Search Engine Optimization

Leading Search Engines Brief History and Overview (Google and Yahoo part 1)

In this article we will briefly go over leading search engines of the world, their history and position in the WWW market.

Google

There’s no other choice but to start with the king of search. It started as a Stanford university project to find authoritative links on the web. In 1996 it was known as the BackRub, before being renamed to Google. As a 2 man team founders Sergei Brin and Larry Page tried selling their invention, but no one wanted it, so they decided to set up their won search engine company. With a $100,000 check and a lot of optimism Google was born. Within few years they won distribution deals with Yahoo!(Yahoo used Google) and AOL, helping Google earn its reputation.

Google did not have a business model until 2002. In less than 3 years, by the end of 2005 company was worth over $100 billion.

Market Share: ~65%

Links: About | Products | Advertising Programs

Yahoo

Yahoo was founded in 1994 as a web directory (and a Hobby) by David Filo and Jerry Yang. Until 2004 Yahoo outsourced search to other companies including Google. Once they realized value of search, they acquired Overture (first PPC platform), Inktomi and other search technology. When Yahoo entered into search engine game, they have ended Google monopoly on search, which at the time was 80% o (around 35% directly, ~35% through Yahoo and rest through other distribution deals).

After purchasing Overture Yahoo renamed it to Yahoo Search Marketing (YSM). According to many advertisers YSM has got a lot to improve especially in the broad match arena. It holds second spot, after Adwords.

Market Share: ~15%

Links: Company Information | Advertising |

• part 2
• part 3

This is a second part of the Googlepoly paper review released by Scott Cleland. To see the full picture please read part 1.

• Avoid fair representation of Google’s multitude of financial conflicts of interest; Author does not provide any specific examples. Though I am not excluding the probability, I would like to see example to be convinced.
• Hide anti-competitive self-dealing in its auctions; Google is known for milking money with quality score, so this is a valid point, however all search engines use this strategy, so it is not Google exclusive.
• Hide anti-competitive front-running in its auctions; Google uses its auction network to promote its own products, seems like a 100% valid thing to do. If I own something I have all the rights to use it.
• Hide monitoring of competitor’s actions and vulnerabilities; This makes 100% perfect sense from strategic perspective. If one has the ability to spy and monitor on competitors, one should utilize it to the maximum. Before going into war Pentagon uses satellites to spy on enemies. If I have the eyes that competitors don’t, I will use them.
• Hide abuse of privacy expectations and compliance; I would love to hear more on this issue, since Google knows more about me and you that any company in the world. What do they do with this data? Do they comply with predatory government requests disguised by “anti terror” acts or just keep it for behavioral targeting.
• Deny competitors access to key market information, thus inhibiting competitors’ ability to control quality or even offer a competitive product or service. I mentioned this above, if the company has gained this knowledge purely through market dominance (pretty fair in Google’s case - by word of mouth) than why in the world share it with competitors?

Read part 1.

Scott Cleland is the authors of articles titled “Googlepololy“, which claim that Google is a monopoly is and is putting up competitive barriers for other companies. The papers offer much research and insight into Google’s behavior, however I found that much of the content is filled resentment. The instantaneous question was why? Digging a little deeper I found out that Scott is on the pay role of cellular giants who are threatened by Google, and in fact hired Cleland to put up barriers for Google, the very thing he is accusing Google of doing.

Let’s look at few examples from Googleopoly’s 2 (there’s a total of 3 papers).

• Proactively preventing a stronger competitor from emerging in Microsoft-Yahoo by undermining Microsoft-Yahoo talks and ultimately making Yahoo financially dependent on Google.This seems like a valid reaction. If my company’s market share can be undermined by a serious competitor, the logical thing to do is prevent this competitor from entering the battle. This is what in fact cell giants hired Cleland to do.
• Supra-competitive “limit” pricing of traffic acquisition costs with websites, Mozilla, Adobe, and others to prevent competitors from gaining search share. It makes sense to strike distribution deals with market leaders, as all search companies do it. For instance Microsoft and Facebook, Yahoo and T-Mobile, etc. If my company can get larger audience and I can make more money, why not? If I hesitate competitors will jump in.
• Structuring ‘auctions’ to maximize revenue for Google, not awarding keywords to highest bidder - the definition of an auction. Award the winning bid not the highest bidder, but to bidder who has more clicks and makes more money in total. If you browse forums you’ll stumble into a term known as the “Google Slap”. This occurs when Google spots competitive, popular terms at extremely low minimum bids ($0.5, $0.10, etc) and fixes the price to a new high price with the excuse of “quality score”. The tactic is used to deliver consistent growth.

