Google added to its arsenal of search services yesterday with a map service http://maps.google.com/ that's designed to help consumers get driving directions and search for a variety of businesses.
The map service, released in test, uses data from digital mapping providers TeleAtlas and Navteq. Yahoo! and Microsoft already offer map-based directions.
Google Maps lets users search by keyword, address, city name, or ZIP code. A request for driving directions asks for a user's beginning and end points, similar to the MapQuest service.
Users can get detailed views by zooming in on any given route or location. Google Maps http://maps.google.com/ also lets users click and drag a mouse across a map to view nearby areas.
Google recently rolled out a video search service that enables users to look for video content. That service now has 1.1 billion searchable images, according to the company.
Just for kicks here's a look from above of Peak Positions the leading Michigan SEO Company
Google Maps Don't Leave Home Without it !
SEO Blog. Organic SEO Blog. Search Marketing News. SEO Done Right examines search engine optimization, the most effective form of internet marketing. Breaking SEO news and emerging developments at Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Leading Organic SEO Consultants Peak Positions debunk the many myths, hype, and spin related to SEO and search marketing.
Wednesday, February 09, 2005
Publisher Survey Points to Optimism for 2005
9 Feb 2005
Advertising.com's second annual survey of publishers found optimistic revenue projections for 2005, predicting growth especially in text links, large rectangles, small banners, as well as rich media, streaming, behavioral targeting, and organic search engine optimization.
Publishers expect traditional advertisers to continue to shift dollars online, particularly in rich media, streaming content, contextual targeting and large rectangles.
More than two thirds of publishers said they support rich media now, helping that category account for the brunt of increased revenue expectations.
Half say they support contextual targeting currently, and a quarter claim to support behavioral targeting. Deman for organic website optimization and seo consulting services is expected to be at an al-time high as senior level corporate marketing teams and major advertising agencies begin to partner with organic SEO specialists that can drive keyword results in the editorial search results pages of Google, Yahoo, and MSN.
More Information on 2005 Advertising Trend Projections is available at: Advertising.com
9 Feb 2005
Advertising.com's second annual survey of publishers found optimistic revenue projections for 2005, predicting growth especially in text links, large rectangles, small banners, as well as rich media, streaming, behavioral targeting, and organic search engine optimization.
Publishers expect traditional advertisers to continue to shift dollars online, particularly in rich media, streaming content, contextual targeting and large rectangles.
More than two thirds of publishers said they support rich media now, helping that category account for the brunt of increased revenue expectations.
Half say they support contextual targeting currently, and a quarter claim to support behavioral targeting. Deman for organic website optimization and seo consulting services is expected to be at an al-time high as senior level corporate marketing teams and major advertising agencies begin to partner with organic SEO specialists that can drive keyword results in the editorial search results pages of Google, Yahoo, and MSN.
More Information on 2005 Advertising Trend Projections is available at: Advertising.com
Saturday, February 05, 2005
A member of our technical team was recently asked to document the leading reasons why websites are not found on the search engines. I know many of you will find this piece very helpful...enjoy
Search Engine Placement
Moving out of the invisible 'dark web'
Leading Reasons Why Websites Are Not Found On The Search Engines
The databases the power the results on the major search engines are simply machines and data collection storage bins programmed to respond to millions of user keyword query requests on a daily basis. The tremendous demands and stress placed on the server farms responsible for displaying the organized series of hypertext links and text not only need to visit sites and collect information they then must store and 'bank' URLs being collected. As we begin to review some common search engine placement roadblocks and barriers that the spiders must overcome on their content acquisition journey keep in mind that these hypertext spiders are programmed to review (index) billions of web pages (URLs) in all types of code and program variations.
Site Design Problems:
Besides website design problems that lead to web pages missing from the search engine results, there are many other common website design elements commonly used by Web developers that can prevent the search engine spiders from indexing the web pages of a site and result in poor rankings. Here are some common web site design elements that keep web sites invisible and floating around aimlessly in the Dark Web rather than being found consistently in the search engines on keyword searches that matter.
Technical Barriers That Prevent Search Engine Placement:
Many types of technical barriers continue to prevent the search engine spiders from fully absorbing the page content or information contained within billions of web sites. Marketing managers, IT Directors, Webmasters, and Internet Publishers must consider a few conditions whenever publishing on the Internet to help overcome spider barriers in order to help search engine spiders properly record their pages/URLs and websites in an effort to 'open-up' their domains to the algorithmic robot crawlers and thus the public.
In order to be found early and often on a consistent basis in the major search engines website publishers and Internet marketing professionals must keep a few of these top issues in mind:
Some spiders struggle out of the gate as they land on a website for the first time and fail to record a site due to a poorly composed robots exclusion file. The major search engine spiders will ignore even the most popular sites if the code compositions and contents of the robots.txt file is incorrect.
Our technicians offer proprietary search engine placement solutions that help streamlining spider indexing through the construction and placement of a comprehensive robots exclusion file that helps organize the table of contents so desperately being sought by the major search engine spiders. Feel free to contact our technical team if you have questions, concerns, or are uncertain of the required protocols for robots exclusion files.
W3C HTML Code Compliance and Validation:
Invalid HTML code is one of the leading causes of search engine positioning problems.
Code validation and code compliance allows search engine spiders to move comfortably through URLs and also prevents 'spider traps' and 'denial of service'.
Broken Links:
Broken links and server downtime also prevent sites from being found on the search engines especially if a lead spider is crawling the site or attempting to crawl the site and is interrupted or landing on broken links. Broken links, server downtime, or server maintenance often interferes with search engine spiders as they are attempting to crawl and index websites.
Content Management Systems:
Content Management Systems that refresh or deliver updated content on a regular basis often create tremendous confusion with search engines resulting in URL Trust factors that restrict websites from attaining exposure and reaching qualified, in-market users searching for their services on Google, Yahoo, MSN, and AOL. The page contents are dynamically updated and changing regularly which is a 'red flag' in itself and the code involved is invalid and actually leaving 'spider traps' all over the pages of the site. If your company is using a content management system and your site is not being found on the search engines, contact our skilled technical team and we can design an affordable optimization solution that will deliver your content in a clean and valid HTML format to users worldwide.
Again, search engine spiders are seeking relevant content; let's help the world find your valuable content by shining light on to your web site and removing it from the Dark Web.
Frames Website Design is a leading Search Engine Placement Barrier:
Frames Website Design is often times a major website optimization problem. While the search engine spiders can crawl pages from a frames-based design, they cannot accurately parse page text and index page content correctly. Frames web sites usually lead to little if any consistent keyword rankings in the major search engines.
JavaScript & Cascading Style Sheets (CSS):
Incorrect use of JavaScript & Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to code web pages usually results in volumes of redundant code and issues with nesting and tables that weights down the spiders slowing their crawl and making them perform Olympic feats just to get through all of the invalid, non-compliant W3C HTML code. Often times the JavaScript errors inflate the size of the pages making them much too large. The opportunity for code errors and W3C HTML code compliance issues increases with the size of the site as the fundamental web page code errors are multiplied as the spiders try to crawl the inside pages of the site.
Many search engine trade associations and W3C HTML code optimization that complies to the established world wide web consortium standards allows the search engine spiders to quickly and easily locate Relevant Page Content.
That's why fully optimized and W3C HTML code compliant web sites that allow the spiders to quickly find relevant page content, when submitted properly, consistently enjoy page one, top five keyword rankings, long-term on the major search engines.
Dynamic Pages Present Unique Search Engine Placement Issues:
Dynamically generated web sites that are database driven often face unique search engine placement obstacles with the search engine spiders. Do your URLs contain these types of query strings? (e.g. URLs ending like this: ?a=1&b=2&c=3) Peak Positions is considered one of only a handful of natural search engine optimization companies that is able to provide comprehensive search engine marketing solutions for large dynamic websites that are database driven.
Non Compliant Site Submissions Hurt Search Engine Placement:
If your company has used non compliant and or automated software submission programs at anytime the URLs and websites involved might continue to be ignored by the major search engine spiders.
Spam Impedes Search Engine Placement:
In addition to making pages easy for spiders to record, it is important to avoid techniques employed by overzealous search marketers that are considered spam by the search engines.
Cloaking is one such technique.
It involves serving customized pages based strictly on IP address.
The search engine spider IPs are programmed into the server with instructions to feed highly optimized garbage pages exclusively to the search engine spiders in an obscene effort to enhance the page's rank in the search results. When visitors click the link to view that site, a different page is shown that would not ordinarily rank as well. This is a very deceptive and risky practice, and is labeled as "spam" by the search engines.
Such bait-and-switch techniques are heavily frowned upon by the search engines and may result in being "tagged", "removed" or "blacklisted" from major search engine databases.
Don't risk your corporate website's ability to be found in the search engines.
Promotional search engine software programs also expose corporate websites to punishment by the search engine editors because they create gibberish and interfere with the sophisticated hypertextual database retrieval systems that are programmed to produce the most content relevant search results in milliseconds.
Many new self-proclaimed search engine optimization companies have and continue to mislead clients to the notion that no website can ever be "blacklisted", "pulled", "tagged" or "removed" from the search engine's database.
One of the nations largest insurance companies was "blacklisted" in early 2004 as well as a spyware company because of cloaking. We urge you to speak with several site optimization firm's program being considered actually work to highlight and present the relevant content contained within the company website?'.
If the website optimization program being considered does not focus on relevant content or is focused on anything other than relevant content, BUYER BEWARE.
Search Engine Placement
Moving out of the invisible 'dark web'
Leading Reasons Why Websites Are Not Found On The Search Engines
The databases the power the results on the major search engines are simply machines and data collection storage bins programmed to respond to millions of user keyword query requests on a daily basis. The tremendous demands and stress placed on the server farms responsible for displaying the organized series of hypertext links and text not only need to visit sites and collect information they then must store and 'bank' URLs being collected. As we begin to review some common search engine placement roadblocks and barriers that the spiders must overcome on their content acquisition journey keep in mind that these hypertext spiders are programmed to review (index) billions of web pages (URLs) in all types of code and program variations.
Site Design Problems:
Besides website design problems that lead to web pages missing from the search engine results, there are many other common website design elements commonly used by Web developers that can prevent the search engine spiders from indexing the web pages of a site and result in poor rankings. Here are some common web site design elements that keep web sites invisible and floating around aimlessly in the Dark Web rather than being found consistently in the search engines on keyword searches that matter.
