Firstly Google Analytics now has a page speed report which is very good for finding the slowest pages on your site.

Next up is Village Voice who were caught spamming reddit and then said they were very sorry, blamed an agency and said they knew nothing about it. Turns out they were caught spamming Digg years ago. Plenty of people spam social media sites but you need to have the guts to stand up and admit it if you get caught.

A new company is offering digital due diligence services so investors and people buying companies can see whether that company is likely to get hit by a Google penalty or not. Sounds like a great idea aside from that company has a marketing strategy involving outing businesses to Techcrunch. Outing is not a marketing strategy no matter how useful & noble the business idea is.

The big news of course is that the Panda update is still here and hasn’t gone away. We have still not seen a single credible report of a site fixing itself although there will no doubt be a few borderline cases that move in and out of the Panda zone as Google tweaks the algorithm. The sites we have seen so far all have a few things in common:

• Content which is very similar to other sites (gadget blogs get hit by this)
• Content which is duplicated on other sites (ecommerce & affiliate sites struggle here)
• Sites which get all their traffic from Google (a lot of people who focus too much on SEO struggle with this)
• Sites that get way too much traffic from Google anyway (if you are getting 50k visits per day and lose 10k then that is a correction, not a penalty)

Finaly, Overstock.com the big US site hit by a Google penalty recently has now been released from the penalty box. It seems that ecommerce sites can use link spam in the runup to Christmas and then be penalty free by Easter.

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Thoughts on a few SEO things

What I find interesting is looking at the number of staff some agencies have in comparison to turnover, useful for figuring out how important search is to their revenue stream. It’s also interesting that a lot of “big” agencies that appear to specialise in natural and paid search don’t really make much money from it.

The list isn’t particularly comprehensive, I can think of quite a few that would make the top 20 on here.

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Turnover of UK search agencies

A recent study into the demographic and psychographic profiles of search engine users has found that people who use Bing are early adopters and innovators whereas people who use Google are more middle of the road types.

My feeling in the past has been that people who use Bing and Yahoo just can’t figure out how to change the default search engine in Internet Explorer but this study says otherwise.

The report also looks at the journeys that people take to get to the destination:

“This research demonstrates that marketers have a real choice to make when formulating search strategies,” said Shane Atchison, CEO of ZAAZ. “The search engine acts as a kind of ‘train’ on the Internet. Each train provides a different set of unique results or ‘destinations.’ Consumer preference for a specific train demonstrates a unique demographic and psychographic profile.”

Historically everybody used to believe that Bing/MSN users converted better than Google users, is this still true in the UK?

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Examining the behaviour of people who use different search engines

Since a lot of users type quite strange keywords into search engines it’s not really enough to rely on simple text matching any more for a search engine, you almost need to be trying to replicate Google technology combined with your product catalogue.

One of the trends this year has been rich autocomplete which is demonstrated nicely on the Apple site. Product images are pulled in dynamically as the user types a query in the search box.

If you’re a developer then there are a lot of autocomplete scripts freely available to integrate into your site.

On this blog we improved the WordPress search by ordering the results by relevance rather than the strange way WordPress orders by date and adding features such as keyword highlighting and “did you mean” suggestions but it’s still miles away from where an ecommerce search engine needs to be.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that internal search results on major sites are just matched from the database by the keyword – ecommerce sites are able to utilise products such as Omniture SiteSearch which uses a rules based approach to adjust search results so that high profit products are given a boost.

Omniture SiteSearch connects site visitors with the information, products and services they seek—quickly and easily. SiteSearch enables marketers to better target search results to visitors, manage relevance and ranking and use visitor behavior to automatically boost results based on criteria such as conversion, popularity and more.

• Analytics-driven Search Results
• Create ranking rules to influence site search results
• Choose metrics from any SiteCatalyst report suite to influence search results
• Weight different metrics to influence results rankings
• Target ranking rules to different visitor segments
• Preview analytics-driven ranking results
• Compare relevancy and analytics-driven ranking scores
• Specify time periods for data aggregation of analytics metrics used to drive search ranking business rules
• Combine offline data with analytics-based metrics to influence search ranking business rules

A final important aspect is to have some kind of internal site search analytics solution to understand your customers and see what they are searching for. If a particular product is being searched for a lot then move it to your homepage or highlight it in your navigation menu.

In the good old days, people dutifully used site navigation at the left, right, or top of a website. But, two websites have fundamentally altered how we navigate the web: Amazon, because the site is so big, sells so many things, and is so complicated that many of us go directly to the site search box on arrival. And Google, which has trained us to show up, type what we want, and hit the search button.

Now when people show up at a website, many of them ignore our lovingly crafted navigational elements and jump to the site search box. The increased use of site search as a core navigation method makes it very important to understand the data that site search generates.

What’s your favourite internal search engine?

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Improving Site Search With Rules, Analytics & Rich Auto Complete

One of the lines that made me really think was “As if there is ever one “right” answer.” This was pretty much in direct response to a Tech Crunch Interview by Eric Schmidt, to quote a quote:

So I don’t know how to characterize the next 10 years except to say that we’ll get to the point – the long-term goal is to be able to give you one answer, which is exactly the right answer over time.

Aaron went on to suggest how the various Google SERPs properties such as rich snippets may over time discourage users to click through to the content creators site. This is where I branch off. I don’t know the long term future of SEO, what it will be and how it will change. And I don’t really want to speculate. It’s an unfolding drama that I am willing to wait out.

