WebMama's Look at the Web

Using Keyword Clouds for SEO and User Insight

2009-11-04T09:43:00.000-08:00

Using Keyword Clouds for SEO and for User Insight is a valuable tactic in the goal of high visibility in search results. First two definitions:

A Keyword Cloud or Tag Cloud is a visual representation of frequently used words on a website. Keywords having higher density are displayed in larger fonts, so the more frequently a word appears on your site, the larger it appears within the cloud. The following is an example of a keyword cloud that appears on the TrustTheVote.org. In this case, the tags link to a page of community postings that are tagged with the keyword.

Keyword Density is the percentage of occurrence of your keywords to the text in the rest of the website or web content. For example, let’s say your keyword occurs only once in a page of one thousand words, it has a lower keyword density than a keyword that occurs (say) four times in a page of similar length. It is very important for your main keywords to have correct density to rank well in the Search Engines. There are a number of free online tools that will generate an instantaneous keyword cloud that will visually represent the current keyword density on your site, such as: Metamend's Keyword Density Visualization tool.

Tag Cloud Widgets are available for wordpress and look to your CMS or web hosting service for the cloud tag widget and/or functionality.

Why Use a Tag Cloud? There are three reasons to incorporate a tag cloud:

1. For your users – Tag clouds highlight the most important or/and popular subjects dynamically, providing an easy-to-use, visual navigational element that is differentiated from other navigation schemes. This may help users more quickly find the page they are looking for.

2. For the KnowledgeBase/Support/Product Management teams – Tag clouds offer instant insight into user behavior at any given moment - through clouds that have been created from user-generated content; forums, blog comments, etc. This information can be used to optimize the site/product to best meet user needs. For example, what tone and terms are used to describe a certain product? Discovering the vernacular that surrounds a brand or product by observing tag clouds can certainly generate some insight on how an audience feels and thinks.

3. For SEO - Tag clouds are textual and keyword-rich. An increase in text-based content helps with visibility. And here are all of the top keywords in one place.

Best Practices for Displaying Tag Clouds:

1. Consider including a tag cloud within each category on the site; not just on the home page.

2. Be careful not to create more than one URL for each keyword/keyphrase. This will avoid duplicate content issues.

3. Ensure that the links from the cloud are absolute links.

4. If the links need to go through a redirect for, say, rewriting the URL to a friendly one, then make sure it is a 301 redirect so that the destination page will be indexed.

5. Use a single color for the tags in the cloud: this will allow visitors to see fine distinctions in size differences.

6. Use a single sans serif font family: this will improve the overall readability of the rendered cloud.

7. Use consistent and proportional spacing to separate the tags in the tag cloud. Proportional means that the spacing between tags varies based on their size; typically more space is used for larger sizes.

8. Avoid separator characters between tags: they can be confused for small tags.

9. Avoid using Flash to render the cloud as the font rendering in older browsers is not always good or consistent, and you want to ensure indexability by search and indexing engines, both locally and publicly.

Do Searchers Still Start with Google?

2009-11-02T14:48:00.001-08:00

In reading a report/analysis on the ecommerce market I read with interest the following statement:

Bazaar Times: Online Specialty Retailers Thrive. Deep selection, wide
variety, product information, interactive education and shopping
tools, as well as third party product reviews and recommendations will
continue to drive retail sales to online specialty retailers, in our
opinion. Companies such as Art.com, Blue Nile, eBags, Hayneedle, U.S.
Auto Parts, and Zappos are positioned well to thrive in this long-tail
environment.

Each of these sites has created a way for the engines to navigate the key content on the site even if the visitors navigate through the internal search. Some of these sites have extensive user generated content that is indexed and highly visible in 'real-time' and 'show options' search results. Each site is HUGE in terms of number of pages and all that are mentioned in the full report are old domains with good reputations.

My question is: do people still go to Google first to find the a good place to buy shoes or are they navigating directly to the long-tail sites? Are the e-commerce brand sites well enough known for people to go directly to them looking for a bargain or are the search engines still the originator of traffic? I believe that pure search drives most of the traffic into these sites. Pure search could result in any of the optimized elements of these sites being clicked on but the traffic still originates from search. Opinions?

eMarketer's Revised Online Ad Forecast for 2009

2009-10-19T08:21:00.001-07:00

Factors Behind eMarketer's Revised Online Ad Forecast - eMarketer

Highlights from Report

Indications such as relatively strong Q3 results from Google suggest an increase in search spending. Even in down years, second-half growth is stronger. eMarketer predicts a smaller second-half 2009 decrease of 2.9%, which will mean a decline of 2.9% for the year. (Note that 52% of 2009 spending will occur in the second half of the year.)

