Web Moves Blog

Searching for Dominance: What Will Microsoft Search Look Like?
It’s the beginning of the year, so you’ll see dozens of ‘Year in Review’ and ‘Predictions for the Coming Year’ articles about the search engine industry. I have to admit, I was going to jump on the bandwagon myself, but as I started looking at what I would say, one thing dominated the future landscape for the next 4 years to such an extent that it made all the other developments pale in comparison. This tsunami of change will shape and affect every corner of the business. Search as we know it will be swept away because of it, and all the search providers we know will scramble to readjust and find their place in the new landscape. When Microsoft enters search, all else will become a footnote in the history of the web.

So, forget Yahoo and Google. Sorry Looksmart and Ask Jeeves, you’ve been pushed off the front page. Today, the spotlight is on Microsoft, and how they will likely change the face of web search. In this column, I won’t be talking about industry impact. Instead, with the help of our Organic Search wiz, Rob Sullivan, I’m looking at the promise of Microsoft’s research itself, and what the tool may actually look like.

MS Search..It’s All About Indexing
First, Microsoft is looking to solve a long standing desktop irritation. And when they find the answer, it will change the indexing of file information forever.

The current way of finding files on your computer leaves a lot to be desired. There has been no single system that effectively searches content from multiple file formats. To solve that problem, Microsoft is looking to employ three different technologies. First, to ensure compatibility, Microsoft will continue to use their NTFS File Structure system. They will combine it with the indexing capabilities of a SQL server relational database and the file labeling potential of XML. The new system is called WinFS.

WinFS
The problem with current file systems is that they are hierarchal. Files occupy one single place within a nested pyramid of file folders. But people don’t tend to think that way. A file may be relevant in a number of different ways, depending on the context in which you’re looking for it.

The other problem with hierarchal systems is that they need a librarian. Someone has to establish and organize the hierarchy. Usually this organization is established in anticipation of the context in which you’ll have to reaccess this information.

I know there are people out there who are diligent about filing away every single document in a well organized file system, but for the 99% that make up the rest of us, our hard drives are a vast junk yard of old files, spreadsheets and emails. More often than not, we desperately use Microsoft’s find file application to try to track down that elusive bit of information we’re looking for.

The other problem is that there is no good way to quickly search a number of different file formats for a scrap of information that may be hidden in one of them.

Microsoft’s new WinFS will work on top of the current NTFS structure, but it will introduce a dramatic new way of indexing files and their contents. XML tags will be used to send relevant information to an SQL database. It will bridge the current gap between indexable structured data, stored in a database and data which has been un-indexable, stored in unstructured formats such as Word documents, webpages and email messages. It also allows users to add ‘metadata’, identifying tags to existing files. For instance, a picture file could include information about the subject of the picture, or a sound file could include information about the audio captured.

Stuff I Have Seen
A Microsoft research team has been working on a prototype application called SIS, or Stuff I’ve Seen. Although it’s focus is to help users find files and information on their desktop, its implications for web search functionality could be dramatic. It pulls information from multiple file formats, including emails and webpages, and records them in a single index. This allows the user to search through them using a powerful interface that allows for the application of several filters at the same time. The search process becames a real time iterative process, allowing the user to quickly narrow down the search to the most relevant findings.

Implicit Query
‘Stuff I’ve Seen’ gives the user a powerful tool to find files and information on their desktop. Implicit Query (the link goes to a interesting Powerpoint presentation prepared by the Microsoft Research team) goes one step further by continually searching and retrieving information based on what the user is doing. As the program tracks user behaviour, it refines its model of what is important and relevant to the user and filters the search results accordingly. This is an extension of Microsoft”s Lumiere research which has modeled the Bayesian logic behind the current automated assistance functionality.

In an example, a Microsoft researcher was typing an email to a colleague about an upcoming conference. As she was typing, Implicit Query brought up presentations, slides and documents prepared for the conference in it’s results panel. In another instance, she was preparing an email to another colleague about a broken link in her group’s website. Before she was finished, she was shown an unopened email that contained the fix.

Memory Landmarks
A third Microsoft project doesn’t hold nearly the same promise for web search, but it would make an interesting add on feature. Memory Landmarks can add historical remarks to a list of chronological search results. For example, if you were searching for articles regarding the capture of Saddam Hussein, you could sort the list by date and Memory Landmarks would indicate where on the list the capture took place.

What Will MS Search Look Like
I think the above prototype applications give use some real clues as to what Microsoft Search will look like. As Microsoft works on the new Longhorn OS, we have to remember:

• As Microsoft works on ways to index and search files locally, it’s a logical extension to apply the new technology to web search.
• Longhorn’s Indigo makes a major move away from object oriented programming towards web services. There will be a much richer and deeper exchange of information between your local computer and web service sites. This allows for much greater localization in search tools.
• Microsoft has a long history of incorporating what were 3rd party stand alone applications into their applications and operating systems. They have already identified search as one of the key activities people do online.
• Microsoft’s ASI (Adaptive Systems and Interaction) research department is working to make their systems more intuitive and intelligent by letting them learn how the user works and adapting itself accordingly.
• Microsoft is working on desktop applications that will dramatically change how people launch searches for information.

Given all this, here is what I believe Microsoft Search will eventually look like.

Microsoft will use WinFS as the basis for eventually indexing every document on the web. Remember, because it’s integrated at the OS level, it will be native to every Microsoft IIS server on the internet. It gets around the current problem of the ‘invisible’ web by allowing web publishers to include metadata to allow for quicker indexing. Its SQL foundation will make indexing of data based information quick and transparent, as was shown when legal publisher Lexus Nexus allowed Microsoft to index a portion of their huge database.

This common indexing procedure will erase the dividing line between desktop searches and web searches. The entire web will be accessible from the Microsoft search sidebar. What’s more, the next evolution of ‘Stuff I’ve Seen’ and ‘Implicit Query’ will monitor what you’re working on and provide suggested information sources and files from both your desktop and the web.

If a user wants to launch a manual search, the current trial and error method of search (try a search, check the results, refine the query and try again if you don’t find what you’re looking for) will become much quicker and more powerful with an interface that allows for real time updating of results as filters are applied and parameters are tweaked. I’m willing to bet that Microsoft will also unveil leading edge natural language query technology that will mine web data based on interpreted concepts and not the current structured query method used on most search engines. By the time Microsoft Search is unveiled, I believe a more intuitive search interface will be standard on all the leading search portals.

Search functionality will eventually be integrated into every Microsoft application, much as the ubiquitous Office Assistant (I can’t tell you how much I hate that damned paper clip..until I need him) is now. Microsoft will be able to capitalize on this by selling sponsored search suggestions that will also be offered via the implicit query channel. For instance, if you’re writing an email about an upcoming business trip to New York, the Microsoft search pane will offer airfare and hotel specials, as well as suggestions of things to do while in New York.

Microsoft will be able to monitor everything you do. The more you do on your desktop, the more Microsoft and its applications will learn about your preferences and priorities. Their ASI research will allow them to adapt search functionality and personalize it just for you. So the search results you see won’t be the same as everyone else’s. Personalization will move beyond just geographic location to take into account the types of sites you tend to visit, business priorities, your typical workday activities and even your lifestyle interests. Big Brother lives, and his name is Microsoft!

