types of tasks in them. I’ve included a picture that lists all the task types and how long they are supposed to take, as well.

What are “Display Block” and “TTR” tasks?

Display Block, if I remember right, is a block of images that we rate as a whole rather than one at a time. TTR stands for Time to Rate, which is the baseline task they use to determine how long it should take to get a task done. It has all the different tasks in it, but instead of looking for accuracy it just cares about time.

Do they try to give you tasks related to topics and things you know about, or do you review pages about things you’re not very familiar with?

If someone types in “Best Dog Food for Puppies,” it’s not very hard to know what they are wanting and most queries have a fairly obvious meaning. However, once in a while I’ll get one that I can’t figure out and that’s when I do research to figure out what they want. For example, if someone queried “Release Liner,” I would need to do some research to figure out that it’s something used in cutting vinyl for signs and the like. At that point, I could determine whether a site is worthwhile or not. Granted, it’s not a perfect system but it works most of the time.

Are there specific industries/niches that show up more than others in your rating tasks?

Not that I have noticed.

How does your work affect Google’s search results — do they tell you anything about that?

They don’t talk about that; however, I know that what it really does is perfect the algorithm instead of changing actual live search results. I gathered this from the way that Side-by-Side are the most important tasks because they show the old algorithm versus a change in the algorithm that they are testing.

Are you an active Rater these days? How long do you think you’ll keep doing it?

I still rate on the weekends. I like doing it, so I’ll keep doing as long as I can.

Does Lionbridge and/or Google know that you work in the search marketing industry?

No. I got this job after I got the Lionbridge job.

Do you know of any other search marketers who are also Quality Raters?

I don’t know any personally, but I bet there aren’t a lot of us.

What’s your opinion of Google’s search results, and has that opinion changed since you became a Quality Rater?

I’ve always used Google as my “go to” search engine; however, since I became a rater, I’ve started using it more because I can see the behind-the-scenes improvements they are trying to make.

I like the idea that they have an army of actual people working towards bettering their engine. I know some people might think this wrong or even that raters have a negative effect on their rankings. Well, I can honestly say that they don’t. The whole point behind quality raters is not to rate the actual web, but rather rate how well Google is doing at providing quality results.

Almost every company has some form of quality control. Do people get upset that McDonald’s has someone check the quality of their food? I don’t see what Google does as any different than wanting to present the best possible product they can to their users.

So, to answer your question, yes, my opinion has changed for the better.

Where We Came From

Some might believe that search engines hate SEOs, hate publishers and have done little over the years to help them. They are mistaken, either choosing to deliberately ignore the gains or, more likely, are simply unaware of how far things have come.

When I first started writing about SEO issues nearly 16 years ago, in 1996, we had little publisher support beyond add URL forms. Today, we have entire toolsets like Google Webmaster Central and Bing Webmaster Tools, along with standalone features and options, which allow and provide:

• Ability to submit & validate XML sitemaps
• Ability to view crawling & indexing errors
• Ability to create “rich” listings & manage sitelinks
• Ability to migrate a domain
• Ability to indicate a canonical URL or preferred domain
• Ability to set crawl rates
• Ability to manage URL parameters
• Ability to view detailed linkage information to your site
• Ability to view keywords used to reach your site
• Notifications of malware or spam issues with your site

There’s even more beyond what I’ve listed above. The support publishers enjoy today was simply unimaginable to many veteran SEOs who were working in the space a decade ago.

The advancement has been welcomed. It has helped publishers better manage their placement in those important venues of the web, the search engines. It has helped search engines with errors and problems that would hurt their usability and relevancy.

That’s why 2011 was so alarming to me. After years of moving forward, the search engines took a big step back.

The Loss Of Link Data

One of the most important ways that search engines determine the relevancy of a web page is through link analysis. This means examining who links to a page and what the text of the link — the anchor text — says about the page.

However, for years Google has deliberately suppressed the ability for outsiders to see what links tell it about any particular page. Want to know why THAT result shows up for Santorum? Why Google was returning THAT result for “define English person” searches? Sorry.

Google won’t help you understand how links have caused these things. It refuses to show all the links to a particular page, or the words used within those links to describe a page, unless you are the page’s owner.

Why? Google’s rationale has been that providing this information would make it harder for it to fight spam. Potentially, bad actors might figure out some killer linking strategy by using Google’s own link reporting against it.

It’s a poor argument. Despite withholding link data, it’s painfully easy to demonstrate how sites can gain good rankings in Google for competitive terms such as “SEO” itself by simply dropping links into forums, onto client pages or into blog templates.