But, I am interested in the right here and right now. What is SEO right now? Is it about ranking? For set keywords at the highest possible positions? I think not. It’s about a blend of strategies, and one of the most important ones Brands should be really focussing on is page share. The writing has been on the wall from the first time Marissa Mayer blogged about it.

Currently a range of ranking positions exist on the first page of SERPs, including but not limited to:

• Video Results
• Image Results
• News Stories
• Blog Results
• Book Results
• Map Results

 
These are further enhanced by the use of  Rich Snippets, Site Links, Search in Search Box, Inline links, related searches, to name a few. Add to the mix Adwords, Adwords Enhanced site links and Google Base results.

Where does that leave a brand?

I recall a few years ago I attended SMX and was in a session presented by Jon Myers, who discussed the use of Search Engine Results Pages as a brands landing page. This was in late 2007, the same year Google introduced more results in SERPs. Its late 2009, and google isn’t letting up. More recently we were treated to Photo layers in Map results.

In a very short and unsatisfactory way, I conclude, SEO right now, at least at the Brand level, is about delivering all the brands content on the brand query, with the maximum possible page share.

After all, there isn’t, one correct answer to a brand query. But there is room to guide the searcher to the right content. 

You worry about your sites landing pages, ever wonder what you are losing to Universal search properties that aren’t under your control?

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Future of Search, Universal Search and a Brands Responsibility to SERPs

The announcement is good news because it’s clear that the two companies can’t compete with Google by themselves. I doubt it will make much difference in the UK because Yahoo has a very small market share as shown in the Hitwise data below.

The only drawback is that rollout is expected within 24 months following regulatory approval by which time Twitter or Facebook will probably have more search volume.

• Microsoft will acquire an exclusive 10 year license to Yahoo!’s core search technologies, and Microsoft will have the ability to integrate Yahoo! search technologies into its existing web search platforms;
• Microsoft’s Bing will be the exclusive algorithmic search and paid search platform for Yahoo! sites. Yahoo! will continue to use its technology and data in other areas of its business such as enhancing display advertising technology.
• Yahoo! will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers. Self-serve advertising for both companies will be fulfilled by Microsoft’s AdCenter platform, and prices for all search ads will continue to be set by AdCenter’s automated auction process.
• Each company will maintain its own separate display advertising business and sales force.
• Yahoo! will innovate and “own” the user experience on Yahoo! properties, including the user experience for search, even though it will be powered by Microsoft technology.
• Microsoft will compensate Yahoo! through a revenue sharing agreement on traffic generated on Yahoo!’s network of both owned and operated (O&O) and affiliate sites.
• Microsoft will pay traffic acquisition costs (TAC) to Yahoo! at an initial rate of 88% of search revenue generated on Yahoo!’s O&O sites during the first 5 years of the agreement.
• Yahoo! will continue to syndicate its existing search affiliate partnerships.
• Microsoft will guarantee Yahoo!’s O&O revenue per search (RPS) in each country for the first 18 months following initial implementation in that country.
• At full implementation (expected to occur within 24 months following regulatory approval), Yahoo! estimates, based on current levels of revenue and current operating expenses, that this agreement will provide a benefit to annual GAAP operating income of approximately $500 million and capital expenditure savings of approximately $200 million. Yahoo! also estimates that this agreement will provide a benefit to annual operating cash flow of approximately $275 million.
• The agreement protects consumer privacy by limiting the data shared between the companies to the minimum necessary to operate and improve the combined search platform, and restricts the use of search data shared between the companies. The agreement maintains the industry-leading privacy practices that each company follows today.

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Microsoft to power Yahoo search

Microsoft has announced that it will ship a special version of Vista’s successor in Europe, titled Windows 7 E, without Internet Explorer 8. The browser-less version, a reaction to an antitrust investigation by the EU into whether Microsoft is abusing its dominant position with Windows and Internet Explorer, will be distributed in all member nations of the European Economic Area as well as Croatia and Switzerland.

This might be good to promote healthy competition and decrease the market share of IE but the EU doesn’t seem to have thought how it will affect search. Google has a 90% market share in the UK and will be more than happy to pay retailers to install Chrome and Firefox with Google as the default search engine on every Windows PC.

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Windows 7 to be shipped without Internet Explorer

It’s interesting to see a search engine with content optimised to rank for cheap flights. Google steers clear of such conflicts of interest by never trying to rank for commercial queries.

Once nice tool is xRank a kind of celebrity tracking service currently ranking Oasis at the top.

Currently Google Analytics isn’t recognising Bing as a search engine so keyword details are not showing up. As far as I can see the UK results are pretty much the same as the old MSN results so no real changes in algorithm.

Image search for non-celebrities is terrible unless you are Matt Cutts in which case the results are 100% perfect almost as if they were hand picked.

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Bing

It seems that the MSN Live Search results for each country have all been hand edited to include the geo-specific version of Bing.com as the top result. You can tell by the fact the URL being indexed is www.bing.com/?mkt=de-de when you search on MSN.de and www.bing.com/?mkt=en-gb when you search on MSN.co.uk

Those URL’s don’t exist and both redirect to a holding page so there is no way anybody would be linking to them. Google certainly isn’t indexing them.

Joking aside I’m looking forward to using Bing, about time somebody started eating into Googles 90+% market share in the UK. Most SEO’s with less than a few years experience probably don’t remember the days of optimising for more than one search engine.

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Bing needs a hand edit to find itself

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Wolfram Alpha knows about your domain