Just what exactly are Trusted Feed programs?
With today’s many PPC (Pay per Click), PFP (Pay for Placement) and PFI (Paid for Inclusion) programs from so many vendors, it’s no surprise that some people can be confused. While organic SEO (search engine optimization) search results (the ones you see at the left of Google’s screen) are considered the best and generally constitute the highest ROI, for companies that just launched a new site and that need sales real fast, these various ‘paid’ programs can make a big difference in their search engine marketing campaigns.
Enter the trusted feed arena
Before I start describing some of the advantages and disadvantages of using trusted feed programs and how you can benefit from them, let’s see what the term ‘trusted feed’ means and what it entails for companies that are considering using such programs.
When a company has a large website, with more than 400, 500 or maybe 600 pages, a trusted feed program would make a lot of sense. With most trusted feed programs offered today, your site’s listings are given the same chance to rank among the generic or organic listings, usually on the same pages.
With certain PFI programs such as Inktomi, you need to pay for each Web page you submit. Trusted feed programs differ from this, since you are required to pay a fee only for the clicks your links are getting.
So, what makes trusted feed programs popular with some companies is that you only pay if there is traffic to your site, as opposed to PFI where you have to pay, whether you get traffic or not.
Trusted feed programs are also called XML feed, since they are based on the XML protocol, a technology developed specifically for Web services. It also used to be called Direct Data when it first came out, but the two most popular terms we hear of today are either trusted feed or XML feed.
Advantages of Trusted Feed programs:
1. Trusted feed is continually re-indexed
2. Appears as generic listings, not advertisements
3. Can boost more keyword and key phrase rankings
4. Greatly facilitates indexing of sites that are database-driven
5. Helps with indexing information that is buried deep in a site
Similarities between Trusted Feed and PFP
Trusted Feed and Pay for Placement (PFP) programs have one thing in common: both programs rely on a Cost per Click (CPC) pricing model. However, PFP click charges for every keyword fluctuate constantly, since advertisers keep modifying their bids all the time. In the case of trusted feed, you can negotiate a single, fixed CPC cost with some of the search engines or their inclusion partners.
Two of the most popular and most recognized PFP search engines are Google’s AdWords program and Overture. A lower and more stable CPC rate makes trusted feed programs a more attractive option to some larger advertisers, since it helps facilitate its monitoring.
Inventory management
If you are a manufacturer or distributor, what happens if you temporarily run out of stock on a certain product? Another popular advantage of trusted feed programs is that there are mechanisms in place that allow an advertiser to remove discontinued or temporarily unavailable products pages from the engine’s database.
Additionally, XML and trusted feeds support the utilization of most third party tracking URL’s from each search engine, for their corresponding individual landing pages. All of this helps companies better manage their ad programs, while at the same time offering them better flexibility.
Trusted Feed limitations
Everything can never be perfect and there are a few limitations to trusted feed. Although trusted feed can significantly improve the indexing of a database-driven website, top rankings can never be guaranteed. Sometimes, certain positions that are achieved can be located in a further down (lower) position than those of sponsored ads.
Another drawback to using trusted feed programs is the time it can take to carefully manage them, in certain situations. Generally speaking, there are certain types of trusted feed programs that were designed mainly for bigger companies that have large advertising budgets to work with. Furthermore, even with trusted feed, don’t neglect the fact that your title tags and description tags still need to be written in a convincing fashion that will entice visitors to click on your link.
Other disadvantages of Trusted Feed
Although advertisers using trusted feed don’t need to worry of large outbursts of click-fees or such big variations, they still need to monitor their campaigns closely, to ensure their maximum profitability. A steady stream of visitors from trusted feed listings could, in certain cases, come to an unexpected halt.
As with conventional and generic SEO, with trusted feed, you will still need to have your Web pages optimized, if you want the best positioning on most engines.
Another common disadvantage to using trusted feed is the amount of people it generally takes to prepare all the data. It is fairly easy and simple for a programmer to export data inside a document. However, in some large companies with thousands of different products to sell on their sites, this can take a few months if there are some problems. So there could be additional delays, which might in effect circumvent one of trusted feed’s main features: faster time to market.
Conclusion
Trusted feed inclusion programs are not for every marketer or advertiser. By their inherent design, some trusted feed programs are more appropriate for larger companies, or advertisers that have larger budgets and can afford longer-lasting ad campaigns.
Carefully evaluate your advertising needs and consider the ad budget you have to work with, in order to determine if a trusted feed program is really appropriate for your company.
____________
Reference:
‘Search Engine Advertising’ by Catherine Seda.
347 pages. New Riders Publishing. Indianapolis, IN. 46240.
Author:
Serge Thibodeau of Rank For Sales
Different results in Altavista/MSN/Yahoo!
A team member of ours did some checking recently comparing results between Yahoo! and its search subsidiaries and found some interesting results. So much so that it begs the question: Why are there different results between the sites?