Given this, it’s hard to understand what Google thinks it’s really protecting by concealing the data. But until 2011, there was an easy alternative. Publishers and others could turn to Google-rival Yahoo to discover how people might be linking to a page.

Goodbye Yahoo Site Explorer

Yahoo launched its “Yahoo Site Explorer” back in September 2005, both as part as a publicity push to win people away from Google and to provide information to publishers. The tool allowed anyone to see what link data Yahoo had about any page in its listings.

Today, Yahoo still supposedly wants to win people away from Google. But because Yahoo’s web search results are now powered by Bing, Yahoo has little reason to provide tools to support publishers. That’s effectively Bing’s problem now.

Yahoo closed Yahoo Site Explorer at the end of last November, saying as it still does on the site now:

Yahoo! Search has merged Site Explorer into Bing Webmaster Tools. Webmasters should now be using the Bing Webmaster Tools to ensure that their websites continue to get high quality organic search traffic from Bing and Yahoo!.

That’s not true. Yahoo Site Explorer was not merged into Bing Webmaster Tools. It was simply closed. Bing Webmaster Tools doesn’t provide the ability to check on the backlinks to any page in the way that Yahoo Site Explorer allowed.

The closure supposedly came after Yahoo “listened to your feedback” about what publishers wanted, as it posted earlier this year. I don’t know what feedback Yahoo was hearing, but what I’ve heard has been people desperately pleading with Yahoo or Bing to maintain the same exact features that Yahoo Site Explorer provided — and pleading for well over a year.

Yahoo-Bing Deal Has Reduced Competition & Features

When the US Department Of Justice granted its approval for Yahoo to partner with Microsoft, that was supposed to ensure that the search space stayed competitive. From what the Department Of Justice said in 2010:

After a thorough review of the evidence, the division has determined that the proposed transaction is not likely to substantially lessen competition in the United States, and therefore is not likely to harm the users of Internet search, paid search advertisers, Internet publishers, or distributors of search and paid search advertising technology.

I’d say dropping Yahoo Site Explorer did harm to both users of internet search and internet publishers. Yahoo Site Explorer was a distinctive tool that only Yahoo offered, allowing both parties named by the DOJ to better understand the inner workings of the search engines they depend on. It also reduced competitive pressure for Google to offer its own tool.

Indeed, things have gotten worse since Yahoo Site Explorer closed. At the end of last December, Bing officially confirmed that it no longer supports the link command in its help forum.

Next To Go, The Link Command?

The link command allows you to enter any page’s web address prefaced by “link:” in order to find links that point at that page. It’s a long-standing command that has worked for many major search engines as far back to late 1995, when AltaVista launched.

Google still supports this command to show some (but not all) of the links it knows about that point at pages. I’d link to Google’s documentation of this, but the company quietly dropped that some time around May 2008. Here’s what it used to say:

Here’s how the command still works at Google. Below, I used it to see what links Google says point to the home page of the official Rick Santorum campaign web site:

The first arrow shows you how the command is being used. The second arrow shows you how Google is reporting there are 111 links pointing to the page. Imagine that. Rick Santorum, currently a major Republican candidate for US president, and Google says only 111 other pages link to his web site’s home page.

The reality is that many more pages probably link over. Google’s counting them but not showing the total number to people who care about what exactly is being considered. I’ll demonstrate this more in a moment, but look at the worse situation on Bing:

One link. That’s all Bing reports that it knows about to those in the general public who may care to discover how many links are pointing to the Rick Santorum web site.

It’s Not Just An SEO Thing

People do care, believe me. I actually started writing this article last Monday and got interrupted when I had to cover how Google might have been involved with a link buying scheme to help its Chrome browser rank better in Google’s own search results.

I doubted that was really the main intent of the marketing campaign that Google authorized (Google did err on the side of caution and punished itself), but the lack of decent link reporting tools from Google itself left me unable to fully assess this as an independent third-party.

As soon as that story was over, renewed attention was focused on why Rick Santorum’s campaign web site wasn’t outranking a long-standing anti-Santorum web site that defines “santorum” as a by-product of anal sex.

Major media outlets were all over that story. My analysis was cited by The Economist, CNN, The Telegraph, The New York Times, MSNBC and Marketplace, to name only some.

But again, I — or anyone who really cared — was unable to see the full links that Google knew about pointing at both sites, much less the crucial anchor text that people were using to describe those sites. Only Google really knew what Google knew.

Third Party Options Good But Not The Solution

If you haven’t heard more complaints over the closure of Yahoo Site Explorer, and the pullback on link data in general, that’s because there are third-party alternatives such as Majestic Site Explorer or the tool I often use, SEOmoz’s Open Site Explorer.

