Dec 1, 2010 at 2:38pm ET by Byrne Hobart

Over the weekend, the New York Times carried a great article on DecorMyEyes.com, an eyewear site whose owner claims that bad reviews got him to page one of Google. Danny Sullivan responded to the piece with a look at why Google's algorithm fails and why reviews should be a bigger part of rankings in this particular case. Yet, according to a post by Vitaly Borker, the site's owner: "I just wanted to let you guys know that the more replies you people post, the more business and the more hits and sales I get. My goal is NEGATIVE advertisement." The Times explains his master plan: It's a [...]

Google’s “Gold Standard” Search Results Take Big Hit In New York Times Story

Nov 28, 2010 at 5:08pm ET by Danny Sullivan

The New York Times has a great, detailed story out today about a merchant with an unusual marketing strategy: be mean to customers. Any publicity, even negative publicity, means a win with Google's ranking algorithms. Is he right? Maybe. Certainly the story illustrates the fallacy of Google's "gold standard" search results. Rank Well With Bad Reviews? A Bully Finds a Pulpit on the Web is the story by David Segal. It's long, but be sure to read it. In it, he examines the woeful customer service record racked up by online eyeglasses retailer "Decor My Eyes." Customers have been treated rudely, [...]

Hard News Pays Publishers More Than Chasing Search Trends, Report Says

Oct 18, 2010 at 12:00am ET by Matt McGee

While many news organizations chase traffic by matching their news coverage to what's listed as "hot" on Google Trends, Twitter, and elsewhere, a new report says hard news coverage actually makes the most money for major news publishers. Perfect Market, a company that works with publishers to help them make more money from search engine visitors, has just released its Vault Index, a list of the most valuable online news topics. The bottom line? Hot topics (like Tiger Woods' troubles and other celebrity news) may bring in search traffic, but hard news brings in the most money. Below is a [...]

Google Refreshes Its SEO Starter Guide

Sep 28, 2010 at 5:32pm ET by Barry Schwartz

Back in November 2008, Google published a 22-page PDF guide to SEO. The company has just updated that to provide some new features and content. You can download the new 32-page PDF guide over here. In particular, Google added a glossary of definitions and terms, additional example images to support the content in the guide, mobile devices optimization techniques and clearer wording for better readability. Google has also translated the SEO starter guide in over 40 languages. In addition, they have finally revealed the true identity of GoogleBot. Here is a large image of GoogleBot [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: SEO | SEO: General | Top News

SEO Is Here To Stay, It Will Never Die

Sep 9, 2010 at 11:56am ET by Danny Sullivan

Google's press conference about Google Instant hadn't even ended yesterday when the question of "is SEO dead" started coming up on Twitter, in blog posts and was even asked about formally during the event's Q&A (the answer was no, twice over, by the way). No, Google Instant isn't killing SEO. In fact, nothing's going to kill SEO. I know there are a lot of SEO haters out there who wish this were so, but that hate comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of what SEO is about. If you misunderstand something so much as to hate it, you surely have no understanding about its future. No, S [...]

Study: Three-Word Queries Drive Most SEO Traffic

Jun 28, 2010 at 10:26am ET by Greg Sterling

Ad network Chitika has published interesting findings from an examination of a whole lot of search-driven ad impressions. Specifically, "Chitika looked at a sample of 41,103,403 impressions of search traffic coming into their network between June 13 - June 19." The company found that 26 percent of (organic) search-driven traffic was the result of "three-word searches." Here's the full breakdown of organic search volume by query length: Three words: 26 percent Two words: 19 percent Four words: 17 percent One word 14 percent Chitika added that "any query beyond five words wi [...]