Internet video advertising will be the main channel for these deep-pocketed companies to increase their digital brand marketing spends, said Mr. Hallerman. Search advertising, too, will draw more large-company spending as their agencies continue to weave online advertising into their cross-media campaigns.

The Synergy of Search and Social Media - eMarketer

2009-10-15T11:57:00.001-07:00

eMarketer has produced a quick overview of some reports that are saying social media mentions/visibility/advertising increase search volume for the subject's brand. Any increase in search volume whether through the paid search ads or natural search visibility should increase sales or leads. I agree with the premise of the article.

Care must be taken so that people don't replace search engine advertising with social media efforts. The social media work, paid or not, increases the volume of searches. If your brand and/or product is not represented on search, then you have lost the benefit of the increased traffic.

Remember that search visibility includes not only the standard ads and your core website, but also the video, news, blogs, forums, etc, etc visibility.

The Synergy of Search and Social Media - eMarketer

10 Mind-blowing Microsites - Definition and Uses

2009-10-13T08:32:00.001-07:00

Microsites let you take more risk? As corporate content continues to fragment more and more, is a microsite a way of controlling some of that fragmentation or does it just mess with the brand message? Different groups within a company will certainly give you different answers.

If you look at from the Search point of view: it gives you a targeted destination for converting keywords, it provides more content associated with your brand that you control, and the sites may get you another place on the coveted first page of results. On the down side: many developers of microsites do not design them in a search friendly way, they don't tend to be linked into the rest of the world, and rarely do they have enough text-based content. If I were developing a microsite and would like it to be visible in search results, I would make sure it was search friendly.

Imedia Connection recently posted a really good article by Fred Brown on the subject. Read the Article on Microsites.

Internet Statistics on China - lots of 'fun' users

2009-10-12T10:59:00.001-07:00

China Internet Statistics 2009

View more documents from Rocky Fu.

East-West: An Instance of the Natural Search Difference

2009-10-08T16:48:00.001-07:00

Those who are steeped in doing search marketing for clients or for your companies know that having appealing visibility in all aspects, all types, of search is key with increased quality traffic being the most common goal.

But we all suffer from the East-West Coast syndrome. This is really a short-hand way of describing the situation where people are looking at Google search results, from all different parts of the world and each with very different histories of searching, trying to see where their website is ranking. [Because I focus on B2B SEM it seems it is always Google.] No matter your opinion on using ranking as a measurement, clients search to see if SEO recommendations and tactics are being successful.

The first thing I do is try to find the time early to give a basic tutorial on blended search. The second thing I do is try to get them to 'sign out' of their Google accounts. By telling them about blended search I hope to show the vast number of elements that are now part of what needs to be optimized. By getting them to logout of their Google account I get a chance to explain the levels of personalization and localization associated with natural search results today.

Here is a great example of the difference in visible results from different coasts of the country.

We are working with a non-profit organization called the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation. One of their key phrases is cancer research foundation. If I am logged in to Google then the results are totally useless since I have visited a ton of cancer research sites lately so nobody's results look like mine. If the client is logged in to Google they don't see their own company very often or highly ranked since they have searched for it and NOT clicked on the natural result so many times. If you see it and don't click on it then how else would the engines interpret that except in rearranging things so that you don't see what you don't click on.

So, nobody is logged in. But results still vary in the standard natural search results. West Coast search shows one unique item that changes the view completely - Local Business Results. With local business results being highly visible the instance of Damon Runyon's website result in the search results below the fold and slowing the traffic under that key phrase. East Coast search shows no Local Business Results. [See screenshots below.]

What can you conclude? Certainly one thing: Google knows the location of the searcher whether they are logged in or not. And probably that many people on the West Coast - specifically in the Bay Area - have been clicking on the local business results when they do the same or similar searches, thus reinforcing, in the mind of the algorithm, that displaying those results is a good idea. Maybe that we have a ton more cancer research organizations in the Bay Area than in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Remember that I am not advocating this as the only way to measure success but it is a way and needs to be interpreted in a realistic manner. Realistically very few search results are now the same.