Finally, Microsoft’s Indigo feature in Longhorn will remove the distinction between server side tasks and client side tasks. Therefore, local indexes will be utilized whenever possible to increase search performance and the options for personalization. The line between your desktop and the internet will become more and more indistinct as time goes on.

Implications For The Real World
Today, I just wanted to focus on what Microsoft’s search could look like. In writing this, I kept asking the same question, ‘Boy, I wonder what this means for Google?’ Obviously, the gang at Google is very aware of the impending threat of Microsoft search. So, in the next NetProfit, I’m going to ask our head of Organic Search, Rob Sullivan, to join me for a little brainstorming. We started chatting today by the water cooler and he has some very interesting theories. Stay tuned!

Author:
Gord Hotchkiss

My Predictions for the Search Engine Industry for 2004
The year 2003 was, generally speaking, a good year for the search engine industry. While for some that may have got hit hard with the Florida update in November, the balance of the year was good.

I predict 2004 will be even better, albeit you should expect some major changes. 2004 will be a year of consolidation, if there is such a thing in this rapidly changing industry. While in the year 2003, some search companies such as Looksmart and Espotting had more than their share of problems, especially in the case of Looksmart, I predict there will be a few newcomers.

2004 will be a year where you can expect news to hit this industry on a daily basis. In 2003, hardly a day went by that there wasn’t something happening at one company or another. Expect 2004 to be even busier.

Additionally, 2004 will be a year where the stakes are getting higher- much higher, and not just for Google! The level of competition among search engines will get tougher, in a race to land what I call ‘targeted eyeballs’.

Will it be GOO, GOG, GLE, GGG or simply GO?
As you must have read or heard about it by now, 2004 will also be the long-expected year where Google is supposed to transform itself into a public company, with all the advantages and the pitfalls that this entails. Google won’t have a choice but to go public in 2004. The reason for this is because of a little-known SEC rule in the US that forces American companies to issue quarterly statements once their number of employee-shareholders have surpassed a certain threshold.

It is estimated that over 700 to 800 of such employees are current shareholders, in effect forcing Google to become public, whether it likes the idea or not. At least by going public, it will receive many billions of new money that it will be able to use in its massive, continuing research and development programs at the Googleplex.

Many are expecting the 5-year old company to make an IPO sometime in late March or early April. People here are Rank for $ales are starting to take bets as to what its stock ticker symbol will be. On the New York Stock Exchange, a company cannot have more than three letters for its stock symbol. Personally, I think it might be GO, although that could cause some confusion with Infoseek’ 😉

The Yahoo Factor
Whatever happens in the Google stables, one major player that cannot be neglected is Yahoo. Yesterday in fact, the CEO of a very large Canadian company and client of mine asked me what I think of Yahoo and what it might do to fight back the ever-powerful Googlemania?

I strongly believe that the Sunnyvale California company should be considered as the ‘sleeping giant’, but not for long. After having bought and ‘digested’ Overture and All The Web in 2003, Yahoo is the number One search directory in the world and the number Two search engine (although I prefer to call it a search directory) on the Web. Yahoo is also the current owner of AltaVista.

In 2004, there is no question that Pay-per-Click (PPC) will be an extremely popular derivative of search, and one that will grow well into 2005 and 2006. Overture and Google, through its AdWords program currently have the two best PPC search properties.

New Search Engines to be born in 2004
After having successfully developed and deployed my paid inclusion search engine Global Business Listing ( http://www.globalbusinesslisting.com/ ) in 2003, in 2004 I will begin the development of my new PPC search engine Net Globe Media
( http://www.netglobemedia.com/ ) which should be completed some time in the third quarter.

Although somewhat slightly different, Net Globe Media will operate on similar principles that Google currently uses for its AdWords program and will be similar to some of the features Overture offers.

What will characterize Net Globe Media from its competition will be its drastically lowered bid prices and the way the ads can be rotated by its advertisers. There will also be an added tool to help you make the best bids on your ads, while lowering its cost at the same time, plus a few additional value-added features.

Where I see the SEO Industry as a whole.
After the Florida update and the many sites that got penalized in the process, I strongly believe that the SEO industry will probably ‘endure’ its largest shakeout ever in 2004. I feel that the search engine optimization firms that are serious, that have always and consistently produced good results for all its clients and the ones that constantly keep up with all the many changes in technology and new developments are the ones that will thrive in 2004.

And the others, the ones that resort to unethical practices or to techniques that are forbidden by the search engines will disappear. Google and many other major search engines are constantly developing new technology and algorithms, in an effort to detect that sort of thing and search engine spammers will get caught at their own game. As a result of all this, I think that the SEO’s and the SEM firms that will remain after this shakeout will be stronger than ever, and will represent the best marketing investment a company can make today for its online advertising programs.

In Conclusion
2004 should be an interesting year, both for the search engines themselves and the SEO community as a whole. There will be no place for second best. Companies and businesses that will have their sites optimized professionally will benefit greatly. Companies, site owners and their webmasters that continue to produce good content for its users will continue to be viewed positively by search properties such as Google and the others and will continue to produce higher than average ROI.

The ones that don’t, well they could end up on the sidelines’ way out of the results pages’

Happy New Year to all of you!

Author:
Serge Thibodeau of Rank For Sales

How To Get Your Visitors To Create Content For Your Website
An ongoing challenge for webmasters today is to provide fresh content that gives visitors a reason to return to their site. Unless you have a full-time staff dedicated to creating regular content, the time involved can be crippling.

Wouldn’t it be great if someone else would write timely, relevant content for you? Sure, but what are the odds of that happening? Well, many webmasters are already enjoying this phenomenon, and I’m happy to count myself among them.

Set it up. Whether your site has a catalog of products or a collection of articles, you can design your pages to allow visitors to post reviews of whatever is featured on the page. They can share their experiences with items they’ve bought or post comments on the information in your site. Don’t confuse this powerful tool with a discussion forum. You create the topic of each page, and encourage visitors to post updates with the latest information in this area.

The more information you provide on your site, the better service you are providing to your visitors; but they aren’t the only ones who benefit from including reviews. It’s also a boon to you as a webmaster. Even if you never wrote another line of new copy, your pages will continue to grow with relevant content. Granted you still have to spend a little time reading the reviews and moderating what appears on your site, but the time required is much less than you would spend writing original content.

Why Someone Else Will Create Content For You.
While the advantages to the webmaster and reader may be obvious, you are probably wondering what incentives exist for the reviewer. A few lucky souls have enough free time to share their opinions online for the mere satisfaction of seeing their own words, but most will need something more tangible before they invest the time to write a useful review. The onus is on you, the webmaster, to create an appropriate incentive. The importance of link popularity in search engine rankings provides a powerful clue. At AffiliateScreen.com, I allow my visitors to post reviews of their experiences with online affiliate programs. At the bottom of their review, they have the option of including a link to another page that supports what they’ve written (or they can simply include their affiliate link for the program). AffiliateScreen.com gives them the additional credibility of their expertise appearing on a third-party site.