SMN This Week: Vanessa Fox On SEO & Hosting (Tues); Yahoo!-Microsoft On Search Alliance (Thurs)

Jun 21, 2010 at 12:48pm ET by Chris Sherman

Search Marketing Now hosts two free webcasts this week, both at 1 PM Eastern. Tomorrow, Tuesday June 22, Vanessa Fox will deliver a presentation "SEO & Hosting Issues: What You Should Know." She'll explain what every serious SEO need to know about hosting—from understanding which database to use, to the impact of hosting issues on SEO. Thanks to Codero for sponsoring this webcast. Thursday, June 24, executives from Yahoo! and Microsoft will share details with us about the upcoming Search Alliance. "Yahoo! & Microsoft Search Alliance—What? How? When?" will delve into specifics [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | SEM Industry: General | SEO: General

SMX Advanced Session: SEO For Bing Vs. Google

Jun 8, 2010 at 1:16pm ET by Matt McGee

SMX Advanced kicked off this morning in sunny Seattle (yes, seriously) with a packed house for the opening session of the SEO/Social Media track, "SEO for Google vs. Bing: How Different are They?" I won't be recapping all of the sessions I attend today and tomorrow, but will do my best to share any interesting info that comes out of SMX Advanced. (Oh, and I will be live-blogging the two keynotes.) Janet Miller of Search Mojo opened the session with what she described as a "big picture" look at the differences between the two engines. She explained that, for some of her company's clients, Bi [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: SEO | Microsoft: Bing SEO | SEO: General

Top Google Ranking Gets Twice The Traffic Of #2 Ranking: Chitika

May 26, 2010 at 9:30am ET by Matt McGee

A web page that ranks at the top of Google's search results gets twice as much traffic as the number two listing, and triple the traffic as the page listed third. That's according to some new research published by the online ad network Chitika. Chitika's Dan Ruby explains that they looked at traffic coming into their ad network from Google and separated it by placement in Google's search results. Pages in the number one position received more than 34% of all visits, compared to 17% for pages ranked second, and 11% for pages ranked third. That speaks to the value of a number one ranki [...]

U.S. Newspapers Start Selling SEO

May 23, 2010 at 11:37am ET by Matt McGee

Your local newspaper may soon offer SEO services. Heck, maybe it already is. Two of the three biggest newspaper publishers in the U.S. have recently announced that they're selling marketing services to small/local businesses ... and those services include things like SEO, local search marketing, and more. Gannett Newspapers is the latest to hop on the SEO bandwagon. The nation's number one publisher recently opened GannettLocal, a small business marketing division based in Phoenix. The independent Gannett Blog recently quoted a memo written by GannettLocal chief Brad Robertson, who expla [...]

It’s Official: Google Now Counts Site Speed As A Ranking Factor

Apr 9, 2010 at 2:00pm ET by Matt McGee

Google has kept a promise it made last year: Site speed is now a ranking factor in Google's algorithm, and is already in place for U.S. searchers. But Google also cautions web site owners not to sacrifice relevance in the name of faster web pages, and even says this new ranking factor will impact very few queries. More on that below, but first the background on today's announcement from Google Fellow Amit Singhal and Matt Cutts, head of Google's web spam team. Why Page Speed Matters The first warning that site speed was on Google's radar came last November, when Cutts said there was "str [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: SEO | Google: Web Search | SEO: General | Top News

Fortune 500 Still Clueless About SEO, Study Says

Feb 17, 2010 at 7:35pm ET by Matt McGee

Despite spending millions of dollars on paid search, Fortune 500 companies continue to fail when it comes to natural search visibility. That's the conclusion of "Natural Search Trends of the Fortune 500: Q4/2009," the latest study released today by Conductor, a New York-based SEO services/technology firm. Some key takeaways from Conductor's survey of Fortune 500 search marketing efforts include: Only 15% of Fortune 500 companies have "mid to strong presence" in natural search results for the same keywords on which they advertise the most. 53% have "no natural search visibility for the [...]

SEO Industry Cries Foul Over Google SEO ‘Services’

Feb 11, 2010 at 5:59pm ET by Matt McGee

A vocal contingent of search engine optimizers is up in arms today, saying Google is "offering SEO consulting services." There are posts on Sphinn here and here, not to mention plenty of related tweets. Only thing is, Google isn't doing anything they haven't done for years and to say the company is "offering SEO services" seems like a real stretch of the imagination. The uproar started with this blog post on Google's Norwegian Inside AdWords blog, which was written about in English on the Qualité Search Marketing blog. John Andrews also picked up the conversation on his blog. Accordi [...]

Scoring Super Bowl 2010 Commercials: How’s the Search Visibility?

