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Matt Cutts, a senior software engineer for Google, says that piling links onto a competitor’s site to reduce its search rank isn’t impossible, but it’s extremely difficult.”
I saw his last night its now on slashdot and search engine land.
I guess this is the official reason
In summary:
After taking a random sample of 600 Wikipedia articles, 96.67% are in Google’s top 10 for their title.
I hate to do this, but this Friday I am closing Threadwatch. I don’t think the site died at any specific point, it has been more of a process, which I will outline below:
Oh this is great shit. — Google calls for more limits for Microsoft Enjoy the BS Full Story
More confusion about SEO, this time from NYT:
EBay said on Friday the where going to start placing ad’s on Google, but that it would rely on other sources to a greater degree.
I don’t even know where to start. MarketingExperiments recent article, “Harnessing Social Media - Web 2.0 Grows Up - Free Internet Traffic,” has so many holes and is so off the mark, it makes me wonder if they’ve been sipping too much of grandpa’s cough syrup over there.
rumours are a foot : http://internet.seekingalpha.com/article/39120 that Yahoo and Ebay are to merge.
The big thing here for Yahoo is that
a) they get a massive user base
b) Paypal
Latest Headlines from the Search Engine Watch Blog
In what may be the ultimate use of social media, Adam Audette - or just audette on Twitter - is twittering the birth of his child. Live from the hospital are messages on the stages of the process.
We are being brought along for the ride as it starts:
It’s on! Heading to the hospital w/ an extra car seat in the back. I’ll update when we’re checked in
http://twitpic.com/14vs <- Our room at the birthing center
WE EVEN GET PICTURES
http://twitpic.com/14vw <- Sally feeling good!
Sally is 6 centimeters dilated. Hooked to pitocin and ramping up
Now we are getting details! It is great reading… stream of consciousness texting - almost like a James Joyce novel. One wonders how some of our experimental writers would have delivered their art with all the media available today to use.
Adam and Sally I wish you all the best and guess I will be following this one - even on my phone while I am at dinner later - to its happy conclusion.
PS: My vote is for Sophia.
Aaron Wall has written a thorough and unflattering overview of Yahoo search traffic following the release of search numbers that show Yahoo gets well over half its search volume from its partners.
Aaron discusses how this impacts arbitrage and motivates poor quality. Though possibly just a little harsh, it is worth reading and keeping in mind.
Recent numbers from Efficient Frontier show that Yahoo has nearly three times more search partners than Google - funny given Google has over three times more search volume. And as Aaron notes direct search converts “nearly twice” more than partner search traffic.
Not good numbers moving forward in a battle for the search industry. But I always managed to convert Yahoo traffic at a better CPA than Google in the financial vertical. So maybe there are niches where Yahoo benefits from its partners…. will have to keep track of this one.
All those media pundits who said Google is a publisher are wrong.
Google isn’t a publisher. Google is a broadcaster. The 4th Network.
Or maybe just a search factory. We’ll know for sure soon.
On Monday, May 19, 2008, Google will webcast the “Google Factory Tour of Search” from Mountain View, CA and their Googleplex headquarters. Featured will be VP Marissa Mayer and product directors R.J. Pittman, Carter Maslan, and Johanna Wright among other Googlers certain to make cameos.
The focus? Google Health. Not “health” as in “stock price” but Google Health as in Google Docs.
Google promises an insider’s perspective on Search. You can’t be any more of an insider than webcasting from Google’s black box. Plus, the speakers will provide an update on Google Health.
You can find videos of executive talks and much more on the Official Google Channel on YouTube.
photo credit: Sydney Morning Herald
After receiving feedback from the recent updates to Mobile Live Search, the team over at Microsoft has made even more updates. Here’s what to expect:
– Weather
– Traffic coverage for more cities through Live Maps
– Map a Contact
– Speech recognition via Bluetooth (available only on select devices)
– Collections - allows users to search community-generated content. See image below for an example of “dog parks in San Francisco.”
What do you think of these updates? Let us know in the comments.
Related Reading:
Price Check! Products Added to Mobile Live Search
Google FriendConnect friended Facebook. It looked as if Facebook (stocked with former Google executives) might become BFFs (best friends forever).
Then Facebook blocked Google FriendConnect.
