Search Engine Room 2009 - 2010

I’m going to be a little self indulgent this week... I promise to get back to answering your questions next week. Cross my heart!

Last week Annemarie, Liesl and I travelled to Sydney to Search Engine Room to catch up with the latest developments in our industry. It’s worth sharing some of the information we collected with you so you can get a feel for where online might be heading into 2010.

The first keynote speech was presented by Justin Baird, Innovationist at Google Australia. Speaking of ‘keynote’, his presentation using Apple’s keynote software was something to behold! Very flashy.

Justin spoke to us about how the web and search is evolving, how the web technology is allowing us to connect with your brand in new ways (like videos and channels in YouTube as just one example).

Speaking of connectivity, he talked about the way in which the ‘real’ world is increasingly connecting to online, through technologies such as QR codes etc.



Then there’s the way we consume “video” and how technology is evolving so rapidly that it won’t be too long before we’ll all be watching TV pretty much solely through online channels.

Mark Thompson; Director General of the BBC stated recently, “We’re less than 5 years away from fully individualised drag and drop TV and Radio Stations”. Sounds pretty cool.

Justin spoke about some of the new things coming through Google Labs such as http://www.google.com/squared which presents information in a tabulated way enabling you to compare things at a glance:



Finally, (because I’m running out of space to talk about anyone else!) he demonstrated “Cross-language Information Retrieval” (sat THAT 10 times quickly).

He used his android phone to speak (in English of course!), and it came back almost instantly with an audio translation in Spanish. This means that soon you will be able to speak to someone in China and the translation will happen via machines in the middle! Love that stuff.

Alan Kohler was the second Keynote speaker – a very ‘old school’ presentation in which he simply referred to his notebook on occasion, but extremely engaging. Quite refreshing in fact and Alan definitely has charisma!

Alan spoke to us about the future of journalism and the upheaval major news publishers are facing at this very moment. The speed of change has really caught them off guard and people like Rupert Murdock are desperately trying to figure out what to do to maintain revenues when so much information can be gathered online for free.

Alan pointed out that quality journalism was the key – noting that his 14,500 subscribers were happy to pay their $330 annual subscriptions to his Eureka Report newsletter. I did the maths, that’s a good business to be in.

Next we saw Jye Smith, Social Media Strategist, Switched On Media and Nicholas O’Flaherty, Bullet PR who spoke about Social Media and Search Engine Visibility.
Because so many social media results are showing up in the search engines, they spoke about ways to leverage social media to get traffic to your social media channels and then back to your website. Nicholas also spoke a little on reputation management.

Karen Grinter from Global Reviews did a fascinating speech on user testing, a topic very close to my heart. They use a system similar to www.usertesting.com but in a much more hands-on interpretive way. Some of the case studies were extremely insightful in terms of user behaviour online, how people search, what annoys them and makes people more inclined to do business online with you.

Key take-away? “Even when a user had a brand in mind when they went online, 51% searched on general terms”.

In the session I spoke in, we saw Jon Ostler, FirstRate talk about how everything that was old is now new again, the click economy and how it’s evolved over time. I loved his take on Forbe’s most powerful list – Google Founders Larry and Sergey now out-ranking Rupert Murdock!

1. U.S. President Obama
2. China President HuJintao
3. Russian President Vladimir Putin
4. U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke
5. Google founders Sergey Brin & Larry Page
6. Telmexchief executive Carlos Slim Helú
7. News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch
8. Wal-Mart chief executive Michael T. Duke
9. Saudi King Abdullah bin AdbulAziz al Saud
10. Microsoft founder Bill Gates

Matt Bateman of Commission Monster spoke about affiliate marketing, a topic which isn’t usually discussed at the sorts of events, so it was an interesting and new insight into the world of performance based online advertising.

Finally! I spoke about the rise and rise of shopping comparison sites like GetPrice, Myshopping etc. These big sites are starting to dominate the head terms and the long tail search terms online with 3 of the top 5 sites ranking for “LCD TV” being comparison websites for example:



They also completely dominate the long tail as you can see from the next screenshot:



So from top to bottom, these sites are squeezing the life out of product related search results. So in essence, if you can’t beat them, join ‘em.

You can download a copy of my comparison sites presentation here.

The Twitter Deal Between Bing and Google.

The recently announced deal between Twitter, Google and Bing could have enormous implications for your online sales.

While there’s not a huge amount of information coming from Google about how it intends to integrate Twitter results into its search, Bing has led the way with a Beta site which you can see here: http://www.bing.com/twitter



Bing does quite a job of returning twitter results. They group the results into the ‘latest tweets’ about a topic, as well as the pages which have been linked to from Tweets.

Google is taking a far more cautious approach as this blog post from Marissa Mayer explains it will be a few months before we see anything on Google.

The reason for the agreement being reached between the search giants and Twitter is simple. Search Engine robots can’t index Twitter quickly enough to return real time information about various topics, especially if a hot topic is trending hard.

Up goes the white flag!

The issue for the search engines though is which ‘most recent tweets’ should they display?