I am talking about the differences you may have noticed between Yahoo! and the sites it provides results for. Namely Altavista, Alltheweb and MSN. If you do the same search across these different engines, chances are good that you get different results. This doesn’t make sense considering that Yahoo! is supposed to be supplying the search results to these sites. If this is the case, you would expect that all four sites should have the same results, right? Wrong.
Why you ask? Well, it comes down to the algorithms.
When we were checking results against the sites, we were finding differences not only in the rankings, but also with the number of pages indexed and the number of pages per site indexed. But we are only going to be dealing with rankings here.
As you may already know, all of the major search engines have different algorithms. The algorithms determine how the pages will rank depending on a variety of factors including OTP (On The Page) factors, such as title tags, descriptions, body text, page length etc. as well as other factors including link relevancy and inheritance to name just a few.
The combinations of these factors, along with the weightings each engine puts on them, coalesce to make up the ranking algorithm which determines where pages will show up in the search results. These ranking algorithms are controlled by the independent engines. And this is why the search results appear differently across multiple engines.
What is happening is that Yahoo! is merely providing the index, or list of sites. They are saying, “Hey MSN, here you go. Here is the list of sites we have added in our index, now it is up to you to rank them the way you see fit.”
It would be like giving someone a deck of cards. Usually, if they are not new, they are in random order. Now if you handed the cards to 3 different people and asked them to organize them, chances are each person would organize them differently. You could organize them by suit, or by face value, or by some combination of these. Ultimately each person would likely organize them differently. If you then asked them to pull the 20th card from the deck, there is a good chance that they would each draw different cards as the decks are organized different.
This is how the algorithms work. Each engine determines how to order the results based on the factors mentioned above. Therefore while the Yahoo! index may be the same across the board for each site, the final search results will be different.
Just so you know, in our test of about 50 sites, there was sometimes over 1000-page differences in rankings. That means, for example, that a site could rank in the top 10 in MSN and not even be in the top 1000 in Altavista (or vice versa). There were some results displayed where rankings were within a few positions, while others were thousands apart. This difference is due to the ranking algorithms.
So, if you think your site will do well in MSN or Altavista just because you are doing well in Yahoo! don’t be so sure. Conversely, if you find you are ranking lower than you like in Yahoo! don’t assume that you are also ranking low in one of the other engines because it is entirely dependant on the engine.
Author Bio:
Rob Sullivan
Production Manager
Searchengineposition.com
Search Engine Positioning Specialists
Gmail privacy concerns?
I’m sure you’ve already heard, but Google is getting into the email business. We speculated about Google email a few months ago, but were unsure about the whole mail thing. It seemed to be a change in a direction that Google wasn’t used to. After all, Google is search, and nothing more. They build services on top of search (such as news, Froogle and so on) but essentially, everything is driven by search.
So when it was confirmed that Google was getting into email, we were a little surprised. Personally, I don’t think it’s a bad thing. One of the strongest assets both Yahoo! and MSN have is web based free email. From a competitive point of view it kind of makes sense. And search, as you will see, is built into it.
Google mail is still in beta testing right now, so you can’t get a new address. You can put a request in for one, but there are no guarantees.
So when people start complaining about privacy being violated with Google mail I get a little surprised. How is it that a beta product can be invading your privacy, especially when you request to use the product? If you haven’t heard, privacy advocates are saying that Google is invading mail user’s privacy because they will be scanning your personal email and offering ads which correspond to the body of the emails. This is where the Google search comes in.
Further, you won’t be able to delete old emails; they just keep building up apparently. I can understand not being able to delete them, especially if Google is trying to serve ads matching the email bodies, and I can see the point of privacy being violated (somewhat). However, it is a free service which you are requesting. You have to agree to their terms of use (which I’m sure addresses the whole scanning emails issue) in order to receive your free email address, so what is the problem?
I could see if it was an ISP who gave you email and did this, because you’re stuck with it, but to go after a free service which you are explicitly requesting to use? It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.
It’s kind of like when you go to a major sporting event. When I go to see our local hockey team, I don’t give express permission for the TV broadcaster to use my face during their broadcast (such as when they are showing the crowds reaction) yet I expect it, and I don’t consider it a violation of my privacy. I am at the event of my own free will as I chose to be there. If I were concerned about someone seeing my face on TV I wouldn’t be at the game.
Maybe I’m taking a simplistic view on this, but I really don’t understand what the fuss is about. Perhaps, if they added the scanning feature after I signed up I would be concerned, but otherwise, if I have previously agreed to it, then I’m stuck with it in exchange for having the ability to use 1 gigabyte of free email storage space.
I guess if I was really concerned, yet I still wanted to use Gmail, then I’d ask all my friends to send images to the Gmail address, and everything else to one of my other addresses. Then I wouldn’t have to worry about Google scanning my emails, because they wouldn’t get much useful text out of the images and I’d be able to keep all those pictures that get sent to me.