There is much insight into Google strategies in papers, but they are saturated with weak arguments all over. Continue reading the article to part 2.

If you’ve been using Google Keyword Tool for your keyword research, you might be missing some of the features (i did). The most obvious yet the most important one is the match feature. In Adwords you can target keywords using broad match, exact match, phrase match and negative match. You can do the same in Adwords keyword tool and filter phrases by match options. On the right hand side right above the “add” link there a dropdown menu called “match type”. Choose the match you like and you will get different search volume numbers. For example:

• Broad Match: mexico vacation 246,000
• Phrase Match: mexico vacation 201,000
• Exact Match: mexico vacation 27,100

Match Descriptions:

• Broad match: keyword (no punctuation)

Show up for all phrase variations that contain your keyword. For example someone searching for “reviews of vacation by professionals to mexico” or “mexico travel vacation guides” will see your ad. This is the basis for the search count that Google Keyword Tool gives.

• Phrase match: “keyword”

This option ensures that the ad only shows up if the search matches the phrase. For example the ad will show up for “mexico vacation travel guides”, but will exclude “vacation travel guides to mexico”. As with the broad match this is the basis for Google search count in the Adwords tool.

• Exact match: [keyword]

Self explanatory.

Getting Keywords From the Analytics

Analytics is a great place to mine keywords. As you rank for you core phrase you will notice that most of the traffic still comes from long tail (assuming you’ve got enough content). There you can mine keywords and discover nuggets of gold otherwise inaccessible in keyword research tools.

Google webmaster tools is another place to discover keywords. In the “top search queries” tab you will see top keywords your website shows in search results. Sometime you can find phrases you did not think of. Simply take each phrase and do a quick research on it. If there’s enough search volume for the phrase, create a separate page designed to target that keyword, and put up a link on the index page to pass page rank.

Aaron Wall of SEObook.com released another useful tool called SEO Toolbar. This is the review of the toolbar.

What’s’ Inside? - there’s nothing new that the toolbar offers. It simply combines all the best SEO, link intelligence, keyword research and competitive research tools into one.

Here’s how the toolbar looks:

And here’s a list of tools you can access through SEO Toolbar.

• Archive.com
• Compete.com
• SEM Rush
• Google Search Based Keyword Tool
• Google Trends for Websites
• Quantcast
• Alexa
• Yahoo Site Explorer
• SEO Book Keyword Tool
• Google Search Based Keyword Tool
• Adwords Traffic Estimator
• Google Adwords Keyword Tool
• Google Trends
• Google Insights
• Google Suggest
• Yahoo
• Wordtracker Free Keyword Tool
• Wordtracker Keyword Questions
• Keyword Discovery Tool
• Quintura

As soon as I installed it I found myself using the tool over and over again. I used the same tools as I did before, but SEO toolbar makes it a lot easier.

Download SEOToolbar

This is a second part of the article that covers advanced search operators for Yahoo and Google.

read part 1…

Combining Intitle: and Inanchor:

You can spot a lot of direct keyword competitors with this command. The intitle: command filters results by page title, while the inanchor command only shows results that have a keyword in an external URL pointing to the domain / page. For example:

intitle:search engine optimization inanchor:search engine optimization

This combination does not work in Yahoo, while Google shows distorted resorts in order to keep information away from search engine optimizers and spammers.

SIte:

Site:www.example.com on both Yahoo and Google will show you all indexed pages for the selected domain that each search engine has in the index. The command is useful in learning about the size of your competitors, and finding out freshness of your pages in the index.

Link:

This command does not work on Google since it features distorted results. If you do link:domain.com search on Yahoo you will be automatically redirected to Yahoo Site Explorer. Use it to analyze links for free.

Yahoo Advanced Web Search

Yahoo advanced web search lets you look for .edu, .gov, .mil and other authoritative links. Simply go to Yahoo advanced web search and filter results by those domains. Downside - there are no filters for Canadian government domains,

read part 2….

In this article we will cover advanced search commands to be used in search engine optimization research. The commands can be used on both Google and Yahoo, however Yahoo is preferred search engine when it comes to research, since Google distorts its data on purpose. In this article we are using Yahoo by default.

Open Yahoo in a new window in order to follow this article.

