Search Trends - Search Engine Marketing

Google's Personalized Search is out of the lab. This is what I call Google playing catch up in the personalization arena.

A Business Week article cites data from ComScore saying that Cyber Monday is just a figment of our imagination--or more accurately, it is a myth that was created by Shop.org to promote online shopping. Several retailers report increased sales on Monday, and they certainly aren't complaining that so many people bought into the hype about "Cyber Monday". According to ComScore, The Monday after Thanksgiving has historically been the 12th biggest online shopping day of the year. Not bad, but definitely doesn't sound as impressive as "one of the biggest online shopping days".

The media was abuzz with talk about Cyber Monday. I even saw a piece on my local Fox News last night where they interviewed some local retailers, including Backcountry.com and Overstock.com, both of which seemed to agree that Monday was a big day for online shopping. The guy from Backcountry.com did mention, however, that he expected bigger days to come in the next 2 weeks.

How high will Google stock go? Who knows, but it was trading at nearly $425 today. (Down to $408 as of right now).

This CNET article discusses how Google stock can trade at 45 times their 2006 earnings and gets some opinions on just how long the Google-mania can keep this thing going.

Wired's article about Google's quest to rule the world or at least give everyone a run for their money.

Mike Grehan offers some good insight into the potential advantages that MSN's new pay per click system offers over it's rivals (especially Google)...particularly when it comes to personalization. He makes the argument that Google's "we're not a portal" mantra could come back to haunt them as they try to compete with MSN and Yahoo, both of whom have historical data for their users going back several years.

Google's obviously aware of their position, which is probably at least part of the reason for introducing personalized search, gmail, and all the other user-centric services they've launched within the past year or two.

According to a Shop.org press release it's the Monday after Thanksgiving that is one of the biggest ONLINE shopping days of the year.

It could be just shopping hangover from the weekend when people are back at work but just have to shop for a few last items before they get down to work. Whatever the reason, online shopping for the holiday season has officially begun.

You heard it here first, folks! Unless you heard it somewhere else, like on Greg Yardley’s Blog...anyway, Google's apparently testing out a new click to call service. The idea is similar in concept to other click-to-call and pay-per-call advertising services out there, but it's integrated with adwords and lets users enter their phone number and get connected with the advertiser's toll free line. Looks like a pretty slick system compared to to others I've seen.

Check out Yardley's blog for the lowdown, including screenshots.

Google's FAQ about click-to-call.

Danny ripped on a bad link exchange request he got emailed to him recently. It's kind of funny because the offender is Brad Fallon, who runs myweddingfavors.com, in addition to SEO Radio and other sites. Brad is a budding SEO expert and actually a lot more of an in-the-trenches SEO guy these days than Danny, but it was definitely a bad idea to email that link exchange request. I'm sure it was an automated process and/or was sent by a clueless employee of Brad's but it's still funny that Danny posted it with the URLs intact, although not linked. I think Danny makes a good point, that link exchanges should be with relevant sites that will benefit your site's users if possible--however, the fact of the matter is, Brad's wedding favors site shows up #1 for his keywords on Google. His tactics are obviously doing exactly what was intended. If Brad sees that he's featured on Danny's site as an example of a bad link request, he might be slightly embarrassed, but he'll laugh it off and he'll be laughing all the way to the bank.

Danny may not have read the email very carefully, or somehow misunderstood that the request was for a three-way link exchange. That means: we put up a link to your site on this site and then you link to this other site from yours. The idea is to basically hide the fact that you're even exchanging links. The email actually explained it pretty well: This exchange will create one way links to both our sites, which is beneficial from SEO point of view. It's actually a very common method of link building and a very good concept if you do it right and can yield very good results in the search engines, as evidenced by this particular site--a fact that Danny neglects to mention (if he even bothered to check the site's ranking). I'm not saying this was a good link request--it was a stupid one, like Danny suggests, all I'm saying is that it's working for now, or at least not hurting their site's ranking in the search engines.

Would I personally use this shotgun approach to link building? No. I prefer the more logical relevant approach to link building. It just makes more sense for everyone and is a lot safer route for long-term success.