The message is clear:
Dear Google,
Facebook is just not that into you.
Facebook says Google has forced them to break off their FriendConnect relationship. Apparently, Google has invaded the privacy of Facebook users without their permission.
Facebook hasn’t turned a cold shoulder or abandoned the search giant. The social network has “reached out” to Google to find a way to make it work.
We view this trial separation leading to divorce, not an open marriage.
Here’s what Facebook had to say in their developers’ blog, under “Thoughts on Privacy.” Read, “I want to be alone.”
Now that Google has launched Friend Connect, we’ve had a chance to evaluate the technology.
We’ve found that it redistributes user information from Facebook to other developers without users’ knowledge, which doesn’t respect the privacy standards our users have come to expect and is a violation of our Terms of Service.
Just as we’ve been forced to do for other applications that redistribute data in a way users might not expect or understand, we’ve had to suspend Friend Connect’s access to Facebook user information until it comes into compliance.
We’ve reached out to Google several times about this issue, and hope to work with them to enable users to share their data exactly when and where they choose.
What this means to you: the search engines are becoming more like car dealerships where certain models can be sold under the same roof. Facebook and Google will form their alliances and consumers will lose out.
The full text of the Facebook “Dear Google” blog post is after the jump.
Click to read the rest of this post…
Internet advertising revenues reached an all-time high in 2007, totaling $21.7 billion, which is 26% higher than 2006. The data comes from internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers 2007 Internet Advertising Revenue Report. Keyword search leads the field when it comes to types of internet advertising. Here’s the breakdown of ad types:
David Silverman, partner, Assurance, PricewaterhouseCoopers pointed out that the data defied economic woes: “Despite the current state of economic uncertainty, 2007 was another record year and the 13th consecutive record quarter. Interactive advertising is not just the future, it is the here and now, as it represents a meaningful and growing component of U.S. advertising and marketing spend.”
What are your thoughts on 2007 internet ad revenues? Leave us a comment and let us know!
Related Reading:
IAB/PwC Reports New Heights, Slower Growth in Online Ad Revenues
Google leads in UK search engine spending for the first quarter of 2008, according to data released by Efficient Frontier. The search engine enjoyed 85% of the market. Click-Through Rates (CTR) actually saw a slight decline for Google over Q4 2007, but the ROI increased by 14%.
The same couldn’t be said for Yahoo. Yahoo’s search advertising market share was 11.9%, down 0.5% from Q4 2007. CTR declined 38% quarter-over-quarter and ROI declined 6%.
MSN increased their market share by 0.4% in Q1 to reach a 3.5% market share in the UK. While MSN’s ROI dropped 10%, it was still 17% higher than Google’s ROI.
Related Reading:
Paid Search Click Data: Syndicated Versus Pure Search Referrals
Social Networking on Mobile Phones is Hot in the UK
Google Sees 79% European Market Share in March 2008
Yahoo just announced they will be partnering with WPP to provide access to their advertising inventory to the clients and agencies associated with WPP. The agreement involves the use of WPP’s recent acquisition, 24/7 Real Media.
The press release (below) suggests Yahoo will give direct access to available inventory to the clients and agencies partnered with WPP.
The real question is if the inventory will be strategically grouped remanent traffic or direct access to all traffic in some type of bidding mechanism.
Beyond that it also seems Yahoo is trying to develop a hands off method for monetizing their traffic. First working on the change over to Google’s paid search and now this partnership with WPP to sell their other media…..
The other view - which may be more accurate now before everyone just starts using the third party vendors - is that Yahoo is trying to maximize all possible ways to sell their traffic in all its forms.
Let’s see how this impacts stock prices tomorrow.
Read the press release after the jump:
Click to read the rest of this post…
The addition of sitelinks to the top listing in certain Google searches can be a boon to site owner. Unfortunately, as with all tests of new technology, this feature has some pretty serious bugs. In today’s SEM Crossfire column, “Google Sitelinks - The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,” Chris Boggs shows you how to fix the ones that are a fault of your site structure, and deal with the ones that are Google’s fault.
Advanced practitioners come to an agency with the skills in place to help grow the business. That’s why we hire them. In today’s Business of Search column, “Training Your Search Marketing Employees - Part 2,” Fionn Downhill notes that because they’re skilled in relation to their job, the priority is to train them to flourish in the agency.