Author Bio:
Rob Sullivan
Production Manager
Searchengineposition.com
Search Engine Positioning Specialists
Meet the new “G” operating system
As most of you know, the Windows operating system is the most popular and the most utilized personal computer operating platform in use today, and has been for a good number of years. Windows has made Microsoft the powerhouse it is today, thanks to its user-friendly interface and a number of other features that greatly simplify your daily life.
However, there is now a new computer operating system that is taking over, and it’s not coming from inside your personal computer, and it’s not from your company’s LAN (Local Area Network) or intranet network either. What I’m referring to here is the ‘G’ operating system, better known as the Google operating platform.
If you feel that for the past couple of years Google has managed to transform many people’s lives, you are not alone. We are witnessing a trend that will probably increase and will become even more widespread in the coming months and years.
Thanks to many of its PHD’s and engineers, and using its vast research labs in Mountain View California, Google is building a gigantic information system, complete with its own computer operating system that anybody can use, 24 hours a day.
How it all began
Almost without warning, engineers at the Googleplex have designed and built an extremely sophisticated computer network. What really boggles your mind is that this whole project originally took place as a simple idea, just a research initiative at Stanford University in the late 1990’s.
Google’s original founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page came up in 1998 with an experimental search engine they had developed. Using the Page Rank’ search algorithm that Larry Page had designed, Sergey worked with Larry to give birth to what is today one of the most exciting projects that ever came out of an American university. Of course, nobody knew at that time the success this simple idea would ave until today.
To make its search engine operate smoothly, Google is utilizing more than 10,000 (probably a lot more) servers, located in many of its data centers, situated mostly in North America. You could say that Google runs its own operating system. Its search engine now looks more like a huge information platform, a large data warehouse if you prefer, than just a simple computer cluster that would have been optimized for one single application.
With Google’s monthly update ‘dances’ and cycles, Google even makes its operating system even faster and more powerful each and every month, while at the same time drastically lowering the overall cost of all its operations, through revenue-generating contextual ads programs, such as its AdWords PPC (Pay-per-Click) and its AdSense initiatives.
What makes Google even more powerful?
Through its complex computing platform, Google has access to a gigantic map of the whole Internet, and it is now fully aware of how people ‘travel’ around in the virtual world it operates in. What makes Google even more powerful at this is it’s getting better and better at analyzing this large map. Furthermore, it is finding more and improved ways at ‘data mining’ all that precious information it collects from millions of users located all over the world and living in many different time zones.
Through its Blogger.com subsidiary, on any given hour of the day, Google knows exactly what people blog about. Through its vast search engine, it knows what topic or subject people are searching for. Thanks to it’s AdWords program, Google knows who wants to advertise and what for and exactly how effective those advertisements perform in real life and, in real time. Oh, and now, thanks to its Orkut portal, now Google knows about how people communicate with friends and loved ones.
If you are beginning to think this is a lot of information, it is! Today, information is power.
The parallel with the Windows operating system
In terms of worries, Google isn’t too concerned about Yahoo or Microsoft’s research projects, although the news media’s attention on that subject could eventually be to their own advantage. Only time will tell for sure.
Of course, Microsoft’s intention is to combine a search engine, right inside its new version of Windows, dubbed Longhorn. However, that version may not be ready until late 2005, early 2006. Light years away in terms of Internet speed.
Microsoft’s idea of such a search engine is to look into your hard drive for the keyword you typed in. If it can’t find it there, it is assumed your query will ‘go out on the Web’ to find it’ somewhere. Where exactly will that somewhere be is not known at this time’
Working in favour of the Redmund company of course is the fact that it is sitting on about 54 Billion of cash, enough money to feed many developing nations for years. Microsoft’s search engine project is still uncertain and leaves some observers perplexed as to how it wants to do it and what will happen next.
Search is what Google does best
So you might ask: who needs a local search engine in Windows or on your hard drive when anybody can have free and unlimited access to information residing on some of the world’s fastest computers? Can the ‘G’ operating system be the fastest and the most powerful when it comes to the information age? At first glance, it would appear to be so. After all, search is what Google does best, and it has certainly proven its ability to innovate in that field.
And let’s not forget all those people on the move out there’ People wanting to access information on mobile devices don’t need large or cumbersome operating systems. All they need is a fast and convenient way to search for information, using tiny LCD screens which are getting better, smaller and cheaper.
Such applications will be perfect if they can run on the ‘G’ operating system. Google could start developing such small and hybrid systems, using parts of Linux for its simplicity, low-cost and ease of use. Linux is also of the open source code, meaning that a whole set of additional applications could be developed around them, giving even more power and credence to the ‘G’ operating system.
All these systems and ‘apps’ would all have one thing in common: they would all query the Google database, whether it be Google’s large pool of information directly in its own search engine, or other sources which are close to Google’s heart, namely Blogger.com or the Orkut social portal that is still in its beta version.
Have you heard lately that Google wants to implement its free email system? Gmail is Google’s answer to free email offerings similar to Microsoft’s Hotmail and Yahoo, except it will offer up to one Gig of storage space, with a few more features to be announced at a later date. Again, this initiative is indicative of more things to come and more applications running on the ‘G’ operating platform.