Look at this from the reviewer’s perspective. Here’s a unique opportunity to gain an external link pointing to the reviewer’s website, but this is far more valuable than a random reciprocal link. Search engines are determining link popularity by examining both the quantity and relevance of links. The page with their link is loaded with keywords related to the product or service, and the reviewer can include additional relevant keywords in their post. The reviewer actually has a hand in creating the page that will link to their site. This is extremely powerful! Can you begin to see how anyone looking to increase traffic to their site would jump at the opportunity to create content for your website?

Now you may have some concerns that allowing anyone to add content and links to your site is inviting your competitors to steal your traffic. If your site has detailed reviews of products on your site, anyone who leaves your site to visit a competitor won’t spend much time there before realizing that your site has useful, original content that they can’t find anywhere else. If that doesn’t put your mind at ease, though, there’s nothing to stop you from including a disclaimer when someone submits a review. Explain in this disclaimer that direct references to your competitors will be removed to keep the reviews informative and to avoid marketing hype. You are the webmaster, after all.

You can draw even more traffic by allowing visitors to rate the usefulness of each review. Many reviewers will encourage people to visit your site so they can read and rate the review. More important than just being a gimmick to increase traffic, rating reviews allows you to sort them by quality and expose your average visitors to the best possible content first.

Promote It!
Once you’ve got the code in place, it’s important to publicize this new feature of your website. If you have experience or know someone with experience writing press releases, you may be able to garner attention from news and niche media. Another highly effective form of publicity is to mention the new feature above the fold on the main page of your site.

If you have a newsletter, promote the review process in your next issue. In fact, as you begin to accumulate reviews, they can serve as great additional content for your newsletter. Simply include the best reviews in each issue. As with the reviews on your website, you are providing valuable content for your audience, giving your reviewer great exposure, and saving time for yourself. It’s a win-win-win situation.

Author Bio:
Clay Mabbitt writes articles about online income opportunities. He is the founder of a community of Internet entrepreneurs sharing knowledge and experience at http://www.affiliatescreen.com

Getting A Better Search Engine Rank For All Of Your Pages!
In one of my articles, I discussed how to market your web site link twice. It detailed out how to promote not only www.yoursite.com but how you should also promote your site without the www., like this: http://yoursite.com.

This article is to talk about promoting ALL of your pages within your marketing campaign. See, most of us typically only promote the main page on our sites. Ex. www.yoursite.com. The truth is, your site is much more than just the 1st page right? Well, let’s condition ourselves to promote everything available within your site…

Search Engine Marketing is crutial for all companies who want to succeed online. I’m sure at one point or another, you will hear how “Optimizing your site for search engines is crutial”. Of course, they aren’t fooling you, it is a crutial marketing tactic but, what is also crutial is learning how to use different tools to boost your search engine placements once you’ve optimized your site for the web.

So let’s talk about the marketing tactics available to you and implement strategies on how to promote all your pages within them.

Link Exchanges
Link popularity has become a norm for most small companies to implement in their daily promoting activities. Here’s the problem, most companies that perform link exchanges daily fail to utilize it to their advantage. For ex. Let’s say you perform approximately 10 link exchanges daily. For each one, you submitted your link “www.yoursite.com”. What you’ll want to start implementing is submitting 10 different links within your site.

Ex Link Exchanges:

Link #1: http://yoursite.com
Link #2: http://yoursite.com/resources
Link #3: http://www.yoursite.com/services
And so on…

A good strategy would be to open up “Note Pad” and create all the links you want to promote.

1) Add each link
2) Assign an appropriate title to each link
3) Create an appropriate description for each link

Now all you have to do is to copy and paste each link when performing your daily link exchanges.

Writing Articles
Do you write articles to promote your site??? If you do, then you probably have created a “Resource Box” at the end of each article right??? Good, let’s change the resource box a little.

My site is host to 100’s of Marketing Articles and the 1 thing I notice time & time again is that each author (no disrespect to any of the wonderful authors) Typically only add the main page of their web site within their “resource box”.

Ok, let’s say you write articles about “Search Engine Marketing”. At the end of the article, add a link to a page on your site that talks about “Search Engine Marketing” or something similar.

Ex. http://www.yoursite.com/search_engine_marketing.html

So with that in mind, try revising all your articles to point to specific pages on your web site.

Directory Submissions
Submitting your site to directories will give your site long lasting traffic. Not all directories will accept any link from your site besides the main page. This is ok though, there are literally 100’s of other directories that will allow you to submit any page you want.

Experiment with this and try to change up all your links when your submitting to directories.

I WOULD NOT RECOMMEND : Using anything other than your main page for directories like: OPD Open Project Directory or Yahoo.

Wrap Up
So now you have 3 proven marketing strategies on how to improve your search engine placements for all of your pages instead of only your main page. Be creative with this and look for more strategies you can implement this tactic with.

Author Bio:
Martin R. Lemieux Smartads – President Affordable Web Site Design & Web Site Marketing Web Site Awards & Webmasters Playground Food for your mind & Entrepreneur Traits Read over 200 articles on advertising!

Finding Good Keywords
First of all, what type of keywords should you optimize for?
A single word, a whole sentence. The actual question is what are people searching for? Here is a breakdown of the most popular type of searches.

Two word searches 29%
One word searches 25%
Three word searches 24%
Four word searches 12%
Five word searches 5%
Six word searches 2%
Seven word searches 1%

What about active verbs? Think about it. If someone types in “buy”, “find” or similar words, wouldn’t this be an indication that the person is about to make a move, instead of just surf. Although you could go to a top 100 search terms site, why not create your own top 100 active search terms by putting these active verbs into a keyword tool.

People talk to their computers. They will use “I” in their search engine queries sometimes. “How do I find…?” I know I do. I also hold my computer personally responsible when I can’t find something or Windows locks up.

People put .com in their searches. Type .com into the
Overture keyword tool and see how many websites people know
by name but still are attached to using a search engine.

Which sites have a really bad interface? I can name a few, a few big ones. You can find these by typing “registration,” “signup”, “login”, or “join” into a keyword tool. How about “purchase”? If you are doing affiliate marketing you may try these and take advantage of webmasters who should be called webminors.

Although a little bit off-topic, I read somewhere that sponsoring cars for Nascar races is one of the most effective ways to advertise a product. Nascar fans are very loyal. This got me thinking.

Fans are definitely an endless source of revenue. What would they be searching for? A few of the words they may type in are “posters”, “zine” and others. Or just type in a celebrity name and “fan” and look for keywords in the pages that come from Google.

Then there are terms that are standard on many sites. When I was looking for places to submit my software, I just plugged “submit pad” into Google. If you are looking for Clickbank affiliates, you might type the product name and “hop.”

The point is that the customers you are looking for aren’t a computer and they aren’t a dictionary. So you can’t be either when you search for terms to optimize. You’ve got to think like someone in need of your product. I bet if you gave it a little time, you can come up with more examples.

