Search Engine Optimization

Here are my top 5 kitty funny pics!

Last year, some people believed that Facebook would only be a momentary phenomenon in Canada, but the social network surprised everybody and using it is now part of a daily routine.

Facebook was created in the United States in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, a 23 year old young man. At first, the website was only accessible to students of Harvard. Today more than 250 000 new users are being added every day and the site is particularly popular among the Canadians since 8 million of them, on a total number of 60 million members, adheres to Facebook.

SEO fee charges are never fixed and rely heavily on demand and competition.. There are things to look out for when selecting SEO company with little history and with low SEO fees.

The most common rate charge for quality SEO usually starts at a minimum of $2000 and can go up to $50.000 +. Of course, if you are a small business owner in a niche field I would say that SEO fees will range from $2000 to $5000.

SEO Crooks with Low Search Engine Optimization Rates.

Things to look out for:

Do not be lured in by low search engine optimization fees – you get what you pay for is true, just like anywhere else. Search Engine Marketing firm might promise you competitive SEO rates with number one rankings, however such rankings may be worthless. For example, we had a call to surveillance equipment store whose owner was convinced he had proper SEO in place because he ranked number one on Google for the term “620 buy digital camera “.

What sense does it make to rank for that term while you are selling surveillance equipment? People landing on your site will be disappointed and leave because they will not find products they were looking for. Your website needs to rank for relevant terms that actually reflect products you are offering. In the case of surveillance equipment store, “surveillance equipment” or “video surveillance equipment” would be perfect.

Another SEO fee to look out for is the unjustified maintenance fee. It is true that search engines constantly change their algorithms and it is essential to keep SEO going after the initial optimization. One thing can be added – is the fee worth it? Here are some ways to justify it:

• You are among top/first page results for a very traffic rich keyword.
• You are getting a lot of business
• Your SEO firm releases updates and updates your website
• Your Search Engine Optimization Company is quick to react. Whenever rankings slip, they prop you back up.

Monthly SEO fees depend on competitiveness of your field as well as the aggressiveness of an SEO campaign. The average charges to aim for are from $200 to $1000 per month.

Trick that companies play – is charging people who know little about search engine optimization fees that are low, while optimizing for very easy terms. For example, it is quite hard to optimize a website for “buy digital camera” while it is fairly easy to get number one for “buy digital camera camcorder combination”.

Keyword Discovery research tool shows:

“buy digital camera camcorder combination” has 14 yearly searches

while

“buy digital camera” generates 559

Of course the numbers are estimates and various formulas need to applied in order get more precise numbers. This is just to give you a good visual.

The difference lies in the amount of searches conducted by people, as well as the competition. The more people search for it, the tougher it is to get rankings, the higher SEO fees, however in the long run revenues will pay for optimization rates. With less people searching with a particular keyword, there is less competition making it quite easy to get the desired spot - SEO charge fees should be low. Though the illusion might be there, profits will not come or will be very low.

You get what you pay for.

Another thing to watch out for are the inbound calls that guarantee number one spots for a fee of $99 - $200. There are exactly the SEO crooks we’ve talked about and you will be simply handing over money for nothing.

Good Luck.

SEO Expert.

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Visit the site.

Let your Dreams Come True.
Never give up.
Merry Christmas from SEO Expert team

Facebook has been attacked from all flanks. We know that the founder is a dork, who stole the idea. We know that Facebook couldn’t give a damn about privacy. And we know that it is valued as much a Ford Motors.

A couple of Smart bloggers decided to kick back the cash-cow and target the ever increasing virtual population. =)

Apart from fierce competition FaceBook is facing Phishing problems.

“Attention all Facebook membeRs.

Founder of Facebook
Mark Zuckerberg”

Phishing or not, sounds like good prank =).

Offtopic:
Are you interested in buying and selling links? Check out strategies approved by Matt himself!

Ask.com put on a Santa face and got the brand new face for itself. Ok it’s not quite brand new but the snow falling out on random looks quite pretty.

It really slowed down my browser after 5 minutes of just being open on the background.

So did Yahoo. Waiting for MS and Google.

Clickz has released its list of the most popular search terms for the year 2007 all across the major search engines. The data was released by the major search engines themselves.

Here is how it looks:

It looks like Ron Paul is a new American Idol and Hilary is the next Britney Spears. Barack loves cricket while Richardson is for Iran.

