Search Month: November 2008 Search News, In Review

Search Month is a monthly newsletter that recaps stories covered on Search Engine Land over the past month. It’s also available by feed here. Below, news about Search Engine Land itself, then our 10 most popular stories from November 2008, then a major story for various search topics along with other stories related to those topics covered during November.

Search Engine Land News

REGISTER FOR SMX WEST! Search Engine Land’s next three day Search Marketing Expo conference arrives in Silicon Valley this coming February. Running Feb. 10-12, 2009, SMX West will cover all aspects of search marketing. Register now to save with special pre-agenda pricing. Learn more in these posts:

Also be sure to learn more at the SMX West web site.

MORE SMX SHOWS! Aside from SMX West, here are other SMX events on the calendar, for those doing forward planning:

SMX Munich, April 22-23, 2009
SMX Social Media Marketing, April 29-30, 2009
SMX Advanced, June 2-3, 2009

UPCOMING SEARCH WEBCASTS! Don’t miss the free online webinars offered by our sister-site Search Marketing Now. Upcoming sessions:

Search Marketing 2008: What We’ve Learned, Where We’re Headed, December 11, 2008
Paid Search for Big Sites, Big Brands, January 13, 2009
Blended Search 2009: Strategies for Large SEO Campaigns, January 21, 2009

SMX & SEARCH ENGINE LAND SOCIAL OPTIONS! Remember, a good way to keep up on all of our events is by reading the SMX Blog. You can also socialize in a variety of ways:

Facebook SMX Group: Has links to all the official SMX events pages on Facebook. You can also meet others who have a general interest in SMX or have attended one of our events this way. There’s also the Facebook SMX Fan Page. In addition, Search Engine Land has both a fan page and a group on Facebook.
LinkedIn: SMX – Member of LinkedIn? Join the SMX group there and connect with others who are interested in our conferences. We also have a Search Engine Land LinkedIn Group, too.
Yahoo Upcoming SMX Group: Network with others interested in SMX events, plus easily jump to the official events pages on Upcoming from here.

Top 10 Most Popular Stories: November 2008

1) Maps Of Fires In Southern California: November 2008 Edition – Fires are burning in Southern California once again. Here’s an update on how to find maps of where the blazes are.

2) Are Our Brains Becoming “Googlized?” – Are our brains being rewired by using the Internet? The evidence tends to be pointing that way. As somebody interested in how the mind works, I read with interest the results of a recent study at UCLA that used the sexiest research tool around today, fMRI scanning. fMRI allows researchers to see which parts of the brain are active when participants are exposed to different stimuli. And for the first time I’m aware of, this was used to track brain activity while people engaged in various online tasks, including searching. First of all, the “official” story of the study. Then I’ll launch off into my own personal speculation, as the study raises some mind altering implications, and I use that term “mind altering” in it’s literal sense.

3) Election Results From The Search Engines & Beyond – Today, the United States is electing a new president, voting on one-third of the seats in the U.S. Senate, and voting on all 435 seats in the House of Representatives. An important election? To say the least! Not to worry, though. The internet, and the major search engines, in particular, will have you covered. Here’s a look at how the search engines are planning to help you get the real-time election results you’re looking for tonight.

4) Google’s New Search-Based Keyword Tool Tells You What Keywords You’re Missing – Google released a new keyword tool tonight, named the Search-Based Keyword Tool. This tool goes beyond what the other Google tools provide and tells you what keywords you are currently missing out on based on search query data from your site’s content.

5) Google SearchWiki Launches, Lets You Build Your Own Search Results Page – Google will announce today (Update: official announcement) the launch of SearchWiki, a major addition to its user interface that allows users to edit search results. When using SearchWiki, you can re-order, remove, or add web pages to the search results for any query. You can also add notes to specific listings. You have to be logged in to a Google account so that the changes you make will be saved and shown the next time you run the same search. “This is a way for search to adapt to a more interactive experience,” says Google Product Manager Cedric Dupont. “We ran a bunch of experiments, and the response was overwhelmingly positive from our users. They asked for this feature.”