Technical Barriers That Prevent Search Engine Placement:
Many types of technical barriers continue to prevent the search engine spiders from fully absorbing the page content or information contained within billions of web sites. Marketing managers, IT Directors, Webmasters, and Internet Publishers must consider a few conditions whenever publishing on the Internet to help overcome spider barriers in order to help search engine spiders properly record their pages/URLs and websites in an effort to 'open-up' their domains to the algorithmic robot crawlers and thus the public.
In order to be found early and often on a consistent basis in the major search engines website publishers and Internet marketing professionals must keep a few of these top issues in mind:
Some spiders struggle out of the gate as they land on a website for the first time and fail to record a site due to a poorly composed robots exclusion file. The major search engine spiders will ignore even the most popular sites if the code compositions and contents of the robots.txt file is incorrect.
Our technicians offer proprietary search engine placement solutions that help streamlining spider indexing through the construction and placement of a comprehensive robots exclusion file that helps organize the table of contents so desperately being sought by the major search engine spiders. Feel free to contact our technical team if you have questions, concerns, or are uncertain of the required protocols for robots exclusion files.
W3C HTML Code Compliance and Validation:
Invalid HTML code is one of the leading causes of search engine positioning problems.
Code validation and code compliance allows search engine spiders to move comfortably through URLs and also prevents 'spider traps' and 'denial of service'.
Broken Links:
Broken links and server downtime also prevent sites from being found on the search engines especially if a lead spider is crawling the site or attempting to crawl the site and is interrupted or landing on broken links. Broken links, server downtime, or server maintenance often interferes with search engine spiders as they are attempting to crawl and index websites.
Content Management Systems:
Content Management Systems that refresh or deliver updated content on a regular basis often create tremendous confusion with search engines resulting in URL Trust factors that restrict websites from attaining exposure and reaching qualified, in-market users searching for their services on Google, Yahoo, MSN, and AOL. The page contents are dynamically updated and changing regularly which is a 'red flag' in itself and the code involved is invalid and actually leaving 'spider traps' all over the pages of the site. If your company is using a content management system and your site is not being found on the search engines, contact our skilled technical team and we can design an affordable optimization solution that will deliver your content in a clean and valid HTML format to users worldwide.
Again, search engine spiders are seeking relevant content; let's help the world find your valuable content by shining light on to your web site and removing it from the Dark Web.
Frames Website Design is a leading Search Engine Placement Barrier:
Frames Website Design is often times a major website optimization problem. While the search engine spiders can crawl pages from a frames-based design, they cannot accurately parse page text and index page content correctly. Frames web sites usually lead to little if any consistent keyword rankings in the major search engines.
JavaScript & Cascading Style Sheets (CSS):
Incorrect use of JavaScript & Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to code web pages usually results in volumes of redundant code and issues with nesting and tables that weights down the spiders slowing their crawl and making them perform Olympic feats just to get through all of the invalid, non-compliant W3C HTML code. Often times the JavaScript errors inflate the size of the pages making them much too large. The opportunity for code errors and W3C HTML code compliance issues increases with the size of the site as the fundamental web page code errors are multiplied as the spiders try to crawl the inside pages of the site.
Many search engine trade associations and W3C HTML code optimization that complies to the established world wide web consortium standards allows the search engine spiders to quickly and easily locate Relevant Page Content.
That's why fully optimized and W3C HTML code compliant web sites that allow the spiders to quickly find relevant page content, when submitted properly, consistently enjoy page one, top five keyword rankings, long-term on the major search engines.
Dynamic Pages Present Unique Search Engine Placement Issues:
Dynamically generated web sites that are database driven often face unique search engine placement obstacles with the search engine spiders. Do your URLs contain these types of query strings? (e.g. URLs ending like this: ?a=1&b=2&c=3) Peak Positions is considered one of only a handful of natural search engine optimization companies that is able to provide comprehensive search engine marketing solutions for large dynamic websites that are database driven.
Non Compliant Site Submissions Hurt Search Engine Placement:
If your company has used non compliant and or automated software submission programs at anytime the URLs and websites involved might continue to be ignored by the major search engine spiders.
Spam Impedes Search Engine Placement:
In addition to making pages easy for spiders to record, it is important to avoid techniques employed by overzealous search marketers that are considered spam by the search engines.
Cloaking is one such technique.
It involves serving customized pages based strictly on IP address.
The search engine spider IPs are programmed into the server with instructions to feed highly optimized garbage pages exclusively to the search engine spiders in an obscene effort to enhance the page's rank in the search results. When visitors click the link to view that site, a different page is shown that would not ordinarily rank as well. This is a very deceptive and risky practice, and is labeled as "spam" by the search engines.
Such bait-and-switch techniques are heavily frowned upon by the search engines and may result in being "tagged", "removed" or "blacklisted" from major search engine databases.
Don't risk your corporate website's ability to be found in the search engines.
Promotional search engine software programs also expose corporate websites to punishment by the search engine editors because they create gibberish and interfere with the sophisticated hypertextual database retrieval systems that are programmed to produce the most content relevant search results in milliseconds.
Many new self-proclaimed search engine optimization companies have and continue to mislead clients to the notion that no website can ever be "blacklisted", "pulled", "tagged" or "removed" from the search engine's database.
One of the nations largest insurance companies was "blacklisted" in early 2004 as well as a spyware company because of cloaking. We urge you to speak with several site optimization firm's program being considered actually work to highlight and present the relevant content contained within the company website?'.
If the website optimization program being considered does not focus on relevant content or is focused on anything other than relevant content, BUYER BEWARE.
Promoting sites on established trademarks or copyright protected brand names is risky business. We were recently contacted by a company who wanted to know if we could help them increase their search engine exposure on the keyword phrase: Planet Beach Franchise Opprotunity they were interested in being found above the actual brand parent company Planet Beach. These kind of expectations are somewhat unrealistic and require gaming or manipulating the search engines to possibly infringe on an established trademark brand name. It seemed like risky business and somewhat removed ethically. We urged this to find another internet marketing vendor or possibly puchase an automated submission software program like submit wolf or web position gold that would allow them to submit as often as they like using nearly any keyword combination they desired.
Recently the topic of cold fusion versus php was raised in an seo blog.
Here are some topline recommendations for database driven websites.
1) if at all possible avoid using cold fusion or .cfm urls
cold fusion is just not worth the long term headaches it causes. As a recent post on google states CFM urls tend to swing wildly whenever the database updates.
2) it is always very important to concentrate on the HTML. Regardless of the structure it all comes down the quality of the HTML.
Both ColdFusion and PHP programs that genreate HTML output. The web
browser makes a request to a video game testing .cfm or .php page, the server then
processes the page and sends the resulting HTML back to the client.
The key to every search engine optimization strategy is to make sure that the HTML generated
meets good SEO requirements. There are many website optimization and give you suggestions for improving your
search engine rankings, for a price. However, it comes down to
following a few basic HTML principles:
* Descriptive text on each page
* Using proper meta tags
* relevant content on the pages
* Clear markup and vaild HTML with CSS styling, clean HTML.
*HTML format, tables, nesting, well formed HTML.
*search engine friendly URLs consider parsing or masking dynamic urls
By using this sort of sign design technology, you allow seach engines to index dynamic content
by publishing dynamic web page content using static URLs
*In most cases PHP holds many advantages over cold fusion in terms of
search engine friendliness. Cold fusion combined with poor
directory structures creates a "death march" in the search engines.
Kind of like buying a Raleigh mortgage loan from an insurance quote service. CFM web sites that even a hint of database structure problems, nesting errors, table isuues, etc.
are prone to fall every 60 days or so in Google, Yahoo, and MSN.
Cold fusion (CFM) urls can be quite cumbersome and difficult for the hypertext spiders to convert and store. These pages are 'heavy' and the heavier urls tend to sink and
fall often like Raleigh real estate values.
Our search engine placement company helps many leading companies rename URLs and move away from cold fusion or cfm. It has been proven that to do well in the search engines it always pays to parse and minimize URL strings in the main sections of the site.
Steve Costello
SEO Technical Coordinator
Peak Positions, LLC
http://www.peakpositions.com
Here are some topline recommendations for database driven websites.
1) if at all possible avoid using cold fusion or .cfm urls
cold fusion is just not worth the long term headaches it causes. As a recent post on google states CFM urls tend to swing wildly whenever the database updates.
2) it is always very important to concentrate on the HTML. Regardless of the structure it all comes down the quality of the HTML.
Both ColdFusion and PHP programs that genreate HTML output. The web
browser makes a request to a video game testing .cfm or .php page, the server then
processes the page and sends the resulting HTML back to the client.
The key to every search engine optimization strategy is to make sure that the HTML generated
meets good SEO requirements. There are many website optimization and give you suggestions for improving your
search engine rankings, for a price. However, it comes down to
following a few basic HTML principles:
* Descriptive text on each page
* Using proper meta tags
* relevant content on the pages
* Clear markup and vaild HTML with CSS styling, clean HTML.
*HTML format, tables, nesting, well formed HTML.
*search engine friendly URLs consider parsing or masking dynamic urls
By using this sort of sign design technology, you allow seach engines to index dynamic content
by publishing dynamic web page content using static URLs
*In most cases PHP holds many advantages over cold fusion in terms of
search engine friendliness. Cold fusion combined with poor
directory structures creates a "death march" in the search engines.
Kind of like buying a Raleigh mortgage loan from an insurance quote service. CFM web sites that even a hint of database structure problems, nesting errors, table isuues, etc.
are prone to fall every 60 days or so in Google, Yahoo, and MSN.
Cold fusion (CFM) urls can be quite cumbersome and difficult for the hypertext spiders to convert and store. These pages are 'heavy' and the heavier urls tend to sink and
fall often like Raleigh real estate values.
Our search engine placement company helps many leading companies rename URLs and move away from cold fusion or cfm. It has been proven that to do well in the search engines it always pays to parse and minimize URL strings in the main sections of the site.
Steve Costello
SEO Technical Coordinator
Peak Positions, LLC
http://www.peakpositions.com
Thursday, February 03, 2005
Search Marketing Association Forming in North America
Almost every professional industry has an association that sets best-practice standards and represents the best interests of their profession. Organizations such as the American Medical Association, the Associated Locksmiths of America, and various Law Societies work to establish legitimacy in both professional practice and public perception.
About two years ago, a number of search engine marketers including: www.peakpositions.com decided to establish an industrial association representing search engine marketers, leading to the creation of the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization, or SEMPO.When it was first formed, SEMPO (www.sempo.org) was welcomed with great interest from a search engine marketing community desperate to establish credibility as the mainstream world began to understand the unparalleled power of search marketing.
Since then, SEMPO has seen a great deal of controversy and is seen by most in the SEM industry as a somewhat dead duck. After the defections of some of the most respected names in the SEM industry such as Christine Churchill and Mike Greham, new SEM associations have formed in the UK and EU, and another is starting to take shape here in North America.