Conclusion
Whether Google goes public or not this year or next, one thing is certain: similar to Microsoft in the mid to late nineties, Google now has become a real powerhouse. Its main asset is of course its huge database, which constitutes the sheer computing power of its fast search engine, used by more than 200 million people everyday.
At last count, Google’s index had over 4.2 billion pages in it, and it is rapidly growing everyday. It is estimated there are anywhere from 6 to 10 million new Web pages added to the Internet on any given day, and these numbers are said to be conservative.
The ‘G’ operating system might be closer than we think. It could happen faster than some are led to believe. If anything, it is to Google’s full advantage to do all of what’s in its power to help promote it’s new “operating system”, by providing the industry and the development community with all the tools it can offer.
Cooperation, planning and concerted efforts will go a long way towards achieving these goals. In fact, for the past 2 and a half years, Google makes available a set of developer tools called the Google API’s (Application Programmable Interface), further helping the development community get up to speed on the ‘G platform’.
With all it has going for itself, I predict that Google will probably double, maybe even triple in size over the next five years.
The next twelve months will be extremely interesting, both from an observer’s point of view, as well as in the user’s perspective of still new things to come, new developments that will take place and innovative new technologies being developed everyday.
Author:
Serge Thibodeau of Rank For Sales
Were You Bamboozled by Google?
It’s still happening. “Florida,” “Boston,” “Ginger,” and “Brandy” are just a few of the many Google updates that have hit within the last few months. And Google is still issuing periodic updates as we speak. No one can say for sure what’s going on or what to expect. One thing is for sure, unless you want to get bamboozled by Google (again!), you’d be wise to take action to prevent it now.
So many people were screaming (and still are) about losing tons of business due to Google’s updates. Some have reported 30%, 50%, or even total losses. What can you do? After all, you’re at the mercy of Google, right? WRONG!
Why Do Rankings Keep Changing?
Google, like many other engines, changes its algorithm (formula for calculating who ranks where) from time-to-time in an effort to filter out spammers and deliver the most relevant search results possible.
Google has had updates since its very beginning. But now, depending on which theory you choose to believe, they are making more advancements that require more updates. This means, even if you rank at #1 this week, you might not make the top 30 next week.
How Do You Protect Yourself From Updates?
Diversify! It is never a good idea to have all your income generated by one source. You wouldn’t depend on having all of your retirement savings from one source (that’s exactly why mutual funds are so popular), and you wouldn’t have all of your money in one bank. I mean, really! What if that one source went under? The same principle applies to Internet marketing.
While search engines are a phenomenal way to drive traffic to your website, they are most certainly not the only way. In order to ensure you are protected should Google (or whoever is the next “big” search engine) change their formula yet again, you need to create a diversification plan.
Think of all the outlets that reach your target audience. Investigate each one to see how feasible it would be to market your site through those channels. Then implement a plan that includes several advertising avenues (including search engines) that – as a whole – generates as much (or more) business as you originally received from Google. That way, should one of these channels go down, your business would only be slightly affected.
Don’t stop there! Twice a year you’ll want to go over your plan and be sure that everything is working, as it should. If one outlet begins to dwindle in its response, look into finding a replacement. This way you are never taken by surprise.
Once you have your diversification plan working for you, you will be in a much better position to be rest assured that the business you receive will be there for the long haul. You will also feel more comfortable that no one organization can cause the tremendous damage Google has caused and could cause again.
Author Bio:
Diane C. Hughes * ProBizTips.com
FREE Report: Amazingly Simple (Yet Super Powerful) Ways To Skyrocket Your Sales And Build Your Business Into A Tower of Profits! http://madmarketer.com/diane
10 Tips for Tech-Writers
Tech-writing is a tricky business. It’s not a very high profile industry, so there’s not much support around. Follow these 10 quick tips, and you’ll be well on your way to a satisfying tech-writing career.
1) Follow a sensible career path:
STEP 1: Start in a team
STEP 2: Stay only just long enough
STEP 3: Manage yourself
STEP 4: Manage a team
STEP 5: Go contracting (depends on the market)
2) Knowledge is your lifeblood – learn the politics of your company. Know who knows what. Find someone who consistently gives you timely, reliable, technically accurate answers, and get their name tattooed on your shoulder! Every company has at least one. And they may not be in the project manager/product manager/customer/programmer roles. They are generally the people who’ve used the product in the real world, and dealt with real world customers.
3) Communicate WITH, not AT. Tech-writers don’t have enough power to get away with communicating at.
4) Track stuff (take spreadsheet printout and write it up on the board).
5) Develop good product and domain knowledge – The more you can figure out for yourself, the better off you’ll be (and the more respect you’ll get from the techies).
6) Find out who your users are, what they are trying to do, what they are having trouble doing, and how they want to be helped. Then provide this assistance. Help the user do what they are trying to do. Don’t just tell them what the product can do- a help system is only helpful if it addresses the users’ needs.