What do you see when you search for cancer research foundation?

East Coast Results:

West Coast Results:

Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation has a fabulous facebook group, linkedin group, twitter feed and does regular youtube submissions, all being optimized to help increase traffic to their website. A full case study on the SEO project will be published this year.

Why still use keyword meta tags?

2009-09-21T10:56:00.000-07:00

Google has recently restated its position on Keyword Meta tags. They are very clearly saying that they don't use them. Ok, fine. But we still recommend them for all clients for all pages. Why? For the following reasons:

1. Google admits it may change their mind in the future. Per Matt Cutts:

Q: Does this mean that Google will always ignore the keywords meta tag?

A: It's possible that Google could use this information in the future, but it's unlikely. Google has ignored the keywords meta tag for years and currently we see no need to change that policy.

2. We don't know what algorithmic elements other engines are using;

3. We don't know what new search engines will use for optimization elements.

Additionally, my team at WebMama.com and I use the tags to help us and the client remember which keywords/phrases were mapped to which pages. It is a great tactic for helping content writers remember what keywords to use.

Is Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Dead? No!

2009-09-18T08:47:00.001-07:00

A catchy title for sure. This was the beginning of a presentation I gave at the Internet Marketing Conference in Vancouver on whether search engine optimization plays a role now that the world is moving towards real-time search. I, of course, said YES, it isn't dead it has just gotten more complicated. Instead of optimizing just your website content, now you need to optimize every element that you post that represents your company. This includes twitter, slideshare, linkedin group messages, facebook (friendfeed), and in the management of all user-generated content.

This is the time that keyword analysis is critical. Those converting keywords need to be used in all of the postings. Those postings get visibility in search results - so why not under your keywords. Everypost company 'poster' needs to be taught that list of important terms and encouraged to use them often. Search Engine Marketing isn't dead, it is just expanding.

Is Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Dead? No!

View more presentations from WebMama.com Inc..

Search Uplifted by Banners

2009-09-11T09:00:00.000-07:00

It is true - based on experience and a number of studies - I firmly believe that using the contextual banner networks in conjunction with search campaigns can increase the volume of searches. This is a highly desired outcome - and has been true for many years even though many of us old timer SEM people had a hard time coming to grips with the idea.

Banners increase visibility. They help you dominate the page. Domination leads to more people being familiar with your brands. Familiarity leads to curiosity or clear interest, thus more searches. Hopefully, therefore, more conversions.

Why not extend your Paid Search campaigns to Google's banner network - one of the largest in the world. It is all the same user interface - easy, easy, easy if you can pry the banners from the design team. Even with the belief that this is the way to go, it is still hard to integrate designed elements with search marketing campaigns due to company business structure and internal politics.

Let me know any stats or case studies you have that support this excellent marketing tactic.

icrossing study - Display Ads Boost Search Site Visits and Click-Throughs
Google White Paper - CPA Performance Trends in Google's Content Network
iprospect - Search Marketing and Online Display Advertising Integration Study
Comscore study - a little biased but interesting no the less - Publishers Hire ComScore To Kill Off The Click-Through

5 SEO/SEM Trends that Are Changing Search during 2009

2009-08-07T10:07:00.000-07:00

The real-time Web has arrived and traditional SEO methods of website optimization are rapidly moving to the background, as we the searchers move into an age of continuous and universal conversation. Search engines are making substantial changes in how they present search engine results: to filter the Web of the growing noise, and provide relevant, timely and useful information to searchers.

Fortunately, this fusion of the social Web with real-time search offers businesses a unique opportunity to take control - to dominate - the search landscape wherever the content is being pulled from.

Note: A shorter, edited version was originally published for the Online Merchant Network June 30, 2009 by Barbara Coll with help from Lidija Davis. It was written for the paypal audience to introduce them to new ways of thinking about search marketing.

