Search Trends - Search Engine Marketing

Is Yahoo adding a sandbox-like component to its algorithm? Some say they are.

It was perfect timing that I wrote that post earlier today about mobile search. OneUpWeb just came out with a report about mobile search and its implications to marketers. Their report goes beyond simple SMS search that I mentioned and gives pointers on how to optimize a site for mobile web browsers (WAP, xHTML, WML, etc).

A couple points from the report:

• Marketers with the most to gain from mobile search marketing are those targeting 12-24 year olds. Beyond this age category, the market is relatively small, but growing.
  
• Local search and mobile search go hand in hand--for obvious reasons.
  
• Simplicity is a key design factor for mobile web users. Smaller screens and serious time constraints require easy to use interface and quick answers for users.
  
• They classify mobile shoppers into two categories: Need-it-now and Killing-time. The killing-time shoppers are a group I hadn't considered, but it's a good point--rather than pounding away at Tetris while they wait for their flight, more and more people are doing some searching on their mobile device. Nothing better to do, right?
  
• Mobile search users of the future (2007-09) will be less tech-savvy than today's users--because they won't have to be.
  
  Very interesting points and like I said before, this mobile search thing will be huge.

I think I mentioned Google SMS on thisblog when it first came out. I have been using it more and more frequently and I find it amazing how quickly I can get a definition, the weather, movie times or nearby restarants. I think search engine optimization will enter a whole new era once this type of SMS searching really starts to take off. Searching via SMS is a whole different ballgame than normal web search. People are typically crunched for time, they don't want to wade through a lot of junk, they just need info and they need it fast. SMS searches don't typically return a lot of results, so the only ones that are going to get any kind of exposure are the ones on the top of the search results.

A huge majority of searches via SMS will be for local businesses, movie times, local weather, etc. This type of search is what will cause local search to really take off. Smart phones and other PDA-type searches will account for a lot of mobile/local searches, but it's the simple text messages that will connect with an entire generation of kids who can send text messages in their sleep. Yahoo already has their own version of SMS search, and they also offer IM for mobile phones.

Mark my words, this mobile search thing will be huge!

Joel Walsh suggests that Google might have a good writing content filter. He cites the fact that the top listed sites are generally well written and contain fewer gramatical and spelling errors than those at the bottom of the search results. That could be the case, but I wonder if they just make more money than the guys at the bottom of the heap, so they can afford to hire literate copywriters. Or perhaps it's simply an indication of superior intelligence on the part of the top-listed sites, whose smarts also carry over into their link building and other marketing activities. Hmmm. I'm not sure, but I like Joel's piece anyway and he offers some good pointers about writing good content that are very useful regardless of whether Google's alleged "content filter" actually exists.

Have trouble finding Mr. or Miss right? Forget about dating sites, bars, and dance clubs...why not try a billboard? That's what Lance's "friends" over at LogoWorks did to try to drum up some dating action for the guy. Lance is the Marketing Director at LogoWorks.


It may not be the cheapest way to find women to date, but it seems like a great way to hit your local target audience. The billboard drives interest in the website, which gives Lance's full bio, testimonials from friends, and even has a video of Lance's reaction when he first saw the billboard. Pretty hillarious stuff. Lance appears to have a pretty good sense of humor about the whole thing. I'm just glad that I got married while I was young so my friends weren't able to pull that kind of stunt for me. And luckily my friends are too cheap to pay for a billboard!

The number of online searches continues to go up:

ONLINE USERS CONDUCTED MORE SECOND-QUARTER searches on Google than on Yahoo!, MSN, America Online, and Ask Jeeves combined, according to data released by Nielsen//NetRatings on Thursday. Overall, the space continued to grow in the second quarter, with users conducting around 12.8 billion searches--up 5 percent from the first quarter, according to the report. Some 6.09 billion searches were performed on Google in the second three months of the year--6 percent more than the approximate 5.73 billion searches performed in the first quarter.

From MediaPost

European search engine marketing (SEM) is expected to grow from €856 million in 2004 to three billion euros by 2010 according to "Europe's Search Engine Marketing Forecast, 2004 to 2010" from Forrester Research.

From Clickz

Tim Mayer over at Yahoo gave another weather report that that the index has been updated and fluctuations will continue to be seen in the Yahoo search results for the next week or two.

In commemoation of the anniversary of the first lunar landing (July 20), Google has launched Google Moon.

Google Moon FAQ

Some commentary on the latest PageRank update.

This could be good news. It depends on the industry and keywords, but in certain instances, Google's automated system has been causing serious headaches for some of my search marketing clients. Hopefully Google's new stance on this should ease the problems somewhat.

According to a new study I just read about on InternetRetailer.com, very few Internet users even know what a blog is. Even among the ones that do know what a blog is, most don't understand how to subscribe to an RSS feed.