It is also important to note the searches. Names such as YouTube, Myspace and Facebook pop up instantly. Though many people do search for those names, we can also make the conclusion that half of the people does not differentiate between the address bar and the search engine. SEO is a MUST!

It seems that Yahoo crowd loves politics a bit more and controversy aka Iraq/Iran/Bush dominates the search. Yahooers also like to play more then Googlers. A note for online shops selling gaming platforms via PPC.

We can see that the interests do classify by the search engines. Google being more entertainment based while Yahoo is more conservative, family/knowledge oriented. That is broad scale of course, but it is something to consider when planning PPC budgets.

Courtesy of Clickz.

P.S.
Lets not forget what’s been left out. I am pretty sure the "top" 10s would look a lot different ;))).

ABC reported that the big three has settled down with the justice department to pay out $31.5 millions in penalties for running online gambling ads through their networks. Microsoft will pay the biggest chunk of $21 million, Yahoo is left with $7.5 and Google gets modest $3 million dollars.

Microsoft is also paying $9 million to International Center for Missing and Exploited Children. I was not able to find out why, but the banner on their website put a smile on my face.

After eight months review, FTD approved Google – Double click merger with 4 – 1 vote.

“after carefully reviewing the evidence, we have concluded that Google’s proposed acquisition of DoubleClick is unlikely to substantially lessen competition.”

One couldn’t expect any other outcome =)

The major brick on the road for Google was the issue of competition. It was decided to let Google have DoubleClick after long assessment into the case.

DoubleClick is a digital advertising agency specializing in visual media ads. Google will proceed to purchase the company for 3.1 billion dollars.

Full story from FTD. Google Official Blog.

Today I’ve stumbled upon a very interesting search engine called ChaCha. Search Insider Blog detailed on a human powered search, where real people search for your queries.

That got me a bit surprised, so I loaded my screenshot capture app, created a new folder and went off to explore. Pretty soon a very friendly interface met my eyes. Very modest, Google style in nature. It seems that Google interface has been copied all over the web.

Once landed, I quickly did a search for “bats” and ChaCha search engine gave me regular, indexed results. I went to the home page and this time clicked on “search with guide”, which sure enough took me to the registration page. I quickly filled out everything, confirmed the mail and the next thing was Brandon Greeted me.

Status: Connecting …
Status: Looking for a guide …
Looking: …
Status: Brandon has connected to help you with your search on bats. Please wait while your guide searches for your results.
Brandon: Welcome to ChaCha!
Brandon: Hello! What are you looking for on this topic today?
You: hey how are you there
Brandon: Good, thank you
Brandon: Yourself?
You: =))) wonderful, thanks.
You: looking for bats
Brandon: All right
Brandon: I am currently searching for your results, thanks for waiting!
You: ok

The idea I had was to give the Operator choice between baseball bats and flying bats and see how good he will do. I also researched both a bit, so in case we went along with animal bats, ChaCha Operator would have to search for “Molossidae bats”. In case we went along with baseball, ChaCha agent would search for “Hillerich & Bradsby bats from 1950 – 1980”

Brandon: I am having technical difficulties. Transferring you to another guide.
Transfer: You are being transferred to another guide who can help you search even better!
Status: Looking for a guide …
Status: Toni has connected to help you with your search on bats. Please wait while your guide searches for your results.
Toni: Welcome to ChaCha!
Toni: Hi I will be helping you with your search.
You: hey there

Brandon didn’t seem to find anything so I got Tony instead. Tony seemed to cut it right off to the point and asked me some more.

Toni: Could you please be more specific as to the exact information that you are seeking?
You: bat old ones
You: Hillerich & Bradsby bats
Toni: baseball
You: 1950s and up to 1980s
You: yeppp =)))

At this point I decided to go with the baseball bats, since baseball seemed a bit trickier then the other.

Toni: Certainly one moment please.

Couple of minutes later, ChaCha interface started popping up websites on baseball bats. It took Tony about a minute to find the first result, while a total of about 3 minutes for all of them.

You: thanks
Toni: Are these results sufficient?
You: yes you hit the sweet spot =)))

I got six results in total, which surely enough had the bats I was looking for. Some of them had information I needed, some were selling vintage bats from 50s.

