WebProNews - Danny Sullivan

You May Get More Traffic from Twitter Than You Realize

Chris Crum — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:28:21 +0000

If you use Twitter or create content, you have probably figured out by now that it can be a great tool for driving traffic to your site. There are measures you can take to expand this if your content is not bringing in the Twitter traffic on its own.

Is Twitter a significant traffic source for your site? Comment here.

If you're not seeing much traffic from Twitter, there is a chance it's coming in anyway, and you're just not aware of it. For that matter, if you are getting a lot of traffic from Twitter, you may be getting even more than you thought.

Stan Pugsley, director of business intelligence for iCrossing says that nearly 70% of referral traffic from Twitter goes unmeasured, particularly if you are using web analytics tools like Google Analytics or Omniture.

"The problem is not with the web analytics tools, but with the Twitter applications like Tweetdeck and Twhirl that are not based in an Internet Browser," explains Pugsley. "When a user clicks through a link in a tweet, those applications do not register a referring URL that can be picked up by the destination website. It appears that they are coming directly to the site. According to TweetStats, only 31.7% of tweets originate from twitter.com, and those are the visitors that can be tracked back to tweets."

Pugsley suggests testing this for yourself, by installing a Twitter app like Tweetdeck, installing the Live HTTP headers plug-in for Firefox, and clicking through the URL in a tweet, then looking at the referrer.

His observation about missing Twitter traffic stats is not a new one, but probably still a topic that gets overlooked frequently. Back in the summer, Danny Sullivan wrote a couple of articles for Search Engine Land tackling the subject. These dig in quite a bit further. If you feel like you are being shortchanged on your Twitter traffic, these are required reading.

As far as simply increasing your traffic from Twitter, here are a few tips:

1. Include some kind of Twitter/tweet button on your content.

2. Abide by this equation, or at least the principle behind it.

3. Make your Twitter presence known throughout your site

4. Use your Twitter presence along with your site on business cards, signatures, etc.

5. Actively engage on Twitter.

6. Tweet your own content. If they're following you, they must be interested in what you have to say (that doesn't mean to just tweet ads and sales pitches. Tweet useful information.).

7. Include ways to share your content on other social networks. It will often find its way to Twitter by other people.

8. Integrate Twitter into your other marketing channels (email for example).

I'm sure there are plenty of other tips that could go here. Feel free to share some if you have them.

Twitter is much more than a way to drive traffic, but when traffic is the goal, it certainly holds a great deal of potential. If you were unaware that you may be getting Twitter traffic that is not being counted as such, perhaps you will see even more potential.

Have you found Twitter traffic that wasn't being counted by analytics services? Tell us about it.

Related Articles:

> Driving Traffic with Twitter

> An Equation for Getting More Traffic from Twitter

> Where Social Media Fits Into the SEO Equation

80% of Consumers Would Not Pay For Content

Chris Crum — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:16:51 +0000

As you've more than likely heard by now, News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch in an interview last week talked about the possibility of blocking search engines from indexing News Corp. publications' content. While this may or may not actually happen, it is one of the latest (and biggest) examples of a publisher taking the position of search engines hurting them rather than helping them.

In an informative piece at Search Engine Land, Danny Sullivan interviews Google News business product manager Josh Cohen about how Google handles paywalls. "For me, I find it puzzling publishers believe they have to make a choice," says Sullivan. "They can have their paywall AND Google traffic combined, via Google's First Click Free program. Are there many publishers who simply aren’t aware of this program?"

"First Click Free is only one example of the ways that publishers can make subscription content available," says Cohen. "They can do previews, they can block it in different ways. I think there are a lot of those questions about the nuts and bolts of how you can work with us, subscriptions just being one of them."

Sullivan highlights the following ways in which Google handles free and paid news content. They boil down to four basic scenarios: free content, first click free, subscription, and preview. First Click Free puts content behind a paywall, but Google indexes it and makes it searchable, and users can get to it from Google and read the entire article for free, but can't access other stories from the site without paying, unless they go back to Google and start over. The subscription option puts the content behind a paywall, and Google indexes the whole article and makes it searchable, but people can only read the whole thing if they pay. The preview option puts the content behind a paywall, and Google does not index the entire story, but only a preview. People can then pay to read the whole thing.

There are many talking points on these options, and Sullivan does a wonderful job of going through them with Cohen. The real question, however, is whether or not it is worth it to even have a paywall. If the latest research from Forrester is any indication, offering only paid content is not the wisest decision, because 80% of consumers wouldn't access news sites if they had to pay.

Forrester's Sarah Rotman Epps says the data suggests two things:

1. Publishers should continue to offer free, ad-supported products to the 80% of consumers who won't pay for content online; and

2. Publishers should offer consumers a choice of multichannel subscriptions, single-channel subscriptions, and micropayments for premium product access.

As she says, consumers want choice. "The need for a multichannel product and pricing strategy is further reinforced by the 'what if' scenario of print being discontinued," says Epps. "When we asked consumers, 'If the publications you read were no longer available in print, how would you prefer to access that content?' we found that no single channel dominated responses."

37% of US consumers said they'd prefer to access content via a web site, 14% said by mobile phone, 11% said by laptops and netbooks, and 3% said by eReaders. 10% said by PDF by email.

Related Articles:

> Obvious: People Don't Want to Pay for Online News

> Murdoch On Blocking Search Engines: "I Think We Will"

> Google Okay With Blocking News Corp.

You May Be Getting More Twitter Traffic Than You Realize

Chris Crum — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 13:30:00 +0000

As you may know, the SMX Advanced event in Seattle took place recently, and interestingly enough, two of the hottest topics frequently discussed were not Google-related (not that Google was discussed frequently too). Odd for a search marketing event isn't it?

Mike McDonald of WebProNews discussed these hot topics - Bing and Twitter search with one of the biggest names in the industry - Danny Sullivan.

More WebProNews Videos

The two discussed Microsoft's decision to brand its new search engine with the Bing name, and Sullivan pointed out that its launch led to a lot of people discovering things that were already there, but are now packaged in a different way.

On the topic of Twitter, Danny believes it is very compelling to search marketers because people are searching in real time. He notes that it's not only about Twitter Search itself. People often search simply by tweeting.

He also goes into the tracking of Twitter traffic, and explains why you might even be getting better traffic from Twitter than you realize. It's possible that not everything is registering in your analytics program. Watch the above clip to learn more. What are your thoughts on Bing/Twitter for searching? Talk about them here.

Was Microsoft's Bingathon a Success?

Jeremy Muncy — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 02:57:21 +0000

Last night Hulu ran the live telethon style infomercial for Bing called the "Bingathon".

So how did it perform?

Well, it appears nothing "official" has been released yet. So let's see what some Twitter users (a co-host, industry professionals and everyday users) are saying about the Bingathon.

Did any of you watch the Bingathon? If so, what did you think about it? Tell us.

Olivia Munn, co-host of the live event with Jason Sudeikis, tweeted the following...

This shouldn't come as any shock that Microsoft is claiming an early victory. Think about it, what is the real measurement for success here? What other live telethon launch of a search engine is there for comparison?

Some of the search industries biggest names threw in their two cents about the Bingathon via Twitter...

So we've heard what a co-host had to say as well as people in the industry, but what does the everyday user have to say about the Bingathon?

Some Tweeters loathed the event...

...while some Twitterers were just happy for the 24 hour commercial free Hulu, provided by Bing.

Scanning through my #Bingathon search on Twitter I did notice that the overall feeling of the Bingathon wasn't very positive. With that said I was able to find a few Tweets of people who seemed to enjoy the event...

It's really hard to say for sure if the Bingathon was a success, but it did manage to get people talking... even though the talk wasn't 100% positive. So was this one of those "any press is good press" moments?

Google PageRank: Sullivan & Cutts discuss nofollow

WebProNews Staff — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 10:10:31 +0000

PageRank sculpting is a pretty advanced SEO tactic, and it has been widely used by SEO pros since Google’s Matt Cutts described its use on YouTube, giving the strategy the official green light. At SMX Advanced in Seattle, the same harbinger of Google insider information offered a stunning revelation: Google changed the way it handled link structures intended for sculpting.

Coverage of SMX Advanced continues at WebProNews Videos. Stay with WebProNews for more updates and videos from the event this week.

An Explanation of PageRank Sculpting (If you know already, skip to next heading.)

PageRank sculpting works for sites that already have a high PageRank and, as a result, have a lot of “juice” to pass around. Webmasters looking to have more control over which pages appear in Google’s search results would thus harness the trust (juice) Google gave their site to boost certain pages they consider important while blocking other unimportant or less useful pages.

For example, a webmaster may find that a sign-in page or contact page appears in the search results but a page more useful to the end user digging around the Net doesn’t, perhaps because the Googlebot hasn't been able to locate it. The webmaster could help “sculpt” different pages’ rankings by adding a nofollow tag on links pointing to unimportant pages while linking to preferred pages.

In this sense, PageRank was seen as a finite amount of energy to divvy up among a certain number of pages. If you have 10 liters of PageRank juice to distribute, you could deprive one page of receiving any juice and evenly divide the rest among pages needing a boost. With six links, one is nofollowed, the rest normal, giving the Googlebot directions on where to crawl while passing on two liters of juice per page.