With the apparent failure of SEMPO, a new initiative has been formed by Calgary-based SEO Ian McAnerin who recently wrote, "One of the problems that I saw with SEMPO is that although they state that they have the goal of representing the industry as a whole, in reality it turned out to be only representing the big names". McAnerin is a graduate from the University of Alberta law school (www.gameinstinct.com) and continues to be a member of SEMPO though he has resigned all official positions he held in order to avoid conflicts of interest.
During a recent trip to the UK, McAnerin decided to establish the Search Marketing Association of North America or SMA-NA. Currently formed as a "working group", SMA-NA hopes to officially launch itself at the New York Search Engine Strategies Conference in early March. SEMPO has made at least one strong contribution to the SEM sector with the December release of its detailed survey (PDF format) outlining trends in search marketing (www.i5design.com) . The results of this survey are a must-read for anyone interested in SEM. In every other sense however, SEMPO has not captured the allegiance of the majority of SEM firms or individual practitioners.
Much of the blame for their failure focuses on two important issues: communication and money.In its early days, SEMPO failed to communicate well with its members and others in the SEM industry. There are varying levels of membership in SEMPO but promotional services seem to be reserved for Search Engine Marketing firm that pay the most for membership. As the vast majority of SEM practitioners are either self-employed or are small 2 – 20 person businesses, the cost of membership is too high for most of the industry. Some notable names in the SEM sector inclusing www.peakpositions.com have quit the organization while many other current members are simply allowing their memberships to lapse.
Compounding these problems is the continuing controversy over the extremely high fees originally charged to the organization by its first (and now outgoing) president, Barbara Coll. McAnerin's initiative seems to have put the fear of competition (www.dnagroup.com/rocker-switches.htm) into SEMPO with chairperson Coll allegedly demanding to know the names of members of the SMA-NA working group. (To make it easier for her and to disclose what might be perceived as a bias on my part, McAnerin has invited me to sit on the working group.) Coll defends SEMPO stating that they are looking at the “big picture” and cites the December release of the SEMPO marketing survey as evidence.
In her defense of SEMPO, Coll couldn't resist taking a pot-shot at the newly formed SMAs stating in a ClickZ article, "The vision of SEMPO is to be involved in the safety industry , not in the members necessarily. The research we put out in December showed that we're thinking long-term. I don't think the regional SMA groups are going to focus on the industry, they seem to be about making sure the members are getting benefits".McAnerin envisions two unique arms of the SMA-NA, a combination of one non-profit arm to act as a lobbying and event promoting organization with another for-profit arm offering benefits to members such as discounts, special offers, and members-only RFPs.
A similar model is used by one of the world's largest industry associations, the American Marketing Association (www.marketingpower.com) .
Almost every professional industry has an association that sets best-practice standards and represents the best interests of their profession. Organizations such as the American Medical Association, the Associated Locksmiths of America, and various Law Societies work to establish legitimacy in both professional practice and public perception.
About two years ago, a number of search engine marketers including: www.peakpositions.com decided to establish an industrial association representing search engine marketers, leading to the creation of the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization, or SEMPO.When it was first formed, SEMPO (www.sempo.org) was welcomed with great interest from a search engine marketing community desperate to establish credibility as the mainstream world began to understand the unparalleled power of search marketing.
Since then, SEMPO has seen a great deal of controversy and is seen by most in the SEM industry as a somewhat dead duck. After the defections of some of the most respected names in the SEM industry such as Christine Churchill and Mike Greham, new SEM associations have formed in the UK and EU, and another is starting to take shape here in North America.
With the apparent failure of SEMPO, a new initiative has been formed by Calgary-based SEO Ian McAnerin who recently wrote, "One of the problems that I saw with SEMPO is that although they state that they have the goal of representing the industry as a whole, in reality it turned out to be only representing the big names". McAnerin is a graduate from the University of Alberta law school (www.gameinstinct.com) and continues to be a member of SEMPO though he has resigned all official positions he held in order to avoid conflicts of interest.
During a recent trip to the UK, McAnerin decided to establish the Search Marketing Association of North America or SMA-NA. Currently formed as a "working group", SMA-NA hopes to officially launch itself at the New York Search Engine Strategies Conference in early March. SEMPO has made at least one strong contribution to the SEM sector with the December release of its detailed survey (PDF format) outlining trends in search marketing (www.i5design.com) . The results of this survey are a must-read for anyone interested in SEM. In every other sense however, SEMPO has not captured the allegiance of the majority of SEM firms or individual practitioners.
Much of the blame for their failure focuses on two important issues: communication and money.In its early days, SEMPO failed to communicate well with its members and others in the SEM industry. There are varying levels of membership in SEMPO but promotional services seem to be reserved for Search Engine Marketing firm that pay the most for membership. As the vast majority of SEM practitioners are either self-employed or are small 2 – 20 person businesses, the cost of membership is too high for most of the industry. Some notable names in the SEM sector inclusing www.peakpositions.com have quit the organization while many other current members are simply allowing their memberships to lapse.
Compounding these problems is the continuing controversy over the extremely high fees originally charged to the organization by its first (and now outgoing) president, Barbara Coll. McAnerin's initiative seems to have put the fear of competition (www.dnagroup.com/rocker-switches.htm) into SEMPO with chairperson Coll allegedly demanding to know the names of members of the SMA-NA working group. (To make it easier for her and to disclose what might be perceived as a bias on my part, McAnerin has invited me to sit on the working group.) Coll defends SEMPO stating that they are looking at the “big picture” and cites the December release of the SEMPO marketing survey as evidence.
In her defense of SEMPO, Coll couldn't resist taking a pot-shot at the newly formed SMAs stating in a ClickZ article, "The vision of SEMPO is to be involved in the safety industry , not in the members necessarily. The research we put out in December showed that we're thinking long-term. I don't think the regional SMA groups are going to focus on the industry, they seem to be about making sure the members are getting benefits".McAnerin envisions two unique arms of the SMA-NA, a combination of one non-profit arm to act as a lobbying and event promoting organization with another for-profit arm offering benefits to members such as discounts, special offers, and members-only RFPs.
A similar model is used by one of the world's largest industry associations, the American Marketing Association (www.marketingpower.com) .
Wednesday, February 02, 2005
Google company released its 4th quarter revenues from 2004 and also discussed new products and plans in the works for the coming months. Here is an update from Google on their fiscal status. A couple of key points.
GOOGLE ANNOUNCES RECORD REVENUES FOR FOURTH QUARTER AND FISCAL YEAR 2004 MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - February 1, 2005 – Google Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOG) today announced financial results for the quarter ended December 31, 2004.
Google reported record revenues of $1.032 billion for the quarter ended December 31, 2004, up 101% year over year. Google reports its revenues, consistent with GAAP, on a gross basis without deducting traffic acquisition costs ("TAC"), or the portion of revenues shared with our partners. Income from operations, on a GAAP basis, was $303 million, or 29.4% of revenues for the quarter ended December 31, 2004 compared to $86 million or 16.9% of revenues for the prior year’s quarter. Income from operations includes a $60 million non-cash, stock-based compensation charge compared to a $85 million non-cash, stock-based compensation charge in the prior year’s quarter. Net income on a GAAP basis for the quarter ended December 31, 2004 was computed based on the following income statement or condensed income statement line items. Net income is derived from the above mentioned revenues of $1.032 billion, traffic acquisition costs of $378 million, as well as other costs and expenses before stock-based compensation of $291 million, stock-based compensation of $60 million, other income of $7 million and a provision for income taxes of $106 million. Some Wall Street analysts use non-GAAP measures to analyze our operating results. For instance, they may subtract traffic acquisition costs of $378 million from revenues of $1.032 billion to arrive at a net revenues amount. Also, certain analysts may arrive at net income before stock-based compensation by subtracting traffic acquisition costs of $378 million, other costs and expenses before stock-based compensation of $291 million (less other income of $7 million) and a provision for income taxes of $106 million from revenues of $1.032 billion. Net income on a GAAP basis in the fourth quarter of 2004 was $204 million or $0.71 per share on a diluted basis based on 285.9 million weighted average shares outstanding. Net cash provided by operating activities for the twelve months ended December 31, 2004 totaled $977 million as compared to $395 million last year, an increase of 147%. Adjusted EBITDA, another measure of liquidity, increased by $236 million or 125% to $425 million (or 41% of revenues) in the fourth quarter of 2004 from $189 million in same quarter of 2003 (or 37% of revenues) and from $321 million (or 40% of revenues) in the third quarter of 2004. "Google had an exceptional quarter. Revenues and profits increased significantly, our execution was solid across the company and most importantly, our relationship with our users, partners and advertisers became even stronger," said Eric Schmidt, Google chief executive officer. "All of this happened while we continued to innovate, expand around the world and make strategic, long-term investments."
Q4 Financial Highlights
Revenues - Revenues in the quarter totaled a record $1.032 billion, representing a 28% increase over the third quarter of 2004 and a 101% year-over-year increase. This revenues growth reflects strong traffic and monetization growth in the quarter as well as advertisers’ growing recognition of the Internet as an effective advertising medium.
Google-Sites Revenues - Google-owned sites generated $530 million or 51% of total revenues. This represents an increase of 118% over the fourth quarter of 2003.