Author Bio:
Stephan Miller is a freelance programmer, and writer. For more Adwords resources, visit the page below http://www.profit-ware.com/resources/googleadwords.htm

Google Paid Placement Review
With the recent ‘Florida’ update on google & its impact on the SERPs, typically on the commercial search phrases, it has become imperative that we now examine paid advertising scenario at google. For scores of merchants, now paid advertising will be the only way to help them salvage their sales, as also future revenues. This will be a two parts article, with the first part focusing on the google paid advertising space & the second part on the best practices thereof. However, before we start on googles adwords & adsense programs a word or two on online advertising industry performance in 2003.

Online Advertising Industry: According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), the online advertising industry sales have been robust this year with three consecutive quarters of growth witnessed for the first time in last two years. Lets first look at the yearly sales figures for last three years. Online advertising climaxed in 2000 with $8 billion in revenue (dot com boom) before declining to $7.1 billion in 2001, and $6 billion in 2002. This year in the first three quarters, the sales have been estimated at a healthy 5.07 billion (up 13% from the same period last year). The break up of the quarterly sales figure is as under:

• The first quarter sales have been at 1.63BUSD
• Second quarter is pegged to have clocked 1.69 billion (up 14% from same quarter last year)
• Third quarter is estimated to have done 1.75billion.(20% growth from this quarter last year)

From figures the emerging pattern is towards keyword based text ads gaining popularity.

According to IAB, out of the 6bUSD figure of 2002, 15.4% (or roughly 1 billion) can be attributed to Search term related sales. This is up 200% from the figures of 2001. The contribution of search term related ads has been estimated to 31% of the second quarter figures. No break up for third quarter figures is however available. Financial firm Salomon Smith Barney expects the estimated $1.4 billion market in 2003, to grow 30 percent to 35 percent per year, reaching $5 billion by 2008.

This Advertising space is dominated by two major players (obviously): Google & Overture. Google Adwords Google has two services for its paid advertisers. Adwords & Adsense. Lets start with Adwords. This is a program run by Google in which it lets the advertisers bid for a chunk of the real estate on the search engine results page related to specific queries. The ads appear as “sponsored listings/premium listings” next to the organic search results. Along with getting exposure at the googles own site, these ads are also syndicated at Googles’ partner sites like: America Online, Inc.,Ask Jeeves ,AT&T Worldnet ,CompuServe ,EarthLink, Inc. ,Netscape ,Sympatico Inc. etc.

Currently, Google is supposed to have approx 150,000 monthly advertisers for its paid placement services. Adwords Account Statistics: Following are the statistics for every adword account google has; One can set up 25 campaigns in every account. Each campaign can have up to 100 adgroups in it; with each adgroup capable of having up to 750 Keywords in it. The overall limit on any account is 2000 keywords. Adwords offers four kinds of Keyphrse matching namely: Broad, Phrase,Exact & Negative.

Recently, Google has introduced expanded matching for its broad matches. More on this later… It lets you target your ads to specifically 14 languages, 250 countries or 200 states /regions in US. Google claims 99% accuracy for its IP tracking system to deliver the ad effectively to the target audience. Recent Features on Adwords: Google has added three new features to its adwords campaign in October. Those are:

• Expanded Matching
• Conversion Tracking &
• Increased Click Through Threshold.

Conversion Tracking
Google has introduced a conversion tracking feature for its advertisers, wherein they can now track the conversions resulting from their advertisement traffic. This conversion tracking helps the advertisers by quantifying the ROI they are achieving with their campaigns. This feature works by introducing a cookie on the user computer whenever someone clicks on an advertisement. This cookie is connected to the conversion page if the user reaches there. If it is matched, google records a successful conversion.

Expanded Matching
As a part of its broad matching of keywords, Google has introduced a ‘smart’ feature called expanded matching. With expanded matching, AdWords system automatically runs ads on highly relevant keywords, including synonyms, related phrases, misspellings and plurals, even if they aren’t in the original list of keywords that you submitted with google. For example if you keyword is ‘software development’, google system will try & guess alternate searches to display your ads on. Some examples are ‘software solutions’ or ‘software services’ or ‘technical solutions’. Over time, it will monitor the click through rates (CTR) for these searches & ‘learn’ the relevance of these searches for you. This will help it make expanded searches more specific. Also, based on its mining the search queries, it will be able to develop fresh combination of search terms which will be relevant to the business.

This theme based adwords tuning, is in sync with googles trend of trying to understand ‘available content’ & ‘user queries’ & make ‘intelligent matching’ of the two. In an effort to let you know what are the keywords it will look to broaden your exposure to, google has for the first time put out a Adwords keyword suggestion tool: Google Adwords tool

This tool highlights the googles view of what other terms, it ‘understands’ to be relating to your business. (Tip :This tool works well for broad searches.)

Increased Click Through Threshold
The increased click-through threshold is designed to help ads that may have struggled for traffic due to poor search relevance. These include those related to contextual ads as well. Now for evaluating the Account performance evaluates each account after every 1,000 ad impressions. If the CTR for the account falls below a minimum required CTR (which varies by ad position, geography etc but is 0.5% for the top spot and slightly reduced for each subsequent position) the ads will only be displayed occasionally for under performing keywords.

Google Adsense
Google AdSense is an offshoot of the Google Content-Targeted Advertising program that was launched in early March 2003. This early program let large websites integrate Google AdWords into their websites. Each deal was independently negotiated with Google, and sites with less than 20 million page views couldn’t participate. The Google AdSense program democratizes the content based text ad display process. Even small merchants, bloggers with only a few thousand page views per month, can now apply to the AdSense program The AdSense program allows Web publishers to apply for the program online.

After Google vets a site for popularity and quality — a process the company estimates will take two to three days — accepted applicants download a string of HTML code to insert on Web pages on which they wish to carry text-link ads. Google draws the listings from its base of 150,000 advertisers, using its algorithmic search technology to scan the content page and match it up with relevant links that are displayed as either skyscraper ads on the right side of the page or banners at the top. Some of the large Googles partner networks are :HowStuffWorks, Mac Publishing (includes Macworld.com, MacCentral, JavaWorld, LinuxWorld ,New York Post Online Edition, Reed Business Information (includes Variety.com and Manufacturing.net), U.S.News & World Report online All the rules that apply to adwords listings also apply to Adsense in respect of CTR, Positioning etc.

Author Name: Vikas Maholta
Company: Mosaic Services
Email: sunny@mosaic-service.com

Looksmart In The New Year
There will be a number of changes around the corner for Looksmart in 2004. Some of their new features are already rolling out. Below is an overview of the new features.

Beginning in January 2004, MSN will be removing the Web Directory Sites section of its search results, and will no longer have a direct partnership agreement with LookSmart. Current LookListings may still appear on MSN through the distribution partnership with Inktomi, but paid inclusion traffic will be reduced at that time. The LookListings will also continue to provide traffic from more than 85 other LookSmart partners such as Lycos, About.com, Road Runner, InfoSpace and CNET. Looksmart is negotiating with other portals and ISPs for additional distribution of LookListings.