7) Treat everyone as a customer. Then manage their expectations and your commitments. Always ensure they know what you’re doing. Tell them when you’ll be finished. And pull out all stops to meet your deadline.
8) Provide a surrogate user testing mechanism for the development team – providing usability feedback.
9) Work as hard as required to get good quality doco finished on time and to budget – this is how you’ll get the satisfaction out of work that you need.
10) Have fun with it.
Don’t become jaded and cynical by the high-tech, harsh, uncaring IT world. Use your smarts, and make the most of the resources provided. Most importantly of all, make work satisfaction your number 1 goal. It’s the best way to stay happy and get ahead.
Author Bio:
Glenn Murray heads copywriting studio Divine Write. He can be contacted on Sydney +612 4334 6222 or at glenn@divinewrite.com. Visit www.divinewrite.com for further details.
Googleopoly: The Motivation Behind Gmail
Just before the close of business on Wednesday, Google announced that it will be launching Gmail, its new free e-mail service set to offer 1000 megabytes of free space to its users. This announcement comes after a flurry of changes at Google, all of which are geared to securing their place as the dominant search engine in light of recent competition offered by Yahoo! and soon MSN. The search engine wars have been predicted for some time now by search engine insiders, and the launch of Gmail is Google’s attempt to win the war before it gets fully started. But is Google really ready to take on the big portals?
Google was an innocent project through Standford University. It was a project started in the days of optimism about a free Internet not supported by ads or corporate revenues, but rather the free exchange of ideas. As a result, they focused solely on product. There were no worries about creating a flashy interface, hiring a sharp marketing team, or launching an IPO. They were worried about good search results. The result is that Google is now synonymous with searching the Internet.
Today, Google stands with a much different outlook. The success of the launch of AdWords propelled Google into a class all their own. Almost overnight, Google entered the PPC industry and dethroned Overture as the untouchable kings of PPC. Although other search engines such as Lycos, FindWhat, Kanoodle, and Sprinks had been competing with Overture, none of these engines were able to bring the reach and brand power of Google.
The success of AdWords was a notice to every other Internet giant. Companies such as Yahoo! and AOL ‘ who were providing Google’s results to their users ‘ took notice to the fact that Google had an incredible influence on the Internet, and if they desired, they could leverage that influence into a variety of new markets. Worse yet, Yahoo! and AOL helped Google gain such influence by providing Google results to their users. These giants became nervous, and with good reason. Google started to show signs that they were expanding into new markets.
Dictionaries, glossaries, news services, Froogle, Catalog search, maps, blogging, and other services were all emerging from the Google labs and news rooms. If Google was able to instantaneously compete and lead in the highly competitive PPC market, what would happen if they moved in on the territory of Yahoo!, AOL, or MSN? These Internet giants helped make Google powerful, possibly more powerful than they were themselves.
The battle for web searches had begun. Yahoo! has taken the most notable steps by replacing their results provided by Google with their newly acquired Inktomi division based results. To fight Google on the advertising revenue level, Yahoo swooped up Overture, still all-star in the paid search market. Overture, now playing catch-up in an industry which they practically founded, launched their own site content match system which rivals Google AdWords.
MSN has vowed to refine their search algorithms to become more relevant. Most of the work being done by MSN has been fairly quiet, but rest assured, there will be a lot of talk about MSN search when they are ready to release their new product to the Internet. And, with every new PC you buy, don’t be surprised if it comes with a host of web searching tools built in.
There have even been rumors over at AOL that they are going to be abandoning their Google based results. The fact is, AOL is scared of Google. As it stands right now, Froogle already steps on their shopping market, and Google News is taking away from AOL’s news delivery service.
By abandoning Google provided results, these Internet giants are attempting to limit Google’s reach. The fact is simple: users still use Yahoo!, MSN, and AOL. They use these services because they offer a host of unique information, updated news, financial reports, maps, phone directories, etc. Most importantly, users visit MSN, Yahoo, and AOL for their free e-mail. While they have these users attention, Yahoo! and MSN will now try to sell these users on their new and improved search results not provided by Google in order to steal a bit of that search engine market.
Just as Yahoo!, AOL, and MSN realized how powerful Google was in the search engine market (and subsequently the danger that posed to them), Google is realizing the real threat that these portals present. If these portals are able to offer suitable search results, users will have less reason to utilize Google’s search. Google has also recognized the main advantage these portals have: free e-mail. Free e-mail is what makes Yahoo! and MSN such popular destinations. People who have e-mail accounts at these locations find themselves visiting these sites multiple times every day just to check their e-mail. While they are there, they have the opportunity to be grabbed by a headline or service offered through these portals. The free e-mail is what brings the users back time and again.
Gmail is a direct attempt by Google to destroy any competition before it arises. With 10 times the amount of storage and what appears to be a superior interface for viewing and organizing mail messages, Gmail is not simply a nice thing to offer to web surfers. Gmail is an attempt to put an arrow through the heart of Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail. The services will not be comparable in quality, and that is the way Google wants it. The goal of Gmail is to make Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail look like laughable solutions to web based e-mail.