These tools highlight just how little the search engines themselves show you. Consider this backlink report from Open Site Explorer for the Rick Santorum campaign’s home page:

The first arrow shows how 3,581 links are seen pointing at the page. Remember Google, reporting only 111? Or Bing, reporting only 1?

The next two arrows show the “external” links pointing at both the Santorum home page and the anti-Santorum home page. These are links from outsiders, pointing at each page. You can see that the anti-Santorum page has four times as many links pointing at it than the Santorum campaign page, a clue as to why it does so much better for a search on “santorum.”

But it’s not just number of links. Using other reports, I can see that thousands of links leading to both sites have the text “santorum” in the links themselves, which is why they both are in the top results for that word.

Because the anti-site has so many more links that say “santorum” and “spreading santorum,” that probably helps it outrank the campaign site on the single word. But because the official site has a healthy number from sources including places like the BBC saying “rick santorum” in the links, that — along with its domain name of ricksantorum.com — might help it rank better for “rick santorum.”

It’s nice that I can use a third party tool to perform this type of analysis, but I shouldn’t have to. It’s simply crazy — and wrong — that both Google and Bing send searchers and publishers away from their own search engines to understand this.

For one, the third party tools don’t actually know exactly what the search engines themselves are counting as links. They’re making their own estimates based on their own crawls of the web, but that doesn’t exactly match what Google and Bing  know (though it can be pretty good).

Not Listing Links Is Like Not Listing Ingredients

For another, the search engines should simply be telling people directly what they count. Links are a core part of the “ingredients” used to create the search engine’s results. If someone wants to know if those search results are healthy eating, then the ingredients should be shared.

Yes, Google and Bing will both report link data about a publisher’s own registered site. But it’s time for both of them to let anyone look up link data about any site.

The Blekko search engine does this, allowing anyone logged in to see the backlinks to a listed page. Heck, Blekko will even give you a badge you can place on your page to show off your links, just as Yahoo used to. But for Google, it’s “normal” for its link command to not show all the links to a page. Seriously, that’s what Google’s help page says.

Google, in particular, has made much of wanting people to report spam found in its search results. If it really wants that type of help, then it needs to ensure SEOs have better tools to diagnose the spam. That means providing link data for any URL, along with anchor text reporting.

Google has also made much about the need for companies to be open, in particular pushing for the idea that social connection should be visible. Google has wanted that, because until Google+ was launched, Google had a tough time seeing the type of social connections that Facebook knew about.

Links are effectively the social connections that Google measures between pages. If social connections should be shared with the world, then Google should be sharing link connections too, rather than coming off as hypocritical.

Finally, it doesn’t matter if only a tiny number of Google or Bing users want to do this type of link analysis. That’s often the pushback when this issue comes up, that so few do these type of requests.

Relatively few people might read the ingredients labels on the food they eat. But for the few that do, or for anyone who suddenly decides they want to know more, that label should be provided. So, too, should Google and Bing provide link data about any site.

Goodbye Keyword Referrer Data

While I’m concerned about the pullback on link data, I’m more concerned about how last October, Google stopped reporting to publishers the keywords people used to find their web sites, for times when those people were logged into Google.

Link data has long been suppressed by Google. Holding back on keyword data is a new encroachment.

Google has said this was done to protect user privacy. I have no doubt many in the company honestly believe this. But it if was really meant to protect privacy, then Google shouldn’t have deliberately left open a giant hole that continues to provide this data to its paid advertisers.

Worse, if Google were really serious about protecting the privacy of search terms, then it would disable the passing of referrers in its Chrome browser. That hasn’t happened.

Unlike the long examination of link data above, I’ll be far more brief about the situation with Google withholding link data. That’s because I’ve already written over 3,000 words looking at the situation in depth last October, and that still holds up. So please see my previous article, Google Puts A Price On Privacy, to understand more.

Google’s Weak Defense

Since my October story, the best defense that Google’s been able to concoct for withholding keyword data from non-advertisers is a convoluted, far-fetched argument that makes its case worse, not better.

Google says that potentially, advertisers might buy ads for so many different keywords that even if referrer data was also blocked for them, the advertisers could still learn what terms were searched for by looking through their AdWords campaign records.

For example, let’s say someone did a search on Google for “Travenor Johannisoon income tax evasion settlement.” I’ve made this up. As I write this, there are no web pages matching a Google search for “Travenor Johannisoon” at all. But…

• If this were a real person, and
• someone did that search, and
• if a page appeared in Google’s results, and
• someone clicked on that page…

then the search terms would be passed along to the web site hosting the page.