Google cleared this practice in 2007 by using it with YouTube. The video site links to random videos from the homepage, and as such, when the Googlebot came by, it would pass on the tremendous amount of juice YouTube carried to those random videos. Google used PageRank sculpting to keep it fair and prevent favoritism of certain videos in the search results.

That Was Then, This Is Now

Matt Cutts

Using the 10 liters of juice model, if a webmaster had ten links, blocks five, then five got two liters and five got none. If the webmaster unblocked five, then the juice was evenly redistributed. It also worked in reverse. If a webmaster had distributed the juice among the ten but decided to dam up five, then the juice would evenly redistribute two liters to the preferred five pages.

But, according to Matt Cutts, in a Q&A moderated by Danny Sullivan at SMX Advanced, that’s all changed. Now, if the webmaster dams up five, that half still receives nothing, but the remaining half remains at one liter each instead of being boosted up to two liters.

Now, instead of having a certain amount juice to distribute as a webmaster likes, Google allows only that select pages be deprived of juice. And where does that all that excess PageRank juice go? “You can almost think of it as just evaporating,” said Cutts, and one imagines the number of stomachs turning over at that moment.

It’s important to note that Cutts said Google would not penalize a site for PageRank sculpting, but Cutts did suggest the practice wasn’t a great use of a webmaster’s time unless using nofollow for sign-in pages, RSS subscribe links, et cetera.

Highlights From the Cutts Q&A Regarding PageRank Sculpting

Cutts on penalties

It's not gonna get you a penalty. You're not gonna get in trouble or anything. We're not gonna say "oh all of these internal links are nofollowed" or anything like that. However, it's not as effective, so it's definitely a better use of your time to go and make new content.

Cutts on sculpting

If you're using nofollow to change how PageRank flows around within your site, it's almost like a band-aid. It's better to make your site the way you want PageRank to flow from the beginning, and then it's good for users, and it's good for search engines.

So how you choose to link within your site is your own business, and I would tell people you can try to sculpt PageRank, but it's not gonna be as useful. So I would urge people to make new content or think about how to link within your site. Put your best products right up on your root page, and things like that. And that's gonna be a much better way to "sculpt" PageRank than using nofollow.

Cutts on site architecture

What we've been saying from the beginning is don't spend as much of your time on the PR sculpting aspect of it. Spend your time making good site architecture so that PageRank just flows wherever you want. That's why we've been saying use it sparingly. Don’t use it for links you can't vouch for. Don’t use it for user-generated content that you don't necessarily trust. And this is all up on the HTML documentation page made for rel="nofollow”.

Cutts on nofollow use:

If you are a power user and there's a specific page you don't want like a sign up page or a login page, that's a fine way to use nofollow.

For example if you look at mattcutts.com, the only thing I have nofollow on (I believe) is my subscribe link and that's because it goes to an RSS feed, which is really not all that useful for the main web index. So for me personally, I tend not to use nofollow on my own internal links

Chris Crum provided some notes for this article.

Twitter Talks Revenue & Real-Time Search

Chris Crum — Fri, 29 May 2009 00:35:26 +0000

At the All Things Digital Conference, otherwise known as D7, Twitter Co-founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone talked about possibilities for making money in the future, but once again, did not want to give too many details away.

Williams said the company is working on a form for people to fill out to give them money, so evidently something is in motion. TheStreet.com reports:

Williams and Twitter co-founder Biz Stone mentioned possible revenue-generators, including a service that would authenticate the source of information. For example, Dunkin' Donuts could pay to make sure that impostors don't send messages under its name.

Still, after nearly one hour of questions from journalists Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher and from the audience, the co-founders gave no clear picture of Twitter's business model. Stone demurred when asked what would be the company's key revenue driver in two years.

Williams added that he isn't entirely opposed to banner ads, but said it's probably the least interesting thing the company could do. ZDNet has some footage from the All Things Digital Conference here.

For More Straight from the Mouth of a Twitter Co-founder...

Danny Sullivan interviewed Biz Stone last week. They talked mostly about the real-time search aspect of Twitter. Danny offers a full article here as well as the following three clips of Stone talking:

There's no question that real-time search has become one of the hottest topics in the industry. Some consider it to be merely a buzzword, while other see it as the future of search. Google Co-founder Larry Page has even acknowledged that Google needs to do it.

Associated Blogosphere Seeds Begin To Sprout

WebProNews Staff — Mon, 18 May 2009 21:34:58 +0000

I’ve been trying to coin phrases since I started this gig in 2005—fraugs (fraud blogs), googlings (Google nuts), spitter (Twitter spammer) etc.—and not a one has stuck except “hamsterbating,” which I didn’t actually create but was credited for in an online dictionary.

I only bring it up now because if Danny Sullivan gets credit for “Associated Blogs” then I’m gonna blow my top, kick some dirt, and whine a whole lot about it. In 2006, I wrote “Seeds of an Associated Blogosphere” and have mentioned it every chance I got since then, including last month in “The AP’s Battle for Relevance in a Decentralized Universe.”

Associated Blogosphere is mine. I want it. Replace hamsterbating with it, please, whoever actually runs the Internet neologisms department.

Since Danny brought up my concept, and in the spirit of great minds thinking alike (because I assume he missed those articles), let’s take a look at Danny’s post, entitled “Dammit, I’m a Journalist, Not a Blogger: Time for Online Journalists to Unite?”

In a nutshell, Danny bemoans all the special treatment the traditional mainstream press gets while bloggers get “bupkes.”

“I wanted to float the idea that perhaps it’s time for an Associated Blogs to take on the Associated Press,” he writes.

That should read: I wanted to float the idea that it’s time, like WebProNews’ Jason Lee Miller has repeatedly suggested, for an Associated Blog[osphere] to take on the Associated Press.

After that, we’re cool, and ready to cheer on some classic Sullivan-esque ranting:

“we’ve got a newspaper industry increasingly portraying us as part of an evil axis that’s killing them. Blogs steal their attention, and Google steals their visitors.”

Yeah! That sucks!

“I don’t recall Google calling me in, or TechCrunch, or ReadWriteWeb, or VentureBeat [or WebProNews] or any number of other online media outlets and asking about our financial health and ways they could help us. I don’t recall any groups proposing special laws to help our financial health. But I do get sick and tired of seeing the journalism we do not getting near enough credit from mainstream media sources that depend on us, plus us being dismissed as mere bloggers."

Preach it!

“I’m a journalist, not a blogger. I use a blog platform to publish, but that doesn’t make me a second class citizen in the journalism world.”

Rock on, Danny, you tell’em. and I’m all about promoting “your” idea of an Associated Blogosphere, or Online Journalism Association or United Bloggers, I guess, whichever you prefer, so long as, if everybody goes the Associated Blog[osphere] route, I get mentioned in the Wikipedia article about it. ;-D Cheers.

Is Google Just a Scapegoat for Newspapers?

Chris Crum — Fri, 15 May 2009 18:46:29 +0000

WebProNews recently interviewed Search Guru Danny Sullivan and discussed several things including the newspaper industry and how it views Google as a threat. Do you think Google is the problem? Share your thoughts here.

More WebProNews Videos

Sullivan, who actually got his start in newspapers, thinks members of the news paper industry who blame Google are missing the big picture in that they should be embracing the traffic that Google sends their way. He says their way of thinking is outdated.

"They get to be in Google News, when lots of people can't be there," he says. "And they get a lot of traffic off that that people would love to have and could figure out a way to monetize."

Sullivan discusses this more in the above clip, as well as a few other things like:

- What content is free for public use?
- The possibility of a solution for the newspaper industry

Want to Get Your Google Profile Verified?

Chris Crum — Mon, 11 May 2009 15:19:55 +0000

Now that Google is putting Google Profiles in search results, you might want to consider getting verified. You have to go through a process to do this however.

"Should you get a verified name? Right now, it doesn’t influence whether your profile will rank better in profile results," says Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land. "But if you’re trying to convince people to trust that the page is really controlled by you, it probably makes sense."

Danny has a great article up looking at the ins and outs of Google Profiles, where he also discusses verification. Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable however puts it into an easier step-by-step format:

1. You must go to Google's Knol site and sign in.
2. Then go to your profile settings.
3. Click on the "Name Verification" tab
4. Then choose to verify by phone or via credit card

So basically, you're not getting verified without giving up a little personal info, which should be a hot topic among those people who frequently criticize Google on privacy. Still, they've got to make sure it's really you one way or another don't they? And it's not like you have to get verified.

I have not done this, and my profile is the only one showing up in a search for my name at this point, so I'm not too worried about it. That may change in the future, but for now, I'm good.

You can still verify other email addresses with your Google account right from your profile (no going to Knol or anything). When you go to edit your profile, you'll see a link for "verify an email address" in the middle of the page under the "Verified Domains" heading. However, if you have an email address that is associated with a different Google account, you will be unable to verify it.

Would you be willing to give Google your phone number or credit card information to get your profile verified? Tell us why or why not.

How important do you think it is to get your profile verified? Share your thoughts with WPN readers.

Will Twitter Replace Google in Search?

Derek Vaughan — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 20:08:00 +0000

Has Google's model of spidering and indexing web pages in an ordered list become obsolete? Is the old static model of search about to be replaced? Does a real-time online conversation (a la Twitter) make for a more relevant and compelling search experience? These are the questions that I recently posed to a group of search and Internet experts. To say that these guys know their stuff would be a complete understatement. It's more like these are the professionals that have defined the modern science of search and search marketing. You'll see what I mean when you read the quotes below.