The Google Network - Revenues generated on Google’s partner sites, through AdSense programs, contributed $490 million, or 48% of total revenues, a 92% increase over the Network revenues generated in the same quarter last year. TAC - Traffic Acquisition Costs, the portion of revenues shared with Google’s partners, increased to $378 million or 77% of Google Network revenues. This compares to total payments to partners of $216 million in the fourth quarter of 2003, or 85% of Google Network revenues. Income from operations - Income from operations in the quarter, on a GAAP basis, totaled $303 million or 29.4% of revenues, and included a non-cash charge of $60 million for stock-based compensation. This compares to operating income of $86 million or 16.9% of revenues in the same period of 2003, when the stock-based compensation charge was $85 million. This improvement in operating margins was primarily due to decreases in stock-based compensation expense and traffic acquisition cost as a percentage of revenues. Income Taxes - Google recorded a provision for income taxes of $106 million in the fourth quarter, an effective tax rate of 34% as compared to a $62 million provision for income taxes and a 70% effective tax rate in the fourth quarter of 2003. The provision for income taxes in the fourth quarter was reduced by $66 million related to certain items, $42 million due to ISO disqualifying dispositions and $24 million related to certain stock-based compensation charges recognized prior to the IPO. The company expects its effective tax rate before these items to generally trend lower over the long term to a rate below 35%. However, the company may experience volatility in its quarterly effective tax rates as a result of certain stock option activity. Net Income - Net income on a GAAP basis increased to $204 million or 19.8% of revenues in the fourth quarter of 2004 as compared to $27 million or 5.3% of revenues in the fourth quarter of 2003. Earnings on a diluted per share basis were $0.71 in the fourth quarter of 2004 as compared to $0.10 in the fourth quarter of 2003. Fiscal Year 2004 Financial HighlightsRevenues - Google reported revenues for calendar year 2004 of $3.189 billion, a 118% increase over the $1.466 billion reported for 2003. Google saw growth throughout the year both in our domestic business and internationally, both on Google owned sites and on the Google Network. Specifically, revenues from Google owned sites increased 101% on a year over year basis, from $792 million to $1.6 billion. The company attributes the rapid growth to increased visits to its sites and to its accumulated knowledge of how to more effectively and efficiently monetize that traffic. Revenues from the Google Network grew 147% in the year, from $629 million in 2003 to $1.6 billion in 2004. This growth reflects growth in the number of partners in the network in both the AdSense for Search and the AdSense for Content programs, as well as improved monetization of those programs. Income from Operations – On a GAAP basis (including the settlement charge) our operating income in 2004 rose 87% on a year-over-year basis to $640 million, representing a full year operating margin of 20.1%. Excluding the effect of a third-quarter, 2004 non-cash, non-recurring charge associated with a legal settlement, our operating income for the full year 2004 increased 146% to $841 million, up from $342 million the prior year. Again, excluding the aforementioned charge, our operating margin for the full year rose to 26.4% from 23.4% the previous year. Operating income as reported in both 2004 and 2003 was reduced by significant non-cash stock-based compensation charges of $279 million and $229 million respectively. Net Income – Net income for the year 2004 rose to $399 million from $106 million in 2003, an increase of 278%. Adjusting for the impact of the third quarter 2004 settlement charge and for certain tax benefits, net income totaled $406 million in 2004. On a GAAP basis, earnings per share increased to $1.46 this year from $0.41 in 2003. Cash Flow – Net cash provided by operating activities increased 147% to $977 million for the twelve months ended December 31, 2004 from $395 million in 2003. Free cash flow is an alternative measure of liquidity to GAAP net cash provided by operating activities and is calculated as operating cash flows less capital expenditures. Capital expenditures were $319 million in the twelve months ended December 31, 2004 as compared to $177 million in the twelve months ended 2003. Free cash flow for the twelve months ended December 31, 2004 totaled $658 million as compared to $219 million for the same period in 2003, an increase of 200%. Adjusted EBITDA – Adjusted EBITDA is defined as EBITDA before the non-cash stock-based compensation charge, the non-cash and non-recurring settlement charge and in-process R&D. It is another alternative measure of liquidity to GAAP net cash provided by operating activities. Adjusted EBITDA increased to approximately $1.280 billion in 2004, or 40% of revenues, from $638 million, or 44% of revenues, in 2003. For the fourth quarter of 2004, adjusted EBITDA increased to $425 million from $321 million in the third quarter. The reconciliation of adjusted EBITDA to the GAAP measure of liquidity, net cash provided by operating activities, is set forth at the back of this release. Cash – As of December 31, 2004, Google had a cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments balance of $2.132 billion. On a worldwide basis, Google employed 3,021 full time employees as of December 31, 2004, up from 2,668 as of September 30, 2004. A live audio webcast of Google’s fourth-quarter earnings release call will be available at http://investor.google.com/news.html. The call begins today at 1:30 p.m. (PDT)/ 4:30 (EDT). This press release, the financial tables as well as other supplemental information including the reconciliations of certain non-GAAP measures to their nearest comparable GAAP measures, are also available at that site. A replay of the call will be available beginning at 7:30 PM EDT through midnight Tuesday, February 15, by calling (888) 203-1112 in the United States or (719) 457-0820 for calls from outside the United States. The required confirmation code for the replay is 0676870. Forward looking statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, including statements relating to the Google's market opportunity and future business prospects. Actual results may differ materially from the results predicted and reported results should not be considered as an indication of future performance. Factors that could cause actual results to differ from the results predicted are included in Google's quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and from time to time in other reports filed by Google with the Securities and Exchange Commission. About non-GAAP financial measures To supplement Google’s consolidated financial statements presented in accordance with GAAP, Google uses non-GAAP measures of certain financial performance and liquidity. These non-GAAP measures are comprised of income from operations, net income and net income per share before material non-recurring and other items, as well as free cash flows and adjusted EBITDA. Google’s management believes that income from operations before material non-recurring and other items and net income before material non-recurring and other items provide meaningful supplemental information regarding the company’s core operating results because they exclude amounts that are not necessarily related to those core results and are of a substantially non-recurring nature. Google’s management believes that free cash flows and adjusted EBITDA provide meaningful supplemental information regarding liquidity.
Google believes that both management and investors benefit from referring to these non-GAAP financial measures in assessing the performance of Google’s ongoing operations and liquidity and when planning and forecasting future periods. These non-GAAP financial measures also facilitate management’s internal comparisons to Google’s historical operating results and liquidity. Google computes its non-GAAP financial measures using the same consistent method from quarter to quarter and year to year. The accompanying tables have more details on the GAAP financial measures that are most directly comparable to non-GAAP financial measures and the related reconciliations between these financial measures.
Media Contacts: Google Inc. Steve Langdon, 650-623-4950 slangdon@google.comDavid Krane, 650-623-4096 david@google.com
Friday, January 28, 2005
Lets take a look at Google:
How does Google make money?
We make most of our money from the sale of advertising, which appears adjacent to our own search results and on sites maintained by a large network of publishers across the web who participate in our AdSense program. These ads, known as AdWords, are automatically matched to the content of the page on which they appear by our proprietary software. On Google properties, ads are always clearly identified as such and are physically separated from the algorithmically derived search results.
Google does not sell placement within our actual search results. We believe paid advertising can provide information as useful as search results, but that users should always be able to distinguish between the two.
When does Google's fiscal year end?
Our fiscal year ends with the calendar year. Our quarters end on March 31, June 30, September 30, and December 31.
How many employees do you have?
As of September 30, we had 2668 employees located around the world, although most are at our Mountain View, California headquarters.
Investor Information
When was Google's initial public offering, and at what price?
Our IPO was August 18, 2004 at a price of $85 per share.
Where is Google traded?
Shares of our Class A common stock are listed on The NASDAQ National Market under the symbol GOOG. Our Class B stock is not publicly traded.
http://www.hipstercards.com
How can I invest in Google?
You can purchase stock in our company through a brokerage or stock purchase service of your choice.
What is a transfer agent? And who is yours? How do I contact them?
A transfer agent is a regulated organization that keeps track of stockholder records and information. Contact these folks for information about your shares.
Equiserve
150 Royal Street
Canton, MA 02021
(866) 298-8535
http://www.equiserve.com/
Does Google pay a cash dividend?
http://www.i5design.com
No, we have never declared or paid a cash dividend nor do we expect to pay any dividends in the foreseeable future.
http://www.pharmadirections.com
When does Google report earnings?
We plan to report our earnings during the third week of the month following the close of each quarter, except at year end, when we will take an extra week. Our next earnings release will be on Tuesday, February 1, 2005. Click here to access an archived version of our 2004 Q3 earnings release
webcast. http://www.franchisegiant.com
When is the Google Annual Shareholder's Meeting?
We haven't scheduled one yet, but it is likely that we will hold our first stockholder meeting in the spring of 2005. We'll post more details as the time approaches.
http://www.sentrysafetysupply.com
Does Google have a direct purchase plan?
No, we don't. Shares of Google Class A common stock can be purchased through a broker or stock purchase service of your choice.
http://www.thehondapartsstore.com
Literature Requests
How can I receive financial literature from you? http://www.getappraisers.com
That's easy—just ask for it by filling out this form or by calling 1-866-INV-GOOG (866-468-4664).
My mail carrier will be pleased not to have to lug around your annual reports. Can I request that annual reports and proxy statements be sent to me electronically rather than through the mail?
http://www.tndui.com
Sure you can—we think saving trees is a good idea. Just let us know what information you would like and where we should send it. We will be happy to forward electronic copies of annual reports, proxy statements and proxy ballots to you as they become available. Please complete the form on the News & Events page to receive information via email.
http://www.paragonbankmortgage.com
Investor Relations Contact http://www.napcousa.com
Who can I contact about specific investor relations issues? http://www.sunseekervacations.com
If you can't find the information you're looking for on our website, email us here:
investors@google.com.
Or write to us here:
Investor Relations
Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043
How does Google make money?
We make most of our money from the sale of advertising, which appears adjacent to our own search results and on sites maintained by a large network of publishers across the web who participate in our AdSense program. These ads, known as AdWords, are automatically matched to the content of the page on which they appear by our proprietary software. On Google properties, ads are always clearly identified as such and are physically separated from the algorithmically derived search results.
Google does not sell placement within our actual search results. We believe paid advertising can provide information as useful as search results, but that users should always be able to distinguish between the two.
When does Google's fiscal year end?
Our fiscal year ends with the calendar year. Our quarters end on March 31, June 30, September 30, and December 31.
How many employees do you have?
As of September 30, we had 2668 employees located around the world, although most are at our Mountain View, California headquarters.
Investor Information
When was Google's initial public offering, and at what price?
Our IPO was August 18, 2004 at a price of $85 per share.
Where is Google traded?
Shares of our Class A common stock are listed on The NASDAQ National Market under the symbol GOOG. Our Class B stock is not publicly traded.
http://www.hipstercards.com
How can I invest in Google?
You can purchase stock in our company through a brokerage or stock purchase service of your choice.
What is a transfer agent? And who is yours? How do I contact them?
A transfer agent is a regulated organization that keeps track of stockholder records and information. Contact these folks for information about your shares.
Equiserve
150 Royal Street
Canton, MA 02021
(866) 298-8535
http://www.equiserve.com/
Does Google pay a cash dividend?
http://www.i5design.com
No, we have never declared or paid a cash dividend nor do we expect to pay any dividends in the foreseeable future.
http://www.pharmadirections.com
When does Google report earnings?
We plan to report our earnings during the third week of the month following the close of each quarter, except at year end, when we will take an extra week. Our next earnings release will be on Tuesday, February 1, 2005. Click here to access an archived version of our 2004 Q3 earnings release
webcast. http://www.franchisegiant.com
When is the Google Annual Shareholder's Meeting?
We haven't scheduled one yet, but it is likely that we will hold our first stockholder meeting in the spring of 2005. We'll post more details as the time approaches.
http://www.sentrysafetysupply.com
Does Google have a direct purchase plan?
