June 2009

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Hands up everyone who cares about what Yahoo does

June 29, 2009 in Online, Search, Search Engines by Anthony | 1 comment

I did not think that there would be too many of you.

But I often find myself suprised at how often people completely disregard Yahoo as a source for traffic these days. While Google does indeed dominate right now, I do not see how relying on it to provide up to 90% of all traffic is a great idea. Yahoo may not perform as many searches as Google, but it should account for more than a single digit percentage of inbound traffic. It is just good business not to trust a single source for the bulk of your revenue.

Google does have a huge pile of traffic, and getting pages into Google does not take as long as it does with Yahoo. However Yahoo does make it easy to pick content to be displayed as a part of an enhanced search listing.

http://www.ysearchblog.com/2009/03/12/embed-videos-games-and-docs-with-searchmonkey/

Yahoo Google’s Base

More recently, and interestingly Yahoo has also started to support Event, Product, Review, Job, and Personals Google Base feeds.

http://www.ysearchblog.com/2009/06/18/searchmonkey-updates-new-enhanced-results-and-support-of-google-base-formatting/

The takeaway right now

I have nothing say right now on the impact this will have on sites being listed, the size of the query space it will occupy or if this can change the volume of traffic sites will recieve through Yahoo. There are a few points to consider here though.

Google is the biggest, but it is not the only search engine around.

It is still worth keeping up with the number two and three in the market, and do not accept abysmal visibility in them just because they are not Google. There is still traffic there, and if your industry uniformly adopts a Google-centric view of the universe, there is opportunity too.

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Bing in Australia, a few weeks on

June 27, 2009 in Online, Search, Search Engines by Anthony | No comments

Bing has been live in for a few weeks now, and it is time to look back and see what has changed. In short, not much. I have noticed a small dip followed by a spike in traffic on a mature site I work with. The dip in traffic was matched by a drop in terms for which the site was visible. I can only assume that the increase in traffic is due to both the increased attention Microsoft has drawn to their new search engine, and an increase in the terms that the site has appeared for.

Interest in Bing

On another domain I have noticed that terms related to Bing and Bing.com.au have produced a little traffic. This is only to be expected due to the increased interest in the search engine.

SERP reshuffle

One thing that I noticed that is worth watching are changes in the order of sites on the Search Engine Results Pages. For a few of the terms that I have been watching, the top three or four results have remained fairly fixed since lauch. However there has been a bit of movement amoungst the mid-page results. This was even evident on terms where the level of SEO activity can be assumed to be low, and with static sites.

Bing and the Search takeaway

It is simple; there is a lot to be learned right now in how the Search Engine Results Pages have been changing for low competition terms. For now, the changes on these kinds of SERPs are more likely the result of spider and algorithmic activity rather than general updates or targeted optimisation.

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The Pinata of Distraction

June 23, 2009 in Online, Social by Anthony | No comments

Have you ever watched someone beat up on a piñata? It isn’t something that can be done with much dignity. They are blindfolded, given a stick and pointed in the general direction of something big and brightly coloured. Oblivious to their surroundings, they then rail on the poor, mute, defenceless papier mache construction, all for a bit of candy and the amusement of others. In a way it is just like the ‘change the flag’ debate in Australian politics.

It is almost inevitable that if something worrying, or requiring a controversial or unpopular decision looms on the horizon, there will be a Piñata of Distraction. Something big, shiny and filled with junk that everyone can gleefully beat up on suddenly appears on everyone’s political radar, and commandeers all their attention. Traditionally it is either the republic or the flag in Australia. For those in the United States, I suspect it is flag burning for you. Groups from small committees through to corporations and countries all have their own Piñatas of Distraction for leaders to hang up and point to when there’s something else going they’d rather you didn’t notice.

A Piñata of Distraction is not all bad though. It does distract people from huge problems for which there is no easy or painless solution, and lets them take a whack and get angry at something less intimidating. Why worry about a global economic meltdown if you are about to be given $900? Who cares about looming environmental catastrophe when you can just blame other people’s four-wheel-drives and feel better? Who cares about a rise in unemployment when someone might have got a ute for free?

The Piñata of Distraction is essential for the health and sanity of almost any social group. It ensures that they can continue to function in a productive manner, especially when they are aware that the problems threatening the group are all but unsolvable, due to everyone’s rampant self interest. It is far better to slip on a blindfold, grab a stick, and hope you get to have some candy.

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Google’s less popular new toys

June 15, 2009 in Advertising, Online, Search, Search Engines, Social by Anthony | No comments

Google Wave and Google Squared have both received a lot of attention in the last few weeks, and so they should. They both represent new and interesting ways for people to generate and consume content through an easily accessible web based platform. In all of this, there are two other recent innovations that have almost completely escaped notice: Google’s Local Business Centre and Google’s new Search Options Panel.

Google Local Business Centre
A great tool for any business that has multiple locations to manage within Google’s local business listings. The ability to quickly and easily review all listings, and edit a listing’s details is a huge improvement. The ability to add video, photos and coupons to Business listings on Google Maps more easily is significant. Whilst issues regarding ownership and hijacked listings will not disappear overnight, Google’s Local Business Centre will help medium to small organisations address these problems more effectively.

Search Options Panel
The Google Search Options link near the top of every SERP might not have a huge impact on who holds the number one spot in the main results, but it will make content that is normally buried more visible. For organisations with a strong brand, but without the resources needed to generate huge volumes of content, this is something to watch. Control over the name space of a brand becomes more important once user generated content such as reviews, forum posts and videos become more easily accessible to the casual searcher. Personally I expect to hear a lot more from individuals and businesses that specialise in online reputation management in the next year as user generated content such as this becomes even more visible.

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Search, SERPs & Bing.com.au

June 6, 2009 in Advertising, Online, Search, Search Engines by Anthony | No comments

There have been a number of changes hitting the Internet since May in search. Google has released a number of new tools, and there are now approximately one and a half new search engines. This post is about the new half a search engine.

Bing.com
The search engine kind-of-formally-known-as-but-not-the-same-as Live.com has finally arrived, and it is now called Bing.com. There has already been a lot written so far, and some very good articles covering everything from usability through to SEO. I am not going to try to replicate what has been said else where, just add my own observations.

Bing.com vs Bing.com.au
For a number of searches there seems to be a few differences between the main and the geographically localised indexes. When I did a few brand searches, I found that Bing.com.au was returning a different SERP than Bing.com. The most dramatic difference was where a new site was not listed at all in the localised version, while it was visible in the main, for both a search on the site’s name and using the ‘site:’operator . Site descriptive text appeared to vary across the two versions of Bing.com too. With our own sites, this indicated a difference in the age of the information that Bing.com was displaying. There were also a few interesting things observed regarding the treatment of hash tags in site links.

Bing.com ads & additions
Bing.com’s launch is being supported by a monstrous media budget, and will shake things up a little in the search landscape. I personally do not think this will change things too fundamentally. This is no real reason not to keep an eye on it though, as things can always change, and to completely ignore Microsoft’s search engine means that you are ignoring a significant slice of the market. In terms of search, I think it is going to be interesting to watch the localised indexes once they integrate newer information and watch the effect that this has on the SERPS.

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