My premise started when I read a UK Techcrunch story about a Google / Twitter mashup. This was in February and there was a major snow event blanketing the UK. But if you were to try to get a satellite image of the snowfall in real time, you couldn't. That's because the cloud cover prevents the satellite from seeing the ground. So this genius named Ben Marsh comes up with the mashup. In brief, the idea was to get the general UK Twitter population to report on the snowfall at their location in the UK. Respondents reported their postcode and then selected a number from 1-10 to rate the snowfall amount. Ben's mashup then graphically displayed the results on a UK Google map. Then it hit me - this Twitter data is yielding superior search results for the amount of snowfall in the UK than any other source. So will this type of real-time data stream become a rival to Google in search?

Daniel Foster is the co-founder of 34SP.com - the website hosting service that kept Ben Marsh's mashup online during peak bandwidth usage during the February snowstorm. I asked Mr. Foster if he thought that Twitter could overtake Google in search, based on his experience with the Ben Marsh mashup site. Mr. Foster replied, "While this use of Twitter was certainly unique at the time and created a superior data set for UK snowfall for that time period, it is still a long way from a true search product. Google clearly has a corporate mission that drives search-related activities. Twitter just asks "What are you doing?". I don't see Twitter search overtaking Google unless the business directives change."

Here is what a few of the other Internet and search experts I contacted had to say in answer to the question: "Will Twitter Replace Google in Search?".

Rand Fishkin is a legend in search marketing. As the founder and CEO of SEOmoz.com, Mr. Fishkin was recently included in Newsweek's list of Best Young Tech Entrepreneurs 2009. His involvement in search marketing began in high school, and he is now generally regarded as one of the world's authorities in search. Mr. Fishkin commented, "No. Twitter is not a search engine and cannot answer the vast majority of queries sent to an engine like Google, Yahoo! or Live. Twitter searches a single stream of user created data in 140 character slices. While searching this database of information can be fascinating and even relevant (particularly for those who are interested in what Twitter users are saying about a particular topic or person), it is not even an attempt to replicate the functionality or application Google provides. Google answers an inherent need that has existed since the web's inception: users must navigate to web sites and pages that contain desired information. Twitter cannot achieve this function and therefore cannot be a replacement for Google in search."

Michael Gray is President of Atlas Web Service, a full service website and Internet marketing company. Michael has worked in website development and marketing for over 10 years, and shares his thoughts regularly on Graywolf's SEO Blog. Mr. Gray opined, "Twitter is never going to replace Google for searches there simply isn't the breadth of information available there. For example say you need to know: "Who was the 3rd Vice President of the United States?". Unless you happen to have a history buff in your stream - very few people are going to know it's Aaron Burr off the top of their heads. It's simple and easier for you and everyone else to type the question into Google and have it spit back the answer. However, if I have a tech related search like: "How do I backup my Firefox profile?" chances are I'll get a few answers from my users. One way that Twitter is better than Google is if I know my followers and trust them. I might not trust Yelp or CitySearch when they tell me what a good seafood restaurant in San Francisco, but if someone who follows me gives me a recomendation, if I know who they are, I'm much more likely to trust their response. The one caveat is the trusted relationship of the person giving the response. 20 people I don't know telling me someplace is good is never going to outweigh the 1 person I really trust telling me it's bad."

Danny Sullivan is often regarded as a true pioneer in search. His seminal 1995 work published as "A Webmaster's Guide To Search Engines" laid the groundwork for his career as an often cited expert in search. Mr. Sullivan he has been quoted in all the major media outlets such as The Wall St. Journal, USA Today, The Los Angeles Times, Forbes, The New Yorker, Newsweek and ABC’s Nightline. Here are Mr. Sullivan's comments, "No, Twitter won't replace Google search because it simply doesn't cover enough of the topics out there. It can be used for question answering, but that's largely limited to the number and quality of your followers. I do think it's an excellent additional search tool, however, http://searchengineland.com/how-we-search-with-twitter-16920 has much more on this."

Andy Beal is an online reputation management consultant, award-winning blogger, and professional speaker. Mr. Beal shares his expertise via his blog at www.andybeal.com, and he is also the founder and editor of Marketing Pilgrim, an award winning news publication that covers internet marketing news and trends. Mr. Beal added, "Twitter's real time data certainly compliments Google's search results, but I don't see it ever replacing it. Twitter's data stream should be looked at in the same way as Google News or Google Blog Search. There's tremendous value in tapping into a fresh, up to the minute content, but people still rely on the structured, ranked data that Google's web index provides."

Neil Patel's email identifies him as a 'professional web surfer'. I know him as an incredibly charismatic, smart and friendly Internet, social marketing and search expert. He has also been named a top 100 blogger by Technorati, and was also one of the top influencers on the web according to the Wall Street Journal. His current company is KISSmetrics, and Mr. Patel shares his insights in his blog - QuickSprout. Mr. Patel offered these thoughts on Twitter overtaking Google in search, "Twitter will not replace Google in search. You can use Twitter to find up to date information, but I doubt you will ever use Twitter to find products to buy or figure out how to fix a technical problem. Just the other day I had to search Google on how to program my router. I don't think I will ever be able to do that on Twitter."

Todd Malicoat is a Marketing Consultant and on the SEO Faculty at MarketMotive.com. Mr. Malicoat is an Internet entrepreneur who has spent "near obsessive amounts of time on Webmasterworld.com, and Threadwatch.org. Here is Mr. Malicoat's response, "I think Twitter definitely has an opportunity to swipe a bit of market share from Google on certain TYPES of terms. Anything very time sensitive, Twitter gives very good results for. I think Google will likely be a suitor, but they likely don't want another youtube over-valuation debacle. Twitter has definitely raised some eyebrows, and what it does do is fill the need for 'guided search' that several companies including trexy.com, mahalo, and even yahoo answers (to an extent), and many others have been trying to do for years. Twitter has done this with a different model of getting the guides first with the critical mass of people, and the organization will come later. Most search results, however, don't NEED a search guide or expert, so for now, Google is perfectly safe, but has the potential to lose out on some niche expert traffic to the new kid on the block."

By way of fairness, I did contact the PR department at Google requesting a comment for this piece. As of the writing of this article, they have not responded.

So there you have it. Practically no one thinks that Twitter will overtake Google in search. At best, in very time sensitive events - perhaps Twitter can be a good companion reference to Google. Of course things can change quickly - and if they do, I'm sure we can all check in with Twitter to learn about them. My thanks to all the experts who participated in this article.

Sullivan Calls Out Google's Favorite Sons

WebProNews Staff — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 15:45:33 +0000

During a discussion on Sphinn, SearchEngineLand’s Danny Sullivan poses an interesting question: Does Google give automatic credit to A-list ventures in the search results?

Danny Sullivan

Earlier this week, big media (New York Times, Disney, BusinessWeek, Hearst) lodged a bit of a tantrum because they felt Google wasn’t treating them special enough and was giving too much credit to scrapers and aggregators. Sullivan strides to the other, more populist side, saying Google seems to dote on Web-celebs like Guy Kawasaki, Seth Godin, and Jason Calacanis.

Sullivan’s main target was Kawasaki’s new Alltop venture, which is essentially a categorized news aggregator. (Kawasaki calls it an “online magazine rack.”) Users can select categories of interest that lead to lists of subdomains where articles on those topics are brought together. It’s not exactly a new idea, but it does have Kawasaki’s former Apple evangelist weight behind it.

We were unable to duplicate what Sullivan was seeing in his Google search results for keywords like “economic news,” “food news,” etc., but Sullivan’s good reputation precedes him, and we have no reason to doubt what he saw. Google may have corrected, or it could be a regional result variance—from here, older Topix.com, with subfolders instead of subdomains, appears high up the list. (Subfolders, unless I’m mistaken, have been traditionally more SEO friendly.)

We know that in its effort to produce fresher results, a slight tweak to the algorithm was allowing cybercrooks to follow Google Trends, parasite host on trusted sites, and gain high rankings redirecting to scareware (bogus alerts warning a user’s computer is infected to scare them into buying fake anti-virus phishing programs). That glitch appears to have been addressed, and it may have affected Alltop.

But it still leaves the question about whether in Google’s pursuit of fast, relevant, recent, and trustworthy search results they company has unduly weighted new ventures of star players. Sullivan presents the classic class struggle flipside:

“If Joe Schmoe SEO dude came along and rolled out hundreds of domains like this, worked it on Twitter, who wants to say Google wouldn't be down on them like a ton of bricks?”

Chris Pirillo

He then brings up Chris Pirillo’s ill-fated Gada.be, whose subdomains got the site banned in Google. The site was eventually unbanned. Meanwhile, Sullivan suggests Godin’s Squidoo received a spam-pass from Google until Calacanis torpedoed it. To top it off, Calacanis’ Mahalo, despite Google’s decree it would drop search engine results from other search engines in its index, still gets quite a bit of Google love.

“You kind of feel sorry for Joe Schmoe,” writes Sullivan. “Build a name by once having worked for Apple or by having written a few marketing books, and you seem to get much better treatment than Joe would get if he pulled the same SEO play stunts.