To get the most bang out of your SEO buck today, you need to have a few things in mind:

understand rankings are no longer as important as they once were due to the weight search engines are placing on personalization and localization,
it is critical to create a virtual shelf for your business in expanded/blended search results,
build buzz around your product/service using the social Web,
monitor your brand via real-time search and
make use of the upgraded tools provided by the major search engines and other useful sources

1. Personalized Search Results

Search engines have been working on the personalization [or reranking] of search results for years . By collecting and storing information about their users (such as search history, types of queries, ads we click on, preferred locations, IP addresses, types of devices we use, and more recently language), search engines in 2009 have the ability to return very specific results.
During this time, site owners have focused on rankings but the personalization of results renders ranking in SERPs less important and overall domination of search results so that personalization will still yeild web assets and properties belonging to our company. Smart businesses no longer focus on rankings, they focus on building their brand and increasing traffic via the social Web, generating fresh content in different formats (blogs, videos, podcasts, microblogs) to ensure they appear across expanded search engines and universal search results, and constantly bettering user experience on their sites. But never taking their eye of the main site either.

2. Expanded Search Engines

Although comScore’s recent analysis found that Americans conducted 14.3 billion core searches during May 2009, it also noted that while 9.6 billion of those searches occurred on Google search, 3.3 billion occurred on other Google properties such as YouTube, News, Blogs, Images, etc.

Not only are the major search engines making substantial changes in how they present search engine results to individuals via personalized results; Google’s Universal Search experience moving to a ‘bento box’ environment; Microsoft’s Bing becoming your ‘decision engine’ and Yahoo! focusing on social since Carol Bartz has taken over as CEO, they are now indexing content from a variety of sources (blogs, video, books, news etc.) (editor's update: at least until Bing becomes Yahoo's search). Is your product/service represented in expanded search?

3. Online Communities

Given search engines are placing importance on indexing the social Web, it is imperative businesses today embrace the social Web culture. Whether you create an online community around your product or service (much like the Online Merchant Network), or participate in any of the many already established online communities (Digg, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Twitter, etc.), you are feeding the search engines and spreading your digital footprint; all good for SEO.
Online communities require commitment, time and effort. If you create your own community, you will encourage repeat visits to your site and receive instant feedback about your product/service; of course this assumes you have a product worth talking about . If you’re joining an established community you can create buzz about your product and build your brand; just ensure you take the time to get to know the culture, the etiquette, the vocabulary and the community before you jump in.

Regardless of the community you wish to involve yourself in, don’t forget the value of pre determined keywords and tags, and reap the benefits of a world that search engines are indexing.

4. Real-Time

Social messaging service Twitter and to a lesser degree social sites such as FriendFeed and Plurk have given Internet users a new platform on which to have public conversations, and a way to find out what is happening right now on any given topic. As a result, it is imperative businesses monitor these real-time conversations for mentions of their brand. Whether the conversation is good or bad, it is your responsibility as the business owner to participate.

Although the major search engines are brilliant at providing the latest search results, they lag behind when it comes to providing real-time results. Google co-founder, Larry Page himself recently admitted that the company has been losing out to Twitter in the race to provide real-time information to Internet users. Monitter , Scoopler , and Twitter’s own search engine offer ways for you to search for your brand in real-time.

5. Smarter Tools

Business owners have always craved information about how search engines see their sites, and search engines have been providing free tools for years. Like the search engines themselves, over time these tools have also evolved. Today, they provide much data on how to improve your sites accessibility and visibility, and are well worth using. Additionally, the major search engines run blogs with updates that you should consider subscribing to.

Google Webmaster Tools
Google Webmaster Blog
Yahoo Site Explorer
Bing Webmaster Center
Bing Webmaster Blog

Finally, during this souring economy it’s critical that businesses have all the tools to monitor their brand across the Web. In an effort to help you do that, WebMama maintains a list of over 80 SEO tools (many of them free) to help with the visibility and growth of your brand.

Bing One Month On: Surprising Findings

2009-07-20T09:00:00.000-07:00

In Part 2 of our review of Bing [read Part 1], we'll consider the impact of Bing on the search landscape. Bing launched on May 28, 2009. While Bing's traffic jumped dramatically after its launch, any conclusions drawn from that information so soon after the hype surrounding its launch would have been misleading. Now over a month, there are some surprising trends that are emerging.