I'm sure most of those people regularly read blogs and don't even know it. Which begs the question, does it really matter if people know what a blog is? Obviously if they're going to run their own blog it could be important...but I argue that it really doesn't matter for the vast majority of web users. It seems like there are so many blogs that are about nothing but blogging, it's like the blogging community is so obsessed with the technology, the content sometimes gets lost in the fhuffle. Hasn't the novelty of blogs worn off yet? Apparently not.

I mentioned something about this report when it came out last month. I haven't seen the actual report yet, but Chris Sherman wrote a nice overview earlier this week about the recent iCrossing/Harris Interactive study of American search habits.

What are people searching for? Most people (88%)said they were researching specific topics—specifically, information about hobbies. And women (61%) were more likely to search for health and medical information than men (35%). Surprisingly few people researching specific topics are looking for job or career information (28%).

Full Article

Press Release from iCrossing

Heather Lloyd-Martin wrote an insightful article on MarketingProfs.com about how to determine whether to bring SEM in house, and the steps to take to be successful at it.

"Think your company can master search marketing and conduct your SEO/SEM campaigns in-house? If so, you're in the majority.

According to a 2005 survey by Jupiter Media and WebSourced, 54% of companies handle their PPC management and SEO internally. This statistic is supported by a 2004 SEMPO study, stating that 52% of advertisers said they would manage 100% of their 2005 spending on both paid inclusion and organic SEO in-house.

But is it really time for your company to jump on the in-house bandwagon? Managing a successful paid and organic SEO campaign takes a dedicated staff, a savvy SEO plan and the time to make it happen. If your company is sitting on the in-house versus outsourcing fence, here are some tips to help you decide."

Full article

Google is finally coming out with some Firefox extensions of their own. Including Google toolbar. The send text message to yourself extension looks pretty cool, too. I'll have to try that out.

It can be hard for many site owners to get their site listed once in Dmoz.org, but how about this list of sites that have multiple listings in the ODP. It's not surprising that Tripod, Geocities and other free web hosts have thousands of listings, but how about CNN, which tops the list with a couple hundred thousand? Or even Yahoo.com, which has 15,000 or so. Kind of interesting, anyway.

Enquiro has released more info in a white paper about their eye tracking study. They had previously sent out a press release about it. Chris Sherman reports with some good insight into the contents of the study:

The study found that searchers tend to respond to search results that do the best job of matching the concept in the searcher's mind, regardless of the position of the search result on the page. Two important behavioral events are occurring here: Our eyes are jumping around on search results looking for direct matches, but we're also using peripheral vision which can indirectly help us locate information on the page.

These ideas, of optimizing for concepts rather than keywords, and taking advantage of subtler types of behavior such as the peripheral vision of the searcher, could lead to a whole new level of search optimization for those search marketers willing to invest the time to experiment.

The study also examines a lot of other factors influencing searcher behavior, such as the impact of bold vs. normal search terms in results, the confidence factor a searcher has with initial search results vs. results seen more than once, demographic differences that can affect searcher preferences and many more factors.

According to Hitwise, consumer Internet searches for the terms "real estate bubble" and "housing bubble" reached a 12-month high the week ending May 28, 2005. The market share of these terms across all major search engines like Google, Yahoo! Search, MSN Search and others, skyrocketed 311 percent and 174 percent respectively versus the prior week.

Visits to real estate sites increased into the spring and early summer of 2005, grew an average of three percent each week. The market share of total Internet visits for real estate sites is up 19 percent the week ending June 11, 2005 versus year-ago. As speculation over a U.S. real estate bubble continues in the mainstream media, new Internet search behavior data suggest consumers are equally concerned that the current market is overpriced.


From: Center for Media Research

It seems like everybody wants to sue Google these days. Why not, they've got plenty of money, right? Well, apparently Google went after some click fraud scamsters back in May and won. I don't remember reading anything about it, but they won a $75,000 judgement against Auctions Expert. Auctions Expert allegedly hired people to click on their adsense links and generate something like $50,000 in bogus click revenue. I'm glad to hear that Google is aggressively going after these bozos. It's also going to make it harder for these guys to make a case that Google doesn't care about click fraud. I'm guessing Google tried to keep this quiet because they didn't want to give any potential fraudsters any ideas.

Article on MediaPost.com

It seems like the idea of Google devaluing directory links comes up every once in a while. The argument is that Google is not placing as much value on links from web directories as they may have in the past. I think this has been happening over the past couple years as webmasters have caught on to the importance of directory links. It's not that Google and the other search engines don't care about directory links. I think they are starting to look at them more like any other link, not with the same high regard they did a couple years back.

I think directory links are still very valuable (especially ODP links), but you can't rely entirely on the directories for all your linking needs. You've got to have a robust, wide-reaching linking strategy that includes links from various different sites.