”Alltop, Mahalo, Squidoo -- none of them dominate Google. But seriously, Squidoo has a PR8 home page? Alltop has a PR7? Search Engine Land, which actually produces original content, sits with a PR6 -- but these guys that simply compile content from others get a big fat PR kiss on the lips?”

It seems likely those who've been used as examples already know the online marketing game very well and also carry with them loyal armies willing to link to any new venture they launch, which gives them an automatic advantage over Joe Schmoe. But it could also be that Google's constant struggle to balance trust and relevance could also be a player.

Danny Sullivan Delivers SMX West Keynote

Doug Caverly — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 15:24:20 +0000

The SMX West conference began today, and Danny Sullivan, its co-chair and the editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land, gave the keynote to truly kick things off. Sullivan took an all-inclusive look at the search industry, touching on current standings, trends, and also what he'd like to see happen.

(Coverage of SMX West continues at WebProNews Videos. Keep an eye on WebProNews for more notes and videos from the event this week.)

The speech started with a comparison of Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft to children - they may disappoint, but Sullivan loves them, anyway. The "love" theme then continued as Sullivan explained that Google's genuine fondness for search is why the giant's been so successful.

In the future, Sullivan thinks Google would do better still if it shows real-time CPC for ads, reveals the AdSense split to publishers, and solves the map spam issue. But focusing on more services like Google Book Search and Knol may not be productive, as Sullivan said, "Google is not a media company and needs to be careful."

On to Yahoo, then, which Sullivan called the little search engine that should've. To support this label, he pointed to the loss of talent and general disarray it's suffered. Sullivan hopes Yahoo manages to keep innovating - he likes SearchMonkey and Search Pad - and simply not anger its advertisers any more.

Yahoo may not have to worry about all that, though, since Sullivan sees some sort of Microsoft deal as inevitable. "We know that they want it and we know they're going to get it," he said. Which won't help the Redmond-based corporation's "very bad reputation of being too dominant," but Sullivan also pointed out that some people are rooting for Microsoft because they want to see competition in the industry.

Anyway, Sullivan believes Microsoft can sharpen its game by picking (and sticking to) a brand name less awkward than Microsoft MSN Windows Live.

As for some smaller issues, Sullivan doesn't see why Google and Yahoo don't offer Twitter search. He pointed out that the great apps Urbanspoon and Chowhound are running unchallenged. And Google hasn't really done much in the mobile arena at all.

Sullivan then wrapped up the keynote by discussing search and the recession. He believes the true effect of the recession has yet to be determined, but advised using analytics in the event things get tighter. Sullivan also said, "Search marketing is still in its teens but is widely recognized as one the most effective forms of reaching people."

WebProNews anchor Abby Johnson contributed to this report.

Changes and Significance in Search: Looking Back on 2008

Chris Crum — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 17:00:00 +0000

I initially intended to piece together a retrospective article about the happenings in the search industry and SEO from throughout the year, based on our coverage of it., much like what I did with online video and online music. I quickly realized this would be a monumental task given that something like 90% of what we cover is search or SEO related. We have articles numbering in the thousands from this year alone covering these things.

So I decided to go down a slightly different path for this article. For this, I wanted to get the opinions of some big names in the field about what they thought the most significant things of 2008 were with regards to search, and what the biggest changes were from 2007 to 2008. I figured it would make for a more interesting article and certainly a less time-consuming one not only for me, but for readers as well.

Editor's Note: It's been a very interesting year for search, and the coming year promises to be even more so. This article looks at how some of the most recognizable names in the industry view the everchanging industry. Where it has gone and where it is going. What do you think?

And while we're on celebrating the year coming to the end and the holidays, we'd also like to share this holiday greeting video with you:

More WebProNews Videos

Semantic and Intent-Based Search

I decided to start in-house and find out what our own Mike McDonald thought the most significant thing to the search industry was in the year 2008. "I think the biggest POTENTIAL event of '08 was Microsoft's purchase of Powerset," he told me. Now keep in mind (in case the emphasis wasn't enough), he said potential, meaning it could have big implications for the search industry's future. Powerset is all about language analysis and semantic search. "Semantic search and interpretive queries based on semantics are going to be big. Language and implied intent is a major direction for search moving forward," Mike said. "So, in my opinion, 2008 marks the start of the real race to a more language/intent/semantic approach to search."

There is no doubt that how we receive search results is in for some change. There has certainly been a lot of talk about it with regards to Google, and Yahoo too for that matter with their whole "open" strategy, but we haven't heard as much about Microsoft on this. Mike may be on to something here. Microsoft no doubt hopes Powerset will be its ace in the hole to gain some search market share.

Personalization, Universal Search, and SearchWiki

Search Engine Roundtable Editor Barry Schwartz had this to say: "I think one of the most significant changes in 2008 was just about a month ago with the launch of SearchWiki in the search results. Although I think the average searcher is not ready for it, it is here and there are no signs that it will be going away any time soon. Not only does this give a searcher the ability to boost or remove search results, Google has admitted that they may be using data gleaned from SearchWiki to change the search results for everyone else. So, I think that this, along with Universal Search, will have one of the most significant impacts in early 2009."

The mere fact that it is Google changing the way they deliver results is enough to make this significant. Google is obviously the top dog in terms of search market share (though not in every country), and most of us use it over its competitors. No matter what Yahoo, Microsoft or anyone else is doing, what Google is doing is going to have a tremendous impact just because its the one more people use.

"The biggest change is the SERP itself. With more universal search, more personalized search, and now SearchWiki, Google is training users to expect 'more than 10 blue links'," says Atlas Web Service Owner and President Michael Gray. "Other search engines that don't provide rich results are seen [as] behind the times."

"I'd say that the most significant thing to happen in the search industry in 2008 was the advent of more personalized search, and even more so, the new addition of SearchWiki showing up in Google," says High Rankings CEO Jill Whalen. "It's too soon to really know what will happen with that, but my guess is that it will cause some reputation management nightmares for many companies."

This is a point that has crossed my mind, and one I intend to explore further in the near future. I think it will be quite interesting to see what kinds of reputation management changes will have to come into play as a result of the changing SERP strategies of the major search engines.

"The biggest change from 2007-2008 was the advent of Universal/Blended Search results which came out in May of 2007," added Whalen. "It has caused some urgency in companies to create multimedia content in order to have their images and/or video snippets show up in the search results."

The Economy and SEO

"In terms of the biggest changes, that might go as far to worry me a bit, is what is going on in the economy," says Schwartz. "We all know about the financial trouble Yahoo is going through to compete with Google and Microsoft. Yahoo is struggling to survive, as opposed to struggling to even compete and that is scary. Google, for the first time, is cutting back big time. They even have decided to not give out holiday gifts this year - which is significant, in terms of Google. What type of impact will the economic turn down play in 2009 and search? Will this impact SEO jobs? I have seen more and more SEMs loose their jobs recently. Will this stifle search relevancy? These are my concerns."

These are certainly valid concerns. Changes in how search results are going to be delivered are going to be challenging for SEOs as it is. 2009 will definitely be a crucial year for SEOs in terms of staying on top of their game.

Community, Professionalism, Clients, and Browsing

"I would say the single biggest change in the field of SEO is the deterioration of the sense of community and professional decency in favor of self-promotion at any cost - where people promote spam reporting each other even when their own past reports were both damaging and inconsistent with search engine editorial policies," SEOBook Author Aaron Wall tells me. "The next biggest change would be Google launching a browser. They still have limited market share, but as they gain market share that gives them yet another dimension to view the web through, and gives them even more search market share."

Google's Chrome browser could really turn into another big thorn in Microsoft's side not only by dominating more search market share as a result of increased Chrome use, but obviously by cutting into Internet Explorer use, a browser that already had its fair share of competition from the likes of Apple, Mozilla, and Opera.

As far as the deterioration of the sense of community and professional decency, this is no doubt directly related to the growth in "social media marketing" and the lack of understanding of the goals of such on the part of many of the people engaging in it.

On the other hand, Beanstalk Search Engine Optimization CEO Dave Davies says, "The biggest change has got to be in the clients. Clients are coming to us [SEOs] far more informed as to what they want and what the limitations of SEO are. No longer are people asking for top 10 results for competitive phrases and disappointed when we tell them 3 months just isn't going to happen. They understand a lot more about what we're doing and how long it takes."

Competition and Google's Increased Domination

"I think 2008 might go down as the year Google moved into complete market share domination, not completely through their own doings, but because Microsoft and Yahoo! failed to reach a deal to combine efforts and because the market has been so tough on Yahoo! while both engines (and other tertiary engines like Ask.com) lost share to Google," says Wizard of Moz (SEOmoz) Rand Fishkin. "In 2007, I held out hope that together, these three - Ask, Yahoo! and Microsoft - along with the possible newcomer, Cuil.com, would have some positive impact in preventing or postponing a Google monopoly, but after 2008, I'm very skeptical that we'll see anyone keep Google from reaching 90%+ search share in the next few years."

That doesn't mean the competition won't continue to try. Yahoo seems to be doing all it can with it's open search strategy to bring new forms of relevancy to its search results, though its ability to steal away a remarkable amount of Google users remains to be seen.