Potentially, this could reveal to a publisher looking at their web analytics that there might be a settlement for income tax evasion for involving a “Travenor Johannisoon.” If the publisher starting poking around, perhaps they might uncover this type of information.

Of course, it could be that there is no such settlement at all. Maybe it’s just a rumor. Anyone can search for anything which doesn’t make it into a fact.

More likely, the search terms are so buried in all the web analytics data that the site normally receives that this particular search isn’t noticed at all, much less investigated.

Extra Safe Isn’t Extra Safe

Still, to be extra safe, Google has stopped passing along keyword data when people are signed-in. Stopped, except to its advertisers. Like I said, Google argues that potentially advertisers might still see this information even if they were also blocked.

For instance, say someone runs an ad matching any searches with “income tax evasion” in them. If someone clicked on the ad after doing a search for “Travenor Johannisoon income tax evasion settlement,” those terms would be passed along though the AdWords system to the advertiser, even though the referrer might pass nothing to the advertiser’s web analytics system.

So, why bother blocking?

Yes, this could happen. But if the point is to make things more private, then blocking referrers for both advertisers and non-advertisers would still make things harder. Indeed, Google still has other “holes” where “Travenor Johannisoon” might find his privacy exposed just as happens potentially with AdWords.

For example, if someone did enough searches on the topic of Travenor and tax evasion, that might cause it to appear one of Google Instant’s suggested searches.

So why bother blocking?

Also, while Google blocks search terms from logged-in users in referrer data, those same searches are not blocked from the keyword data it reports to publishers through Google Webmaster Central. That means the Travenor search terms could show up there.

So why bother blocking?

Nothing has changed my view that, despite Google’s good intentions, its policy of blocking referrers only for non-advertisers is incredibly hypocritical. Google purports this is done to protect privacy, but it puts its own needs and advertisers desires above privacy.

Blocking referrers is a completely separate issue from encrypting the search results themselves. That’s good and should be continued. But Google is deliberately breaking how such encryption works to pass along referrer data to its advertisers. Instead, Google should block them for everyone or block them for no one. Don’t play favorites with your advertisers.

What Google & Bing Should Do

Made it this far? Then here’s the recap and action items for moving forward.

Bing should restore its link command, if not create a new Bing Site Explorer. Google should make sure that its link command reports links fully and consider its own version of a Google Site Explorer. With both, the ability for anchor text reports about any site is a must.

If there are concerns about scraping or server load, make these tools you can only use when logged in. But Yahoo managed to provide such a tool. Blekko is providing such statistics. Tiny third-party companies are doing it. The major search engines can handle it.

As for the referrer data, Google needs to immediately expand the amount of data that Google Webmaster Central reports. Currently, up to 10,000 terms (Google says up to 1,000, but we believe that’s wrong) for the past 30 days are shown.

In November, the head of Google’s spam team Matt Cutts — who’s also been involved with the encryption process — said at the Pubcon conference that Google is considering expanding the time period to 60 days or the queries to 2,000 (as said, we think — heck, we can see, they already provide more than this). Slightly more people wanted more time than more keywords shown.

I think Google should do more than 60 days. I think it should be providing continuous reporting and holding that data historically on behalf of sites, if it’s going to block referrers. Google is already destroying historical benchmarks that publishers have maintained. Google’s already allowed data to be lost for those publishers, because they didn’t begin to go in each day and download the latest information.

So far, all Google’s done is provide an Python script to make downloading easier. That’s not enough. Google should provide historical data, covering a big chunk of the terms that a site receives. It’s the right thing to do, and it should have been done already.

What Publishers Can Do

An anti-SOPA-like effort as targeted GoDaddy isn’t going to work with the search engines. That’s because the two biggest things that publishers could “transfer” out of Google and Bing are their ads and their web sites. But there’s no place to transfer these to that wouldn’t hurt the publishers with incredible amounts of lost traffic.

This doesn’t mean that publishers are powerless, however.

Bing is desperate to be seen as the “good” search engine against “evil” Google. Publishers should, whenever relevant, remind Bing that it’s pretty evil not to have maintained its own version of Yahoo Site Explorer much less to have closed the link command.

Mention it in blog posts. Mention it in tweets. Bring it up at conferences. Don’t let it die. Ask Bing why it can’t do what little Blekko can.

As for Google, pressure over link data is probably best expressed in terms of relevancy. Why is Google deliberately preventing this type of information from being studied? Is it more afraid that doing so will reveal weaknesses in its relevancy, rather than potential spam issues? Change the debate to relevancy, and that gets Google’s attention — plus the attention of non-publishers.