Looksmart recently launched Sponsored Listings, a bid-for-placement keyword product. Sponsored Listings are fully integrated with LookListings, so you can use your existing login and password, get started with just a few simple clicks, and monitor the performance of all of your paid inclusion and pay-for-placement listings together in the LookSmart Advertiser Center.

LookListings now has other important new features, designed to give you greater control and flexibility. Starting December 16th, you can now pinpoint customers with specific keywords. Or reach a broader audience using relevancy-based inclusion targeting.

Create Keyword-Targeted Listings
If you provided Relevancy Keywords for your LookListings campaigns, you will now see those Relevancy Keywords displayed as new keyword-targeted listings in your account. These new listings will appear in search results when users search for the associated keyword across the LookSmart network. If you did not provide Relevancy Keywords for your campaign, you may now access your account and add keywords to your existing LookListings campaigns to improve the precision of your targeting.

Combine Targeting Options In One Campaign
You may combine two different targeting options within the same LookListings campaign. With “Inclusion Targeting” your listings will continue to be displayed whenever they are relevant across the LookSmart network, just as they were previously. Now, by adding “Keyword Targeting,” your listings will only appear for searches that match the specific keywords you choose. Use both targeting options together to tailor messages to specific groups of customers.

You now have the ability to bid for higher placement on your LookListings keywords. Take advantage of the new “Max CPC” feature with auto-discounting: Set the CPC ceiling you are willing to pay for any given keyword. The actual CPC you are billed will be discounted to the minimum value necessary to maintain your desired position in search results. This means you will never pay more than you need, to show up where you want.

No Fees To Create Or Update Listings
It is now free to create new listings, add keywords, and update your campaigns.

It will be interesting to see what new announcements Looksmart makes in the New Year prior to their deal with MSN ending on January 14th.

Author Bio:
Jason Lane Senior Search Marketing Strategist at www.searchengineposition.com

Teoma Search Engine
One search engine that really caught my attention at the search engine strategies conference in Chicago was Teoma. Teoma is the search engine that powers Ask Jeeves, also knows as the ask.com search site. Teoma has made several improvements to its engine over the past year or so that has drastically increased its index and the quality of results generated. They have a unique method of ranking sites that Teoma likes to call “authority”. In addition, they have a Teoma toolbar and many of the advanced search features that other search engine have.

In the upcoming pages I will cover the following:

– Teoma’s History and Background
– Teoma’s Search Technology
– Teoma’s Features and Advanced Search Functions

Teomas History and Background
Teoma’s founder and vice president of research and development is a Professor of computer science from Rutgers University, Apostolos Gerasoulis, Ph.D. Professor Gerasoulis along with his team of computer scientists founded Teoma in April of 2000. Their single goal was to build a search engine that looked “at the Web in terms of subject-specific communities.” Teoma had the advantage of joining the search engine wars late in the game. This allowed them to look at what the current engine did right and more importantly, what the other engines did wrong. Teoma.com was not officially launched until a year later in April 2001.

On September 18, 2001 Ask Jeeves, Inc. acquired Teoma, paying over 1.5 million dollars. On January 9, 2002 Ask Jeeves announced its successful integration of the Teoma search technology into Ask Jeeves. Ask Jeeves reported an increase user satisfaction of 25% and a site abandonment rate of 15% less after this integration. In 2002 Nielsen//NetRatings reports Teoma has grown 175% making Teoma the third most popular search engine in the United States.

Teoma 2.0 was released on January 21, 2003. The new version boasts improvements to overall search result relevancy, additions to search tools and more advanced search functions. Teoma currently powers Ask Jeeves primary organic results and receives its paid search results from Google AdWords.

Teoma’s Search Technology
Teoma adds a new layer of “authority” to search results through something they call “Subject-Specific Popularity.” Google’s PageRank, simply explained, ranks pages based on the quality and the number of inbound links to a site. Teoma ranks sites based on related communities of sites that are “organically organized” and link to each other. It then determines which sites are most relevant based an authority factored, that is where Subject-Specific Popularity comes into play. Subject-Specific Popularity determines the authority of a site based on the number of pages that link to a page within the same subject. Teoma provides a nice analogy to why this is important. They write, “picture yourself in your garage, in front of the opened hood of your severely out-of-commission pick-up truck. You need help with this major repair, and you can either ask your uncle, who owns two cars but has never held a wrench in his life and happens to be visiting (similar to using other leading search technologies) or you could phone your best friend, who has a degree in applied mechanics and builds automobiles from the ground up in his spare time (similar to Subject-Specific Popularity). The choice is quite clear.”

When Teoma 2.0 was released it provided improved relevancy, more accurate communities, spell checking, “Dynamic Descriptions”, more advanced search tools and an expanded index. Ask Jeeves reports an increased “user pick-rate” of 22% and a site abandonment decrease of 28% since the upgrade. In addition, Teoma received a relevancy grade of “A” from Search Engine Watch, adding them to the elite group of search engine that include Google, Yahoo and MSN. By improving Teoma’s analysis of “Communities” they were able to increase the relevancy of pages by better evaluating authoritative pages. In addition, the “refine” search option found on Teoma.com enables searchers to easily narrow down their search results. Many search engines have Web-based spell check, Teoma added this in its 2.0 version. Teoma 2.0 added other enhancements and features as well as increased its index by over 500 million URLs.

Teoma’s Features and Advanced Search Functions
Teoma provides numerous methods to both refine your search and locate subject specific resources. Conduct a search on search technology and you will find on the right side a “Refine” option that presents you with useful “refinements” to your search query. In addition you will find a collection of “Resources” directly below the refinements option that easily allows you to locate “expert” sites on search technology. You will also see that Search Engine Watch is one of those results. You will also see the sponsored listings at the top, provided by Google and you will find the Web page results directly below. Google is the first result for that keyword and we all know why.

In addition, Ask.com allows you to search for anything and it attempts to provide exactly what you are looking for without the use of any “tabs”. For example, I did a search on picture of chair at Ask Jeeves and guess what? It gave me actual pictures of chairs, this chair is a nice one. Ask Jeeves called this technology Natural Language Processing (NLP). For a complete listing of technologies and features provided by Ask Jeeves please visit: http://sp.ask.com/docs/about/tech.html. For advanced search tips from Teoma, please visit: http://sp.teoma.com/docs/teoma/about/advsearchtips.html.

Teoma has come a long way since April 2000 by achieving its rank as the number three search technology. Its unique method of providing relevant and accurate results makes Teoma and its partners stand apart from the other search engine technologies. As the features and index improve, Teoma will continue to succeed by adding partners and a more satisfied user base. It will be interesting to follow Teoma and Ask Jeeves over this coming new year and see how it competes with the other major search engines.

Sources: Teoma.com, Ask.com, and About.com

Author Bio:
Barry Schwartz is the President of RustyBrick, Inc., a Web services firm specializing in customized online technology that helps companies decrease costs and increase sales. Barry is a leading expert in the search engine optimization community. Barry has written and contributed many articles to the SEO community, by publishing in SEMPO (Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization). Barry also gives regular seminars covering the complete spectrum of search engine marketing technology and methods.