Actual results:

The Batting Cage: Collecting World Series and All Star Game Bats

Vintagebats

Louisville Slugger

Items For The Auction

Mastro Auctions Completes Another Industry Classic

Timeline of Baseball
This is one seemed a bit off topic.

Since it seemed to end pretty fast, I decided to poke Tony a bit more and find what exactly this ChaCha place is.

You: do you guys google over there? =)))
Toni: yeah me!
Toni: No not often but once in a while
You: pretty fun searching with a person
You: get a lot of people?
Toni: I am going to close and assist others. Thank you for using ChaCha. The results will remain for you to review.
Toni: It is a lot of fun
Toni: We are hoping to get busier. We are actually independents
Toni: So thanks again and please continue to use us
You: ok bye

As Tony stated ChaCha is run by independents who work on their on their own time.
Here is how guided ChaCha search looks like.

How does it work?

According to numerous sources, ChaCha guides get paid $5 per search hour, when they reach “pro” status. It is not clear how soon that status is earned, but people say it does not take long. You only get paid for search time, that is when you are connected to the person, doing actual searching. ReadWriteWeb says there around 10.000 search guides, all independents, working from home. Start whenever you want to, work as long as you want to and leave whenever you want. Seems pretty interesting. Though $5 does not seem like a lot in the western world, Eastern European countries, African Union States and other poorer nations will definitely benefit more from having such a part time job.

Now if you do the math, $5 to 10.000, aussuming only half of the people work an hour per day, turns out to $50.000 per day from ChaCha?

How exactly does ChaCha make money?

There are a number of Google sponsored text ads that run side by side, but it seems they ought not to generate too much profits for ChaCha. So what is going on?

ReadWriteWeb speculates that ChaCha founders are training AI en mass scale.

“ChaCha: The more you use ChaCha, the smarter and faster ChaCha becomes! Because ChaCha indexes all the questions that are asked and associates them with the search engines and resources used by Guides, and the links visited by the users, ChaCha knows where to look and what the best human-approved resources are for each question or topic.”

“This is a unique, interesting and clever twist on search. The entire human sifting process is leveraged to train the automated engine to create, in essence, an equivalent of a page rank. With time, ChaCha will get better and better - because more quality search results will be discovered. For this to succeed, the number of guides needs to scale with the amount of new information online - which is not simple. But we have to assume that the ChaCha company has a plan for that. If it works, we’ll get what I think will be the first example of AI training done on such scale.” - ReadWriteWeb.

This is a very interesting and existing concept. It seems that ChaCha got some pretty big sponsors, willing to invest heavily in the project, but can it be Google killer? I have to say Google is alarmed. If you go to Google and search for ChaCha – you will get wiki describing the dance, which is OK and some other results with ChaCha search nowhere in sight. Refine it a bit and search for “chacha search”, still no ChaCha on the horizon. Lets go ahead a do in your face chacha.com. The first result is the Search Engine Watch, followed by underground.chacha.com, with no direct results to the ChaCha homepage.

This got me thinking, don’t get me wrong, but from what Search Engine Watch found out(long ago) – it’s damn competitive.

# Best Thai food in Los Angeles: ChaCha, Google, Yahoo
# How many smartphones will there be in 2010 in the US: ChaCha, Google, Yahoo
# Best non-toxic household cleaning products: ChaCha, Google, Yahoo
# Thanksgiving recipes: ChaCha, Google, Yahoo

Better then Yahoo! in my opinion.

I wouldn’t think that Google would do that, after all it is very democratic in terms of sending traffic to direct competitors, so it might be simple page rank in action. Regardless, ChaCha does have a lot of potential if exposed to larger audience.

• It’s search is accurate.
• You can get humans to search.
• Interface is very friendly to the eyes(some search engines look really repelling)

The only negative I found was the speed of ChaCha search. Being spoiled by Google’s “0.023 seconds 13,400,000 results” it can get quite annoying waiting for results to show up(in indexed search). Of course guided search is a different story.

Is ChaCha going to get more traffic? More users and more money? I think they’re on to a brilliant idea and I wish them luck. It can get tough competing with the big 3 and real innovation seems to work best.

Regardless of whether they will pose direct threat to Google or Yahoo in the future, their AI training will cost more then enough to satisfy the investors.

Since overture is out, at least on its own website, here is the list of keyword research tools both free and subscription based.

Free Keyword Research Tools.