There’s also the issue of openness. Google shouldn’t be allowed to preach being “open” selectively, staying closed when it suits Google, without some really good arguments for remaining closed. On withholding link data, those “closed” arguments no longer stand up.

As for the referrer data, Google should be challenged in three ways.

First, the FTC will be talking to publishers as part of its anti-trust investgation into Google’s business practices. Publishers, if asked, should note that by withholding referrer data except for Google’s advertisers, it’s potentially harming competing retargeting services that publishers might prefer to use. Anti-trust allegations seem to really get Google’s attention, so make that wheel squeak.

Second, question why Google is deliberately leaving a privacy hole open for the searchers it’s supposedly trying to protect. If Google’s really worried about what search terms reveal, the company needs a systematic way to scrub potentially revealing queries from everything: suggested searches, reporting in Google Webmaster Central, AdWords reporting as well as referrer data.

Finally, withhold your own data. Are you opted-in to the data sharing on Google Analytics that launched back in 2008? Consider opting-out, if so:

To opt-out, when you log in, select an account, then select “Edit Analytics Account” next to the name of the account in the Overview window, then you’ll see options as shown above and as explained on this help page.

Opting out means you can’t use the benchmarking feature (fair enough, and no loss if you don’t use it) and Conversion Optimizer. If you still want Conversion Optimizer, don’t opt-out or alternatively, tell Google that you should have a choice to share data solely for use with that product but not other Google products.

There might be other drawbacks to not sharing that I’m missing. But we haven’t been sharing here at Search Engine Land since the beginning of the year. So far, we’re not having any problems.

Google loves data. Withholding your own is another way for publishers to register their displeasure about having data withheld from them. And it’s the type of thing that Google just might notice.

Related Articles

• What Is SEO / Search Engine Optimization?
• Search Engine Land’s Guide To SEO
• The Periodic Table Of SEO Ranking Factors
• What Is Google PageRank? A Guide For Searchers & Webmasters
• How The “Focus On First” Helps Hide Google’s Relevancy Problems
• Yahoo Completes Global Organic Transition To Bing
• Yahoo Site Explorer Closing Down Monday, November 21st
• The Microsoft-Yahoo Search Deal, In Simple Terms
• Google Releases New Link Reporting Tools
• Google Now Reporting Anchor Text Phrases
• Yahoo Adds Link Badge In Site Explorer
• Link Building Tool Review: Link Research Tool Set By CEMPER
• Link Building Tool Review: SEOmoz PRO
• Link Building Tool Review: SEO Book
• Link Building Tool Review: Raven Tools
• Link Building Tool Review: Majestic SEO
• Bing Webmaster Tools Launches New Link Reports; Google Webmaster Tools Changes Theirs
• Blekko’s SEO Tools: What Information Do They Provide?
• Blekko Offers New Linkroll Widget & More Publisher Tools
• Google’s Chrome Page No Longer Ranks For “Browser” After Sponsored Post Penalty
• Should Rick Santorum’s “Google Problem” Be Fixed?
• How Rick Santorum Is Making His “Google Problem” Worse
• For “Define An English Person,” Google Suggests The C-Word
• Google’s Spam Report Page Gets “Biggest Refresh” In Years
• Google: As Open As It Wants To Be
• Google’s Facebook Competitor, The Google+ Social Network, Finally Arrives
• How Google Instant’s Autocomplete Suggestions Work
• Google Webmaster Tools Adds Page-Level Query Data
• Google Webmaster Tools Search Queries Report Now Less Accurate
• Google Analytics Benchmarking Feature, Data Sharing & Audio Ad Charting
• Guest Opinion: Is Google’s Privacy Move Really An Anti-Competitive Practice?
• Dear Congress: It’s Not OK Not To Know How Search Engines Work, Either
• Googleopoly: The Definitive Guide To Antitrust Investigations Against Google
• Keyword “Not Provided” By Google Spikes, Now 7-14% In Cases
• Google Puts A Price On Privacy

This additional seed of Series D financing brings the total money raised for Trada to $17 million.

Trada basically lets you offload your PPC management onto a community of SEM experts, who spend the budgets you set up as they see best. The money is spent on Google, Bing, Facebook and other PPC platforms and Trada handles the payment exchange between the SEMs and the company advertising, while taking a small percentage of that spend.

Trada’s CEO told TechCrunch that they hope to be “profitable by the end of 2012.”