6) Eagerly Awaiting Google’s Voice Search For The iPhone – Yesterday, arguably the top tech story of the day was Google’s introduction of voice search for its iPhone app. As of this morning, the updated app still isn’t available in the iTunes store (that’s not Google’s fault). I spoke yesterday afternoon with Google’s Mike Cohen and Gummi Hafsteinsson about the app and how it would work. What they described was something that sounded qualitatively different in terms of accuracy and usability vs. competitive offerings now in the market.

7) Google Hosting Time-Life Photo Archive, 10 Million Unpublished Images Now Live – TimeWarner and Google have announced that starting today Google will make available millions of images from the Life Magazine photo archive. The vast majority (97 percent) of these images have never been seen by the public (they were sitting around in physical envelopes). These are hard-copy photographs that have been or are being scanned by Google and will be hosted by Google. They will show up in Google.com and Google Image search results. All these photos are available in high-resolution (5 and 6 megapixels). The images will be free to use for “personal and research purposes” but will be digitally watermarked to prevent unauthorized or unlicensed commercial uses. There are links to appropriate contacts for those who want to use the images commercially.

8) Google SearchWiki 101: An Illustrated Guide – Google SearchWiki — a new feature that allows you to move and comment on search results — has been out for less than a day, and it’s amazing to see how much confusion (as well as commentary) there is already developing. So below, some clarification on how it works, opportunities search marketers should consider, some privacy issues and ideas for improving it.

9) Where Can I Vote? Google Maps Lists Voting Locations! - According to Google Trends, lots of people are currently trying to figure out where their local polling place is. So it’s time for a good reminder of what we covered earlier. Google Maps has a special area and search shortcut to help you find where you’re registered to vote, voting location hours and more. Searches like where can i vote or polling places make a special “shortcut” box appear at the top of Google’s results.

10) Who’s Got The Flu? Google Flu Trends Reveal State-By-State Activity - Wondering if it’s just you or if others have the flu, too? Google’s announced a new tool that tells you. Google Flu Trends allows you to see flu activity across the United States. How’s Google doing this? Is it now indexing actual human beings, in the way it does web pages? Nah. Turns out that when you’re sick with the flu, you search for that word and other flu-related topics. Google can tell which areas are seeing a spike in flu-related searching, and from that, trends can be plotted.

Ask.com

Jeeves Returns To Ask Jeeves; Ask.com Still Shuns Him – Try it, go to askjeeves.com, notice how it redirects you to ask.com and then shows you the old Jeeves character.

AOL

MapQuest: “We’ve Come Out Of Hibernation” – I recently had the opportunity to interview two senior level executives from Mapquest to find out what the longtime provider of online mapping services is up to. Despite perceptions, MapQuest is actually a more popular mapping destination than Google or Yahoo’s map sites, and the company continues to innovate and push out new features and services, with a renewed level of energy in recent months. What follows is my Q&A with Mark Law, Vice President of Product Development and Christian Dwyer, Senior Vice President & General Manager, MapQuest, Inc. Can you share the highlights of your future road map? See also:

AOL Launches Local Events Search: When.com

B2B

Measuring The Effectiveness of B2B SEO – Many B2B marketers have difficulty justifying the value of search engine optimization (SEO) to senior level executives. Since SEO is a highly-efficient marketing channel with longer-lasting results than most mediums, establishing ROI is challenging yet critical. The information derived from your analytics tool is instrumental in determining the success of your optimization program – and this data can also reveal critical areas for future improvement. See also:

Book Reviews

The Complete Guide To Google’s Website Optimizer – “Always Be Testing: The Complete Guide to Google Website Optimizer,” by Bryan Eisenberg & John Quarto-vonTivadar with Lisa T. Davis. It’s a comprehensive guide to Google’s free testing tool, written for search marketers who are more interested in enhancing the performance of their search marketing campaign than in the analytic joys of multivariate testing. The authors don’t shy away from technical explanations when necessary, but the focus is always on the “whys” of testing even when looking closely at the “hows.”

