Search Trends - Search Engine Marketing

I just read a very interesting report out of Penn State about an experiment they performed to see how a search engine brand influences the perception of relevance. They displayed the exact same set of search results for various keywords, but formatted with different search engine's logo/layout. Surprisingly, Yahoo came out with the best scores. I'm sure brand plays an important part in people's perception of search relevance, but I'm not sure I trust their results completely based on the sample size (32 people) and the methodology used. I hope this spawns some additional research into this concept of branding/search.

Labels: branding, search, yahoo

This NY Post article extolls the virtues of organic search listings, by referencing an upcoming report by Internet Search Metrics along with eBay's recent Adwords spending diet. They point to these things as evidence that there is a lot of valuable traffic that is being left on the table by companies that ignore organic search while spending thousands or millions of dollars on paid search. I've personally seen this many times with marketers I've talked to about SEO. I think a large part of the reason for this isn't so much that companies are unaware of the value of organic search, it's more like they've tried doing organic SEO themselves or even outsourced it to an SEO firm, but didn't see measurable improvement, so they gave up in favor of PPC, which gives them complete control as long as they keep paying.

Labels: seo

I noticed another reference the other day in Sean Ammirati's blog post quoting a Google engineer (Udi Manber) as saying that 20-25% of all searches on Google are unique--meaning that almost 1 out of 4 searches are for something that has never been searched for on Google. He also mentioned that searcher expectations and needs will continue to evolve. This makes for some interesting issues for the search engines as well as us search marketers. How can we optimize for keywords and phrases that people haven't even searched on yet?

We need to look at search in terms of relevancy and overall theme rather than exact keyword phrases. We need to provide quality content and products that will meet specific needs of the consumer, rather than just be "optimized" for a certain keyword.

Don't get me wrong, keywords are still important and will continue to be for a while, but we need to recognize the importance of being relevant outside of simple keyword phrases to build a long-term, sustainable business.

Labels: keywords, seo

I spent most of this week at the TRAFFIC Conference for domainers. Met a lot of great people and learned a lot about domaining. There is an obvious shift in the industry away from simply parking domains and relying on ppc revenue. More and more domain owners are looking to develop real web properties on their premium domains in hopes that their long-term value will increase with a real site. I think that's a wise direction to head, but the reason for this post is to mention that there were some big domain sales at the live auction at the end of the conference. Over $10 million worth of domains were sold at the live auction. They could have easily doubled that figure if some of the high-end domain owners would have been a bit more reasonable with their reserve prices. Regardless, it's good to see that the domain market is alive and well. There were some good names up for grabs today.

See the final sales prices on Moniker.com

It's also interesting to see Frank Michlick's list of sales prices and max bids for ones that didn't hit the reserve. You'll notice that even though only a few sold for over $1 million, there were a lot of others that got 7 figure bids, but they didn't hit the reserve so they didn't sell.

If you missed out on the action at the live auction, they've got an online silent auction going on until next Wed.

Now I'm off to sleep for 4 hours before I catch the plane home. Later.

Labels: domains

Big news! Web Targeted was recently acquired by WashingtonVC. In collaboration with BP Holidings we were able to secure the best SEO domain in the world: SEO.com. I'm SUPER excited about this change and look forward to the challenge of taking this SEO company to a much higher level. We've still got the same great team of SEO experts, plus a few new faces. SEO.com will continue to be a search engine optimization firm, but our website will also offer lots of good stuff like SEO resources, tools, articles, tips, and insight into the SEO/SEM industry.

Stay tuned for a new logo, website, and a lot more.

Labels: seo

I have no idea who Privacy International is, but apparently they came out with a privacy ranking of several top websites a few days back. Basically, this "watchdog group" used a very subjective ranking methodology (if you can call it that) that ranks these companies on their privacy policies and practices. Google came out at the bottom of the list with the worst possible ranking (black on the color code). Matt Cutts is ticked because he feels like the report is completely off base. Danny Sullivan also gives a strong (and long) defense of Google on SearchEngineLand.com.

I agree with Matt, Danny, and the countless others who are challenging the validity of this report. They're not saying Google is perfect (far from it), but they make some very valid points that Google is not the worst when it comes to privacy.

Labels: google