Market Share

To the surprise of most, after the novelty users defected back to their existing search engines, Bing has slowly continued to gain market share. Per StatCounter, two weeks after launch there was an exodus of users, but since then Bing's market share has been climbing week-after-week. Into July, it has challenged and briefly eclipsed Yahoo, with both claiming between 11-12% market share. Admittedly, part of this change is the 1-3% residual share of Live/MSN in June has now been folded into Bing, but a large part of the increase is likely due to a preference for the features and search experience Bing offers. Of course, Google still dominates the market with over 75% of market share, but it appears from this analysis of the StatCounter data that the gains Bing is making are coming almost solely at Google's expense.

Microsoft itself says it had an 8% jump in search traffic during the month of June, with the rebranded Bing Shopping seeing a nearly 200% jump in visits and Bing Travel, rebranded from Farecast, seeing a 90% increase. HitWise reported more modest but steady gains for Bing, also showing week-over-week market share increases in the month of June.

Name Recognition

Microsoft's $100 million advertising campaign has resulted in a stratospheric growth in name recognition for its new decision engine. According to this YouGov Polimetrix BrandIndex's study, 8% of U.S. adults had heard something about Bing on June 8. By June 22, that number had grown to 25%. Also according to the study, 81% of users say that while they have a favorite search engine, they are willing to consider other options. Google's dominance in brand awareness tempers this data somewhat. Though 25% of study's participants had heard some news about Bing by mid-June, over twice that many had heard news about Google.

Paid Search

According to search marketing firm Didit, paid search ads are performing 170% better on Bing than comparable ads on Live Search a year ago.

Much of the increase is attributed to how Bing devotes a larger percentage of the page to paid search listings. In a separate eye tracking study comparing Google and Bing, more users were drawn to Bing's right side sponsored links, and they looked over them longer, than comparable results from Google. Highlighted as one of the best features in part one of this series, highlighting related searches in the Explorer Pane drew 31% of the users interest. In contrast, Google's inclusion of related searches at the bottom of the search page drew only 5%.

Some advertisers have observed these trends, as reported on Searchengineland, as click share and spend share for Bing increased in June. Advertisers have reason for concern though over Bing's obnoxious Quick Preview feature obscuring their ads. Another article suggests that, unless you can budget to be one of the top paid listings, it may be better to aim for a much lower placement so that the quick preview pane does not 'fly out' over your ad.

Conclusions

While all of these are positive for Microsoft and the future of Bing, in order for Bing to truly gain traction, people have to be willing to switch away from using Google or Yahoo as their primary search engine. This Catalyst Group study found that though participants preferred Bing's features, they were unwilling to switch from Google because of familiarity with Google and that they used or expressed a preference for other Google apps, such as the Google Toolbar, Google Maps, and Gmail. In another study, J.P. Morgan polled a group of adults, and under half had tried Bing and only 2 percent of the participants intended to switch to it.

On the other hand, Bing has only been released for over a month. Google might have heard the same comments in a showdown between itself in its infancy and Yahoo. Yahoo offered similar free services, including probably the best free e-mail solution at the time, and it didn't prevent people from switching to Google. Even the most optimistic observers don’t expect a serious challenge to Google’s market dominance any time soon, much less a mass exodus of users switching from Google to Bing. Bing's best strategy right now is continue to improve its user interface and innovate in search, either forcing Google to match its innovations or risk losing market share.

Google is already stepping up a PR offensive to convince users its features can be as useful as Bing. To that end, Google has launched an "Explore the World of Google Search" page touting many of the same features Bing is winning plaudits for. In addition, to compete with Bing's universally acclaimed graphical backdrops, Google is promoting its own National Geographic style backdrops for iGoogle.

Author: Chris Pantages, WebMama Team

Leveraging Consumer Generated Content - WebMama Q&A

2009-07-17T04:17:00.000-07:00

At the upcoming Search Engine Strategies San Jose, I will be on a panel discussing how to ignite your viral campaign by leveraging consumer-generated content. I was interviewed by Kate Trgovac of OneDegree about my thoughts on Leveraging Consumer Generated Content.

She asked 5 thought-provoking (on my part) questions. The full article can be found on onedegree.ca. Here are two of the questions I answered. Any comments or additions are more than welcome.

OD: How do I get my customers talking about me?

BC: Ask them! The onus really is on the business to ask for the review - particularly if you are a local business. If you're a restaurant, make sure you let your customers know that you're on Yelp and you'd love their feedback. Give them a card with their bill that has a reminder to submit a review. You also want to make sure that you're doing this on a regular basis. It seems to me that search engines are really starting to value currency - the business or product that has the more current reviews will get better search engine rankings.