Business & Revenues

SearchBiz: Google’s Balancing Act, Mr. Schmidt Goes To Washington (?), Yahoo’s Next CEO, Autonomy Jumps The Highway, Black Friday Mixed & The Gift Of Smut-Free Free Internet Access – There’s lots of news today and from over the US holiday weekend. Much of it concerns Yahoo and Google, as it often does in this column. The big buzz generated over the weekend was from the UK’s Times Online report that there was a tentative deal reached between Yahoo and Microsoft to buy the former’s search business for $20 billion. See also:

Google: AdSense

Google AdSense To Improve Ad Filter & Blocking Ads – The Inside AdSense blog has told us they will be improving the speed of the AdSense competitive ad filter and also enhance the blocking capabilities of the Ad Review Center. The ad filter will be speed up to work within an hour, once these changes have been deployed. While the Ad Review Center will be expanded to give you ways to block an “entire categories of ads in addition to individual ads.”

Google: AdWords

Drill, Baby, Drill: Google Finance Gets Ads; Google News Testing Them – In my Ad Age column last month, I joked about Google taking a “drill, baby, drill” approach in rolling out more ads everywhere on its properties. Now the latest ad reservoir to be tapped: Google Finance, as announced today on the Google Blog. You’ll find a new box as shown above sporting ads on the Google Finance home page, as well as ads that are running along the sides of internal pages. See also:

Google: Business Issues

Citing Risk, Google Ends Yahoo Paid Search Deal – Only days after the two companies submitted a modified proposal to try and win the favor of anti-trust regulators, Google has unilaterally decided to discontinue its paid-search agreement with Yahoo, citing “a protracted legal battle but also damage to relationships with valued partners.” See also:

Google: Maps & Local

Meet Pegman: Google Makes StreetView Bigger, Easier To Use – Who knew that the little “man” that helps users navigate StreetView is called “Pegman”? As much as I’m a fan of StreetView, there was always something a bit awkward about maneuvering the little man on the map to launch the StreetView image window. But Google has now made a number of improvements that make it easier to use Pegman himself and StreetView in general. See also:

How To Fix Google Map Spam

Google: Mobile

Video: Google Mobile iPhone App With Voice Recognition Now Available – The Google Mobile Blog announced that the Google Mobile iPhone App, now with voice search, is finally live as an update in the iTunes App store. So I downloaded this morning and decided to offer you a video demonstration of how it works. Before showing you that, let me link you to some of the coverage we have seen so far. Matt Cutts of Google has not only one, but two useful posts demonstrating the features. Waxy shows the behind the scenes on how it works. Plus you can see more coverage at Techmeme. See also:

Google: SEO Issues

Google Offers SEO Starter Guide – Google is getting into the SEO consulting business. Well, not quite. But, Google is now formally offering an “SEO Starter Guide” with practical advice for webmasters about improving search engine visibility and increasing traffic to a web site. It comes in the form of a 22-page PDF. See also:

Google’s Site Search Gets Faster; Yahoo’s Goes Away

Google: Searching

Q&A With Google On SearchWiki (Don’t Expect An Opt-Out Soon) – Four days after it launched, Google SearchWiki continues to attract much attention from critics and fans alike. Meanwhile, there remain questions on how it all works, under the hood. Below, a follow-up to my Google SearchWiki 101: An Illustrated Guide article from last week, answering some of the remaining questions. Oh, and for those looking for a SearchWiki opt-out, the short answer is don’t expect one anytime soon. See also:

Google: YouTube & Google Video

YouTube Formally Introduces ‘Sponsored Videos’ – YouTube is formally announcing “sponsored videos.” This is an evolution and expansion of what was has been informally running under the heading “promoted videos.” The effort seeks to marry Google AdWords-like bidding and targeting with YouTube video content. Accordingly, it’s an auction marketplace but somewhat simplified vs. AdWords. And while there apparently will be a view from AdWords of sponsored videos the two marketplaces are largely separate — for now. See also:

YouTube Defaults Videos In HD Format: But Forgets Embed Feature

Google: Other

Google Reader Now Translating Your Subscriptions – The Google Reader Blog announced that they now are offering translation of your subscriptions. Google Reader now gives you the ability to subscribe to blogs and sites that do not publish content in your native language. You can select the “Translate into my language” option in the feed settings and Google Reader will automatically translate the content into your language. It will also remember this setting and continue to show you the translated version of that subscription, going forward. See also:

In House SEM

In-house SEOs: Put On Your Detective Hat – When you’re an in-house SEO, much of your success is dependent on the information you dig up and how you use it. “I feel like a detective” said my client two days into intake discussions with IT. Whenever you interact with someone from IT and they talk about what they are working on, listen for buzz words – documentation names, project deliverables, etc. so that you can poke around to find out if it’s something that you need to be a part of. See also:

Link Building

Forums Are So Much More Than Signature Links – Yesterday, while I was in Hancock Fabrics, a woman standing in front of me told the cashier she loved the store’s discussion forum. She said it helped her more than once and turned to it whenever she had a problem or was looking for ideas. What made the conversation interesting was the fact the woman in front of me was 72 years young. So much for the idea older people aren’t online and forums are a dying breed. When you talk about forums and link building, most people focus on signature links or attracting links through repeated brand and reputation exposure. Signature links tend to be weak algorithmically, they’ve been abused almost to the point of no return and add little to your link reputation. Building links through brand and reputation management takes time so it’s not considered a proactive link building tactic. If signature links are basically worthless and brand attraction takes a while, how else can you use a forum to attract links? There are a couple of things you can do. Let’s talk about two: running membership based link promotions and developing networks. See also:

Local Search & Maps

Citysearch Debuts Broad Redesign: More Social, Local & Mobile – The venerable local arts and entertainment guide Citysearch, which has, in the last couple of years, confronted a new generation of challengers (mostly notably Yelp), launched a broad redesign last night. The comprehensive new site introduces the ability to get more listings and content at the neighborhood level, allows users to sign in using Facebook Connect, which will broadcast their activity back to Facebook, and embraces mobile in a much bigger way. See also:

Local Search Marketing

A Business Idea For Joe The Plumber: HyperLocal Blogging – The 2008 election is over and so, in all likelihood, are Samuel J. Wurzelbacher’s appearances on cable news shows. Wurzelbacher, better known as Toledo’s own “Joe the Plumber,” gained national celebrity, of course, as the symbolic everyman both presidential candidates hoped to reach with their economic messages. Joe’s 15 minutes of fame are about up (or are they?)-which may not be a bad thing. His thoughts on everything from Middle Eastern relations to fiscal responsibility are the subject of frequent press ridicule. Sadly, the economic downturn will last longer than Joe’s 15 minutes. So after his farewell tour of CNN, if he ends up buying that plumbing business he supposedly had his eye on, he’ll need to think up an actual cost-effective marketing strategy to keep its supposed profits at the $250,000-a-year level. Well, Joe, I’ve got one for you: it’s called HyperLocal Blogging. See also:

Microsoft: Business Issues

Microsoft Does MSN Toolbar Distribution Deal With Java – Continuing on with its strategy to build search share by gaining distribution partners, Microsoft has landed a deal to have its MSN Toolbar offered to anyone in the United States who downloads Java for Internet Explorer. See also:

Microsoft: Search

Live Search Launches Instant Cashback For eBay Purchases – Microsoft just announced Live Search instant cashback rewards. This instant reward currently only applies to items purchased at eBay. If you make a purchase at eBay, using Live Search Cashback, you should see the rewards instantly in your PayPal account. Yes, you won’t have to wait 60 days to see the money. Clearly, having instant cashback rewards with all their partners is something we would love to see. But for now, having eBay give you instant cash back is really nice to have.