Intitle:

When you search intitle:keyword Yahoo will only show results with your selected keyword in the title. Use this command to estimate online competition. For example a simple search for “mortgages” gives 487,000,000 results. If you do a search with “intitle:mortgages” the number goes down to 12,600,000 results. (you can do the same on Google). If you have a keyword that consists of several phrases you can use quotations to do exact match: intitle:”search engine optimization company”

Inurl:

This operator filters results by URL names and shows results that have your keyword in the domain name or in the URL filename. Check inurl:search engine optimization on Yahoo and Google to see this.

Inanchor:

Inanchor: is a powerful command that lets you see websites that have external links with your keyword pointing to them. For example search for inanchor:cheap vacation packages on Yahoo - you will see www.orbitz.com/App/PrepareVacationsHome as the number one result even though keywords don’t match the title nor the text.

Use this command to identify competitors that specifically optimized for your keyword, and then use Yahoo Site Explorer, Majestic SEO, or Linkscape to analyze their link.

Google maps has a major bug. You can “close” any business you wish, while the business is 100% operational.

The bug is in Google’s open approach to maps where anyone can edit results and add their own stuff. Though you can’t create a listing without real address and phone number, you can edit a lot of information about other businesses. In his blog post, Barry of SEO roundtable did a test with Microsoft. Screen shots below:

He says that the request will be most likely denied because it is Microsoft, but situation is different when it comes to the small guys.

http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/019569.html

A small Adsense publisher who’s account was terminated by Google has won the case in court for $721. Originally the account was terminated on the basis of being “dangerous and harmful” to the advertisers, however Google did not state why exactly.

Your AdSense account for this login is currently disabled. We recommend checking your email inboxes for any messages we may have sent you regarding your account status. Sometimes our messages can be caught by email filters, so please be sure to check the Bulk/Spam folders of your email accounts as well.

Not happy with the matters website owner took matters to the small claims court, suing Google for $721. Since no lawyers are allowed in the small claims court, judge turned the tides in favor of the publisher with the following statement: “I don’t think I have the power here in Palo Alto small claims court to make you reinstate his account, but I think you owe this young man $721.” The judge also added, “I think there might be money in Google’s treasury for that.”

On the flip side, Google already paid the man $721 it owed (according to Google) and fulfilled all obligations as per contact (it can terminate ANY publisher for ANY reason). It seems like Google is loosing its “innocence” and is now viewed as more of a corporation, than a playful friend.

There is a lot of controversy around the alleged Google “Brand Update”, originally spotted by Aaron Wall. In his video reply to the issue, Matt Cutts sorta admitted the update calling “Vince Change” (according to the video Vince was the guy who made the changes). In the video Matt admits there was a change for a number of queries, saying that is the a move towards authoritative websites rather then the free boost for brands.

On the contrary data shows the opposite. If you missed the Aaron’s blog, big brands started ranking for core terms completely out of nowhere, looking a lot like a boost.

• 4 airlines recently began ranking for “airline tickets”
• At least 90% of the first page of search results for auto insurance is owned by large national brands.
• 3 boot brands / manufacturers rose from nowhere to ranking at the top of the search results.
• 3 of the most well recognized diet programs began ranking for diets.
• 4 multi-billion dollar health insurance providers just began ranking, with Aetna bouncing between positions #1 and 2.
• 3 of the largest online education providers began ranking for online degree.
• 5 watch brands jumped onto the first page of search results for watches. To be honest I have never heard of Nixon Now.

Wolf Howl on his blog sparks a discussion that Matt is trying to use the word “change” in order to “distract” community from the fact there was an update.

When you go around stating there was no update (your definition), when we can clearly see there was an update (our definition), we’ve got a problem. It looks like you’re trying to perform some Jedi mind trick, if you keep repeating there was no update and waving your hand eventually we’ll all believe you. Even worse it’s like you’re trying to tell us what we’re seeing isn’t really there and this is one of those “these aren’t my pants officer” moments from cops. http://www.wolf-howl.com/google/matt-cutts-failure-to-communicate/

So what really happened? Let’s stick to the facts. We know for sure that big buck brands got rankings out of nowhere, so there was a change. Matt is responsible for entire PR with the webmaster and developer community and I would not wonder if he has a zip on his mouth, limiting what he can say.

Search Engine Watch reports that Yahoo has rolled out algo updates

We’ve rolled out some changes to our index with fresh web data and updates to our crawling, indexing, and ranking algorithms over the last few days. We have had two updates since last November: one in December, 2008, and another in late January this year. We expect the update will be completed very soon. Throughout this process you may see some changes in ranking as well as some shuffling of the pages in the index.