SEO Book Keyword Research Tool

From Aaron Wall of SEO Book comes a free keyword research tool. It used to rely on Overture for its data, however since the Overture is out, it gathers keywords from WordTracker Database. SEO Book tool has some useful estimates such as “Google Daily Estimate”, “Yahoo Daily Estimate” and “MSN Daily Estimate”.

“* Please note our tool currently assumes Google having ~ 70% of the market, Yahoo! having ~ 20% of the market, and MSN search having ~8% of the market”

Tool also gives quick shortcuts to: KW Discovery, Google Trends, Google Traffic Estimator, Google Suggest, AdWords Keyword Tool, Quintura.

WordTracker Daily Count Keyword Research

One’s Loss is someone’s gain. Word Tracker didn’t wait for long. WordTracker keyword research tool gives 100 top daily estimates. Considering 1% share of Dogpile, to predict precise estimates you will have to.

Multiple the number by 30(to get monthly count) then:
multiply the numbers by 100(to get total estimates), 60(Google), 30(Yahoo), 10(MSN).

Keyword Discovery Research

It is said that Keyword discovery research tool gets it data from Google, Yahoo, MSN, Teoma and other 180 Search Engines. It zeros in on information from 3.5 million toolbar users. It is not clear which toolbars Treallian taps into, but it sounds good. Free keyword research is limited, but will do the job of showing broadest and most popular terms.

Google Adwords Keyword Tool

Straight from the horses mouth – keyword research tool from Google. Google Adwords tool is the only research tool that does not show actual numbers, but limits to a green indicator bar. The “greener” the bar the more people search for that term.

Google also offers greenish intelligence on: “Advertiser Competition”, “Monthly Search Volume”, “Avg Search Volume”.

Yahoo Search Marketing

Cudos to Yahoo and thanks for Overture, but why stop supporting it? Yahoo could gain some prestige among SEO crowds if it nurtured us a bit more. Anyway, you can still tap into Yahoos’ database which is actually updated, through Yahoo Search Marketing. You don’t have to sign up all the way, just select the time zone and a market, Yahoo will unveil its keyword research tool.

Nichebot Classic

Another Tool that relies mainly on WordTracker Database. Nichebot classic has a very annoying anti robot measures, where after each search you have to enter the confirmation all over again. SEO Book keyword research tool and Nichebot Classic are essentially the same, while SEO Book is a bit more useful and friendly to the eyes.

Microsoft Adlabs Keyword Suggestion Tool

Though you would expect more then just a suggestion, Adlabs stop at that. Not too useful, but it is there.

Subscription Based Keyword Research Tools.

NicheBot 2 Keyword Research(or NichebotX)

One of my favorite tools. Though its older brother, free Nichebot classic isn’t quite useful, Nichebot v2 surpasses usability of many tools and blendes a very powerful mix of usability and pricing.

It is the only keyword research tool that seems to work with Overture, even though Overture is barely breathing. I would say 6 out of 5 queries work. (more on Overture)

It also gets data from WordTracker, this time with a 100 day count.

Keyword Discovery is swiftly dissolved with the interface and you have a chance of tapping into expensive keyword discovery premium database by using Nichebot credits.

Apart from remote access to a vast amount of tools, Nichebot has many internal features that ease the research. More inside.

WordTracker Keyword Research

Best known keyword research tool on the web. It has many advanced features and its subscriptions range from 1 week to one year. WordTracker also sells bulk keyword intelligence.

Apart from Dogpile, WordTracker gathers data from a number of small, metasearch engines such as Lycos, Mamma and other.

Base 1 week subscription is 30$US, while 1 year is 299$US.
more on WordTracker

Trellian Keyword Discovery

We mentioned their basic, free services. Keyword discovery is also available for subscription, starting at $49.99US.

Wordze

I have never personally dealt with Wordze, but its name surfaces all across the web. It has a subscription of 35$US for a month, with 7$US daily trial. Wordze claims to gather data directly from ISP’s and other sources. Not clear on other sources, but people use it, so it must work.

Commercial, heavy use keyword research tools.

There are two more names that provide keyword research worthy of mentioning, however they are limited in audience since they require deep pockets.

Online Search Solutions

Comscore is a company specializing in web statistics. Kind of like IDC and Forrester, but exclusively for the internet.