Take for example a Bed and Breakfast in Yosemite. They have had a few negative reviews so the owner is no longer reading TripAdvisor, and certainly not recommending that happy clients post their reviews. This leads to the negative reviews being highly visible in search results - not a good thing for a small business owner.

OD: What do you think about incentivizing customers to write about you? Free product? Chance to win? Etc?

BC: This practice would tilt the reviews positively towards the business which many would say is unfair. On the other hand, it is common practice in many lines of marketing and advertising to give discount coupons, freebies, and awards to encourage customers to return to the business, purchase from the business online, or provide material for case studies.

Read full article....

Vancouver IMC Here I Come

2009-07-09T06:00:00.000-07:00

I am thrilled to be speaking at an IMC event once again. It is at these events I met some of the people in the business I like best! Super speakers, great topics and an amazing place to host a conference - Vancouver, B.C. on September 16-18th. Sponsored by the superb marketing organization - IIMA.

I will be doing 3 sessions with the first one being my take on real-time search. Real-time search is my focus these days - both in educating clients and educating myself.

Session #1 Title: Search is going Real-Time. Will SEO matter anymore?

Sessions #2 and #3 are SEO panels with live Q & A. I hope people bring their hard questions to this!

Event URL: http://www.internetmarketingconference.com/vancouver/

See you there!

Facebook Friends in Google Results Today

2009-07-08T12:13:00.000-07:00

Have you seen this? Facebook friends showing up in the Google results. See example below:

Maybe I just missed it but it is great to see a live example of the Facebook friends search result.

Igniting Viral through Reviews, Comments and Threads

2009-07-07T06:00:00.000-07:00

This SES (San Jose August 10-14) I will be presenting a soundbite on how using reviews, comments and forum threads can lead to high search visibility and results domination. The session is about viral and my focus is that you need up-to-date content, shall we even say, real-time content, in order to attract the engines today. One way is to let your audience and customers provide the content. Of course, it all has to work in a search engine friendly way to be visible at all.

The session is on Wednesday August 12th and titled:

Igniting Viral Campaigns: Leveraging Consumer-Generated Content
How can businesses leverage social platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and more to break through and create buzz, encourage word of mouth, and establish relationships with potential customers? This session unveils the secrets of Web 2.0 techniques and technologies that enable companies to stand out and be talked about.

Speakers:
Brian Ellefritz, Senior Manager, Social Media Marketing, Cisco Systems
Matthew Liu, Product Manager, YouTube Sponsored Videos
Greg Finn, Director of Internet Marketing, 10e20
Barbara Coll, CEO, WebMama.com Inc.

A Bing Overview. Part 1: Are the Features Any Good?

2009-07-06T07:21:00.000-07:00

After making a concerted attempt to use Bing exclusively for the last week or so, there are a lot of things about Bing that are excellent. In Part 1, the good and bad features of Bing will be highlighted. Part 2 will focus on the impact Bing has made in the month or so since its launch.

Bing is Microsoft's latest attempt to take up arms against a sea of troubles in capturing more market share in search is Bing, its self-titled 'decision engine'.

The Explorer Pane - Bing reserves the left hand side of the search page for additional links, divided into three categories, Quick Tabs, Related Searches and Recent Searches. I found the Explorer Pane links more useful than not most of the time, especially the search history feature which saves the last 5 searches. Microsoft estimates that up to 50 percent of searches are repeated.

Preview Video in Browser - Bing's most discussed feature is probably its best. When SERP's include a video result, flying over the result with the cursor plays a preview of the clip without leaving the search page. For integrated videos from popular services like YouTube and Hulu, choosing the result plays in a larger in-browser window, also without leaving the search site.

Bing Travel - Bing Travel excels on two fronts. When searching for travel between two cities, Bing will offer its travel results first. For my sample search of New York to Boston, clicking the first Microsoft featured result promised, "Bing Travel utilizes over a billion airfares on a daily basis to bring you Price Predictors, and now we're using that data to uncover cheap flights from New York to Boston every day."

Incorporating technology from Farecast that Microsoft acquired a year ago, the results page will also create a graph showing the likely fares for the next 30 days. Bing will also recognize airport abbreviations, especially useful for cities with multiple airports.