I recently spoke on the multivariate testing panel at eMetrics in San Francisco. You would think that I dropped a hand grenade into the room when I opined that the Taguchi Method was a bad fit for landing page testing. This is a well understood fact to anyone with a solid understanding of basic statistics. Unfortunately this seems to leave out most landing page testers…
In the world of landing page testing there are two common mathematical approaches: A-B Split testing, and parametric Multivariate testing. A subset of Multivariate testing is known as “Design of Experiments” (DoE) and is also called “fractional factorial”. A common fractional factorial approach is called the “Taguchi Method”.
Some online marketers consider A-B Split testing to be kind of wimpy, and endow fractional factorial methods with an almost mythical quality.
I spend way too much of my time explaining to people that at least when applied to landing page optimization fractional factorial methods are a really bad idea. Despite this, the illusion persists that this kind of testing is somehow state-of-the-art, when in fact, nothing could be further from the truth.
For a lot more detail (30 pages worth), download the whitepaper - “The Truth About Taguchi”.
Testing is composed of two important activities:
- Deciding what to test and coming up with good ideas
- Finding the best solution among your tested alternatives
People claim to get really good results with fractional factorial multivariate testing, and they credit this to the method that they use to analyze the data.
In reality, the improved conversion rates are the results of the great ideas for new landing page elements that go into the test. If all of your alternative landing pages designs are better then the original, it does not really matter what method you use to confirm that. Fractional factorial approaches may actually miss the best version of the landing page in your test and often lead you to a sub-optimal answer.
There is a huge mismatch between the original environment in which fractional factorial testing was developed and how it is usually applied to landing page optimization. It was basically transplanted to online marketing because it is relatively easy for a non-mathematical audience to understand, and not because of its appropriateness or fitness for the task.
The principal drawbacks of fractional factorial methods are:
- Very small test sizes
- Restrictive & inflexible test designs
- Less accurate estimation of individual variable contributions
- Drawing the wrong conclusions
- Inability to consider context and variable interactions
Despite misinformation to the contrary, fractional factorial methods do not offer any speed advantage over full factorial data-collection approaches (such as those available in the free Google Website Optimizer tool) if you are simply planning to understand the impact of the individual variables in the test (a so-called “main effects” analysis).
If you plan on using parametric (i.e. “model building” )approaches for landing page testing you should always use full factorial data collection regardless of the subsequent analysis you plan to do. It greatly simplifies your test design, and produces better estimates of the main effects.
All parametric methods (including fractional factorial) are also outclassed by newer non-parametric testing methods such as the SiteTuners TuningEngine, which can be licensed to run your own tests in-house and have the following advantages:
- Very large test sizes (1,000-10,000 times larger with the same data rate)
- Much faster data collection (on the same data rate)
- More accurate results (consider variable interactions)
- Flexible test construction
- No knowledge of statistics required
Hopefully this will set the record straight. If you still have an issue with this, and insist on proclaiming the superiority of fractional factorial methods, tell your statistician to call us and I will have my Chief Scientist beat them up properly.
There is a discussion at WebmasterWorld forums about Yahoo sending visitors to country specific versions of their homepage.
So if you try and go to Yahoo.com from England or Germany you end up at the country specific version of the Yahoo homepage. Google has been doing this for a long time, interesting that it has taken this long for Yahoo to catch on and drive local traffic to their many country specific sites.
Could this help international search numbers?
Yahoo’s Chairman of the Board Roy Bostock fired back a reply, on behalf of the beleaguered board members Carl Icahn has been trying to replace, stating Icahn had a “significant misunderstanding of the facts about the Microsoft proposal and the diligence with which our board evaluated and responded to that proposal”.
Icahn had sent an open letter to the board informing them of his intended proxy fight, Kevin Newcomb reported earlier today.
Read Bostock’s letter after the jump:
Click to read the rest of this post…
The U.S. government charged a mother who allegedly used MySpace in a deadly hoax that drove her daughter’s 13-year-old classmate (pictured here) to suicide with conspiracy.
Missouri resident Lori Drew, after her daughter’s schoolgirl fights with neighbor Megan Meier, 13, created a fake MySpace account to pose as a boy and flirt with Meier. When Drew began using her online identity to taunt Meier, the girl hanged herself.