Yahoo Search Engine Market Share

According to Comscore Yahoo is at 21.0% in Jan 09, up from 20.5% in 2008, holding steady number 2 spot against Google. Microsoft is last with 8.3.

The Situation with Yahoo, New CEO an Microsoft Acquisition.

Yahoo got a new CEO - Bartz, who is in the process of clamping Yahoo leaks and restructuring Yahoo management chain. Bartz is a no nonsense exec, with a good sense of humor and a defined goal.

The plan aims to speed-up decision-making and give Yahoo products a more consistent appearance by consolidating certain functions that have previously been spread out across the company — like product development and marketing — into single, standalone departments, people familiar with the matter say . . .

One likely scenario under discussion is that Yahoo’s chief technology officer, Aristotle Balogh, would expand his role to become head of product, say people familiar with the matter. The move would put Mr. Balogh in charge of product strategy and management in addition to product technology.

Hilary Schneider, currently in charge of the company’s advertising, publishing and audience groups in the U.S., would become head of North America.

Yahoo’s European, Asian and emerging markets divisions would be consolidated under one boss, said these people, cautioning that the roles and executives tapped to fill them could change.

The battle between 2 giants continues and G is not messing around as it joined antitrust case in EU against software developer, on the topic of Internet Explorer monopoly.

[W]e believe that we can contribute to this debate. We learned a lot from launching our own Google Chrome browser last year and are hoping that Google’s perspective will be useful as the European Commission evaluates remedies to improve the user experience and offer consumers real choices. Of course creating a remedy that helps solve one problem without creating other unintended consequences isn’t easy - but the more voices there are in the conversation the greater the chances of success.

Now that Google got Chrome it wants a good chunk of the browser market. The anti trust case is a perfect opportunity to get it or at least to step on Microsoft toes.

Google also has a distribution deal with Mozilla for over 60 million to act as the default search engine. It has prolonged the agreement for an undisclosed amount.

More on the topic from search engine land: http://searchengineland.com/google-joins-eu-case-against-microsoft-16685

What can you do when the economy gets the best of us, but we still want to get away. Personally I like to go on vacation few times a year in order to recharge. Sometimes to the ocean, other times to white mountain tops for snowboarding. I find it if I don’t relax and get my mind off of business, I accomplish less.

So in my search for cheap vacation packages I stumbled on a little website located at the domain xmlshareware.com The site is nothing special, with few pages and a Travelocity partner, but I like their layout. They also got a nice line up of packages and deals.

Give them a try as you mind get a good vacation

Cheap Vacations at xmlshareware.com

Aaron Wall of SEObook.com spotted a major update rolled out by Google. In a nutshell Big G awarded fortune level companies with core listings.

• 4 airlines recently began ranking for “airline tickets”
• At least 90% of the first page of search results for auto insurance is owned by large national brands.
• 3 boot brands / manufacturers rose from nowhere to ranking at the top of the search results.
• 3 of the most well recognized diet programs began ranking for diets.
• 4 multi-billion dollar health insurance providers just began ranking, with Aetna bouncing between positions #1 and 2.
• 3 of the largest online education providers began ranking for online degree.
• 5 watch brands jumped onto the first page of search results for watches. To be honest I have never heard of Nixon Now.

The article is a must read if you’re in business of search engine optimization, since the rules of the game are changing yet again. Aaron also put a lot of emphasis on Eric Schmidt’s quotes from 2008:

The internet is fast becoming a “cesspool” where false information thrives, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said yesterday. Speaking with an audience of magazine executives visiting the Google campus here as part of their annual industry conference, he said their brands were increasingly important signals that content can be trusted.

“Brands are the solution, not the problem,” Mr. Schmidt said. “Brands are how you sort out the cesspool.”

“Brand affinity is clearly hard wired,” he said. “It is so fundamental to human existence that it’s not going away. It must have a genetic component.”

Less than 6 months and we see this philosophy in action. The big question is, what does Google consider a brand worthy of boosting up in search results? What is their criteria? It is easy to identify Fortune 5000, or even Fortune 100,000 and give them a boost in search results, but what about smaller guys?

I have a feeling Google is digging through all major corporations, their customer focus, etc and giving them good rankings based on offline data alone, as it can afford research of this magnitude now. The update is likely to move into the next stage assoon as Google measures results from rankings boosts it gave away.

http://www.seobook.com/google-branding