No, we don't. Shares of Google Class A common stock can be purchased through a broker or stock purchase service of your choice.
http://www.thehondapartsstore.com
Literature Requests
How can I receive financial literature from you? http://www.getappraisers.com
That's easy—just ask for it by filling out this form or by calling 1-866-INV-GOOG (866-468-4664).
My mail carrier will be pleased not to have to lug around your annual reports. Can I request that annual reports and proxy statements be sent to me electronically rather than through the mail?
http://www.tndui.com
Sure you can—we think saving trees is a good idea. Just let us know what information you would like and where we should send it. We will be happy to forward electronic copies of annual reports, proxy statements and proxy ballots to you as they become available. Please complete the form on the News & Events page to receive information via email.
http://www.paragonbankmortgage.com
Investor Relations Contact http://www.napcousa.com
Who can I contact about specific investor relations issues? http://www.sunseekervacations.com
If you can't find the information you're looking for on our website, email us here:
investors@google.com.
Or write to us here:
Investor Relations
Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043
Friday, January 21, 2005
Pay Per Click Fraud - Paid Search Engine Marketing
PPC Click ManipulationCosts Companies Thousands
WebMasterWorld Post:Walked in this morning, had 6000 clicks before 12:30 eastern on a term that received 61 clicks yesterday.
I wanted to run down with everyone the steps we took to identify it, in case some people are curious as to how you catch it.
Steps for investigation that we took:
1. Observed a much higher than normal traffic volume (we're talking orders of magnitude higher)
2. Looked at my AdWords account, figured out these clicks were content and not search clicks.
3. Traced it to a specific keyword via our tracking system, then dumped all session information originating from that word and the AdWords source (we use a SQL based landing page system, so it's an easy 5 second query)
4. Compared offending IPs with known open proxies. No match, and the most clicks by a single IP was 7. So there was really no patterns within the IPs that were clicking.
5. Sorted by referrer in Excel, noticed that most clicks were originating from three main AdSense pages
6. Noticed that those AdSense pages had nothing on them but ads for this particular word. I assume they're getting the ads targetted to what they want via mediabot cloaking.
7. Phoned Google, talked to a helpful girl named Kate, who agreed that the clicks looked odd. She offered to pass the offending sites onto the AdSense team, and sent me a form to fill out for information.
Time to resolution: Approximately 15 minutes
The moral of this story is that you need to be measuring everything having to do with your AdWords account, especially considering Google does not break out content clicks within your account. It is quite easy to detect simple clickfraud on a large advertising campaign by tracking and observation. You don't need expensive products.
Companies that are addressing pay-per-click fraud and have used the techniques above to reduce PPC expenditures: www.i5design.com, www.gameinstinct.com, www.pharmadirections.com, www.lucasandassociates.com, www.sentrysafetysupply.com, www.paragonbankmortgage.com.
Breaking News: Phone calls from 2 high level google editors confirm that a french court has found google guilty of trademark infringements relating to the google adwords ppc system being used in France. More details on this story will be posted as soon as we have legal clearance from our attorneys.
For more information about PPC fraud and a leading ppc fraud law firm click here:
http://www.peakpositions.com/
Carol Jacobsen
Database Optimization Administrator
Peak Positions, LLC
PPC Click ManipulationCosts Companies Thousands
WebMasterWorld Post:Walked in this morning, had 6000 clicks before 12:30 eastern on a term that received 61 clicks yesterday.
I wanted to run down with everyone the steps we took to identify it, in case some people are curious as to how you catch it.
Steps for investigation that we took:
1. Observed a much higher than normal traffic volume (we're talking orders of magnitude higher)
2. Looked at my AdWords account, figured out these clicks were content and not search clicks.
3. Traced it to a specific keyword via our tracking system, then dumped all session information originating from that word and the AdWords source (we use a SQL based landing page system, so it's an easy 5 second query)
4. Compared offending IPs with known open proxies. No match, and the most clicks by a single IP was 7. So there was really no patterns within the IPs that were clicking.
5. Sorted by referrer in Excel, noticed that most clicks were originating from three main AdSense pages
6. Noticed that those AdSense pages had nothing on them but ads for this particular word. I assume they're getting the ads targetted to what they want via mediabot cloaking.
7. Phoned Google, talked to a helpful girl named Kate, who agreed that the clicks looked odd. She offered to pass the offending sites onto the AdSense team, and sent me a form to fill out for information.
Time to resolution: Approximately 15 minutes
The moral of this story is that you need to be measuring everything having to do with your AdWords account, especially considering Google does not break out content clicks within your account. It is quite easy to detect simple clickfraud on a large advertising campaign by tracking and observation. You don't need expensive products.
Companies that are addressing pay-per-click fraud and have used the techniques above to reduce PPC expenditures: www.i5design.com, www.gameinstinct.com, www.pharmadirections.com, www.lucasandassociates.com, www.sentrysafetysupply.com, www.paragonbankmortgage.com.
Breaking News: Phone calls from 2 high level google editors confirm that a french court has found google guilty of trademark infringements relating to the google adwords ppc system being used in France. More details on this story will be posted as soon as we have legal clearance from our attorneys.
For more information about PPC fraud and a leading ppc fraud law firm click here:
http://www.peakpositions.com/
Carol Jacobsen
Database Optimization Administrator
Peak Positions, LLC
Monday, January 17, 2005
The demand for Natural Website Optimization is at an all-time high. As Pay Per Click rates continue to increase, PPC traffic conversions on a decline, and questionable ppc management invoices arriving daily, paid search marketing budgets are evaporating more rapidly than ever before and the pendulum has definitely swung back to favor organic SEO consulting services.
"In recent months, demand for our firm's core organic/natural website optimization services has increased substantially", reports Jack Roberts, Vice President, Director of Client Services at Peak Positions, LLC a leading organic/natural website optimization company based in Traverse City, Michigan. Many leading Fortune 500 B2B companies and major online shopping portals have decided that securing and maintaining premium keyword positions in the organic search results is a critical component of their online marketing strategy.
After months of combing log files and analyzing site traffic reports seeking to stop the PPC bleeding and establish tighter PPC cost controls, upper management teams now realize that new users being delivered to their company site by the organic search results are far more valuable. Site traffic from the organic search engine referrals tend to be more qualified and in-market and thereby much more likely to convert versus the often curious, fickle, price conscious, and costly PPC referrals.
Organic keyword searchers are naturally motivated to click through and discover more about the web sites and/or companies that are ranking high in the organic search results. Searchers are quickly persuaded by the web sites holding peak keyword positions in the organic search results.
If Google, Yahoo, or MSN are finding a site content relevant and worthy of premium keyword rankings, thereby endorsing the site and its content(s), their keyword searchers tend to follow the search engine's organic results lead and click through. Also PPC click traps and bait & switch paid search advertising gimmicks have been in place for years. Many internet keyword searchers have been fooled by mislabeled PPC ads in the past and are not interested in possibly experiencing further frustration with misleading PPC sponsored ads.
Internet focus groups are showing that nearly 30% of all keyword searchers are ignoring the paid search listings entirely. Roberts added that, "these new keyword search industry studies are completely in sync with recent Pew Internet Research studies reporting that organic keyword search click throughs volumes are outpacing PPC sponsored ads by a 6 to 1 margin, and if the keyword query is B2B related, top 20 organic rankings are outpacing the PPC sponsored ads at nearly an 8 to 1 clip".
B2B keyword searchers tend to be more search engine savvy and content-focused seeking to interact with high ranking sites in the non-partial and objective, editorial search results vs. sites from companies that are forced to buy their limited search engine results page exposure. The new line of thinking by many searchers is that: "if Google TRUSTS the site...then I can too".
Larger companies are realizing that top organic search positions help establish confidence with in-market internet keyword searchers, and that the implied search engine database endorsement creates a positive brand impression that helps condition searchers preceding their arrival to the site. New website arrivals delivered by the organic keyword search results are in a better mindset upon arrival to the site, making them more accepting of the product(s) and content offerings and much easier to convert.
All of these internet marketing and website usability factors are increasing demand for organic website optimization specialists, especially those firms with strong performance track records, high client retention rates, and proven organic SEO capabilities.
Donald Bice
Senior Project Engineer
Peak Positions, LLC
www.peakpositions.com
"In recent months, demand for our firm's core organic/natural website optimization services has increased substantially", reports Jack Roberts, Vice President, Director of Client Services at Peak Positions, LLC a leading organic/natural website optimization company based in Traverse City, Michigan. Many leading Fortune 500 B2B companies and major online shopping portals have decided that securing and maintaining premium keyword positions in the organic search results is a critical component of their online marketing strategy.
After months of combing log files and analyzing site traffic reports seeking to stop the PPC bleeding and establish tighter PPC cost controls, upper management teams now realize that new users being delivered to their company site by the organic search results are far more valuable. Site traffic from the organic search engine referrals tend to be more qualified and in-market and thereby much more likely to convert versus the often curious, fickle, price conscious, and costly PPC referrals.
Organic keyword searchers are naturally motivated to click through and discover more about the web sites and/or companies that are ranking high in the organic search results. Searchers are quickly persuaded by the web sites holding peak keyword positions in the organic search results.
If Google, Yahoo, or MSN are finding a site content relevant and worthy of premium keyword rankings, thereby endorsing the site and its content(s), their keyword searchers tend to follow the search engine's organic results lead and click through. Also PPC click traps and bait & switch paid search advertising gimmicks have been in place for years. Many internet keyword searchers have been fooled by mislabeled PPC ads in the past and are not interested in possibly experiencing further frustration with misleading PPC sponsored ads.
Internet focus groups are showing that nearly 30% of all keyword searchers are ignoring the paid search listings entirely. Roberts added that, "these new keyword search industry studies are completely in sync with recent Pew Internet Research studies reporting that organic keyword search click throughs volumes are outpacing PPC sponsored ads by a 6 to 1 margin, and if the keyword query is B2B related, top 20 organic rankings are outpacing the PPC sponsored ads at nearly an 8 to 1 clip".
B2B keyword searchers tend to be more search engine savvy and content-focused seeking to interact with high ranking sites in the non-partial and objective, editorial search results vs. sites from companies that are forced to buy their limited search engine results page exposure. The new line of thinking by many searchers is that: "if Google TRUSTS the site...then I can too".
Larger companies are realizing that top organic search positions help establish confidence with in-market internet keyword searchers, and that the implied search engine database endorsement creates a positive brand impression that helps condition searchers preceding their arrival to the site. New website arrivals delivered by the organic keyword search results are in a better mindset upon arrival to the site, making them more accepting of the product(s) and content offerings and much easier to convert.