"The Yahoo-Microsoft Merger That Wasn't was the most significant thing, as it caused both companies to be weakened against Google and remains as the biggest doubt about their success, as the off-again, on-again rumors continue," says Search Engine Land Editor-in-Chief Danny Sullivan. "Search marketers need healthy competition among the search engines, and the competition ain’t healthy."

Dave Davies also cited this. "Refusing a deal at $33/share and now sitting at around $13 has got to go down as one of the big 'tragedies' of 2008 in the search industry," he says.

Adjusting Focus

"The biggest change was probably more awareness that it's not about getting more traffic but how to better convert the existing traffic you have," says Sullivan. "I hear more and more people paying attention to metrics, these days." I suspect this type of mentality will continue to increase as changes in SERPs render some traditional SEO tactics obsolete.

Another thing SEOs and Internet marketers are going to have to watch out for is what happens with regards to net neutrality. This issue isn't always brought up in the search engine marketing discussion, but as Cindy Krum discussed with Abby Johnson) in the following video from SES Chicago, it should be.

More WebProNews Videos

"The victory of a Net Neutrality supporter in the Presidential race is also a significant event though many may not know it," says Davies. "If I had to say what will have the biggest long term affect on the search industry (and in fact the Internet as a whole) it will be this win by Obama. No matter where you stand on the issue, the victory itself paints the picture of the future of the Internet."

Mobile Search

"In 2008, we finally witnessed mobile search go mainstream," says MordComm Co-Founder Boris Mordkovich. "With the arrival of the much anticipated Apple iPhone, followed by a collaboration between Google and T-Mobile on the G1, it is becoming clear that mobile devices are going to a whole new level - and taking the Internet and the search experience, as we know it, with them. The SEM marketing community has been anticipating this for quite a while, so I think that we are well prepared to face the challenges that lie ahead."

Wrapping up

In concluding, I would like to thank all of the people mentioned in this article for providing their opinions and insight into the everchanging search industry. I am very pleased with the variety of answers, and I feel it has made for a well-rounded outlook on where the industry is heading. 2008 has been an interesting year for search, but 2009 promises to really shake things up, and you can bet we'll be there keeping an eye on it. Then, this time next year, perhaps we can reflect on how it all really went down.

What do you think was the most significant thing to happen in the search industry in 2008? What was the biggest change from 2007 to 2008?

Test Your Search Knowledge In New Contest

Mike Sachoff — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 22:05:59 +0000

Do you think you are a Search Engine Marketing expert? If so, you will now have a chance to prove it.

Marin Software along with Search Marketing Expo-SMX West has launched the Biggest Search Geek Contest.

"The SMX Biggest Search Geek Contest celebrates the unsung heroes of search marketing who make SEM campaigns successful for the brands and agencies they work for every day," said Danny Sullivan, SMX West program chair and Search Engine Land Editor-in-Chief.

The SMX Biggest Search Geek Contest is open to anyone who wants to answer 20 challenging questions about search marketing. The winner will receive a free trip for two people to SMX West in Santa Clara, CA February 10-12,2009.

The prize includes round-trip airfare, hotel accommodations, and passes to SMX West for the winner and a guest. The winner will also receive an award on stage from Danny Sullivan.

The winner will be chosen on who answers the most questions correctly in the least amount of time. Contestants have until the end of January to take the timed questionnaire and the winner will be notified the first week of February. The top 10 percent of contest entrants will each receive a "Search Geek" recognition award from Marin Software.

"Compared with other forms of advertising media including display, TV, print, radio, and direct mail, search marketing is certainly one of the more complex and intellectually challenging, but when done well it's also among the most rewarding," said Chris Lien, CEO of Marin Software.

SMX East: Keynote With Google's Tim Armstrong

Mike Sachoff — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 15:14:25 +0000

At todays keynote Tim Armstrong, President, Advertising and Commerce, North America, & Vice President - Google, spoke to Danny Sullivan about a variety of topics.

(Coverage of the SMX East conference will continue at WebProNews Videos. Keep an eye on WebProNews for more notes and videos from the event this week.)

Danny asks Tim about Google being too powerful. Tim tells Danny that back in 2000 when he started at Google the company had no market share and now Google has grown its business in general and is providing great results for its users. He says Google is trying to make things transparent for everyone and that Google is not an ecosystem.

On the Google-Yahoo ad deal Tim says that the Justice Department has asked for more time and all parties agree. Tim said,"Google has allowed all players to play evenly with advertising."

Danny asks about A&A companies and Tim says that over time he believes they will be supportive of them. Tim said," Respect of our end users is paramount."

Tim says Google is not trying to set prices for its ads and it's about quality and that can be attributed to its success.

Tim says that Google promises more transparency and it does not compete with ad agencies. He says the idea that Google is the enemy is outdated and that it helps companies grow.

Google would like to work with more agencies and "The good news for you (Danny) and the good news for me is that there are still many people that don't really get search." Tim says, "the number one thing that is holding us back is education."

Tim says there is lots of opportunity still out that there and cites local as a definite opportunity. He also cites mobile and says Google is working to better optimize video.

Google is testing video with AdWords and is trying to figure out if video is more effective in the results.

On behavioral targeting Tim said,"Behavioral targeting is something we've been thinking about for a long time."

Quality control is something that will continue at Google for a long time.

WebProNews Video anchor Abby Johnson contributed to this report.

Danny Sullivan Wants Search Choice In Firefox

WebProNews Staff — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 22:43:00 +0000

The relationship between Google and Mozilla keeps the Firefox maker well-funded, but apparently relegates the option for Microsoft's Live Search to one step away for consumers.

It's easy enough to add Live Search, Wikipedia, Merriam-Webster, or any other search site to the Firefox browser; we needed only a few moments at Firefox's search add-on site to do so.. As it has done for some time, the Mozilla Foundation makes Google the default search provider.

One would be hard-pressed to quibble with that choice, given Google's skill at gleaning relevance from a few scant terms per query. Search industry maven Danny Sullivan found reason to quibble anyway, exhorting Mozilla to clear out the search defaults.

Sullivan said at Search Engine Land the pending arrival of Firefox 3.0 should be accompanied by the same kind of open search choice in the browser that Google demanded of Microsoft and Internet Explorer.

"Microsoft is a good search engine that searchers should have access to directly from that search bar. By not offering it, Firefox is failing its users out of either financial reasons or spite," said Sullivan.

Even if Mozilla cleared out the search defaults, and made Live Search available alongside Google, Yahoo, and other search options, we're not convinced anything but Google would earn the choice as the default search for most consumers. Google is a verb and a globally-known brand associated with search, two qualities Live Search may not be able to overcome.

The Hottest Trends Of Internet Marketing

Andy Beal — Thu, 15 May 2008 19:04:13 +0000

In internet marketing circles, there are a handful of names that pretty much everyone should recognize; Danny Sullivan, Dr. Ralph Wilson, and Larry Chase are among them.

What? You’ve never heard of Larry Chase?

That might be understandable, if you only ever get your marketing insight via blogs–Larry Chase doesn’t have a blog. But, if you’re open to receiving an old-fashioned email newsletter, then you’ll find weekly treats and advice in his weekly Web Digest For Marketers publication.

In particular, you’d know the 12 hottest internet marketing trends for the next 3 years, which include:

1. Mobile eCommerce Picks Up Speed

4. Transparency Marketing

6. Social Networking Goes Mobile

9. Internet Media Pricing Affects Offline Media Pricing

You’d also know that Trackur is one of Larry’s hot social media marketing resources, calling it "Google Alerts on Steroids." (thanks Larry!)

There are few email newsletters that are worth the time, but Larry Chase’s is definitely one you should be reading.

Comments

Danny Sullivan Downgrades Ask.com To Irrelevance

WebProNews Staff — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 17:24:41 +0000

In his look at a possible search industry future with Google and Microsoft baying like hounds at each other, longtime observer Sullivan suggested Ask.com simply won't matter in the future.

Although an Ask representative rushed to reasssure us that Ask.com will remain a search engine, albeit one with a shift in its business model, some time away from the big changes atop the site indicated to Sullivan that the future of Ask and search will be its partner, Google.

"Ask.com? The change in leadership and confused nature of its direction make it seem likely it will simply outsource everything to Google," Sullivan said in Advertising Age. "Given this, it's no longer a service I deem worth watching closely."

Ask put some effort into the development of its search-complementary services. Local service Ask City in particular came along with a host of useful tools for users of that mapping and search product.

Back in March, an Ask.com spokesperson said the site isn't turning into a "women's search engine," but wasn't able to specify the upcoming changes yet.

With that work still (likely) in progress, we hoped to hear from Ask about Sullivan's blunt assessment. Ask, however, did not reply by press time.

SMX Social Media, April 22-23

Geoff Simon — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 13:17:07 +0000

For Internet marketers trying to reach the unique audiences at social media sites such as Facebook, Digg, Reddit, and Stumbleupon, the place to be on April 22 and 23 is Long Beach, California, for the SMX Social Media conference.

SMX Social Media was established by Search Engine Land editor-in-chief Danny Sullivan, who has been the go-to guy for Internet and search engine marketing for over a decade. He has a reputation for producing quality shows that deliver useful, timely information to attendees, some of whom even begin implementing his ideas during breaks in the conference.