In January 2011, the highest earning Optimizer (paid search or Facebook expert) in the Trada marketplace earned $4,500 for the month. Last month, the top earner made $14,500, or $175,000 annualized earnings. And at the beginning of 2011, the startup’s largest advertiser had a monthly budget of about $35,000 per month. Today, Trada’s largest advertiser budget is $500,000.

Tim Mayer, former Yahoo executive, formerly worked at Trada and recently left last month to found a new company called “Heddle.”

Related Stories:

• Crowdsourced SEM “Marketplace” Trada Raises $5.75M From Google Ventures & Others
• Tim Mayer: Search Vet & Ex-Yahoo Lands At Trada

The numbers come from the 2011 State of Digital Marketing Report, which was compiled by Webmarketing123, a California-based online marketing agency. The company surveyed more than 500 U.S. online marketers in August and September; about two-thirds of all respondents identified themselves as B2B marketers.

Whether B2B or B2C, both groups of marketers agree that SEO has the biggest impact on lead generation. 57 percent of B2B marketers credit SEO as their primary source of generating leads, while 41 percent of B2C marketers said the same thing.

Both types of marketers say that website traffic is the primary way they measure the success of online marketing efforts. Brand awareness was at the bottom of the list for measuring success by both B2B and B2C respondents.

The survey asked a number of budget-related questions, including one about which channels get the majority of the marketers’ budgets. On the B2B side, one-third indicated that SEO gets the majority of their budget. But on the B2C side, more than 42 percent say that PPC gets the majority of their budget — about double the number of B2C marketers who said SEO is their top budget allocation.

Overall, 60 percent of respondents said they plan to increase their budget for social media marketing in 2012; 53 percent plan to increase their budget for SEO and 40 percent will increase their PPC budget.

Those increases in social media spending are likely field by another couple statistics from the survey: 68 percent say they’ve generated leads from either Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, while 55 percent have closed deals from social media leads.

The 2011 State of Digital Marketing Report can be downloaded from Webmarketing123′s website. You’ll need to provide name and contact information. There’s also an associated infographic with many statistic, which we’ve posted separately here: Infographic: Digital Marketer Views On SEO, PPC & Social Media.

The Tech 200 ranks companies not based on overall revenue, but on sales growth between 2008 and 2010. Congrats to the following search marketing-related companies that we’ve spotted on the Tech 200:

• Slingshot SEO
• HubSpot
• SEOmoz
• Increase Visibility
• Yodle
• MediaTrust
• Fathom
• Covario
• eZanga
• Wpromote
• Location 3 Media

To be considered for inclusion, companies must submit their data to Lead411; there’s no cost to apply for consideration on the annual list. (If we missed any, please let us know in the comments.)

SEO: One Of Highest ROI Tactics

As part of this year’s list, Lead411 surveyed the companies to find out how they’ve grown their businesses. Although the respondents collectively spend only 13% of their marketing budgets on SEO, it was listed as one of the highest ROI tactics behind email marketing and trade shows, and more than double traditional advertising.

SEO was also the second-most popular tactic in use by these companies, with 74% saying they have budget set aside for SEO efforts. Public relations came in first, with 82% saying they include that in their budgets.

Matt said outright, “We don’t consider SEO to be spam,” and added that SEO is “a valid way to help people find what they’re looking for via search engines.”

He did add that there are bad SEOs out there, typically known as black hat SEOs that can produce web spam. But in general, SEO is not spam and there are plenty of good SEOs out there.

Matt has said several times at conferences that SEO is not spam, but this is the first time he devoted a video to it.

Here is the video:

Related Stories:

• Thoughts On Web Developers, SEO & Reputation Problems
• The Coming Tide Of SEO Tattletales
• Violations & Search Engine Spam Penalties
• Matt Cutts On SEO Tips & Fighting Spam
• SEO Gets Dissed by CBS TV Series “The Good Wife”
• Google’s Locksmith Spam Problem Hits The New York Times

As it states on the website:

Search Quality Alliance is a group of former Google Search Quality team members who offer Search Engine Consulting Solutions on an international scale with local expertise.

From collaboration in international SEO projects, to Google & SEO workshops, to developing new tools including testing and sharing best practices, the Search Quality Alliance offers a range of SEO solutions.

Members of the alliance include people like Pedro Dias, Alfonso Verdugo, Ariel Lambrecht, Jonas Weber, Michael Schwarz and Sebastien Monnier.

Google’s search quality team oversees, as the name says, the quality of Google’s search results. The group includes everything from those involved in the ranking algorithm to spam fighting to dealing with webmaster issues.