All of these internet marketing and website usability factors are increasing demand for organic website optimization specialists, especially those firms with strong performance track records, high client retention rates, and proven organic SEO capabilities.
Donald Bice
Senior Project Engineer
Peak Positions, LLC
www.peakpositions.com
Wednesday, October 20, 2004
Reprinted From the BBC London
Here is a recent piece on the corporate search developments at Google. Similar programs are said to be coming out worldwide in the coming days.
Google rolls out corporate search Google has begun the global roll-out of a technology which enables firms to "google" their own networks easily. The search firm, recently floated on the Nasdaq stock market, says companies will soon discover search as a "critical business function".
This could kickstart the corporate search market, now worth just $500m.
But the new "Google in a box" solution carries its own hazards, making all documents on an intranet visible to all, unless security steps are taken.
The Google look and feel
Google's technology comes in a shiny bright-yellow box, which slots into a company's server racks.
The search engine inside is similar to Google's own web search technology, tweaked for the enterprise market, and runs on an Intel computer running a version of the open-source Linux operating system.
However, it is not new. For the past two years, customers in the United States have already been able to buy their in-house Google.
Google says that after some fine-tuning the technology has "matured". Even large companies should be able to index and search their sprawling intranets within a few hours of switching on the Google search appliance, which can recognise about 250 different file formats.
Users of these intranets - websites that are visible only within the company - will get their search results in a format that is very similar to Google's traditional internet search, including small excerpts from the documents found and links to cached versions of the documents listed.
The appliance can also be deployed as a search engine for a company's public website.
And those who want to avoid the Google 'look and feel' can customise the software.
The hunt for information
The launch comes days after Google launched a free software tool that allows users to index all the information on the hard drive of their personal computer - from e-mail to all kinds of documents.
But the desktop search does not reach corporate networks like those in place at Paragon Bank Mortgage - Raleigh North Carolina's Leading Home Mortgage Bank.
"A lot of the world's information is not public but behind firewalls in private networks," said Dave Girouard, the general manager of Google's enterprise business solutions at the European launch of the search appliance in London.
He happily quotes surveys that suggest that in some knowledge-driven companies workers may spend a quarter of their time looking for information, while poor search facilities on corporate websites are a sure turn-off for potential customers.
And without naming names he takes swipes at the "poor quality of search results" and the "long expensive installation" of rival products.
Investment bank Morgan Stanley, for example, saw the number of internal searches grow eleven-fold once Google's search technology was added to the company's network.
And even though the market for enterprise search is small right now, Mr Girouard expects it to take off once companies realise how search can make their workers work faster.
The Google appliances are aimed at medium-sized and large corporations. The most basic version, which allows to index about 150,000 documents, costs £19,000 ($34,000)for a two-year license.
Larger versions, dubbed "Mama Bear and Papa Bear" solutions by Mr Girouard, come in clusters of five or eight search boxes and can handle up to 15 million documents and 1,000 queries a minute. In the US market Google's licence fees for such heavy-duty search applications start at about $660,000 (£370,000).
Total information awareness
But there are security risks too. Once a whole intranet is indexed and cached in a Google server, it presents a neat takeaway package of a company's secrets.
Server room security suddenly becomes even more important - although Google's David Bercovich hastens to point out that somebody stealing the yellow Google box would find it very difficult to extract any information from the machine.
The other problem is information awareness. Every document can easily be found.
Firms that don't have proper security systems in place that clearly define who is allowed to look at which documents might suddenly find their workers googling for terms like "salary". Splitseconds later they might find a spreadsheet detailing the salary details of the management team, which used to be hidden away in a little known corner of the intranet.
Google says its search engine links in with various software applications from other vendors that regulate access to sensitive documents. Workers will only get search results for the documents that they are actually allowed to see.
Firms or institutions that have failed to put such basic security in place, might find themselves in trouble.
Another drawback: The system can only return documents that can be found using an http or https address on the network. This takes many customer relation management systems out of the equation.
But Google's Dave Girouard promises that his developers are "working hard" to make it possible to search all the information available in a company.
Donald Bice
Senior Project Engineer
www.peakpositions.com
Here is a recent piece on the corporate search developments at Google. Similar programs are said to be coming out worldwide in the coming days.
Google rolls out corporate search Google has begun the global roll-out of a technology which enables firms to "google" their own networks easily. The search firm, recently floated on the Nasdaq stock market, says companies will soon discover search as a "critical business function".
This could kickstart the corporate search market, now worth just $500m.
But the new "Google in a box" solution carries its own hazards, making all documents on an intranet visible to all, unless security steps are taken.
The Google look and feel
Google's technology comes in a shiny bright-yellow box, which slots into a company's server racks.
The search engine inside is similar to Google's own web search technology, tweaked for the enterprise market, and runs on an Intel computer running a version of the open-source Linux operating system.
However, it is not new. For the past two years, customers in the United States have already been able to buy their in-house Google.
Google says that after some fine-tuning the technology has "matured". Even large companies should be able to index and search their sprawling intranets within a few hours of switching on the Google search appliance, which can recognise about 250 different file formats.
Users of these intranets - websites that are visible only within the company - will get their search results in a format that is very similar to Google's traditional internet search, including small excerpts from the documents found and links to cached versions of the documents listed.
The appliance can also be deployed as a search engine for a company's public website.
And those who want to avoid the Google 'look and feel' can customise the software.
The hunt for information
The launch comes days after Google launched a free software tool that allows users to index all the information on the hard drive of their personal computer - from e-mail to all kinds of documents.
But the desktop search does not reach corporate networks like those in place at Paragon Bank Mortgage - Raleigh North Carolina's Leading Home Mortgage Bank.
"A lot of the world's information is not public but behind firewalls in private networks," said Dave Girouard, the general manager of Google's enterprise business solutions at the European launch of the search appliance in London.
He happily quotes surveys that suggest that in some knowledge-driven companies workers may spend a quarter of their time looking for information, while poor search facilities on corporate websites are a sure turn-off for potential customers.
And without naming names he takes swipes at the "poor quality of search results" and the "long expensive installation" of rival products.
Investment bank Morgan Stanley, for example, saw the number of internal searches grow eleven-fold once Google's search technology was added to the company's network.
And even though the market for enterprise search is small right now, Mr Girouard expects it to take off once companies realise how search can make their workers work faster.
The Google appliances are aimed at medium-sized and large corporations. The most basic version, which allows to index about 150,000 documents, costs £19,000 ($34,000)for a two-year license.
Larger versions, dubbed "Mama Bear and Papa Bear" solutions by Mr Girouard, come in clusters of five or eight search boxes and can handle up to 15 million documents and 1,000 queries a minute. In the US market Google's licence fees for such heavy-duty search applications start at about $660,000 (£370,000).
Total information awareness
But there are security risks too. Once a whole intranet is indexed and cached in a Google server, it presents a neat takeaway package of a company's secrets.
Server room security suddenly becomes even more important - although Google's David Bercovich hastens to point out that somebody stealing the yellow Google box would find it very difficult to extract any information from the machine.
The other problem is information awareness. Every document can easily be found.
Firms that don't have proper security systems in place that clearly define who is allowed to look at which documents might suddenly find their workers googling for terms like "salary". Splitseconds later they might find a spreadsheet detailing the salary details of the management team, which used to be hidden away in a little known corner of the intranet.
Google says its search engine links in with various software applications from other vendors that regulate access to sensitive documents. Workers will only get search results for the documents that they are actually allowed to see.
Firms or institutions that have failed to put such basic security in place, might find themselves in trouble.
Another drawback: The system can only return documents that can be found using an http or https address on the network. This takes many customer relation management systems out of the equation.
But Google's Dave Girouard promises that his developers are "working hard" to make it possible to search all the information available in a company.
Donald Bice
Senior Project Engineer
www.peakpositions.com
Thursday, October 14, 2004
Hello All,
I thought a great introductory post would be to discuss some of the leading site design obsticles that prevent web sites from being found.
Move your web site out of the invisible 'dark web' !
The results on the major search engines are produced by machines and data collection storage bins programmed to respond to millions of user keyword query requests on a daily basis. The tremendous demands and stress placed on the server farms responsible for displaying the organized series of hypertext links and text not only need to visit sites and collect information, they then must store and 'bank' URLs being collected. As we begin to review some common roadblocks and barriers that the spiders must overcome on their content acquisition journey keep in mind that these hypertext spiders are programmed to review (index) billions of web pages (URLs) in all types of code and program variations.
Site Design Problems: Besides website design problems that lead to web pages missing from the search engine results, there are many other common website design elements commonly used by Web developers that can prevent the search engine spiders from indexing the web pages of a site and result in poor rankings. Here are some common web site design elements that keep web sites invisible and floating around aimlessly in the Dark Web rather than being found consistently in the search engines on keyword searches that matter.
Technical Barriers That Prevent Indexing: Many types of technical barriers continue to prevent the search engine spiders from fully absorbing the page content or information contained within billions of web sites. Marketing managers, IT Directors, Webmasters, and Internet Publishers must consider a few conditions whenever publishing on the Internet to help overcome spider barriers in order to help search engine spiders properly record their pages/URLs and websites in an effort to 'open-up' their domains to the algorithmic robot crawlers and thus the public. In order to be found early and often on a consistent basis in the major search engines website publishers and Internet marketing professionals must keep a few of these top issues in mind: Some spiders struggle out of the gate as they land on a website for the first time and fail to record a site due to a poorly composed robots exclusion file. The major search engine spiders will ignore even the most popular sites if the code compositions and contents of the robots.txt file is incorrect.
Our technicians at Peak Positions offer proprietary solutions that help streamlining spider indexing through the construction and placement of a comprehensive robots exclusion file that helps organize the table of contents so desperately being sought by the major search engine spiders. Feel free to contact our technical team if you have questions, concerns, or are uncertain of the required protocols for robots exclusion files.
W3C HTML Code Compliance and Validation: Invalid HTML code is one of the leading causes of search engine positioning problems. Code validation and code compliance allows search engine spiders to move comfortably through URLs and also prevents 'spider traps' and 'denial of service'.
Broken Links: Broken links and server downtime also prevent sites from being found on the search engines especially if a lead spider is crawling the site or attempting to crawl the site and is interrupted or landing on broken links. Broken links, server downtime, or server maintenance interferes with search engine spiders as they attempt to crawl websites.