SMX Social Media was presented to standing-room-only crowds in New York City last fall, and the West Coast version in April is an encore presentation of that event. The show is designed to offer tips about how to harness the power of social media sites to engage audiences in an appropriate and respectful manner in order to deliver them information based on community interests, voting, and sharing.

The two-day event will offer attendees both fundamental and advanced presentations on topics including social media marketing essentials, the most popular social news sites, social bookmarking and tagging, the marketer’s role in social media marketing, and how to use linkbaiting and leverage social networking effectively. Speakers at the event were chosen based on their knowledge and experience with social media marketing.

SMX Social Media is open to the public, but anyone who is responsible for promoting and enhancing brand acceptance should attend—new media specialists, SEM managers, PR professionals, CMOs, brand marketers, and full-service agency media planners and buyers. Register before March 15 and save $200 off the full conference rate. Satisfaction is guaranteed—so you have nothing to lose by attending, and chances are good that you’ll walk out as a master of social media marketing!

For more information or to register click here.

Comments

Blended or Universal Search?

Aaron Stewart — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 20:49:14 +0000

Michael and I had the opportunity to attend the SMX (Search Marketing Expo) last week in sunny Santa Clara, CA.
It was a shame to spend those 60-degree days inside, especially since I come from the cold, white Rocky Mountains, and we spend as little time as possible outside this time of year. But for the good ofour readership, my poorly educated mind, and to get our money’s worth we suffered through some questionable meals (sorry guys, most of it was inedible), and overly well air-conditioned conferences rooms (where’s my parka?) to gather all the information we could.

From the get go, it was obvious the conference was going to spend much of the time discussing what Danny Sullivan and others are calling “Blended Search.” I am not a big fan of the term “blended search,” it isn’t an accurate descriptive term. In my mind when something is blended, a bunch of ingredients are taken and acted upon to create a new product, with the ingredients of that product not being individually identifiable from that point forward. What we are talking about here is not a blended new search results page, but more like a new look, and a re-organization of information from sources, which were not previously utilized, but where the data remains very much identifiable. Google is calling this mega- results page Universal Search, which is a better term as far as definitions go, since Google is essentially universally searching all their database silos for all the results possible. Essentially, the search engines are now able to draw from more databases at one time and return results from all those queries to us on our results pages. The database sources used by search engines can now include blogs, books, catalogs, programming code, online directories, stock quotes, images, maps, news, video and standard web searches.

So on a so-called blended or universal results page, the searcher could see data from anyone of the above listed sources, organized by relevance, instead of just the page of links and snippets we are used to seeing now. In the past if we wanted to search specific data silo, we had to select Images, Maps, News, Shopping, etc, from the top of the search page, now all those silos can be automatically included.

I personally wonder how much this sort of mega results page will benefit us. My biggest complaint with search now is the shear volume of superfluous garbage we still seem to receive in our SERPs today, so I worry that unless the search algorithm gets drastically better, all these new search results possibilities could potentially just turn out to add to the useless noise and clutter plaguing us now. We shall see.

The most important question to us small business owners becomes, what does this mean to our sites, and how does it change the way we SEO? In short, for now it doesn’t change one thing. In two different sessions representatives of Google made it clear that good, proven SEO strategies are still as important as ever whether is be in web search or universal search pages, so we do not need to change what we are doing (assuming we are doing our SEO right). I think that is the best way to play it, just keep adding the rich content, building natural links, adding popular keywords, and our sites will continue to grow and do well. However, I am concerned with the prospect that we are now going to now need to compete with large companies and other media types for position on the SERPs. For example, if I am an online advertiser for my plumbing services, I don’t want the listing I worked hard to achieve to be replaced by some absurd YouTube plumbing mishap video, or by an image of Miss Plumber America, scantily clad holding a pipe wrench. I want my listing to rightfully stay put… I hope good SEO practices and a more defined and appropriate algorithm protect small business owners, our site’s position, and they continue to provide us with the opportunities to still do well online as Integrated Search becomes more mainstream. We will need to keep a close eye on it, and if we must, we will figure out how to make the new changes work best for us. I am sure Michael could make us some sort of another helpful tool. ☺

Comments

Reasons to Go to SMX

Neil Patel — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 20:23:48 +0000

As many of you already know, last year Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman kicked off the Search Marketing Expo (SMX).

The conference series started with SMX Advanced in Seattle and it was a hit. Compared to most conferences, people actually came away learning new information as well as actually being happy with conference food for the first time (no more boxed lunches).

This year, they are planning on expanding the conference series with a few new additions such as SMX West and East. If you haven't attended any SMX events before, I highly recommend doing so for the following reasons:

More knowledge - you'll actually learn something new. Even old people like me that have been doing this stuff for years, still learn new things from SMX.

Networking opportunities - One of the main perks about going to conferences is that they provide networking opportunities. The only problem with many of these networking opportunities is that they take place at parties, which are usually invite only. At SMX all the parties are open for anyone to attend.

Intimate setting - when you attend large conferences with 5000 plus attendees, it can be overwhelming and in many cases you don't get much out of the conference due to the size. With SMX, the atmosphere is very intimate which means you will get to know others on a personal level and hopefully gain some business out of it.

No sales pitches - compare to most conferences the speakers at SMX are willing to help you for free. When you have questions they don't mind answering them and more importantly they don't care for your money, but instead just want to help you.

Great food - the food at SMX is great. I know I mentioned this earlier, but I can't emphasize this enough because when you are hungry you usually don't think straight. But at SMX they have gourmet lunches and snacks throughout all the sessions.

I hope to see you at future SMX events such as West and Social. If you have any questions about SMX feel free and leave a comment.

Comments

Ways To Recover Your Online Reputation

Andy Beal — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 04:23:31 +0000

It has been an interesting week for blogger faux pas. Search Engine Land found itself taking flak for it’s sensational post about obtaining links from Wired’s wiki. Meanwhile, Gizmodo suffered at the hands of its peers for its CES television monitor prank. Both serve as examples of how it’s sometimes impossible to look ahead to the future and determine what the consequences of our actions will be. It’s this lack of prophetic wisdom that pretty much guarantees that despite your best efforts to protect your online reputation from harm, at some point your good name will come under fire.

How you handle the fall-out will pretty much determine how your stakeholders–in this case, readers and fellow bloggers–will adjust their perception of your brand.

Two Attacks, Two Very Different Responses

For Search Engine Land, Danny Sullivan chose what I would obviously call the “radically transparent” option with his statement, which in part read:

The article that we posted, with my approval, was irresponsible, both for failing to check on the situation properly, exposing the system to spammers, and encouraging spamming itself….I simply cannot apologize enough for the mess the article made over there…For me to have contributed to the industry’s reputation problem was wrong. To everyone in it, my apologies.

In my opinion, Danny demonstrated the three traits that I believe are important when apologizing for a reputation-damaging mistake: sincerity, transparency, and consistency.

Here’s a recap of what I’ve said about these qualities:

Sincerity. If you’re called out for your past practices, simply saying “sorry” is not enough, if you’ve not changed the associated behavior. While you may appease one critic, many others will be standing by. And, should you continue to make the same mistakes, your critics will feel duped by your false apology and likely attack with greater fervor.
Transparency. Once you’ve realized the error of your ways and decided to make a change for the better, you’ll need to admit your mistakes and demonstrate why your critics should believe you have changed. Whether it’s an open letter to your customers, an interview with your critics, or your own company blog post, it’s important to be open and honest about your mistakes and future plans.
Consistency. If you’ve made just one screw-up, chances are you’ll be able to make amends with just one single action. However, if your company has built a reputation for one mistake after another, it will take a lot more to convince your detractors that you have changed your spots. Your sincerity and transparency will buy you a reprieve and some breathing-room, but it’s your consistency in your future actions that will change the ongoing perception of your critics.

On the other hand, Gizmodo’s Brian Lam’s response was more defensive–even defiant. Instead of simply apologizing and admitting their mistake, Lam chose to justify the actions of Gizmodo’s bloggers, and attempted to spin the incident into something that would be a positive influence on the blog’s reputation. In fact, Lam’s response is typical of how many of us–me included–would likely respond to a crisis–he became defensive:

A Gizmodo writer has been banned from CES for a prank. But when I see some fellow press damning us for the joke, I feel sorry for them: When did journalists become the protectors of corporations? When did this industry, defined by pranksters like Woz, get so serious and in-the-pocket of big business? This is totally pathetic…In closing, I will fill you in on our little secret: TVs turn back on when you press the power button a second time. So, I can assure you, everything is going to be OK once the companies find their clickers between the couch cushions of our prank and your obedience.

You could argue that Lam’s response is appropriate and in keeping with the edgy image that Gizmodo presents. I wouldn’t be in that camp, but that’s just my opinion.

So, what can we learn from these recent reputation crises? Well, apart from learning that we should be slow to judge the actions of others–remember hindsight is 20/20–we can use the incidents to help us think about preparing our own crisis communication plan.

Five Steps for Responding to a Reputation Crisis

Here are five steps to consider, the next time a blunder threatens your reputation. I’ll use the two blogs as a case study, but these steps apply to any business or individual.

1. A response from the top

Even though Danny Sullivan was not the one who personally wrote the Wired article, he did approve it and he is the “name” behind the Search Engine Land brand. Like Danny’s personal apology, your response should be from the top. When your reputation is under fire, you shouldn’t send out a scape-goat.