Feb 10, 2010 at 10:11am ET by Vanessa Fox

After the 2009 Super Bowl, I monitored how the commercials drove searches and reported back on how well the brands did at ensuring visibility in organic search results. It didn't go so well. The primary problems were: Microsites - Microsites aren't inherently a bad idea, but too many of them can cause brand confusion, external link dilution, and require that all search-related relevance and authority build from scratch with each new microsite. Display issues - Many of the advertising brands last year ranked well, but due to technical issues had poor titles and descriptions in the search [...]

Google May Be Crawling AJAX Now – How To Best Take Advantage Of It

Jan 28, 2010 at 11:31pm ET by Vanessa Fox

In October 2009, Google proposed a new standard for implementing AJAX on web sites that would help search engines extract the content. Now, there's evidence this proposal is either live or is about to be. Read on for more details on the proposal, how it works, and why it might be past the proposal stage. The Trouble With AJAX Historically, search engines have had trouble accessing AJAX-based content and this proposal would enable Google (and presumably other search engines that adopted the standard) to index more of the web. The standard SEO advice for AJAX implementations has traditiona [...]

Another Person No One’s Heard Of Tries To Trademark SEO

Jan 21, 2010 at 1:55pm ET by Barry Schwartz

HuoMah Blog discovered that yet another person is trying to claim a trademark on the term SEO, search engine optimization. Clinton Cimring of a company called "Search Engine Partner" filed a trademark application with United States Patent and Trademark Office on January 5, 2009. The filing claims first use SEO as a trademark was on September 23, 1996 and first use in commerce was on September 24, 1999. This is the second time in about two years that someone with no general stature, reputation or well-known and documented history has tried to claim a trademark on SEO. In 2008, Jason Gambert [...]

Amazon Slaps UK Affiliates Using Search Marketing Techniques

Jan 15, 2010 at 9:07am ET by Barry Schwartz

Like Amazon did several months ago to U.S. affiliates, Amazon sent an email to their UK affiliates basically preventing them from using certain paid search techniques and free search techniques to drive sales to Amazon. The message sent to their UK affiliates yesterday read: After careful review of our Associates programme, we have made the decision that as of February 1, 2010, we will no longer pay referral fees to Associates who send users to www.amazon.co.uk, http://astore.amazon.co.uk or www.javari.co.uk through keyword bidding or other paid search on Google, Bing, Yahoo!, or any other [...]

The Big List: 2010 Marketing Predictions & Resolutions

Jan 11, 2010 at 6:00am ET by Matt McGee

Here we are, starting the second full week of 2010. Chances are good that you've already made your own marketing resolutions for the new year, or perhaps penned your own set of predictions for what 2010 will mean to online marketers. If so, you're not alone; there's been a lot of thinking about the new year amongst internet marketers. Just like last year, I've been collecting links to as many articles as I could find that offer predictions and resolutions for 2010 to create the following big list. And you're welcome to let me know what I missed down in the comments. SEO Search Engine [...]

Google Search Volume Compared To Type In Domain Traffic

Dec 17, 2009 at 10:07am ET by Barry Schwartz

An interesting post from Elliot compared the number of searches in a month on Google versus the number of visitors received on type in traffic domains. He used the Google Keyword Tool and looked at the traffic of domains to compare the two. The results showed that longer domains received less type in traffic as a ratio to Google searches relative to short domains. The best way to show you what this means is to look at some of the results. I will post two of several of his results here: Google exact search volume for: torah: 49,000 Type-in traffic for Torah.com:1,052 uniques (50% tota [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | SEO: General

Is SEO Dead? 1997 Prediction, Meet 2009 Reality

Dec 16, 2009 at 5:11pm ET by Danny Sullivan

I shouldn't take the bait -- Robert Scoble's latest missive that SEO isn't important. But sometimes I can't help myself for wanting to provide some perspective. I've covered the space going on 14 years now. I've heard the SEO is dead spiel over and over and over again. I feel like a revisit to the first major prediction of this back in 1997 is in order. Somehow, it has survived since then. In that year, the Online Advertising Discussion List was one of the primary ways that internet marketers communicated with each other about trends and tactics. We didn't have forums. We didn't have [...]

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