Content Management Systems: Content Management Systems that refresh or deliver updated content on a regular basis often create tremendous confusion with search engines resulting in URL Trust factors that restrict websites from attaining exposure and reaching qualified, in-market users searching for their services on Google, Yahoo, MSN, and AOL. The page contents are dynamically updated and changing regularly which is a 'red flag' in itself and the code involved is invalid and actually leaving 'spider traps' all over the pages of the site. If your company is using a content management system and your site is not being found on the search engines, contact our skilled technical team and we can design an affordable optimization solution that will deliver your content in a clean and valid format to users worldwide. Again, search engine spiders are seeking relevant content; let's help the world find your valuable content by shining light on to your web site and removing it from the Dark Web.
Frames Website Design: Frames Website Design is often times a major web site optimization problem. While the search engine spiders can crawl pages from a frames-based design, they cannot accurately parse page text and index page content correctly. Frames web sites usually lead to little if any consistent keyword rankings in the major search engines.
JavaScript & Cascading Style Sheets (CSS): Incorrect use of JavaScript & Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to code web pages usually results in volumes of redundant code and issues with nesting and tables that weights down the spiders slowing their crawl and making them perform Olympic feats just to get through all of the invalid, non-compliant W3C HTML code. Often times the JavaScript errors inflate the size of the pages making them much too large. The opportunity for code errors and W3C HTML code compliance issues increases with the size of the site as the fundamental web page code errors are multiplied as the spiders try to crawl the inside pages of the site. Many search engine trade associations and SEO consultants recommend that individual web page sizes remain under 100k, however larger page sizes can achieve top five rankings if specific code definitions are established and the search engine spiders receive clear instructions. We highly recommend code validation and incorporating the use of W3C HTML compliant code guidelines that allows the search engine spiders to access a single reference points that eliminate redundant attribute definitions within the page code. Valid W3C HTML code that complies to the established world wide web consortium standards allows the search engine spiders to quickly and easily locate Relevant Page Content. That's why fully optimized and W3C HTML code compliant web sites that allow the spiders to quickly find relevant page content, when submitted properly, consistently enjoy page one, top five keyword rankings, long-term on the major search engines.
Dynamic Pages: Dynamically generated web sites that are database driven often face unique obstacles with the search engine spiders. Do your URLs contain these types of query strings? (e.g. URLs ending like this: ?a=1&b=2&c=3) Peak Positions is considered one of only a handful of natural search engine optimization companies that is able to provide comprehensive search engine marketing solutions for large dynamic websites that are database driven. Contact our dynamic website search engine optimization SEO consulting specialists today : info@peakpositions.com
Non Compliant Site submissions: If your company has used non compliant and or automated software submission programs at anytime the URLs and websites involved might be ignored by the major search engines.
Spam: In addition to making pages easy for spiders to record, it is important to avoid techniques employed by overzealous search marketers that are considered spam by the search engines. Cloaking is one such technique. It involves serving customized pages based strictly on IP address. The search engine spider IPs are programmed into the server with instructions to feed highly optimized garbage pages exclusively to the search engine spiders in an obscene effort to enhance the page's rank in the search results. When visitors click the link to view that site, a different page is shown that would not ordinarily rank as well. This is a deceptive practice, and defined as spam by the search engines. Such bait-and-switch techniques are heavily frowned upon by the search engines and may result in being tagged, removed or blacklisted from the search engine databases. Don't risk your corporate website's ability to be found in the search engines. Promotional search engine software programs also expose corporate websites to punishment by the search engine editors because they create gibberish and interfere with the sophisticated hypertextual database retrieval systems that are programmed to produce the most content relevant search results in milliseconds.
**Many new so-called search engine optimization companies have and continue to mislead clients to the notion that no website will be blacklisted, pulled, tagged or removed from the search engine's database. One of the nations largest insurance companies was blacklisted in early 2004 as well as a spyware company because of cloaking. We urge you to speak with several companies and to always keep in mind 'does the site optimization program being considered actually work to highlight and present the relevant content contained within the company website?'. If the optimization program being considered does not focus on relevant content or is focused on anything other than relevant content, BUYER BEWARE.
As a test, the Peak Positions technicians recently optimized a small webpage about a Connect 4 computer game. Over time it will rank on the search engines when using a broad search term like "Connect 4".
Donald Bice
Senior Project Engineer
Peak Positions, LLC.
I thought a great introductory post would be to discuss some of the leading site design obsticles that prevent web sites from being found.
Move your web site out of the invisible 'dark web' !
The results on the major search engines are produced by machines and data collection storage bins programmed to respond to millions of user keyword query requests on a daily basis. The tremendous demands and stress placed on the server farms responsible for displaying the organized series of hypertext links and text not only need to visit sites and collect information, they then must store and 'bank' URLs being collected. As we begin to review some common roadblocks and barriers that the spiders must overcome on their content acquisition journey keep in mind that these hypertext spiders are programmed to review (index) billions of web pages (URLs) in all types of code and program variations.
Site Design Problems: Besides website design problems that lead to web pages missing from the search engine results, there are many other common website design elements commonly used by Web developers that can prevent the search engine spiders from indexing the web pages of a site and result in poor rankings. Here are some common web site design elements that keep web sites invisible and floating around aimlessly in the Dark Web rather than being found consistently in the search engines on keyword searches that matter.
Technical Barriers That Prevent Indexing: Many types of technical barriers continue to prevent the search engine spiders from fully absorbing the page content or information contained within billions of web sites. Marketing managers, IT Directors, Webmasters, and Internet Publishers must consider a few conditions whenever publishing on the Internet to help overcome spider barriers in order to help search engine spiders properly record their pages/URLs and websites in an effort to 'open-up' their domains to the algorithmic robot crawlers and thus the public. In order to be found early and often on a consistent basis in the major search engines website publishers and Internet marketing professionals must keep a few of these top issues in mind: Some spiders struggle out of the gate as they land on a website for the first time and fail to record a site due to a poorly composed robots exclusion file. The major search engine spiders will ignore even the most popular sites if the code compositions and contents of the robots.txt file is incorrect.
Our technicians at Peak Positions offer proprietary solutions that help streamlining spider indexing through the construction and placement of a comprehensive robots exclusion file that helps organize the table of contents so desperately being sought by the major search engine spiders. Feel free to contact our technical team if you have questions, concerns, or are uncertain of the required protocols for robots exclusion files.
W3C HTML Code Compliance and Validation: Invalid HTML code is one of the leading causes of search engine positioning problems. Code validation and code compliance allows search engine spiders to move comfortably through URLs and also prevents 'spider traps' and 'denial of service'.
Broken Links: Broken links and server downtime also prevent sites from being found on the search engines especially if a lead spider is crawling the site or attempting to crawl the site and is interrupted or landing on broken links. Broken links, server downtime, or server maintenance interferes with search engine spiders as they attempt to crawl websites.
Content Management Systems: Content Management Systems that refresh or deliver updated content on a regular basis often create tremendous confusion with search engines resulting in URL Trust factors that restrict websites from attaining exposure and reaching qualified, in-market users searching for their services on Google, Yahoo, MSN, and AOL. The page contents are dynamically updated and changing regularly which is a 'red flag' in itself and the code involved is invalid and actually leaving 'spider traps' all over the pages of the site. If your company is using a content management system and your site is not being found on the search engines, contact our skilled technical team and we can design an affordable optimization solution that will deliver your content in a clean and valid format to users worldwide. Again, search engine spiders are seeking relevant content; let's help the world find your valuable content by shining light on to your web site and removing it from the Dark Web.
Frames Website Design: Frames Website Design is often times a major web site optimization problem. While the search engine spiders can crawl pages from a frames-based design, they cannot accurately parse page text and index page content correctly. Frames web sites usually lead to little if any consistent keyword rankings in the major search engines.
JavaScript & Cascading Style Sheets (CSS): Incorrect use of JavaScript & Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to code web pages usually results in volumes of redundant code and issues with nesting and tables that weights down the spiders slowing their crawl and making them perform Olympic feats just to get through all of the invalid, non-compliant W3C HTML code. Often times the JavaScript errors inflate the size of the pages making them much too large. The opportunity for code errors and W3C HTML code compliance issues increases with the size of the site as the fundamental web page code errors are multiplied as the spiders try to crawl the inside pages of the site. Many search engine trade associations and SEO consultants recommend that individual web page sizes remain under 100k, however larger page sizes can achieve top five rankings if specific code definitions are established and the search engine spiders receive clear instructions. We highly recommend code validation and incorporating the use of W3C HTML compliant code guidelines that allows the search engine spiders to access a single reference points that eliminate redundant attribute definitions within the page code. Valid W3C HTML code that complies to the established world wide web consortium standards allows the search engine spiders to quickly and easily locate Relevant Page Content. That's why fully optimized and W3C HTML code compliant web sites that allow the spiders to quickly find relevant page content, when submitted properly, consistently enjoy page one, top five keyword rankings, long-term on the major search engines.
Dynamic Pages: Dynamically generated web sites that are database driven often face unique obstacles with the search engine spiders. Do your URLs contain these types of query strings? (e.g. URLs ending like this: ?a=1&b=2&c=3) Peak Positions is considered one of only a handful of natural search engine optimization companies that is able to provide comprehensive search engine marketing solutions for large dynamic websites that are database driven. Contact our dynamic website search engine optimization SEO consulting specialists today : info@peakpositions.com
Non Compliant Site submissions: If your company has used non compliant and or automated software submission programs at anytime the URLs and websites involved might be ignored by the major search engines.
Spam: In addition to making pages easy for spiders to record, it is important to avoid techniques employed by overzealous search marketers that are considered spam by the search engines. Cloaking is one such technique. It involves serving customized pages based strictly on IP address. The search engine spider IPs are programmed into the server with instructions to feed highly optimized garbage pages exclusively to the search engine spiders in an obscene effort to enhance the page's rank in the search results. When visitors click the link to view that site, a different page is shown that would not ordinarily rank as well. This is a deceptive practice, and defined as spam by the search engines. Such bait-and-switch techniques are heavily frowned upon by the search engines and may result in being tagged, removed or blacklisted from the search engine databases. Don't risk your corporate website's ability to be found in the search engines. Promotional search engine software programs also expose corporate websites to punishment by the search engine editors because they create gibberish and interfere with the sophisticated hypertextual database retrieval systems that are programmed to produce the most content relevant search results in milliseconds.
**Many new so-called search engine optimization companies have and continue to mislead clients to the notion that no website will be blacklisted, pulled, tagged or removed from the search engine's database. One of the nations largest insurance companies was blacklisted in early 2004 as well as a spyware company because of cloaking. We urge you to speak with several companies and to always keep in mind 'does the site optimization program being considered actually work to highlight and present the relevant content contained within the company website?'. If the optimization program being considered does not focus on relevant content or is focused on anything other than relevant content, BUYER BEWARE.