If Gmail is successful in converting Yahoo! Mail users and Hotmail users, the search engine wars will most likely be much ado about nothing. The battle and war will be won, and the victor will be Google. But don’t expect MSN, AOL, or Yahoo! to simply watch Gmail launch without developing a plan to strike back hard. Yahoo! alone has invested incredible amounts of money to acquire Inktomi and Overture just so they can compete head to head with Google. It would be uncharacteristic of them to simply fold. And do not forget about the power MSN has with their search.
Remember that Microsoft controls what search engine is used by default on most every computer around the world. That is a competitive advantage that Google will have a very hard time overcoming.
Gmail will not be the last new service offered by Google. It certainly will not go unanswered by Yahoo! or another portal. It will, however, mark a fundamental point in this search engine war that appears to now be in full swing.
Author Bio:
Mark Daoust is the owner of Site-Reference.com and TowerSearch. Signup for a free TowerSearch account and receive guaranteed top rankings for all of your chosen keywords.
It is very unlikely that Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page had any idea exactly how big their original search engine (then called BackRub) would actually become.
Introduction
In case you haven’t noticed yet, Yahoo has been hard at work lately. If you missed it, Yahoo now has its own toolbar. In a similar fashion the Google toolbar works, Yahoo just introduced Web Rank’. Web Rank’ happens to be Yahoo’s new search engine algorithm, as well as the name it gave its new toolbar.
The Yahoo Web Rank’ toolbar works a bit like the Google PageRank’ toolbar and is a technical measurement of a particular URL’s popularity. If you download and install the Yahoo Web Rank’ feature on the Yahoo Companion Toolbar, an icon will display the Web Rank’ value of each URL that you visit.
Just like Google, Web Rank’ values range from 1 to 10, with the higher number depicting higher link popularity. So, it is hoped (!) that a site with a higher Web Rank will offer more information and content, at least that’s how it should work.
Note that Web Rank’ is only in Beta release, which means Yahoo is still experimenting with it and modifications in the way it works are possible, until the final version is released sometime in the next few weeks.
To help determine a site’s Web Rank’ value, Yahoo’s Companion Toolbar collects anonymous URL data about sites visited by toolbar users who have enabled the Web Rank’ feature and then sends that information back to Yahoo. According to Yahoo, the new toolbar does not collect personal identity information about you, such as your name, phone number, physical address or email address, etc.
The anonymous URL data is sent to Yahoo’s servers and the Web Rank’ value is returned to the Companion Toolbar as one single measurement of the popularity of the Web page or URL you are currently visiting.
You will see a small Yahoo icon on your Companion Toolbar, displaying the Web Rank’ value of the site you are currently visiting. The value will be between 1 and 10.
Yahoo’s Web Rank’ algorithm numbers are calculated using a sophisticated scoring formula developed in Yahoo’s labs that provides a measure of the popularity of the Web page or Web site that you are viewing.
Installing Yahoo’s new Web Rank’ toolbar is easy. With the help of Yahoo’s Companion Toolbar, you will have the option of enabling the Web Rank’ feature. If you want to use it, choose the “Install with Web Rank” button on the configuration panel and the Web Rank’ feature will be enabled during the installation of your new toolbar. It took me less than two minutes to do the whole thing.
Once you have it installed on your machine, should you ever change your mind, you can turn it off if you want. Doing this is easy: from the Yahoo Companion Toolbar, just click the “Toolbar Settings” button and uncheck “Enable Web Rank.” That way, the Companion Toolbar will stop collecting anonymous URL data about the sites you visit once Web Rank’ has been disabled.
If you are running your toolbar from a corporate network and if you need to disable it, you will need to block http://cpn.yahoo-webrank.net at your firewall or proxy server. This will disable the Web Rank feature from sending any anonymous URL data back to Yahoo’s servers.
Do you really need the Yahoo Companion Toolbar?
You don’t need to install the Companion Toolbar if you don’t want too. Yahoo’s Web Rank’ feature is opt-in only and it’s not required to install the Companion Toolbar if you don’t need it. If you decide to have it installed, you will be asked if you would like to enable the Web Rank’ feature in the toolbar.
If you choose to enable it, a toolbar icon will display the Web Rank’ value for the URL that you are currently visiting, if that value is in fact available.
Web Rank’s cool new features
I had time to experiment with Yahoo’s new toolbar and discovered some cool new features. One of them is what Yahoo calls “Recent Searches”. This feature is a pull down menu of your last 30 search terms through Yahoo Companion. At the time I tested it, 12 query terms were directly visible and I could access an additional 18 with the scroll bar.
According to Yahoo, no information is ever sent back to any of their servers on any of your recent searches. If, for privacy reasons or otherwise, you want to turn off “Recent Searches”, you can do it at any time by selecting the ‘Clear Recent Searches’ under the “Toolbar Settings” button. That button has a small picture of a pencil on it to better help you find the button.