It offers keyword research, as well as online intelligence. Prepare your bank account though, since companies like that charge a minimum of $2000.

Hitwise

The superstar of internet intelligence and competitive research. Hitwise services include very detailed and thorough keyword research(apart from ton of other tools), but it is priced at 60.000US according to SEO Chat.

Hope this helps with your keyword research. Please leave us comments if you think we are missing a tool, or you need more information.

Hello.

Since the Overture is out, there is a very similar and more updated version available
with Yahoo Search Marketing. This keyword tool is very nice when looking for the write key words to optimize for.

Just pick the timezone/market and it will take you to the keyword research page.
Though this is setup for Yahoo PPC you don’t have to complete it to use the keyword
research. It shows the numbers very similar to overture, but this one is updated. This Keyword Selector Tool is a seo’s best friend!

Good day.

Clickz reported on a very interesting announcement made by a prominent hybrid PR company called Connor Communication.

"we don’t do that anymore."

Connor had dropped original PR in favor of SEO and discontinued their offline efforts. Company will be focusing on optimizing entire websites for their clients rather then doing few pages. Offline PR wiil be left in the graveyard.

For a PR person it would probably sound like a dopey and ridiculous move that would not last, but it is really? How insane are Connor Communications decision makers?

Not at all. They’ve just secured their existence as a firm.

In another interesting article Gord Hotchkiss of Mediapost talks about revolution, as well as evolution which PR is experiencing. He argues that big companies will face extermination unless they get search. His biggest argument is that they will be wiped off because they never will.

“….It took them 50 years to adopt electricity, even though the advantages of electrical power were obvious. By the time they made the move, younger, smaller, faster-moving and more nimble companies had passed them by. Many of the industrial dinosaurs never recovered and died away.”

‘….From the big agencies’ perspective, high atop their vast media-buying empires, the agency monoliths seem invulnerable. It’s only if you’re scurrying around down here at ground level that you see the cracks in the ground underneath them.”

I believe he is somewhat correct. We have observed emerging patterns in the world of advertising for quite a bit a now, and numbers speak for themselves. More and more giants are taking internet seriously and spending more and more money online. Though search is never mentioned in the analysis apart from PPC, going on the internet means doing search. There is no way around it. Search will only go up with time.

Though I agree with Gord Hotchkiss, Mike Margolin has a lot of powerful arguments on his plate to defend PR companies.

“….other media channels are crucial in generating awareness and driving just the search activity that we most value.”

“….the more forward-thinking agencies already know that a great advertising idea doesn’t mean “a great 30 second spot” - it means understanding how people learn and communicate and how their perceptions are shaped and then choosing wisely from the available media tools how to communicate the brand’s message.”

Mr. Mike Margolin painted a very colorful picture of the decision making process within PR companies and has done very well defending their positions. He argues that traditional advertising is essential to create brand awareness and search would not be as effective without it. He is very correct here and commercials which do not punch the brains with "Go get it NOW" do create awareness that transforms into searchers. However that is the minority. Mike also describes the structure and decision making process of a PR firm.

One thing needs to be said – the old process is the primary reason why the big guys are going to get left behind. The culture is too different. As Gord said, advertisers are looking for that next BANG to unroll or for that killer idea to light up that torch, while search is a piece by piece, slow, boring process. Where no BANGs ever come, and each and every granule can be measured and accounted for.

There are also the media sales people, the management and the big bucks involved in TV that slow down the process. The structure needs to be rebuild and thought over, which takes times, new people and money.

All this time somewhere beneath the grass are the grass hoping SEO companies, who have made their bones and gained needed reputation. As the times moves forward the small guys are going to be biting a bit more. Piece by piece, bite by bite.

Though the giants will not die, we will see a swap of power in the future. Some will be left behind, starving for contracts. Some will benefit from right decisions. New powerful players will emerge.

Dropping traditional advertising for a PR company, especially a big one, would not be right. Forming effective SEO department and allocating more budget and weight to search is a start.

Because search is sexy.

Last Friday Google London held a fund raising effort for Kids Company and Refuge Center. As a part of the fund raiser, Googlers dressed into different outfits such as Superman, Batman, Spiderman and other superstar characters.

However the most notable one was not the superman or the batman. It was the Googleman. One of the guys finally broke the rumors of the new upcoming Google produced movie and showed off the main character.