As a test, the Peak Positions technicians recently optimized a small webpage about a Connect 4 computer game. Over time it will rank on the search engines when using a broad search term like "Connect 4".
Donald Bice
Senior Project Engineer
Peak Positions, LLC.
Wednesday, May 19, 2004
Yahoo Site Match Paid Inclusion Program Misleads the Marketplace
Yahoo recently released their new Site Match paid inclusion program and quickly drew wide-spread criticism. The misleading and deceptive messages that Yahoo is sending website owners and emarketers is that in order to enhance your keyword rankings in Yahoo's natural search results, companies need only to pay a Site Match inclusion fee. The program makes one wonder if Yahoo will clearly identify all paid listings to users.
The Site Match inclusion fee is actually akin to a permanent, open, Pay Per Click invoice. Site owners and operators participating in the Site Match program will now pay for EVERY CLICK referred by the Yahoo search results. Yahoo's marketing messages suggest that Site Match is not entirely a Pay Per Click program.
Yahoo's marketing materials also suggest that Site Match participation results in enhanced keyword rankings on target keyword search results within the Yahoo search database, when in fact, it merely ensures a presence or inclusion anywhere within the Yahoo search index. Contrary to the marketing message implicit in Yahoo's Site Match promotional materials, inclusion in the program DOES NOT guarantee any particular keyword position in the Yahoo search results or 'enhanced' keyword placement.
Do websites still need to be open to the Yahoo-Inktomi Slurp and Archiver spiders in order to secure and maintain leading keyword positions in the natural search results on Yahoo? Do the Yahoo robot crawlers or spiders still need to be able to deep-index the website? If site design and site navigation obstacles are not overcome, is long-term search engine ranking success possible in Yahoo?
Don't jump into Site Match without first fully understanding that this program is not a turn-key electronic web marketing solution. This program ONLY provides Yahoo the ability to charge participants for EVERY CLICK received from their search results pages, and completely neglects the issue of search engine positioning on any other major search engine.
Before we address the other search engines that represent nearly 70% of the domestic search marketplace. Let's stay tuned to Yahoo and their most aggressive, profit-driven search engine marketing program to date. Yahoo intends to charge website owners participating in Site Match for EVERY CLICK received once an account is active. Will Yahoo searchers receive clear labeling of all paid sponsor positions?
Another important consideration for website owners and emarketers is the costly occurrence of fraudulent click activity. The opportunity for large scale, fraudulent, click manipulation of the Yahoo search results pages has now become larger than ever.
As Google cofounder Larry Page told the New York Times recently: "Any time you accept money to influence the results, even if it is just for inclusion, it is probably a bad thing."
Proceed with caution regarding Yahoo Site Match.
Jack Roberts
Peak Positions, LLC.
Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization News
Yahoo recently released their new Site Match paid inclusion program and quickly drew wide-spread criticism. The misleading and deceptive messages that Yahoo is sending website owners and emarketers is that in order to enhance your keyword rankings in Yahoo's natural search results, companies need only to pay a Site Match inclusion fee. The program makes one wonder if Yahoo will clearly identify all paid listings to users.
The Site Match inclusion fee is actually akin to a permanent, open, Pay Per Click invoice. Site owners and operators participating in the Site Match program will now pay for EVERY CLICK referred by the Yahoo search results. Yahoo's marketing messages suggest that Site Match is not entirely a Pay Per Click program.
Yahoo's marketing materials also suggest that Site Match participation results in enhanced keyword rankings on target keyword search results within the Yahoo search database, when in fact, it merely ensures a presence or inclusion anywhere within the Yahoo search index. Contrary to the marketing message implicit in Yahoo's Site Match promotional materials, inclusion in the program DOES NOT guarantee any particular keyword position in the Yahoo search results or 'enhanced' keyword placement.
Do websites still need to be open to the Yahoo-Inktomi Slurp and Archiver spiders in order to secure and maintain leading keyword positions in the natural search results on Yahoo? Do the Yahoo robot crawlers or spiders still need to be able to deep-index the website? If site design and site navigation obstacles are not overcome, is long-term search engine ranking success possible in Yahoo?
Don't jump into Site Match without first fully understanding that this program is not a turn-key electronic web marketing solution. This program ONLY provides Yahoo the ability to charge participants for EVERY CLICK received from their search results pages, and completely neglects the issue of search engine positioning on any other major search engine.
Before we address the other search engines that represent nearly 70% of the domestic search marketplace. Let's stay tuned to Yahoo and their most aggressive, profit-driven search engine marketing program to date. Yahoo intends to charge website owners participating in Site Match for EVERY CLICK received once an account is active. Will Yahoo searchers receive clear labeling of all paid sponsor positions?
Another important consideration for website owners and emarketers is the costly occurrence of fraudulent click activity. The opportunity for large scale, fraudulent, click manipulation of the Yahoo search results pages has now become larger than ever.
As Google cofounder Larry Page told the New York Times recently: "Any time you accept money to influence the results, even if it is just for inclusion, it is probably a bad thing."
Proceed with caution regarding Yahoo Site Match.
Jack Roberts
Peak Positions, LLC.
Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization News
Friday, May 14, 2004
Search Engine Industry Buzzing
Yahoo! and Google both removed adware/spyware giant whenU.com from their search results pages, accusing the e-marketing firm of cloaking in order to increase their search results rankings in the major search engines.
This is isn't the first major company to have its website removed from the search engines for manipulative practices, and it almost certainly won't be the last. The veteran search technology specialists here at Peak Positions recall similar cases in the past, where major, household-name corporations employed cloaking in an effort to drive exposure and sales on the web, and were black-listed from Google for doing so. So, what is cloaking anyway?
Cloaking
The term "cloaking" is used to describe a website that returns altered webpages to search engines crawling the site. In other words, the webserver is programmed to return different content to Google than it returns to regular users, usually in an attempt to distort search engine rankings. This can mislead users about what they'll find when they click on a search result. To preserve the accuracy and quality of our search results, Google may permanently ban from our index any sites or site authors that engage in cloaking to distort their search rankings.
This is the definition of cloaking according to Google. Cloaking is, ostensibly, a quick, down-and-dirty and clear pathway to search engine rankings success. Taking the easy road and creating separate, static keyword and link heavy pages, specifically built to appeal to search engine spiders, instead of retrofitting their current large, dynamically generated websites - in which they have invested anywhere from 50 to 500 thousand dollars, is quick and painless.
Quick and painless can be very attractive, and has lured numerous top-level marketing teams with the promise of early returns. Most firms that practice cloaking emphasize quick turn-arounds and immediate results for their clients, and will often guarantee top 10 keyword rankings on the major search engines within 30 days. Marketing directors, feeling the enormous pressure to position their corporate website with authority on keyword targets, might find themselves succumbing to the lure of immediate results.
We alway ask two questions of potential clients that express an interest or desire to engage in the dubious practice of cloaking:
1. How can any SEO firm guarantee rankings on search engines like Yahoo! or Google, when they have absolutely no direct influence over the order in which (natural - sometimes called editorial or organic) search results appear?
2. Wouldn't you rather serve your users and online customers, as well as the search engine spiders, by simply DOING THE RIGHT THING - which is delivering relevant content in the form of HTML pages?
Rather than cloaking or participating in other underhanded tactics such as page redirects, gateway pages, automated submissions, 30 days to number 1 bogus guarantees, et cetera, marketing directors need to remain focused on serving users first.
Serving users can take several forms, but they all rest on a single principle - regularly generating and delivering high-quality, relevant text content (preferrably without neglecting good aesthetics). Many of our accounts have secured and maintained premium keyword rankings on the major search engines by focusing on content and enhancing the user experience. Content, content, content - content is king.
Next week, we'll begin our profile of proven, ethical search engine marketing techniques, that have yet to be challenged by any other SEO techniques....
Jack Roberts & Joel Dalley
Peak Positions, LLC.
Search Engine Optimization
Yahoo! and Google both removed adware/spyware giant whenU.com from their search results pages, accusing the e-marketing firm of cloaking in order to increase their search results rankings in the major search engines.
This is isn't the first major company to have its website removed from the search engines for manipulative practices, and it almost certainly won't be the last. The veteran search technology specialists here at Peak Positions recall similar cases in the past, where major, household-name corporations employed cloaking in an effort to drive exposure and sales on the web, and were black-listed from Google for doing so. So, what is cloaking anyway?
Cloaking
The term "cloaking" is used to describe a website that returns altered webpages to search engines crawling the site. In other words, the webserver is programmed to return different content to Google than it returns to regular users, usually in an attempt to distort search engine rankings. This can mislead users about what they'll find when they click on a search result. To preserve the accuracy and quality of our search results, Google may permanently ban from our index any sites or site authors that engage in cloaking to distort their search rankings.
This is the definition of cloaking according to Google. Cloaking is, ostensibly, a quick, down-and-dirty and clear pathway to search engine rankings success. Taking the easy road and creating separate, static keyword and link heavy pages, specifically built to appeal to search engine spiders, instead of retrofitting their current large, dynamically generated websites - in which they have invested anywhere from 50 to 500 thousand dollars, is quick and painless.
Quick and painless can be very attractive, and has lured numerous top-level marketing teams with the promise of early returns. Most firms that practice cloaking emphasize quick turn-arounds and immediate results for their clients, and will often guarantee top 10 keyword rankings on the major search engines within 30 days. Marketing directors, feeling the enormous pressure to position their corporate website with authority on keyword targets, might find themselves succumbing to the lure of immediate results.
We alway ask two questions of potential clients that express an interest or desire to engage in the dubious practice of cloaking:
1. How can any SEO firm guarantee rankings on search engines like Yahoo! or Google, when they have absolutely no direct influence over the order in which (natural - sometimes called editorial or organic) search results appear?
2. Wouldn't you rather serve your users and online customers, as well as the search engine spiders, by simply DOING THE RIGHT THING - which is delivering relevant content in the form of HTML pages?
Rather than cloaking or participating in other underhanded tactics such as page redirects, gateway pages, automated submissions, 30 days to number 1 bogus guarantees, et cetera, marketing directors need to remain focused on serving users first.
Serving users can take several forms, but they all rest on a single principle - regularly generating and delivering high-quality, relevant text content (preferrably without neglecting good aesthetics). Many of our accounts have secured and maintained premium keyword rankings on the major search engines by focusing on content and enhancing the user experience. Content, content, content - content is king.
Next week, we'll begin our profile of proven, ethical search engine marketing techniques, that have yet to be challenged by any other SEO techniques....
Jack Roberts & Joel Dalley
Peak Positions, LLC.
Search Engine Optimization
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)