2. Admit your mistakes and apologize

While Lam did respond personally on Gizmodo, he wasn’t prepared to eat humble pie. Meanwhile, Sullivan admitted the site’s screw-up and apologized profusely. Your customers want you to admit you messed-up–denying your guilt doesn’t make it disappear.

3. Host the conversation

Both Gizmodo and Search Engine Land realized that the discussion was taking place outside of their web site. What they both needed to do was join the conversation, and provide their own location for the discussion. When your reputation comes under fire, trying to respond to every blog post or forum comment can be akin to a game of “whack-a-mole.” Instead, bring the conversation to your door step. Sure, it shines a brighter spotlight on the incident, but it at least gives you a central location for the discussion.

4. Seek resolution

When you make a mistake, just apologizing is not enough. You need to fix the problem–and quickly. Danny shared with his readers the steps he took to do just that…

Wired’s Editor In Chief, Evan Hansen, contacted me on Friday several hours after we initially published, not out of anger, but to understand more about the issues we were raising. When I realized what a mess my approval of the article had caused, I apologized for the hassle. Both parties decided that the original article should stay up. Wired was happy with my suggestion that I add a note making it clear that we were not asking people to spam them.

5. Turn detractors into evangelists

You’d probably agree that Lam’s statement did very little to acquiesce the criticisms of those attacking Gizmodo. Maybe Gizmodo’s loyal readers were happy with the defiant response, but it’s unlikely Lam won the support and praise of the exhibitors at CES, or the bloggers that criticized the stunt.

While it’s still early days, it appears that Search Engine Land will be able to put the incident firmly behind it. Danny addressed the public statements of his peers, and I’m sure that he’s also personally contacted those that were disappointed by the original post.

If you make a reputation-damaging mistake, you too should ensure that you reach out to those affected and seek resolution with them. You won’t be able to make amends with everyone, but you should be willing to try.

Sincerity, Transparency, and Consistency

OK, so the five steps above will not, and cannot, apply to every reputation crisis that your brand might encounter. However, they’re a good foundation, and perhaps something you can refer back to, the next time you face a reputation misstep. If the five steps are too much to remember, then just memorize these three words: sincerity, transparency, and consistency. Base your crisis communication around these three words, and you’ll likely recover from even the severest mistakes.

Comments

Danny Apologizes to Wired and SEO Community

Dave Davies — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 02:07:27 +0000

Danny Sullivan (a.k.a. The Godfather to those of us in the SEO realm) messed up, kind of.

In a post he OK's for the Search Engine Land a couple days ago titled, "Get A Free Link From Wired" they basically outline how to get yourself a free link on the wired.com site. I especially love the "don't be too evil" note which implies that some amount of evil is OK.

Now I'm going to note here before I go on that WIRED IS MODERATED - that's why they don't use the rel=nofollow. It shouldn't and can't really be sp@mmed and you're only wasting your time and everyone else's trying to. This was an oversight in the first article.

Danny today published an apology to wired and to the SEO community. It appears that the post got quite the attention from a number of SEO's including (of course) Doug Heil (Mr. My-White-Hat's-Whiter-Than-Yours-Except-When-I'm-Trying-To-Get-My-Way). It's true the post is a but questionable (as I said ... the "don't be too evil" quote leaves some room) but let's be honest - we all make errors in judgement. I posted a blog about rel=nofollow carrying weight. To me it was an interesting test. The next thing I knew I read a blog on another site, "Blogspam works but only in large amounts" written about the test. Not really what I had in mind.

So let's all forgive Danny the oversight and remember, at worst is was some great unintentional (?) link baiting. At best, it got us all talking and pointed out to Wired an issue wither their system that should probably be addressed (maybe rel=nofollow until it's moderated?)

Good luck to both parties.

You can read more about the hoop-la here.

Nofollow and Wikis

Ross Mayfield — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 18:23:36 +0000

There is no such thing as a free link. No matter what the person who is selling you it tells you. And the web will always adapt to make it so. Even if its hard work.

Barry Schwartz posted Get A Free Link From Wired today on an SEO blog, noting that:

Some SEOs were saddened when Wikipedia added nofollows to external links. Perhaps they'll perk up to discover that Wired's semi-Wikipedia challenger has no such blocking

The post proceeded to give advice and instructions for how to spam the Wired How To Wiki. And it has been by the SEO community. As a member of the community and working at the provider of its most excellent wiki software, I edited out some of the spam as it didn't meet the goals of the community. But its not that simple.

I believe the intent was to point out an exploit, and not necessarily for bad. The problem rests with nofollow being a good tool for some purposes (blog comment spam) and not for others (wikis in general). I had a quick email exchange with Danny Sullivan and he also talked with Wired and edited the post:

NOTE FROM DANNY: We've talked with Wired about the situation, and they are putting a robots.txt block on links coming out of the wiki so that links won't pass credit. Also, our apologies to Wired in that we've ended up causing a run on the wiki with new pages being created. That was definitely not our intent -- the headline of getting a free link, and the article itself, was more tongue-in-cheek about how the system was and might further get abused, rather than advice for people to really misuse the wiki for promotional purposes. I don't agree with that type of abuse in general, and as someone who has had to deal with it in comments or submissions to our forums, it's no fun. In hindsight, we probably should have just dropped a note pointing out the vulnerability. We've also asked that our test page be completely removed -- it has served its purpose now.

If every website was a wiki I might have edited something similar on their post while disabling the link. Later over a drink with Paolo Valdermin I was joking that we should invent the unfollow link, or make it so any traffic coming from the site doing damage was rejected. But I'm joking and need to digress into a topic most people don't understand:

unfollow was a byproduct of Vote Links, created by Kevin Marks, which I believe I had a hand in at least inspiring. It was designed as a tool for making blog comments not count in Google's PageRank, while letting the blog post's links count. Blog comments are relatively good at dealing with comment spam because of what Clay Shirky described as encapsulation -- every blog has an owner who can determine how to moderate their comments. nofollow is just one way.

Now comments with nofollow enabled get spam anyway, maybe because the fact that the blog host is communicating behind the scenes with search engines is ignored, or that SEO isn't the only goal of the spammer. If you own a blog, you deal with manually sorting through vandalism all the time.

Still, nofollow is a good thing for some Social Software. But it doesn't belong or work everywhere. Can you imagine a web that works as good as today's if every link was tagged with nofollow?
Wikipedia enabled nofollow, much to the chagrin of the SEO community, for some good reasons that also need additional context:

Wikipedia is an exception to any other wiki community on the web
Wikipedia has no feature to detect and delete spam, instead it is a feature made of people, who are better at such decisions when one of the goals of the system is openness
Wikipedia's core editors are extremely burdened with this task because of how valuable its attention is
The result is Wikipedia gets lots of link love, but doesn't give any to anyone

IMHO, Wikipedia made a mistake implementing nofollow. While blogs have one or a couple authors, a few commenters, and many readers -- wikis have many authors and many readers. In an a wide open wiki, just one possible configuration, you can't tell who is trustable or accountable given the missing identity and reputation layers of the web. nofollow doesn't work for wikis because:

Wikis are part of the web of links
I haven't seen a partial and prudent implementation of nofollow in a wiki. And its hard to picture one that doesn't discriminate upon users automatically. You could make nofollow apply to links from "trusted users" but different communities should develop different rules for trust. And such rules could kill communities, especially nascent ones by hard coding rules too early.
There are other wiki spam countermeasures
If you enable nofollow, every link gives no value, regardless of its value, and that value is best defined by the community using it

Part of how wikis deal with spam is the phantom authority -- there is a higher transaction cost for damaging a wiki than fixing it. And people are generally good.
That said, even though I may not want to be in business with a web like this, I care about what's been created on this wiki. And so I'll be spending some of my time this weekend reverting vandalism. Better that than giving in by shutting it down, or uninformed suggestions to bluntly implement nofollow. Besides, the irony is that some of the SEO posts actually have some good How To content that actually needs a little human editing.
Some links to SEO Posts about all this (maybe they will pitch in if I link to them): WebProNews, Wired News and Mashable!
Comments

Wired Dubs Search Engine Land A Spammer

WebProNews Staff — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 23:17:29 +0000

Ross Mayfield took umbrage to Barry Schwartz creating a page on Wired's How To Wiki and pointing the page to Search Engine Land.

Shooting the messenger is a favorite pasttime for people who don't really understand the impact of their actions. Mayfield proved pretty quick on the draw today after Schwartz demonstrated something that Wired should have thought of in the first place.

Schwartz said on Search Engine Land he created a page on the Wired How To Wiki to show how easily one could get link love from Wired:

(1) Register at How To Wired
(2) Add a new page or edit an old page on the site (don't be too evil)
(3) Then add your link to that page

His sample page, a proof of concept, linked externally. Schwartz noted the links appeared to pass weight, an unusual occurrence and one that would draw plenty of grifters seeking the same link benefit. Where was the nofollow Schwartz expected to find?

Mayfield seemed to recognize this as well. Schwartz's original page soon received an edit, replacing the content with this message: deleting this page, 'its spam

on the comment about nofollow -- nofollow works for blogs, but not for wikis where everyone is an editor

Obviously, Mayfield missed the whole Wikipedia and nofollow discussion from earlier in 2007. Wikipedia slaps nofollow on outbound links to foil the kind of mischief Schwartz demonstrated.