The Google Man

Google has not yet released the details on the plot, but from the pictures we can see that one of the opposing characters will likely be a CatBat or a BatGoogleMan.

The movie will be fully sponsored and shot by Google Inc. and is projected to come out by the end of 2008.

Okay… There is no movie. It was a fund raiser =), but it’s nice to see Googlers having fun.

As far as the movie, Sergei Brin (co-founder of Google) has been working on one called Broken Arrows. There are no dates of when it will be released, but if you are interested you can check out the trailer. It does’t look too existing. I think Sergei is better off developing algorithms =), but who knows, it is never perfect the first time.

Google announced it is inviting people for a private beta testing of its new project – Google Knol. New service will allow anyone to create articles on any subject. Google Knol has a degree of "wikiness" to it, however it will be different in terms of editing. Unlike Wikipedia which allows anyone to edit it’s articles, Knolers will create stand alone content, whereby public will have a chance to vote for that article and write reviews.

There will be as many versions of the same articles as there are writers, but the best ones will get propped up by users. Essentially Google Knol will give a chance to anyone to share what they know, without the constraints of other people editing it, or shady interests dipping their hands in the process.

The name Google Knol comes from the word “knowledge” as it seems weird names are quite popular on the web =) (Google, Urkut, Shpinn, Reddit ) Short and easy to remember.

A new revenue source for writers.

"Knol is all about the authors," - Udi Manber head of the project, reported by Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land.

Apart from the ability to solely create and publish articles, writers will be required to put their name out to the public, allowing people to see who wrote it.

Google Knol will not only serve as the editing and hosting platform, but will give writers a chance to make a sidebuck off of their work. If authors give Knol permission to run Google ads, Google will split a part of their money juice with writers in the same manner as Google Adsence program.

What will Google Knol mean to the web?

As said, a launch might not happen at all — there’s certainly no set date. - Udi Manber, Search Engine Land

If it did launch would happen?

Knowledge is being gradually transferred to big platforms, where smaller guys are having harder time to compete.

As Danny put it:
“It begins to feel like the knowledge aggregators are going to push out anyone publishing knowledge outside such aggregation systems.

The brightest example is Wikipedia, which seems to rank for half of all the search queries.

The question that I have, how accurate is it? In the recent months Wiki has slipped on the slope of “accuracy”, and anyone interested in the subject would probably agree that it is wise not to trust wiki, at least on some touchy subjects.

Google Knol seems to have a solution for this problem, since no one but the creator of the article will be able to edit and other users will only participate in the popularity process.

Squidoo is already operating with a similar idea. Anyone passionate about anything can write and earn money from the ads.

Yahoo Answers is also working out and has some weight on a number of topics. It is not precisely a knowledge base, but a quick answer venue, which is perfectly reflected in its name.

In the light of Web 2.0, Google seems to be taking steps to stay competitive, as well to increase revenue streams. However the overall picture apart from Google Knol is becoming alarming.

The downside of such centralization, is the centralization itself, which history shows is never good.

There are many benefits to running content on the separate platform, both for authors as well as the readers. Authors get their name heard, message communicated, knowledge shared and some pocket money earned. Readers get all-in-place database without the hassle of looking for info, though that hassle is largely eliminated thanks to Google, Yahoo and co., it is still nice to have it all in one place.

How will it affect the future of the internet?

Google Knol and SEO.

Knol will allow authors to link out to their own websites, creating a good motivator for writers to get their content up to the public. Referrals will be gold, especially if writers are able to provide value to the reader. Good article will instantly create an image of expertice and earn a degree of respect from reading audience, which will be directly passed on to the website of that writer. I believe Google Knol will become quite popular with professional community.

“Authors can link out at will (and links might NOT have nofollow attributes on them, allowing reputation to flow from Knol pages to others)”

Though Danny states there might be a possibility of having nofollow with Google Knol, I doubt it will happen. Knol would get spammed by SEOs, both black, white, grey and purple. The link juice is too hard to pass by. There are also dangers of other types of spam, but Google claims they have got a good grip on it and have learned a lot from Blogger.

Anyway you look at it, Google Knol is going to make more buzz in the future, so lets wait and see how it unfolds.

Google search inquiries represented more than six requests out of 10 in the United States last November, which is more than triple than its main competitor Yahoo, according to datas published Tuesday.