The Recent Searches feature can be disabled entirely by deselecting the menu item called ‘Enable Recent Searches’ through the “Toolbar Settings” menu. This action will delete all the recent search terms in the client and disable the feature.
Other features and benefits to searchers
Yahoo’s new Web Rank’ algorithm has even more features. It can also provide the following important benefits to its users:
1) It will help Yahoo identify critical new trends and usage habits in Internet activity, in an effort to better enhance the quality and relevance of the products and services people are searching on.
2) It will also help Yahoo to correctly identify new websites faster, and then add these newer sites into its search index, resulting in more relevant results and significantly improved overall search results.
Features and benefits to webmasters and site owners
For site owners and webmasters, the new Yahoo Web Rank’ algorithm will also deliver the following features and benefits:
1) Yahoo’s Web Rank’ algorithm delivers a valuable indicator of how popular your site is perceived by other site visitors or webmasters.
2) Additionally, Yahoo’s new Web Rank’ algorithm will help alert Yahoo’s Slurp (Yahoo’s search crawler or spider robot), to the existence of a particular website or Web page, and direct its spider to visit that website or Web page for inclusion in its search index, if it isn’t already in it.
Conclusion
As I have written in my last article on the New Yahoo, it is clear now that Yahoo wants to not only conserve its lead position on Google, but it also wishes to improve on it. The next few months should be exciting, as the industry witnesses other new developments, either in new search engine algorithms or new toolbars and the like.
This industry is advancing at break-neck speed and I predict that the search engine industry will be a $30 Billion-plus industry in 2005-2006. Judging at the speed the Internet is growing, it may well be over $ 100 Billion by 2010.
Author:
Serge Thibodeau of Rank For Sales
Interview With Eurekster CEO
If you keep tabs on the latest search engine news, you’ll no doubt realize that we are getting closer to a merging of search engine technology and social networking. While Google may have created the sizzle with its recent launch of Orkut along with rumors that it may one day roll it into its search engine, there is a company already making headway with social searching.
Although Eurekster may technically still be in Beta testing (launched in January of this year), there is no doubt that the offspring of SLI Systems and RealContacts is making major advancements in combining social networking with search engine technology.
Eurekster makes use of its own SearchMemory� technology which remembers the sites a user finds useful and presents them higher in the results the next time they search. Then, Eurekster lets a user and their friends share their searches and sites, so when they do a “hotel” search, for example, they’ll see the hotel sites their friends also found useful, moved up in the results and marked with an icon.
I had an opportunity to discuss with Eurekster CEO, Grant Ryan the future of social searching and find out what Eurekster is doing to get a step ahead of Google, Yahoo and MSN.
[Andy Beal] Tell me about the search engine technology being developed by Eurekster?
[Grant Ryan] The Internet is a huge place – how do we know what is interesting out there? Word of mouth is the most common way for new ideas to spread and the “What’s Hot” function of Eurekster allows users to see what is going on with their contacts without seeing exactly who does what. This has already worked in interesting ways. There was an earthquake in my home town and someone immediately did a search for that to find out how big it was. Two people I know who were overseas at the time saw this in the “Recent Searches” area of Eurekster and rang home to check that everything was ok. It is a great way to share information with your contacts.
We’ve also shown how search engines can now also remember that you or your friends liked one particular search result over the thousands of others, and deliver it on top of the results for all future searches performed by your network of contacts.
[AB] What new developments in search do you see happening in the couple of years?
[GR] We think that personalization will be the main area of improvement. Search technology has evolved from computers deciding what is relevant (e.g. Infoseek, AltaVista), to paid editors deciding what is relevant (e.g. Yahoo, LookSmart), to webmasters deciding what is relevant through link analysis (e.g. Google, Teoma).
The next logical step is that users decide what is relevant based on their knowledge and experiences. Search engines that learn and adapt results based on your behavior, giving personalized results is the next big opportunity and challenge.
Another big opportunity is local search – this is a form of personalization – delivering search results based on one’s location. This is, to some extent, like merging the yellow pages with search. This has a lot of potential commercially, especially since there still are greater numbers of yellow page advertisers out there than search engine advertisers.
[AB] What impact do you see social networking having on the future of search engine technology?
[GR] Word of mouth or social networking is the most commonly used method for filtering information in everyday life. We use it every day to get recommendations for doctors, lawyers, places to stay on holiday, and so on. As the quantity of information explodes, word of mouth information filtering will become even more important. It is inevitable that this natural social process will be used to filter information on the Internet and search engines are the logical place to start.
The reason that social networks are important for information filtering is that there are billions of people in the world with different views about what is important and interesting. One of the ways we choose people with whom to associate is based on the fact that we either enjoy something about their perspectives of the world or share similar views. In either case, this is a useful way to help work out what is likely to be more relevant to you.
[AB] Do you foresee a time when commercial search results (product/services) will be separated from informational search results (white papers/educational sites)?