We’ve seen Googlers leave Google to offer SEO and SEO-related services (our own Vanessa Fox is one example), and we’ve seen SEOs leave SEO to work at Google (Adam Lasnik is an example here). I’ve never seen a group of Googlers leave to form an alliance of companies offering SEO and web services.

Postscript: Ariel Lambrecht from the group tells us, for those who are wondering if there’s any pitch of inside knowledge:

We won’t be revealing any inside knowledge. That is ours and not to share to anybody. (We want to establish white hat practices in the market (as you can read in our mission statement), with initiatives like communication, training etc.

SEOing Press Releases, Patented!

Yousaf Sekander over at ElevateLocal spotted the news and has his own write-up here. The Business Wire release is here, saying:

Business Wire announced on Wednesday that it has been awarded a U.S. Patent for the technological process of optimizing and distributing press releases to maximize their ability to be found and tracked in leading search engines.

The unique proprietary approach to maximizing the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for press release content is the result of years of research and development and considerable investment. The newly patented process helps users to increase the availability, ranking and click-thru rates of press releases online, particularly in search engine results.

Sound really fancy and high tech? Let’s go to the patent document to understand more. Here is more tech talk from the two main claims:

A computer-implemented method comprising: receiving a document containing content for distribution via one or more online media distribution channels; analyzing a structure of the document; determining optimal modifications to the structure of the document; analyzing keyword frequency and keyword positions in the content of the document, the keyword frequency and keyword positions being analyzed relative to historical data obtained from one or more of the online media distribution channels; determining optimum modifications to the keywords in the content of the document based on the structured document; displaying recommended structural changes to the document based on the structured document modification and recommended keyword modifications to the content in the document to a user in a graphical user interface; receiving input from the user adopting one or more of the structural changes or the keyword modifications to the content; and initiating distribution of the document via one or more of the online media distribution channels.

A computer-implemented method comprising: receiving a document containing content for distribution via one or more online media distribution channels; analyzing a structure of the document; determining optimal modifications to the structure of the document; analyzing keyword frequency and keyword positions in the content of the document; determining optimum modifications to the keywords in the content of the document, the keyword frequency and keyword positions being determined based on one or more of the following: other documents that previously achieved high search engine rankings for keywords in the document, historical data weighted by recency, seasonality factors, and neural networks which adapt based on the actual performance of documents for which recommendations are made; displaying recommended structural changes to the document based on the structured document modification and recommended keyword modifications to the content of the document to a user in a graphical user interface; receiving input from the user adopting one or more of the structural changes or the keyword modifications to the content; initiating distribution of the document via one or more of the online media distribution channels; and analyzing and recording the performance of distributed documents for each optimized keyword in terms of search engine ranking, document opens or views, and related conversion events.

That’s a lot of technical sounding words. Further down in the summary, we get some plain talk:

The systems and techniques described herein allow non-technical users to optimize content through tools and guidance needed at each step that is integrated within a single interface. The current subject matter also automatically tracks and reports on the performance of optimized news and press releases, emailing the reports directly to end users.

Pictures Of An SEO Process

Then you get many more specifics, including a handy chart:

But elsewhere in the images, you realize what’s really being patented is a specific tool that helps someone check and improve a document for SEO criteria. Business Wire certainly wasn’t the first to have such a tool. I’d also be surprised if that current tool clients use look like what was included in the patent:

Patents Purchased From Newsforce

Indeed, from looking at the images, this isn’t even a tool that BusinessWire created. It’s a tool that the now defunct Newsforce company created. They have a series of press release optimization tools, as you can find reviewed here, which look the same as you see in the patent documents.

Some of the principles behind Newsforce are named as inventors on the document. These include Greg Jarboe and Jamie O’Donnell, who run the long-standing SEO-PR firm, John Gaffney, Dana Todd, Mike Zemans, Gary Saner and Marlene Matheson.

I was pretty surprised to see both Jarboe and Todd on the document. Knowing them over the years, they’ve always seemed the sort who would have been leading an attack against anyone who tried to claim a patent on SEO.

My guess is that they, along with others at Newsforce, decided they should patent their particular process for protective reasons. My further guess is that BusinessWire decided that was a handy patent to have, and perhaps to use aggressively against competitors.

I’m checking with BusinessWire for a comment and will update, as I hear more.

Postscript: I have a brief comment from Tom Becktold, senior vice president of marketing from Business Wire. He emailed me:

We’ve pretty much issued this release in advance of our 50th Anniversary NYSE Opening Bell event tomorrow.  It may be referenced during that event, so we wanted to have a basic overview out heading into tomorrow.  We’ll have more information in the coming weeks as details firm up.

I’m hoping to catch Becktold later today by phone to talk more.