Today, the Google American market share adds up to 65,1%, compared to 61,84% in November 2006, according to the Hitwise firm. As for Yahoo search engine, their market share is 21,21%, followed by MSN with a mere 7,09%, Ask with 4,63%, and 1,96% for the other 46 search engines.

Yahoo has released new Wordpress plugin designed to ease the job of bloggers.

As you go on typing your blog, Yahoo will automatically offer rollover links from its search platform. For example, if I was to enter Montreal, Yahoo would offer me a link, which will pop up as a small window every time anyone hovers over that word. Once clicked, another window will open within the blog itself, which shows yahoo search results for that term and gives readers the option to click on it.

Links may take all kinds of forms and currenly Yahoo! WordPress plug-in offers:

• Search
• Maps
• Local
• Pictures/Flikr.
• Shopping

Yahoo WordPress plugin offers full control to the blogers as to what links to keep and which to let go, making it a potential time saver.

Yahoo Wordpress Plugin – strategic Yahoo! intitiative.

Apart from making the job easier for blogers, in my opinion, at the core of this project lies the expansion of Yahoo! search market. Whenever anyone hovers over such a link, Yahoo! automatically offers results, which of course when clicked lead to Yahoo! search. If a substantial number of bloggers will use such an extension, Yahoo! will inevitably get a good share of readers to its search platforms. If a targeted word, say Sony HDR-FX7(a camera) gets Yahoo! linked, Wordpress Plugin will lead its readers onto Yahoo! search, where a vast number of online shops are competing in PPC. The user has a potential of clicking on sponsored results, making revenues for Yahoo.

Props to Yahoo! on a brilliant idea.

Apart from PPC advantage to Yahoo!, Wordpress plugin will play a role of luring more people to use its search engine, since the ads are quite friendly and may get their share of users to switch to Yahoo!

Yahoo! plugin from blogging perspective.

Though the primary selling point is the job made easy, I would not agree with it entirely. Personally I prefer to be completely in control, and link out to sites I’ve seen first hand. Yahoo! Wordpress plugin does give a degree of control over the links, however you may never know where exactly users will land.

From the interactive perspective it’s wonderful, and has web 2.0 written all over it.

Maps. Really nifty feature is the Yahoo! maps. Whenever you enter the name of a city/country/town or any other geographical location, Yahoo! shortcuts pick it up and give you the ability to embed Yahoo! maps within the article, which are of course interactive. Some more value to the reader.

Flikr is integrated with the plugin, so whenever Yahoo! finds a suitable word, Flickr photos will be offered with ability to choose resolution. A picture can speak a thousand words, and pic search is made convinient.

The aspect of distraction. It does distract users from reading. Whenever mouse pointer reaches such a link, a little popup window may:

Interest the reader and be the exit point from your blog.
Traffic is gold and loosing it without a good reason is never good. Lets say a Reddit story got promoted, a new flow of traffic came in. Yahoo! Wordpress plugin has the potential of getting that traffic away from you, before people finish the article, or even explore the blog/website. Potential subscribers are lost.

Convenience. Personally, I sometimes get annoyed reading articles with similar platforms installed and it does disrupt the natural flow by stealing attention from the article itself. Usually it is done by ad agencies specializing in that type of advertising and sites with substantial traffic levels use it as a revenue source.

I would personally restrict my use of Yahoo! Wordpress plugin to maps and Flikr, entering rest of the links manually. Though a wonderful idea by Yahoo! team, it has the potential of taking away hard earned traffic. Of course, one might argue – as long as you got the content and the SEO in place that should not be of a worry, however maximizing your audience and maximizing the revenues is on the priority list of many blogers and Yahoo! is a perfect example of that strategy in practice.

Just my 2 cents. Some blogs are already using it and so far Yahoo! Wordpress didn’t link me out anywhere, so I’m probably just too paranoid =).

Watch video presentation of Yahoo! Wordpress plugin.

On October 24th 2007 Google adjusted Pagerank for numerous websites. Many dropped from 1 to 4 points. Webmasters got outraged, however the SERPs did not change. People started talking, rumors spread, forums fired up, blogs written.

On December 1st 2007 Matt Cutts and Maile Ohye have officially announced on Google webmaster blog what many have already envisioned. Google will be taking steps to devaluate paid links.