The boy Megan had been corresponding with on MySpace unexpectedly began calling her a fat slut. He wrote “the world would be a better place without you.” It turns out he was a hoax created by the mother of a former friend.
Drew was indicted today for conspiracy and accessing protected computers without authorization to inflict emotional distress. She faces 20 years in prison, the maximum penalty.
“Any adult who uses the internet or a social gathering website to bully or harass another person, particularly a young teenage girl, needs to realize that their actions can have serious consequences,” Los Angeles federal prosecutor Thomas O’Brien, who brought the charges, said in a statement.
The case was filed in California, where MySpace is headquartered.
The suit goes a long way toward establishing and enforcing the boundaries of acceptable and illegal behavior on the Internet in general and social media sites in specific.
Yahoo announced today the general public availability of their SearchMonkey program. This is a program that has been in beta testing with limited partners. It allows the partner to provide Yahoo with structured data that provides advanced information about a web page. This information is then used by Yahoo to influence the presentation of organic search listing results for that page.
This is a very powerful concept in that a modified search listing can surely influence click through rates. Imagine your search listing with an image and several related links built in. Let’s look at a quick example:
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You can see additional examples in my interview with Yahoo Chief Scientist Andrew Tomkins. The interview was published this past Monday and focuses on SearchMonkey.
The basic process for creating SearchMonkey applications is straightforward. SearchMonkey supports multiple formats, including microformats, RDFa, eRDF, XML feeds, and APIs such as OpenSearch, so publishers have many options for exposing the data.
In addition, developers can build sophisticated applications into the search results. An example of this is the notion of an InfoBar. With an InfoBar, you can actually put an active control in your search listing result. When users click on the control, you mini application will run and can present additional data that displays inline right on the Yahoo search results page.
Here is what it looks like:
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The InfoBar provides a very powerful mechanism for managing complex interactions with users right on the Yahoo search results screen. This should have significant value from a branding and click through perspective.
Here is a summary of the development process:
- Application Type – Decide what type of app you want to build (Enhanced Result or Infobar) and enter basic info such as application name, description, and icon.
- Trigger URLs – Decide the URL patterns that will trigger your app.
- Data Services – Data Services are the structured data on which SearchMonkey apps are based. They can be created using data available in the Yahoo! Search index (via data feeds or page mark-up such as microformats or RDF) or by using APIs or page extraction.
- Appearance - Use PHP to configure how structured data should appear in the application.
Commentary
Note step 2, the one in which your application gets activated. A critical part of the program will be determining when and where you would like your enhanced result to show up.
One key element of the program is that creating an enhanced result, or an InfoBar, does not mean that all users will be exposed to them. Users need to enable the enhanced listings on a publisher by publisher basis. In addition, users can change their minds later and remove your SearchMonkey application from their results.
I spoke to Amit Kumar, Director of Product Management at Yahoo, this past Tuesday, and he indicated that in the future that select SearchMonkey applications may get exposed to all comers. Applications that are adopted by lots of users, and not remove by many at all would be more likely to make this leap to general availability. This however, is not a certainty.
Amit also told me that Yahoo is going to setup a Gallery of such applications for users. This will be a place where the user can go to select an application and enable it. It will be interesting to see how much exposure the Gallery gets. This will play a critical role in the rate of adoption of these types of results. The publisher can, of course, promote their own application, and try to drive people to sign up for it.
Another thing that Amit emphasized during our conversation was that the effort level for developers to engage with SearchMonkey is quite low. The platform makes it really easy for them to engage. This could play a critical role in broadening adoption.
One thing I learned in my interview with Andrew, and also from his presentation at SES New York, is that building SearchMonkey applications will not help you improve your rankings. The program is not intended to be used for that purpose.
Personally, I’d like to see a stronger move towards exposing some of the applications to all users. This maybe a difficult thing to implement at some level, and it makes it far more susceptible to spam. But it would certainly accelerate the exposure of these types of applications to the general public.
The early action (in terms of users) will likely be driven by early adopters. Then we will need to see how widely it penetrates the market, and how aggressively Yahoo pushes it forward.
That said, this is exciting stuff. I have long been a believer that search engines should get more information from the publishers, in a structured format. Yahoo has taken a big step in that direction with this program.