I agree with Andy's analysis of the sandbox and tips on how to beat it for most sites the best way to beat the infamous sandbox is to acquire somewhat trusted link and let them age. It's quicker if you can get highly trusted links, but it's not always possible for most sites to do that so they have to play the waiting game while the links age.

I love to see keyword data that relates to real-world events and goings on. Last week, Bill Tancer from HitWise posted a cool post showing the graph for "Thanksgiving recipes" and "online dieting" keyword searches for last year. It's not surprising, but kind of hilarious to see it in all it's graphical glory. There's a huge decline in searches for dieting info from August through December, and then it spikes back up Jan. 1. The spike for Thanksgiving recipes is basically the monthof August especially this time of the month.

I think Google underestimated how popular their new analytics service would be. I just read an article on ZDNet that says Google has temporarily shut off the signup form. They also don't allow current users to add new site profiles, which is kind of lame because I wanted to add stats to a bunch of other sites this week. I'm sure the google guys are scrambling to catch up with the huge demand for their analytics and it's only a matter of time before they open up the floodgates again...fingers crossed that they get it together real quick. I've been talking this up like crazy, so I hope Google doesn't let me down on this one.

Google it. Do you Yahoo? Ask Jeeves. It's better with the butterfly (that last one is MSN in case you don't remember the commercials)

People continue to flock to the search engines to find what they're looking for. This, according to MediaPost, cites stats from Pew and ComScore.

In a recent Fobes article, Rachel Rosmarin cites Forrester research that points out Google's lost revenue saying they're losing out to potential rivals. They talk about the lower traffic volumes on Froogle and high CPC rates on rival shopping sites. They are trying to make the point that Google doesn't dominate every sector of online search. While that may be the case, I think Froogle is still in test mode. Sure, it's been online for a few years, but it's still in beta mode, right? Even in Beta Mode, I'm sure they're generating significant revenue from the adwords ads on the side of the Froogle pages, and will continue to do so.

The reason Google has been so successful is because they don't listen to Forrester or Forbes or anyone else. They do things the Google way, which is a little nerdy, but it's a lot different than everyone else. Whatever they do has a little different twist, And people love the Google way. The media loves anything Google puts out (with the exception of this Forbes article), and most users lvoe everything Google puts out. We're Goo-goo for Google right now that's all there is to it. I'm sure it will fade, but only if Google grows too big for it's nerdy little britches or if one of their competitors is able to capture the attention of the masses by coming out with something unique and innovative enough.

Besides, I'm sure Google's got a team of very smart people working on figuring out the best way to do shopping search without "being evil". Once they figure it out to their liking, then buh-bye--it's off to the races.

Even if they don't ever figure out a way to really Google-ize the whole world, is that such a bad thing? Google is really good at web search and they've been able to carry that momentum over into a lot of other related areas, but maybe they won't dominate every single market they enter. Why is that such a shocker?

I don't think I mentioned anything about Yahoo's new Social Commerce via the Shoposphere & Pick Lists. It was announced a few days ago, and is currently in beta, but it looks like a pretty interesting development in shopping search--allowing users to make product recommendations and pick lists of the stuff they like.

Yahoo's been a big-time player in shopping search for a very long time, and they appear to care enough about keeping (and expanding) their market position to continually innovate with how they do things.

An interesting development with Google SiteMaps...more stats that show which keywords return results with your site as well as which ones result in clicks. This could be very useful for finding pages that might show up well, but don't generate many clicks for whatever reason. It's also nice of Google to give us a little gimpse into what they're doing with our sitemaps.

They've also added a feature to SiteMaps where you can get the same stats for a site that you haven't submitted a sitemap for. One very cool thing about these new stats, I just added a sitemap for a client's site this morning and the stats for that site showed up instantly. Of course, this was probably because this client's site is already showing up in Google, so if it's a new site, or if they don't have any data on the site, the stats wouldn't show up.

Also, you have to place a file on your server so Google can verify that it's actually your site or one you're authorized to view stats on.



From the Google Sitemaps Blog

It's heeere. The Google Blog announced the launch of Google Base. What is Google Base? It's not 100% clear, and perhaps it's up to the public (yeah, us) to decide what it will be. As far as I can tell, it's essentially a Google-charged worldwide classified ads.