It seemed the blogosphere got ignited by flammable chemicals. Everyone from young to old got to bloging and discussed the breaking news. Some got angry, some showed support, regardless – Google simply stated its strategy to the public.

Why SEOs are right. Why Googlers are right.

They are both right because it all comes down to profits. No matter the public relations(not that kind of PR) from both sides, everyone knows what they’re in for. Of course I wouldn’t argue that many simply enjoy what they do, but the bottom line is with dollars. If it didn’t pay, we’d be doing something else and enjoyed SEO and internet marketing in our spare time. A weird hobby that would be?

But people aren’t happy and that is understandable:

• Webmasters get paid for passing the link juice
• SEOs buy links to move their clients up the chain
• People get referrals both from search and from the links

Google is in the business of search and as much as webmasters and Bloggers talk about Google – we are not the biggest fans. People who go out once in a while to research their new house, look for raw paper or simply find a good site to kill some time are the biggest fans. Google is going to do its best to keep them happy. Competitors are a nanosecond away.

Many whine (sorry). Some take it like men (not to discredit women).:

“Firstly - I feel your pain

….The first time it happened to me my traffic (and income) plummeted to a third of what it was in December of 2004. It hit me hard and almost knocked me out of blogging for money. The second major hit that I’ve taken happened earlier this month when within the space of a couple of hours the traffic (and income) on my biggest blogs went to one tenth of normal levels and my blogs completely disappeared from Google’s index. Once again it was a fairly frightening experience (although I’d learnt a lot from last time it happened and have diversified my income quite a bit since).”

It is not a stable world. Dollar is nearing extinction, wars swallow Middle East and oil hits 100$ in the States. Cui bono? Don’t panic. As John Lenon Put it: “There are no problems, only solutions” and there will be. I guarantee. Solutions will surface, we just have to give it some time and listen to the silence.

Back to the Google vs. Webmasters.

I understand why people are angry and believe it goes deeper then the link war debate.

Danny is right in the recent comment:

“Hey, newsflash — Google’s an independent company that at least in the United States has a court-backed decision that says the First Amendment gives it a constitutionally protected right to do whatever the hell it wants with the PageRank meter. So you built your business around selling ads linked to PageRank, and now you’re upset when Google pulls the plug?”

It’s simple as that.

Google is a corporation, owned by its shareholders. Google has a board of directors. Google has CEOs and a management chain. Google is in the business of search and its business is built around providing relevancy to the millions of Google search users. If that relevancy is threatened, Google’s shares and income are threatened as well. It is only logical to address that threat as effectively as possible. It is a business strategy, nothing more and nothing less.

We are in the middle of an endless debate where both sides are right. There aren’t any solutions to satisfy the two.

Link buying can be win-win-win, but it can be win-win-lose, where “lose” are Google users, hence Google is in the “lose”. It is going to get balder with time.

Why the linkwar will not be efficient.

Does anyone know how it works?

Search Engine Roundtable claims it’s not very efficient so far, which I believe is true. Other then by analyzing a website and other websites that mention the URL or the name of your site, how else does Google determine if link is paid or not? There is Gmail which gets scanned, but savvy users got their own domains. There is the Firefox which sends data to Google, so Firefox might report some of the forums you hang out at and send it to Google. Google bot might scan those posts and store it in his box(may not be true at all, just my guess).

Other than that? I believe there is no way for Google to know, unless pointed by someone. Googleplex team is in for quite a nifty task and it is going to be tough for both sides. I would not be suprised with people going under the radar(if not already) and forming underground black market link merchant chains - kidding =). SEOs going under the radar would be logical though, while Google will have to develop techniques to spot them.

Webmasters use paid links to boost their rankings. Google sees this as a threat. We can’t blame them for trying to get rid of that threat. After all, their image is on the line.

P.S.

Poor Matt Cutts =).

Ask.com released its new feature today called “Ask Eraser” which disables the routine recording of search patterns and visited websites. Though it does not completely erase the data, it stops new information from being recoreded in Asks’ database. In world of increasingly Big Brother-like surveillance Ask.com is hoping to get bigger share of privacy wary users.

"We take significant steps to protect any data that’s stored in our servers, but for those people who want to take extra precautions, AskEraser let them take the issue completely off the table." Ask.com Chief Executive Jim Lanzone

Here is the tool in action:

You can try it for yourself at Ask.com. It is located on the top right hand side.