Microsoft: Search API

Microsoft Live Search Releases New “Silk Road” API With Ad Support – Microsoft today released version 2.0 of its Live Search API, also called “Silk Road,” that offers support for multiple data exchange protocols, access to more search resources and the ability for developers to pull in ads to help monetize search applications they build.

Mobile Search

A Searcher’s Perspective Of iPhone 2.2 Update – Last night Apple announced a software update to the iPhone. This update was pretty major and there are tons of sites covering all the details of the changes. I thought I just focus on the features specific to searching. Apple made a change to the browser, featuring the Google search bar more and a few changes to the Google Maps application. Google Maps now has street views, walking directions, transit directions, and a share location feature. Those are the bulk of the Google and search related changes that I see, were made in version 2.2 of the iPhone. See also:

Paid Search & Contextual

8 DON’Ts and 7 DOs For Holiday eCommerce – The holiday season is almost upon us. It’s time to start looking over the inventory, keywords, and offers to make sure you’re ready for Cyber Monday. In today’s column we offer several things to do and important don’ts that will help you have a successful holiday season. Don’t… Blindly test Traffic in December is unlike any other month of the year. Conversion rates go up, and cost per conversions go down. If you are running split or multivariate tests throughout the month to see which ads or pages convert the highest, do not blindly trust that the data will carry over into January. It is not uncommon to see the highest converting pages (or ads and keywords) not be the highest performer once the buying excitement of the holidays melts away. See also:

Searching

Cyberchondria: When Web Search Makes You Sick(er) – Those muscle twitches you get probably aren’t a sign that you have ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, aka “Lou Gehrig’s Disease”). But if you’re using search engines to diagnose what ails you, there’s a chance you’ll come to that conclusion. In a new paper, Microsoft investigates cyberchondria: “… the unfounded escalation of concerns about common symptomatology, based on the review of search results and literature on the Web.” See also:

Search Marketing Industry

Crappy MP3 Sites, Comment Spamming & Enough Already – In covering search marketing for the past 13 years, I’ve tried not to be judgmental about certain marketing tactics some people might undertake. Search engines have “rules” that they themselves knowingly allow others to break. Arguments erupt over the idea that any type of marketing is “manipulation.” But at some point, enough is enough with some tactics. And today, I’m done. I’m calling bullshit on anyone who is link spamming or creating crappy nonsensical content sites. Seriously, enough. You’ve wasted enough of my time, and you’ve wasted enough time of people all over the web. I’ll give you a personal illustration of this below. Sure, I’ll skewer Google along the way. See also:

Search Marketing Tactics

SEO: Just Deal With IT (The IT Department, That Is) – Every corporation large enough to have an IT department has had search engine optimization problems at one point or another. Well, at least every corporation that I’ve dealt with. And dealing with these issues sometimes requires the diplomatic skills of Henry Kissinger, the technical skills of Bill Gates, the persuasion skills of P.T. Barnum and the people skills of Barack Obama. If you’re in that position, here are some tips for the successful care and feeding of IT people. See also:

SEO / Natural / Unpaid Search

Building SEO Momentum by Using A Consistent Site Structure – Change. It is a part of life, especially on the web. Evolve or die. But some things need not change to be successful. In some cases change undermines your momentum, particularly in the field of search, where most of the traffic goes to the top couple ranked sites. One of the biggest problems in the field of SEO for enterprise-level sites is content management. Product lines, editorial calendars, marketing, and content management systems often dictate that pieces and parts of a site are organized in a sub-optimal way and/or move locations. See also:

Small Business

A Small Business Search Marketing Thanksgiving From A-Z – Thanksgiving is almost here, and as the McGee family sits down at a table full of turkey, stuffing, and potatoes next week, we’ll do our regular Thanksgiving tradition: From A-Z, each family member takes a letter and shares something s/he’s thankful for this year. In that same spirit, here’s a list of things that small businesses can be thankful for — one for each letter of the alphabet — this Thanksgiving. These are things that can make the difficult challenge of online marketing a little easier for any small business. See also:

SMBs, Video and Search – Looking Backward & Forward

Social Media

Why Social Media May Not Be Right For You – I was recently asked whether, if I had to make the choice, would I choose to work in just SEO or social media. Without any hesitation I answered SEO. In the current climate it’s obviously more accountable and seems a more obvious choice to me for brands looking to make reduced marketing budgets go further. See also:

Fortune 500 Begins To Embrace Blogging

Video Search

How To Get Discovered Through Video Search – You may have heard the story about how the band Journey found a replacement for their lead singer on YouTube. While Joe Six Pack may not be scouring YouTube for a new lead singer for his 80’s band, he’s still discovering new things through video search every day. Perhaps it’s a new album, TV show, pickup truck, or Blendtec blender. Savvy online marketers need to get in front of Joe with some online video showcasing their products. Here are a few tips to help your product get discovered through video search. See also:

Yahoo: BOSS

Yahoo Launches “Vertical Lens” Search Through BOSS – Yahoo announced an expansion to the BOSS technology named “vertical lens” technology. In short, this allows developers build their own vertical search engines using Yahoo’s search technology, through BOSS. This new technology is replacing Yahoo’s old Search Builder tool. TechCrunch is one of the first to deploy a “vertical lens” on their site. TechCrunch’s solution searches technology-focused articles on both TechCrunch.com and across Yahoo’s web index. So this helps improve TechCrunch’s internal site search, and also give searchers other relevant search results that are not found on TechCrunch’s domain. Here is a picture that shows how TechCrunch implemented this BOSS technology. See also:

Yahoo: Business Issues

Jerry Yang Stepping Down As CEO; Resuming Chief Yahoo Role – Yahoo has announced that Jerry Yang, Yahoo’s founder and current CEO, will be stepping down from the CEO role after Yahoo finds a successor. See also:

Yahoo: Searching

Yahoo Brings “Glue Pages” To The US – Yahoo has announced that Glue Pages are now live in the US market. Barry wrote about Glue when it first appeared in India. Glue Pages are essentially structured search results, pulling content on particular queries or topics from a range of sources: Wikipedia, news, Yahoo Answers, image search, blogs (in some cases) and video. There are also paid search ads on the page. The sources change with the particular topic and not all topics are available, although the Yahoo Search Blog says more will be added over time.

Yahoo Image Search Adds Search Features

Yahoo: SEO

Yahoo November Search Update – Yahoo has informed us that they will be rolling out a search update over the weekend. Yahoo said, that you can expect “some changes to our crawling, indexing and ranking algorithms over the next few days and expect the update will be completed soon.” As always, expect the ranking to change, hopefully not too much and expect things to settle down over the course of a few days. I have heard only one blip about a change at Yahoo in the forums, but that individual soon retracted his statement. So as of right now, it does appear nothing has yet changed or at least, no one noticed a change yet.

US Presidential Election

Change.gov Launches, But Can You Find It In Search Engines? – If you’re looking for more about how the Change We Need will be implemented by incoming President Elect Barack Obama’s administration, good news! He’s got a new transition website up: Change.gov. Bad news — you’d be hard pressed to find it in search being both new and being untargeted toward any search terms. SEO 101: Know your audience. That means know how your audience is searching for you. What do people likely want from this new site? Chances are, the campaign itself hasn’t thought of this. See also:

Fun, Weird Stuff & Other Things

Google Fixes Veterans Day Logo – Google’s special occasion logos are supposed to be lighthearted tributes to some person, event, or thing … but it’s not lighthearted when a Google logo upsets the very people it was supposed to honor. That’s what happened Tuesday, when Google first posted a Veterans Day logo showing hats representing the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines. Seems Google forgot the U.S. Coast Guard, and heard about it from members of that branch of our military. See also:

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Search Month: November 2008 Search News, In Review

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Search Month: November 2008 Search News, In Review

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