If a topic is hot and folks are commenting at a rate of thousands of tweets a minute, the search engines need to take the ‘best’ tweets and display them in the results.

What’s unclear at present is whether the search engines will be running their own algorithms over the twitter results to help them make a decision about the most relevant tweets to display. My guess is they will.

And they’ll probably need to, because what you see often see happening is spammers who jump in on a trending topic and post tweets to their porn, pills & casino sites to try and get some traffic from the ‘crowd’.

It could lead to some undesirable results showing up in the Search Engine Twitter feeds!

There’s also been some talk that the Search engines will be looking at each Twitterer’s history, the amount of tweets they’ve made, the amount of re-tweets they’ve received from others, in other words, the quality of the Twitterer. This would help the search engine establish the authority of the twitterers posts and may give that their tweets preference in the search engine results.

The other factor which is still unclear is whether there will be any change to the search engine algorithms regarding links from tweets to web pages. Currently there is no search engine benefit from links from tweets.

In spite of that, we’re already seeing Bing follow links from Tweets and list them in the twitter results to help categorise the most popular web pages which twitterers are linking to.

This could potentially turn SEO on its head. It means if you haven’t set up a twitter account for your business you need to pronto, just to be on the safe side.

I believe Twitter Feeds in Search Engine results will be the biggest change in search engine results since the introduction of Universal Search back in 2007.

My advice is to sit tight and wait and see what Google does, which is where the greatest impact could be felt in terms of potential traffic to your site from Twitter feeds.

Never a dull moment.

Use Yahoo Answers to get traffic

Search Engines aren’t the ‘be all and end all’ when it comes to getting targeted traffic to your website.

There’s a little thing called ‘Social Media’ which is really starting to get some traction online!

You may have noticed Yahoo Answers: http://answers.yahoo.com.au/ which has become a huge online hit. Basically anyone can ask pretty much any question they like, and before you know it, lots of people pile in to help them with an answer.

Here’s an example:



But where it gets interesting is the “power” of these Yahoo Answers pages on two fronts.

1. There’s a huge community of people who turn to Yahoo Answers to ask for help and to also answer. So if someone asks about the best kind of digital camera to buy, and you own a Digital Camera store, there’s nothing to stop you from answering that question (and including a link to an appropriate, helpful page your website).

The link will be ‘nofollow’ed (so technically there’s no SEO link building benefit), however, it’s simply amazing how much traffic some of our clients receive from utilizing this social media technique, and how many sales are generated from it.

2. Yahoo Answers ranks really well at search engines! The ‘power’ of these pages is remarkable and you’ll notice Yahoo Answer Pages all over Google. It’s a genuine long term traffic driving strategy…



Unlike Wiki Answers (another site offering the same kind of service) where you can set up emailed alerts, Yahoo Answers doesn’t provide any kind of alert system. However, you can subscribe to the RSS feed and keyword search the feed to find questions you might like to help answer.

Remember to be helpful, not ‘salesy’. The minute you start ‘pushing’ your products or services, the result will be the dreaded “thumbs down” from the community.

It’s a community – so play nice and you will be rewarded.

Why my Google Search Results are different to yours

There once was a time when Google displayed the same results for everybody, but those days are gone and are changing at a rapid pace. There are now a range of factors which determine why my Google search results may be vastly different to yours, for the exact same search query:

Google Data Centres

Google has multiple data centres located all over the world. Any search you conduct is routed to the data centre located nearest to you, which may contain a different collection of indexed pages. Additionally, as Google makes large changes to its algorithms, it rolls them out across the various data centres which will also produce a different set of results.

Geographic Location

Depending on where you are in the world, Google will alter your search results based on your geographic location. Google aims to return results that are the most relevant to you by including local domains or sites from servers hosted in your area. Google does this by redirecting your search query to the appropriate local search database. So, if you’re in Australia, even when searching on Google.com, your results will be biased towards Australian websites.

Personalised Search & Web History

If you’re signed into a Google Account (whether it be Gmail, Google Reader, Adwords, or any other google service you may use) your search results will be personalised according to your web search history. This is based on websites you’ve visited, past searches you’ve made and the sites you’ve visited from the search results. It also takes in to account what you’ve bookmarked in Google Bookmarks or saved to your iGoogle personalised homepage amoung other factors. Google does this to provide you with more relevant and useful results.

If you’re visiting a site or page frequently (your own business for example) you may see an improvement in the positioning of that page in your search results. However, once you sign out of your Google account, the rankings will return to ‘normal’.

Previous Search Query

Google also refines your search results based on the search you performed just prior to the current one. For example, you might search for ‘cheap flights’ followed by a search for ‘new zealand’. Google will effectively combine these two searches and return results as though you had searched for ‘cheap flights new zealand’.

This ‘previous query’ refinement appears in both organic and paid search listings, and happens regardless of whether or not you’re signed in to a Google account.

Many searchers do not realise these changes are taking place and are completely unaware of their modified search results. Google has recently given the control back to users however, with the recent addition of the ‘search customisation’ link at the top of the search results. This informs searchers when their results have been modified due to their geographic location, recent search activity or web history, and provides the option to opt out.