[GR] Yes it may head that way. I can naturally see that there will be more tabs on search engines to allow users to focus only on products or just on educational information, etc. Most users simply want to type in a search query and have results appear — so I suspect they will continue to be mixed by default.
[AB] How do you see search engine technology impacting our use of portable technology such as PDAs and Cell phones?
[GR]I would be surprised if PDAs and Cell phones will ever be used as a primary source for searching given the requirement for small screen size. Mobile search engines of the future are likely to take into account your precise location when serving results as you are more likely to be looking for directions, local news, sport etc.
[AB] If search engine users gave up a little of their privacy and allowed their search habits to be monitored, would this allow the search engines to provide better, customized results?
[GR] Yes – if users want truly customized services then the provider has to know something about their preferences. The level of service you can get from a travel agent or investment advisor would be severely limited if you had to start from scratch every time you needed something. Most search engines assume that everyone typing in a term is looking for the same thing and give them exactly the same results!
[AB] Grant, tell us what Eurekster is doing to personalize the search experience?
[GR] At Eurekster we have developed a way to learn from your past search history and that of your contacts in a way to provide personalized and more relevant search results. There are strong incentives for search engines to keep their promises on privacy given there is more value in keeping a long term quality relationship, compared to the negative publicity and loss of customer trust.
[AB] How can Eurekster compete with Google or Yahoo?
[GR] I have been involved in the search business for over 6 years now and every year have read articles about how the search wars have been won (different companies over time e.g. AltaVista/Infoseek, Yahoo, Inktomi, Google). It is inevitable that companies will continue to come up with new technologies that offer consumers greater choice and new improvements. That is what we are doing at Eurekster, so have a play and tell us what you think — and what features you want us to add next.
Author Name: Andy Beal
Company: KeywordRanking.com
Email: andy@keywordranking.com
Author Bio:
Andy Beal is Vice President of Search Marketing for WebSourced, Inc and KeywordRanking.com, global leaders in professional search engine marketing. Highly respected as a source of search engine marketing advice, Andy has had articles published around the world and is a repeat speaker at Danny Sullivan’s Search Engine Strategies conferences. Clients include Real.com, Alaska Air, Peopleclick, Monica Lewinsky and NBC. You can reach Andy at andy@keywordranking.com and view his daily SEO blog at www.searchenginelowdown.com.
Why MSN Won’t Buy AOL
You may have seen the online headlines this week “MSN in talks with AOL execs to buy AOL from Time/Warner.” At first glance you may think “wow that would make MSN pretty powerful.” After all, while AOL’s customer base is shrinking, it is still substantial. MSN’s reach is expanding, especially as the portal continues to grow in popularity. By merging these two client bases, Microsoft would have an impressive number of paying portal customers. Whether one portal was dropped in favor of the other would remain to be seen, but they could end up with about of the world’s internet portal customers.
So you are probably wondering: why won’t this happen? One word: Competition.
Microsoft has already faced a barrage of anti-trust lawsuits filed by various US and global governments citing its apparent monopoly on the computer software/operating system market. In fact, in the most recent ruling against them by the EU, the company was fined many hundreds of millions of dollars for stifling competition in the European Union. Or course, Microsoft will appeal and likely settle out of court for an undisclosed amount of money, all the time preaching their innocence.
But that stifling of competition is why Microsoft will not buy AOL. In fact, they likely can not buy AOL because of the assets the company has. If you look at it in these terms you begin to understand.
Let’s start with browsers. AOL owns Netscape. Sure, it isn’t much of a player anymore, but for Microsoft to buy this company, they could effectively put Netscape out of business. Not that Microsoft didn’t already do that with the settlement they reached last year with AOL.
There is also ICQ and AIM, both instant messenger platforms are owned by AOL. MSN could shut both down with the purchase. AOL also owns Mapquest.com, a competitor to Microsoft Mappoint and they own Winamp.com, which is a direct competitor to Windows Media player.
There are also a few others, like MovieFone.com, CompuServe and the ODP (DMOZ.org) which aren’t necessarily direct competitors to MSN or Microsoft, but would be a loss for the internet if Microsoft purchased them.
So when you consider that AOL is a direct competitor of Microsoft and/or MSN in more than a dozen different markets, you can see that even if they did make an offer, it’s highly unlikely that such a merger would be approved by the various regulatory boards located on American soil. Not to mention the various world governments and other organizations which would lose sleep over such a merger. This is why I don’t think Microsoft could make a play for AOL.
But consider this option. What if (and this is probably more of a long stretch than an MSN/AOL merger) Microsoft and Google formed a temporary alliance and bought AOL and its assets and divided them among themselves. Google could get control of those properties which they don’t already compete in (such as AIM or ICQ, Mapquest and Winamp) while Microsoft could get the portal and its customers.
This scenario is probably more of a stretch than the one where Microsoft buys AOL. But as we’ve found in the past, with search and search engines you just never know.
Author Bio:
Rob Sullivan
Production Manager
Searchengineposition.com
Search Engine Positioning Specialists