Search Engine Strategies Conference 2003
Search Engine Strategies Conference and Expo is an event that brings together most talented and famous Search Engine Marketing professionals in the world. This event is held several times a year all over the world, and is hosted by JupiterMedia and SearchEngineWatch.com. Danny Sullivan is the name behind the show, but people come to this event for many reasons including to learn about search engine optimization and marketing, to hear about advancements in the search engine industry, to meet prospects and attract new business, and simply to meet people in the industry face to face and have a good time.

I was privileged to be able to attend the full three-day conference in Chicago that took place from December 9, 2003 through December 11, 2003. I have compiled a detailed review of each day of the Search Engine Strategies (SES) conference at The Search Engine Roundtable Weblog. Overall, I recommend the conference to all those in the Web design, Internet marketing, advertising field, search engine optimization and search engine marketing field.

In the upcoming pages I will cover the following:

– Overview of the Search Engine Strategies Conference
– Topics at the Search Engine Strategies Conference: What you can expect to learn?
– Advances in the Search Engine Industry and the RustyBrick Perspective
– Networking Opportunities and Exhibitors at Chicago
– The Search Engine Elite and Sometimes Wacky
– Search Engine Strategies Chicago Conference Wrap-Up

Overview of the Search Engine Strategies Conference
The Search Engine Strategies conference first took place on November 18, 1999 in San Francisco, California. Danny Sullivan told me “To my knowledge, it was the first search engine conference of this type.” The first show attracted about 250 attendees and 9 exhibitors. The whole seminar took place over one day between 8am and 6pm. Some of the past speakers still present today including Danny Sullivan, Shari Thurow, and Dana Todd. Mr Sullivan said that this event was “great because I [Danny Sullivan] felt both ‘sides’ saw each other much less as enemies but instead as real people.” Danny went on to explain that at this time, except for Overture, there was no one really in the paid listings market. Now, both the organic and paid people were in one room together and communicated face to face. Check out the first SES agenda at http://www.jupiterevents.com/sew/sf99/sew-agenda.html.

The following year JupiterMedia hosted 4 SES events, in New York, London, San Francisco and Dallas. The shows drew between 300 and 600 attendees each. New York and San Francisco were the larger events. Check out the SES 2000 archives at http://www.jupiterevents.com/seminar-archive2000.html.

The 2001 season for the SES conferences was a little different. They moved the New York show to Boston and added Denmark to the list of locations. The shows on average attracted between 300 and 700 attendees, and exhibitors ranged from 5 to 25 depending on the location. For the 2001 archives visit http://www.jupiterevents.com/seminar-archive2001.html.

In 2002 SES added more shows, making the total number of shows 7 for that year. They added Australia and Singapore to the current list of places to hold the event. Denmark moved to Germany and San Francisco moved to San Jose, California. They had over 30 exhibitors at Boston and San Jose and close to 900 attendees. Check the 2002 season out at http://www.jupiterevents.com/seminar-archive.html.

In 2003 they ran 6 shows and moved Dallas to Chicago – the conference this article will cover. The Boston show was the first to ever break 1,000 attendees and in San Jose they have over 1,500 attendees with over 45 exhibitors.

In 2004 they will be moving the Boston show back to New York, and they are expecting to break the 2,000-attendee barrier. Danny Sullivan told me “In the US, we’re also now at a four day, three or four-track format.” He said, “There’s that much content to cover.” As you can imagine this short but exciting history has been filled with success and opportunity for all those who are involved.

The Chicago 2003 conference was held at the McCormick Place Convention Center. It is a very nice hotel and conference center. The Hyatt McCormick Place Hotel was very well equipped for technical people with high-speed Internet connection in each room and wireless access in the restaurant. The wireless did not work on my Apple Powerbook; but I think it was due to the Web site where you pay for access and not the actual network itself. Many people complained about the “hike” from the hotel to the convention center, but I did not find it to be bad at all. The walk was about five minutes and was all indoors with a nice indoor bridge. The first day I had to walk back and forth several times to see if my room was available. Needless to say, the Hyatt was sold out the first night. Why Chicago was selected as the location for a December conference, I do not know. It was cold, rainy and windy during my stay but I rarely left the hotel. Overall, I am satisfied with both the hotel and the convention center.

Frank Fazio from JupiterMedia reported to me at the conference that 1,200 people have signed up for the conference. 900 of those were conference attendees, meaning JupiterMedia received payment to go to the conference sessions, and 300 were exhibitor only attendees. The numbers exceeded the projections; and all those from JupiterMedia were extremely delighted.

Topics at the Search Engine Strategies Conference: What you can expect to learn?
The Search Engine Strategies Conference provided a tremendous amount of information to attendees. If you are new to the search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) field, you will learn a great deal in just three days. If you are an intermediate SEO/SEM, you will still learn a lot, and at the same time reinforce your current skills. But if you are an advanced SEO/SEM you will gain in other ways. The conference has something to offer to every one in the Internet field. The next paragraphs will review some of the tracks I had attended at this conference. For a more detailed and less organized review of the conference please visit my review of Day One, Day Two and Day Three. For a complete conference itinerary please visit http://www.jupiterevents.com/sew/fall03/glance.html. The remainder of this section will be a selection of sessions I attended during the three-day conference. Details of materials will not be discussed. Only an overview of the track and anything discussed that stood out will be mentioned.

Shari Thurow, a name synonymous with search engine optimization, was the single speaker for the Search Engine Friendly Design track. This track focused on how to design (code, layout and navigation of) a site in a fashion that is both good for your Web visitor and search engine spiders. The session’s outline includes the definition of a search engine friendly web site design, the three search engine essentials and design considerations. The search engine essentials include something Shari calls the text component, the link component and the popularity component. This track is a must see for all ‘newbies’ to the field. Shari does an outstanding job of explaining the basics to any level designer and programmer. Shari Thurow wrote a very well organized book that goes into more detail then what she discusses at the track. I recommend that you read the book before going to the track. The book, Search Engine Visibility (ISBN: 0735712565) comes in both print and electronic versions and can be purchased at http://www.searchenginesbook.com/ or through your favorite online bookstore.

Andy Beal of KeywordRanking.com, Chris Copeland of Outrider Search Marketing and Dan Theis of SEO Research Lab presented the Search Term Research track. This track covered one of the most important areas of search engine marketing and optimization, how to best determine which keywords one should purchase and/or optimize their site for. Andy Beal discussed the importance of keyword research, how to actually select the keywords, the keyword research process, and the available tools to conduct keyword research, and gave very nice examples throughout the presentation. Andy also discussed some of the faults of the keyword research tools and some overall strategic decisions that need to be made during this process. Chris Copeland focused more on what needs to be done after your keyword research. Do you use organic optimization or paid advertisements? How do click-through rates differ when you tailor your description or use corporate name in the anchor text? Dan Theis took this presentation one step further by discussing the false self-satisfaction of ranking well for a specific keyword but (1) not getting click-throughs on that keyword or (2) not converting sales on that keyword. He also discussed other common mistakes of a search term researchers and how to avoid them.