Annemarie Hunter - Search Marketing Specialist

How does Google's algorithm work?

Perhaps the eighth wonder of the world should be Google’s mysterious “Algorithm”. By the way, I do say that with tongue planted firmly in cheek (never really understood that turn of phrase, if any one can tell its origins that’d be great).

But I do regularly get asked about it. What is it? What’s in it? What does it do?

Today, I’ll take a bit of a stab at what it is and what we know about it.

I think I mentioned many-a-blog-post-ago that there are three parts to a search engine, the robots, the index and the algorithm. I’ll do a very simple re-cap to put it into context.

Remember, the ‘bots’ go out over the internet and find and collect web pages. When they find a page, they scurry back and plonk it into Google’s massive storage system, the index. The third part of the ‘engine’ is the algorithm which effectively analyses each page for relevance. When someone performs a search, it tries it’s best to sort all pages in the index, ranking the most relevant result highest then the second most relevant page, well, second, and the third and so on.

The problem for you and I is that Google doesn’t tell us exactly how the algorithm works. It can’t really, because for starters, if Google did “give it all away” competitors would no-doubt copy it, and there’d be an optimisation free-for-all by every website owner out there.

It’s Google’s own “11 secret herbs and spices” recipe.

I read recently that in 2007 Google changed or tweaked the algorithm around 450 times. That’s more than once a day! Talk about a moving target! That’s the main reason we will never guarantee a number 1 position at Google. Customer expectation management 101.

I think the most important thing to remember about the algorithm is that while it’s been written and updated by humans, there is no human involvement in a website’s ranking position. It’s best summed up by Ubi Manber, Google vice president who oversees search quality.

"If we find, for a particular query, that result No. 4 should be result No. 1, we do not have the capability to manually change it. We have to find what weakness in the algorithm caused that result and find a general solution to that, evaluate whether a general solution really works and if it's better, and then launch a general solution."

While Google might be constantly fiddling around the edges, there are things about the algorithm which tend to remain fairly constant. Over at SeoMoz (effectively the SEO industry’s version of Smartcompany), the world’s top SEO industry experts were invited to vote on what they believed were most important factors to influence Google’s algorithm. The Title Tag came in first, followed by body text and Headings etc. Certainly, links are also a play a huge factor, and the anchor text of in-bound-links to a site was of “exceptional importance” to all respondents.

Even so, the algorithm doesn’t always get it spot on. The main inspiration for this post was the research I was doing to the AIMIA speech last week, “the future of search”. When I typed that key phrase into Google for some inspiration, the number 1 result’s content was written in 2004. So, there’s still some work left for Google to do!

Australian Financial Review - Digital Rights Management and SEO

One of the guys here at work today (Anthony) visited the Australian Financial Review website www.afr.com.au. Anthony was reading one of their articles, and as is his want, was highlighting the page copy as he was reading.

He noticed the page text was 'switching out' every second character. It's probably best explained with some screenshots (I love screen shots). Here's the normal version of the site.



The next screen shot shows what happens if you swipe the text (to try and copy it):



Try it yourself here

This is a html form of Digital Rights Management. For the more technically minded, basically what AFR has done is use two floating div tags each containing every second character, which, when overlayed make the text read normally. It's only when you swipe the text that the system comes into play, because you're just swiping one layer.

It potentially creates a strain on your server as it's working hard putting the whole thing together each time a page is called. It would also send your bandwidth through the roof!

It also has it's SEO pros and cons, so lets go through the implications if you decide to protect your content with this system.

1. This technique is SEO unfriendly!

If we take a sneak peak at the source code, there's no way Google's going to index this page effectively.

Ever.

Here's an example of the source code:
I don’t think google will like this… (or any other search engine for that matter)



If you don't want your content in Google's index, use a robots.txt file to keep the Googlebot out (very useful for subscriber / members only content).

And given the way that Google handles duplicate content (it gives gives first 'dibs' to the web page where the Googlebot first found unique content and ignores any other page with the same or highly similar content), I don't really see the point in using this system.

To make sure your content gets indexed first, set up a xml sitemap in Google webmaster tools, and make sure that when you publish something new, Google knows about it seconds after it's gone live.

In other words, even if someone else copied and published AFR content on their website or Blog, Google would simply ignore it.

Besides... it's easy to steal content. Ever heard of a 'screengrab'? (see above!).

2. This is a usability disaster. Not everyone online can see.

Beth (a collegue) also chipped in... What happens when someone with a screen reader comes through? They get this:

A s r l a n N w e l n B n i g r u f u m x d h m r e b f r C r s m s i h s r t g p e e t t o p o l i i g h t h b n 's s a b s n s w u d r w o 0 e c n o p o i s n i e e r . F o 7 e c n t d y. e t e e a n m j r c u s t o o t e o i o a d o e x s i g u i e s s o l e e b s l .

Mmmm.

Finally, one of our clever developers spent 10 minutes to create a script which renders the whole AFR digital rights 'thing' useless. Sorry, we won't be offering that for download!

Do you have any other thoughts?