Calling the Search Engine Land entry spam soon drew a response from Sullivan, rebuking Mayfield for his spam comment:

Now we come to find that you’ve killed the test page and called it spam. It wasn’t, and it’s somewhat insulting that you’ve called it that rather that understanding it was a test of how your system works. That’s a much different thing from the real spam that clearly happens in your wiki and which, because you fail to use nofollow, was already a magnet for abuse.

Mayfield has since taken down his spam comment, and the test page now contains a link to Sullivan's response, hosted on the How To Wiki.

SphinnCon Heading To Jerusalem

WebProNews Staff — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 18:15:59 +0000

Danny Sullivan's Search Engine Land will debut a half-day conference format, SphinnCon, in Jerusalem, Israel on February 5th.

There's no need to fret about travel plans to SMX West, the big event Sullivan's group will host in Santa Clara later in February. The SMX series will be moving full steam ahead as it has been.

However, the serendipity of Barry Schwartz's upcoming trip to Israel offered an opportunity for Sullivan to try out something completely different. SphinnCon debuts in Jerusalem in early February.

Unlike the larger, two or three day conferences under the SMX brand, SphinnCon, named for the Sphinn social media site operated by Sullivan, will be much more compact. The noon to 6 pm event will admit 150 people at $50 per person.

Three sessions, on paid links, the PPC model, and social media, will take place, sandwiched by some networking time.

When we chatted by phone with Schwartz, he said once the idea of SphinnCon took form, organizing the Jerusalem event took about a month. He credited local SEO businesses there for helping get the ball rolling.

This should lead to a full fledged SMX conference in Israel, as Schwartz plans to work on developing it over the course of 2008. As for other SphinnCons, where they might land next will be up to the members of Sphinn to choose.

A message thread on Sphinn announcing SphinnCon has been filling up with suggestion of places to have the next ones. Votes for cities around the US, as well as Toronto, Brisbane, Amsterdam, and other international sites have been mentioned.

Cutts, Sullivan Weigh In On Paid Links

WebProNews Staff — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 12:10:01 +0000

The wild debate about Google's increasingly hardline stance against paid links looks like Wimbledon, with Matt Cutts taking on Rich Skrenta, while Danny Sullivan volleys against Michael Gray.

Cutts, Sullivan Weigh In On Paid Links

Internet Drama, in the form of the ongoing paid links debate, received a couple of new entries to fan the flames. Webmasters see paid links as a way to boost their search engine presence against the competition. Google perceives paid links as a mechanism that devalues their core organic search results.

Rich Skrenta posted his stream-of-consciousness thoughts about the paid link debate. He said "PageRank wrecked the web," a reference to part of Google's model of weighting search results based on inbound links.

"Links used to be for human navigation," said Skrenta. "Google made them count for money and they're ruined now. Nofollow isn't going to put it back the way it was."

Cutts answered from the comments, defending Google's position:

I truly believe any successful system (be it eBay, Amazon, Usenet, Wikipedia, DMOZ, or government spending) will attract people who try to optimize for that system or even game it. When Google came onto the scene with its new way of ranking search results in 1999/2000, it was inevitable that people would try to optimize for Google and link-based reputation.
Tools like rel=nofollow give site owners a method to decide whether to flow PageRank at a link-level of granularity.

Over on Graywolf's blog, Gray called Google crybabies over the paid links issue.

"The problem is you figured a way to make money off of a link based analysis, and now you’re upset and ridding the waaaaaaaaambulance when other people move in on your cash cow," said Gray. "You feel like you have some god given right to be the only one who makes money off of it."

Sullivan answered back in the comments:

If we’re talking crybabies, then include the website owners that have tapped into the PageRank economy and now are upset with the Federal Reserve Of Google has decided to cut interest rates.
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? Suck it up - the writing’s been on the wall that this WILL happen (not could) since 2003, and all Google has really done is finally made it more visible that many sites selling PageRank weren’t actually passing along credit at all.

The point about Google being an independent company summarizes the whole paid link issue, though we understand it will continue to be a sore spot for many. It's Google's game, and they can change the rules. Betting that they would continue to favor outsiders as much as Google favors itself looks like it was a poor wager.

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Danny Sullivan Suggests Google Needs Scrutiny

WebProNews Staff — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 16:58:20 +0000

In deconstructing the letter sent to the Federal Trade Commission by two US Senators, Danny hinted at other Google aspects the Senators should consider about the search giant's business. Danny wants to see the Google-DoubleClick deal receive approval, and considers hearings over that topic a "waste of time."

His Search Engine Land post, an open letter to Orrin Hatch and Herb Kohl, Senators serving on the antitrust subcommittee, suggested alternatives to probing the privacy and competitive aspects of the deal. There are bigger issues with Google to consider.

"Why not investigate whether Google is trampling laws by both being a leading traffic source for some web sites while also being their leading revenue generator?" he asked.

To bolster this position, Danny cited commentary he made in April 2007 about Google's continued focus on "closing the loop," a scenario where Google earns money and insights into online activity no matter what people do on the Internet. He cited an example where he sought clarification of how data from Google Checkout might be used internally:

Both Chris Sherman and I asked when briefed if conversion and purchasing data would be restricted to only Google Checkout's use rather than for Google as a whole to use.
I repeated the question several times, in various ways, to ensure that Google was clear. And it was. If it found this data useful for something, it was going to use it however it wanted, for whatever it wanted. Nothing would be ruled out. It was a dramatic shift in attitude from a company I'd watched for so long.

We won't trot out the "is Google evil" tropes, because Danny has already done this well. We also picked up on what seemed to be the real tipping point moment in July 2007, when a Google blogger recommended ads for the health industry to counter the negative publicity of Michael Moore's movie, "Sicko."

As far as privacy goes, Danny thinks Google and its search competitors have the means to be privacy monsters, if they opted to do so. Though he half-jokingly suggested it's time to break up Google, it may not be impossible to think of Google occupying space in front of Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly once she is finished with Microsoft's antitrust oversight.

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SMX Social Media: Hi, Linkbait Chum

WebProNews Staff — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 17:36:37 +0000

At the SMX Social Media conference in New York City, panelists discussed the murky topic of social media sites, and how to draw traffic from them to your site. A well-crafted story can bring approval and loads of profitable traffic from social media destinations like Digg, Reddit, or Delicious. Rebecca Kelley of SEOMoz wanted attendees to think links, in a big way.

It's all about traffic, and even the temporary after-glow of a server-melting influx of visitors will help in the long run. Rebecca believes traffic from that rush, though temporary, should help boost long-term traffic afterwards.

Getting the attention of the social media audience means being clued in to what is current. Rebecca suggested looking at Digg, Google Trends, and industry peers as potentially solid resources. Delving into authoritative, related blogs could be a gold mine of ideas too.

Brent Csutoras suggested the ever-popular idea of lists as an avenue to attract the social media crowd. They don't always have to be a top ten, and they don't always have to be positive lists, either.

Lists should be numbered, with simple, strong, focused points for each item. The viewer should benefit from the titles of the list just as much as the descriptions.

The how-to article has proven popular too. It shouldn't be a massive, lengthy block of text, and in a time where images, audio, and video can be placed online easily, people expect more out of a how-to than an endless stream of words.

Cameron Olthuis of Factive Media reiterated the importance of categorizing one's linkbait; tagging accurately helps here, too.

When reaching out to the social media crowd with a submission, it's important to target it to a receptive crowd. The offbeat approach can work, as Cameron referenced the online game he helped make, Search Engine Smackdown, where the player could pummel search geeks like Google's or Yahoo's co-founders.

The referee will look familiar to SMX Social Media attendees, as it is none other than conference organizer and panel moderator Danny Sullivan.

WebProNews Video anchor Kara Ratliff contributed to this report.

Seven More Questions About SEO

WebProNews Staff — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 16:06:36 +0000

Rand Fishkin followed up his original ten questions (plus bonus) on SEO knowledge with the answers, and some new questions from Danny Sullivan for everyone's perusal.

Seven More Questions About SEO

If you knew about the big four search engines, the concept of the 'long tail', and Alexa's fatal flaw, you got through the easy questions without a problem.

Rand provided a follow-up as promised to his original SEO quiz. He answered the original questions, like listing the three most important elements in the <head> section of a typical HTML document (and listing one that really isn't that important):

Title, Meta Description and Meta Robots are the big 3. Although Meta Robots isn't essential to have, it's certainly able to control spider and search activity. Meta keywords is another common answer, but it would rank as a distant 4th, as our experiments show that none of the major engines will rank a page for a keyword that is listed only in the meta keywords tag.

Danny offered some suggestions for another quiz. His seven questions proved taxing enough to drive Rand to the Internet to find a couple of answers. Here's the seven questions Danny posed to the audience:

How do you seize control of a local listing on Google? On Yahoo? What fields can you change? How do you add a picture?
What elements are important to ranking well in Google Video and YouTube?
How do you get into Google News? In particular, what unique structure do your URLs need to reflect to even be considered?
Google Blog Search -- full text or indexing off whatever you put out in feeds?
How do you submit to Google Product Search? Yahoo Product Search?
Do you have to have a mobile web site to be in Google Mobile? Yahoo Mobile?
How do you know if Google is personalizing your web results?

Think of it as a warmup to SES San Jose coming up this month.