Heather Llyod Martin of SuccessWorks and Jill Whalen of HighRankings.com presented Writing for Search Engines track. Balancing ones keyword density and readability within the content of your pages can be a hard task. Heather and Jill both explained how you could achieve a nice balance of both and rank well. Both described that you should not look at percentages such as keyword density, keyword divided by total words. You should first focus on making the page easy to read for the user and then look for ways to add your keyword phrases into the content. Both gave examples on how you can add these keyword phrases to your page copy. Heather was much more fluid and perky on the stage as compared to Jill. Both had very informative presentations but Heather claimed the prize for her speech delivery.

The final session for day one was the evening forum with Danny Sullivan. This session was an open-ended discussion where you can bring up any search engine related topic and Danny would talk about it. The first topic of discussion was obviously the Google Florida Update and Danny discussed it for a few minutes. He then began talking about the actual industry and where it was in the past and where it will be in the future. This was a very interesting and enlightening session and it gave the attendees the opportunity to be proactive in the conversation.

The morning keynote address for day two was given by Danny Sullivan. He discussed the Google Florida Update and the search engine industry revolution. Danny discussed his theory of “Invisible Tabs” and showed real life examples on how the search engines today are moving in that direction. It was basically a more organized presentation for what was discussed the night before at the Evening Forum with Danny Sullivan. The session was extremely interesting and thought provoking. For any of you expert SEOs, I recommend attending the keynote address at the next conference.

Optimizing Flash and Non-HTML Content track was designed to teach us how to take Flash or other non-HTML content and optimize it for search engines. The speakers for this track included Gregory Markel from Infuse Creative, Shari Thurow from GrantasticDesigns and Karen Howe from AOL Audio Video. Gregory’s focus was on Flash content and how you cannot optimize it for search engines. The point of this track was to discuss how you should optimize Flash documents or implement “workarounds”. Gregory gave ideas but quickly dismissed each one saying that he tried it and it didn’t work. Shari gave a nice presentation as she did in the past; Shari’s focus was on optimizing PDF documents. She eloquently gave examples of how you should optimize your page’s content and the actual PDF document to rank well in search engines. Again, her book covers most of this discussion. Karen presented the most interesting component of this track, optimizing rich multimedia content. AOL recently purchased Karen’s company, a search service that is designed specifically for rich media content. She explained the advances of this technology and how rich media designers often leave out the Meta data that is so crucial in determining the relevancy of the content. Overall, this track was disappointing – maybe the title should be changes to “Workarounds For Flash and Non-HTML Content”. There was no discussion about how to use the “noscript” or “noframes” tag. When the question was brought up during the Q&A session, Shari said that you should not use the tag – make an HTML equivalent site. The session was about optimizing for non-HTML content, not about realizing that you cannot optimize for non-HTML content.

One of the best tracks at the conference had to be “Link Building” presented by Paul Gardi from Teoma/Ask Jeeves, Mike Grehan from iProspect, Eric Ward from EricWard.com and Marissa Mayer from Google. Paul Gardi explained how link popularity works on Teoma, which happens to be very different from how PageRank works on Google. Mike Grehan then gave an enlightening overview of the science behind Teoma’s “link equity” structure. Eric Ward gave a nice presentation on how to get good quality links and then discussed some philosophical points on PageRank that was very interesting. Marissa Mayer discussed how Google’s PageRank works with a nice one liner, “links are proxies for human judgment of page value”. She explained that PageRank is not the only component to how Google ranks a page and should not be the single most sought after goal for a search engine optimizer. Make sure to catch this session at the next conference, it’s a must see.

One of the new tracks, Getting Local is one of the hottest topics today in the search engine industry. The speakers for this track included Dick Larkin from TransWestern Publishing, Cheryle Pingel from Range Online Media, Stacy Williams from Prominent Placement, Richard Holden from Google and John Ellis from Overture. Getting Local was more focused on the paid side of search engine marketing then the organic side. The Google and Overture representatives both gave demonstrations on how their pay per click models work with the local component. Very impressive stuff; and it is a safe bet that the technology to target local customers will continue to grow and be enhanced. The other two speakers discussed how they pick keywords to target the local traffic to their sites. Overall this presentation went well, and you should expect more information at the next conference on Getting Local.

Meet the Crawlers has always been and will always be one of the most attractive sessions at the conference for a search engine optimizer. Where else can you get representatives from the top search engine all in a single room? The representatives for the search engines included Jon Glick from Yahoo! Search, Steve Gemignani from Loosmart, Craig Nevill-Mannig from Google and Paul Gardi from Ask Jeeves. Each speaker went over some of the new and exciting features that were added to their engines. Yahoo! showed off its new SmartSort feature in the Yahoo! Shopping portal. Yahoo! also pointed out that Inkotmi inclusion could possibly also get you listed in the Yahoo! Shopping portal. Looksmart is working on an interesting new method to crawl updated pages or fresh content. Instead of crawling pages on set intervals like many of the crawlers do, they will look at an individual page and then determine based on how often that individual page is updated, how often they should send out their robot to that page. Google now allows you to type in UPS, FedEx, airline reservation, patent and more numbers and will automatically give you the information you seek. Paul Gardi again discussed Teoma’s unique method of determining link popularity but he also showed how Danny Sullivan’s invisible tabs theory is making its way into Ask Jeeves.

Overall you can expect to learn a great deal from the Search Engine Strategies conference. There tends to be a lot more sessions for novice SEOs/SEMs but there is something for all levels at this conference. Most of the basic information you can easily learn by reading Shari Thurow’s Search Engine Visibility book, but the conference does give you the ability to hear from the best. For a more detailed review of the conference, please visit the Search Engine Roundtable Weblog and the posts for Day One, Day Two and Day Three.

Advances in the Search Engine Industry and the RustyBrick Perspective
The search engine industry is a rapid and dynamic market. Search engines are constantly updating and upgrading their algorithms and indexes to achieve the competitive edge. Search engine marketers spend several hours each day trying to stay up-to-date with these changes in order to provide their clients with better results. Most of these dynamic changes remain transparent to the average Web searcher, which happens to be part of the goal.

Most of the people reading this article are well aware of the Google Updates, also known as the Google Dance. The Google Dance is a time period when Google begins to update its index throughout the Google datacenters. Normally you will see a change in the search engine results page, where pages are added, removed, bumped up and bumped down. All search engines have this update process where the results change on a sequential basis. Each update is the search engines attempt to provide better quality results for the searcher. Better quality results for the searcher translate into a larger searcher base. Marketers look to advertise at search engines that have a large user base.

As covered by Danny Sullivan, search engines are trying to provide the most relevant results possible without the need to specify exactly what the searcher is looking for. For example, if you want to do a search for a picture of a map, the search engine should know that by typing in “map” to return pictures. Currently if you conduct a search in Google on “map” it returns Map Quest as the first result. The user then has to know enough about clicking on the “images” tab to specify that he or she wants map images. Google does tell you to try an image search if you type in “map picture” but Ask Jeeves actually gives you pictures as part of your results. And Teoma is one of these search technologies that is moving towards that area of search. Anticipating what the searcher really wants and making that transparent to the end user will prove to be the killer search engine application.