Here's more info about Google Base:
From Google Base info page
From SEW

On his blog, Paul Allen pointed out this misguided article on BusinessWeek.com that foretells the impending doom of all SEO companies due to Google's new analytics, (formerly known as Urchin). The truth is, SEOs are safe (for now), but it's the web analytics companies that have to be shaking in their boots. I'm sure there will continue to be a market for high-end, customizable analytics software like Omniture and Coremetrics, but for the small biz market, why would anyone pay $50 or more per month for stats that aren't even as robust as what Google offers for free? They won't. It's that simple. Small business owners and webmasters aren't stupid. They'll go with the solution that provides the most benefit at a price they can afford. And who can't afford free? There is certain to be at least some type of shakeout in the web analytics marketplace, but I say it's about time. Thank you Google. You might be taking over the world, but at least you're making it a little bit more affordable!

Wahoo! I was already a big fan and user of Urchin, but Google just announced that they are offering Google Analytics free of charge. Their old pricing structure of $199/month, plus $100 for every 1 million additional pageviews was already the best deal around, but free -- now that's a bargain! I was hoping Google would offer Urchin for free, but wasn't sure if/when they would. It will be interesting to see what this does to the web analytics market. Google analytics are a very robust solution, even compared to the much more expensive options out there. It simply blows away any other free or low-cost stats options. They should be able to grab a huge share of the market with this pricing move, especially the ever-price-conscious small business market.

Google gets personal - now the cat's out of the lab, or so to speak. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, check out Chris Sherman's article about Google going primetime with their new personalized search feature. It's been in the lab for a while, and of course it's still in beta (this is Google, remember), but it's another way Google is helping to organize the world's data.

There's been a major update happening with the Google index lately. They're calling this one the "Jagger" update. Danny Sullivan has a nice roundup of what's going on with this update, or at least the speculation surrounding the update. This particular update has been a multi-phase approach, which means we have to wait until it's completely finished before we dig in too deeply to try and figure out what the changes were.

Another article about Google from the NY Times. This one is from the end of October, although I hadn't read it until today. It's a rather long article that goes into Google's plans to take over the world. Well, okay, not the world, but the advertising world for sure.

A little diversion on a Tuesday morning...A friend sent me a pretty cool link today to the flash mind reader. Give it a try and tell me it doesn't read your mind correctly every time. It will freak you out until you figure out how they do it. It's pretty good.

I just read an interesting interview of Bill Gates on Computing.co.uk. Gates says the way to win customers is to pay consumers for searching. He goes on to say that Microsoft is planning to experiement with that concept in the next year.

It will be interesting to see what kind of scheme they come up with to pay consumers without a huge amount of fraud. If you thought click fraud is bad now, wait until the search engines start paying every Tom, Dick and Harry for searches. If left unchecked it could potentially destroy the CPC business model.

There have been search engines that sort of paid users for searching with them. Remember iwon.com? They got a huge following when they first launched, especially when they were giving away ludicrous amounts of cash prizes. I never won anything, though, so I quit using their search engine. I'm sure tons of people were gaming their system to get more "points". Can you imagine what it would be like if everyone were getting paid just to search? The problem is that people will search for all kinds of crap just to get money. So as search marketers, we pay for a lot more junk traffic--that's beside the outright click fraud, automated clicks, etc.

I'm sure the search engines have considered these issues, that's why they're not currently paying users to search. (not that it hasn't been tried before). Although I have serious reservations about the idea of paying users to search, if anyone can pull it off, it could be Microsoft. Why? First of all, they've got plenty of money to dole out. Second, they have the distinct advantage of providing the operating system to 99.999% of all the computers out there. Because of their market position, MS can do things their competitors can't in terms of requiring user registrations and so forth.

When Windows Live was announced the other day, it didn't seem to create much of a stir, but the thing that stands out to me about Windows/Office Live is that it is a platform "in which software and online services and applications work together, portions paid for by advertising and subscription revenue". Hmmm...sounds a lot like compensating people to use your search engine and view your ads.

It's still early, but Microsoft might be onto something here. Only time will tell how this concept is accepted in the marketplace, but I am personally very excited to see some serious competition among the top search engines. I think it's good for the search engine industry and all of us who make a living doing the search thing.