Postscript 2: I emailed back:

I think the key thing is whether you’re going to try and enforce this patent. There are a lot of people who do press release SEO, not necessarily with toolsets, but still who might wonder if this is something they need to worry about.

And got this reply:

We continue to strive to maximize the effectiveness of press releases – their reach, search visibility and measurement – on our platform.  As demonstrated by our previous US & Canadian patents awarded for our simultaneous NX distribution technology, we look at this announcement on our 50th Anniversary as a continuing step in our ongoing commitment to lead our industry in innovation.

Postscript 3: I also emailed SEO-PR founders Greg Jarboe and Jamie O’Donnell, to see if they had any comment, as well as Dana Todd. Todd said she was heading for a flight, so I might have a comment later. Jarboe is on vacation, from his auto-responder. But O’Donnell emailed back:

Seven years after Greg wrote the initial product specification for the Newsforce tool it amazes us at SEO-PR how many companies are still interested in training on press release optimization. We are equally surprised how many press release links show up in site link audits. The tactic now plays to the current wave in content marketing.

Newsforce originally patented the tool as part of a roadmap to attract funding. Like hundreds of startups Newsforce made it for a about five years before closing its doors.

We are not aware of any enforcement plans by BusinessWire. As for BusinessWire publicizing it, all of the leading wire services are focused on their competitiveness in search.

We are called upon to perform a competitive analysis of wire services including Google indexing and ranking several times a year. Business Wire has made great progress in the last couple of years as to thousands of pages it now has indexed by Google. I expect that optimization of releases will only grow that number.

Postscript 4: As it turns out, the patent office has been busy on the SEO patent from recently. The patent above was granted on June 28, 2011. Two other notable ones, found by our corresponding editor Gary Price, have also been granted this year:

• System To Modify Websites For Organic Search Optimization: This was granted to Accenture on March 3, 2011
• Method And System Of Optimizing A Web Page For Search Engines: This was granted on Sept. 8, 2011, to three inventors, including Chris Adams, formerly of Hot Banana.

Postscript 5: Dana Todd has sent me this.

At the time we launched Newsforce in stealth mode in 2005, very few companies were actively optimizing their press releases – using software or otherwise. There was nothing on the market that suited the unique needs of optimizing against the news search engine algorithms, nor a solution that addressed the requirements of the audience who was using online PR and had very little technical or SEO background. We were extremely proud of the novel product we built and felt it was worth protecting the IP on it, so we filed for patent. As Jamie O’Donnell said, it was also part of building value for the company and its investors. We were pleased that Business Wire (who were our first wire service partners) found value in it too.

One thing to note: I would never “lead an attack against anyone who tried to claim a patent on SEO”. You’ve known me enough years to know I never attack anyone. But one thing I do know is technology, from years of working in development. This is a solid patent on a specific technological advancement, including a rank-checker that works against news algo results and a wizard that makes it dead-easy for PR people or anyone to optimize a document for news search. While I agree that no one can patent all of SEO (that would be silly, like trying to patent “marketing”), there are plenty of reasons to protect software intellectual property. And yes, we were the first to patent this specific approach and software implementation so it’s worth declaring and protecting as a valued asset and a means of differentiating.

Who gets chosen? Inc. says, “The 2011 Inc. 500|5000 is ranked according to percentage revenue growth from 2007 through 2010. To qualify, companies must have been founded and generating revenue by March 31, 2007. Additionally, they had to be based in the United States, privately held, for profit, and independent—not subsidiaries or divisions of other companies—as of December 31, 2010.”

We were also pleased to note that numerous companies in our own search/online marketing industry made the list. Congratulations and kudos to these companies:

#33 – HubSpot
#40 – CPAlead
#48 – Leadnomics
#58 – Slingshot SEO
#74 – Millennial Media
#84 – Local Splash
#89 – eGumBall
#105 – Yext
#112 – Galaxy Marketing Solutions
#116 – RAMP
#118 – Likeable Media
#125 – TriAd Media Solutions
#130 – ymarketing
#137 – Yodle
#163 – Teknicks
#167 – Cloud 8 Sixteen
#183 – That! Company
#193 – PCG Digital Marketing
#219 – ChaCha
#239 – Capitol Media Solutions
#264 – Balihoo
#325 – Spring Creek Group
#360 – OrangeSoda
#372 – TriMark Solutions
#375 – Local Leads HQ
#418 – Search Influence
#472 – The1stMovement
#474 – G5
#481 – Levelwing #4007 – Vizergy

Did your company make the Inc. 5000 2001 list, and we didn’t mention you? Please let us know in the comments, below.