Other areas where you can expect advances to be made are in local search. When searching for a local specific keyword phrase, the search engines will try to provide the best possible matching results. How they do this is a combination of teaming up with the yellow page directories and using some sort of geo-filtering technology. Yahoo might come the closest to providing those results; but then again, you need a tab to get them in the format you are looking for.

With Microsoft racing to compete in the search engine market and with all the consolidation amongst Yahoo, Overture, Inktomi, and Alta Vista we can expect a lot of excitement in the upcoming year. Will MSN compete? The common analogy is the Netscape and Internet Explorer history. However, others still feel MSN is too far behind, and it is unlikely that they can catch up. Others believe that since Microsoft has such a control over the PC market that if they build the search into the operating system they can easily win over the market. Danny Sullivan argues with that by pointing out that search is already built into the Windows operating system, so why aren’t people using it? I feel that Bill Gates will be focusing more on search and promoting it more in the operating system that people will be locked in to using MSN.

Networking Opportunities and Exhibitors at Chicago
As with many conferences, people attend just to add new prospects to their lead lists and hopefully close new sales. I have personally met two people who came up to me out of the blue and told me straight out that they were there simply to drive some business. People attending the conference are there to learn about the industry and technology supporting the industry.

This section will not get into why people network. That is more for a business-oriented article. However, it will discuss whom you can expect to meet. The types of people who attend this conference include search engine marketers, search engine optimizers, Web designers, Web developers, marketing departments, Webmasters and even top-level management. If you have something to offer any of the types of people above, then you have a reason to network. I shared a cab ride to the airport with an individual looking to invest in a company that is working on some type of specialized search service. This conference provided him with the contacts to reach out to and ask these confidential and important questions.

The exhibitors at the conference included search engines, optimization and marketing firms, Web analytics companies, specialized search engine tools, yellow page companies and affiliate companies. Exhibitors had their own goals to be at the conference. I personally did not spend more then five minutes in the exhibitor hall, but from what I saw, the hall was crowded with potential customers.

The Search Engine Elite and Sometimes Wacky
The Search Engine Strategies conference is the one conference that brings together almost all of the search engine elite into one event. Experts from around the world, from popular search engines and from next door gather at this conference to share their knowledge with others. They also come to hang out and relax with their colleagues in person with a beer in hand. Many have the opportunity meet their favorite forum poster, article author, blog poster, or search engine representative for the first time face-to-face.

Some of the most popular names at the Chicago conference include (in alphabetical order): Bruce Clay, Scottie Claiborne, Barbara Coll, Mike Grehan, Detlev Johnson, Heather Lloyd-Martin, Chris Sherman, Danny Sullivan, Shari Thurow, Eric Ward, and Jill Whalen. You also get to meet representatives from Google, Yahoo, Teoma, Ask Jeeves, Marketleap, Microsoft, Looksmart, About.com, Did-It, JimWorld, Commission Junction, Lycos, SearchEngineWatch.com, and Position Tech.

HighRankings.com is hosting pictures documenting some of the more relaxed and even wacky moments from the search engine elites. Visit Scottie Claiborne’s gallery at http://www.highrankings.com/scottie/chicago-ses/ and Mike Grehan’s gallery at http://www.highrankings.com/scottie/chicago-mike/. Please notify me if you know of other pictures of this event. I would like to apologize in advance if I missed any names in the list above.

Search Engine Strategies Chicago Conference Wrap-Up
Search Engine Strategies Conference and Expo is an event that is comprised of the most talented and famous Search Engine Marketing professional in the world. This event is held several times a year all over the world and is hosted by JupiterMedia and SearchEngineWatch.com. There are many reasons to come to the show including learning about search engine optimization and marketing, to hear about advances in the search engine industry, to meet prospects and attract new business, and simply to meet people in the industry face to face and have a good time.

I was privileged to be able to attend the full three-day conference in Chicago that took place on December 9, 2003 through December 11, 2003. I have compiled a detailed review of each day of the Search Engine Strategies (SES) conference at The Search Engine Roundtable Weblog. Overall, I recommend the conference to all those who are in the Web Design, Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing field. I am looking forward to the New York Show and hope to see you all there.

Author Bio:
Barry Schwartz is the President of RustyBrick, Inc., a Web services firm specializing in customized online technology that helps companies decrease costs and increase sales. Barry is a leading expert in the search engine optimization community. Barry has written and contributed many articles to the SEO community, by publishing in SEMPO (Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization). Barry also gives regular seminars covering the complete spectrum of search engine marketing technology and methods.

Yahoo Switching To Inktomi?
I took a leap a few months ago, predicting when Yahoo! would change search results providers. I thought my theory was sound, but apparently Yahoo! seems to have a few different ideas.

I figured, based on their history of rolling out new features a few days after announcing their quarterly earnings, that they would roll out with Inktomi results in early October (Tuesday, October 14th to be exact). There was a reason for the date, but you will have to read the other article to find out what that is.

While I was a little off on the date (OK way off, as it still hasn’t happened yet), it is still obvious that this is going to happen some time soon. Which brings me to the point of all this speculation, and a question for you – are you ready for the switch?

Think about this for a second before you answer. Consider the implications of having (or not having) listings in Inktomi right now. If you do not have an Inktomi listing, not only are you alienating 1/3 of your possible web traffic (vis-a-vis Microsoft’s MSN), but you have the potential of losing another 1/3 of your traffic once Yahoo! does do the change. That means you could be losing 66% of your total traffic. Wouldn’t this justify the paid inclusion fees?

If you do have Inktomi listings, consider what they are. Do they accurately describe your site? Do a search on MSN for your keywords. Do they come up? How compelling is the description. Would you click on your listing if you were looking for your product, or are your competitor’s listings more compelling? Keep in mind that MSN has their own ranking algorithm, so at the moment there is no way to influence rankings up or down. But just take a minute to look at the results and put yourself in your customer’s shoes and think about which result you would click on.

One more thing to think about: We have seen an incredible increase in traffic from the Inktomi crawler, also known as Slurp. And it has been incredibly active during the last 3 or 4 months. This can only mean one thing. That Yahoo! is gearing up for the switch by building the database. Which leads to the question; Are you being found by Slurp?

You can easily find out by viewing your log file reports. Most log analysis software can distinguish between browsers and spiders. You will want to look under the “spiders” section of the report to see if Slurp has been there, and how often. Based on our data, Slurp should be one of your top 3 spiders over the past few months.

If it hasn’t been there, you may want to consider paying for inclusion on a few pages just to get the spider visiting. Otherwise you do risk losing a lot of potential traffic when the change occurs.

On a final note, it has been almost a year since Yahoo! bought Inktomi. December 23rd was the day we brought the news to you. Wouldn’t it be poetic if Yahoo! made the change on that date – one year later? After all, it is a Tuesday.

Author Name: Rob Sullivan
Company: Searchengineposition.com

Author:
Rob Sullivan
Production Manager
Searchengineposition.com
Search Engine Positioning Specialists