The only downside to this feature is that it's currently available for only the most popular cities. Cities like San Jose and Las Vegas don't make the cut, but flights in and out of San Francisco from most big cities do. Also, while there is a link to Bing Travel from the main page, it is not one of the tabular links across the top.

Scroll for Images - Click on an image search, and Bing allows you to scroll through the first 500 results or so without leaving the search page. Flying over each image created a larger thumbnail, along with a link to the source, the original image size, and an invitation to refine your search by choosing similar images. On the left panel you can specify image size, layout (square, wide or tall are the default options), color, style and type of image for personal photos.

Real Time Search - Bing has also taken the lead in real-time search. First, Bing is giving more primacy in their search results to breaking news. A search for Brett Favre has news about his potential comeback as the top three results. Google’s results go to his website and Wikipedia. A recent TechCrunch review found pretty much the same thing.

Bing is also indexing and displaying Twitter posts in an innovative and informative way. As discussed in this great John Battelle article, for a select group of Twitterati, Bing will tease their profiles by posting their picture, Twitter username, and two most recent tweets in real time at the top of the search results page. Clicking “see more tweets” delivers you directly to their Twitter page. To this feature are having to structure the search query as “[name] twitter” or “@[name]”. Also, tweets are not indexed and displayed by Bing instantaneously, but rather more likely at some sort of interval, perhaps up to an hour. Looking at the Bing and Google SERPs side-by-side, the Bing SERP is definitely more attractive.

While indexing a few celebrities’ tweets is just the tip of the iceberg of search nirvana promised by the potential of real-time search, it is an area where Google and Microsoft are both starting on roughly equal footing. Continuing to index and display real-time, relevant search results will help Bing gain marketshare.

THE BAD

Preference for Microsoft Brands - Just when you were thinking "Hey, this Bing sounds pretty good", Microsoft bollixes it up with a move that is classic Redmond.

Numerous articles, including this one in CIO magazine, have noted that Microsoft is shading Bing results to give preference to its products and partners. In Google, using the search term virtualization, VMware, the market leader, is the first link on the results page after Wikipedia. With Bing, it is not on the first page of results, with Microsoft's Virtualization product ranked third, and a related search dedicated to "Virtualization Microsoft".

A search for smartphone had similar results. On Bing, the search had 'Quick Tabs' truncating the results to four links. Microsoft was at number two. On Google, Blackberry and HTC were the second and third results, respectively. Microsoft.com was seventh result.

Quick Preview - The concept of this feature is more interesting that its execution. An orange dot is to the right of the search result. Flying over it generates a few paragraphs of text about what the site is about and other links from the results page. Generally, the information is scraped from the site, ignoring the Description META tag (making text-based content on the site critical as per usual).

In practice, the information wasn't any more relevant than the standard description. Some sites did not have a Quick Preview. Sometimes it took a second or two to load. Sometimes the preview pane was blank. It was also especially aggravating for me as I usually position the mouse cursor around where the quick preview pane would pop up to scroll through the search results, requiring me to move it further to the right to avoid getting an epilepsy-inducing display of windows consistently opening and closing.

Quick Tabs - With Quick Tabs, Microsoft stretches the SERP page, and inserts its own "categories" of results. For instance, my search for '30 Rock' was broken into Quick Tabs for Theme Song, DVD, Characters, Wallpaper, Quotes, etc. It then displays the top 3-4 SERPs for each category. If you want to more results, you click the "See More Results" link, which brings up a full page of links, not including the links on the prior page.

Why wouldn’t searching for 30 Rock Wallpaper or DVD’s just be a related search? The longer SERP pages were an improvement, considering the primacy of the blended search results, but I hated having to scroll down to see if one of the three results were on the page, and then having to click through if it wasn't. Also, if you wanted more results, the top results were not retained on the “more results” page – instead those results were the 4th through 13th results. If you chose to use one of the ‘Quick Tabs’ as a link and clicked directly through, you’d get the same page that had already excised the top 3 or 4 most relevant results. The categories weren't always helpful (wallpapers?). Moreover, the same resource page could be used to populate numerous categories. In the 30 Rock example, Wikipedia featured prominently in 6 of the 7 tabs.

Conclusion

Bing has some promise. I think it has surprised a lot of people with its feature set, and while it is not going to topple Google any time soon, hopefully it will spur more innovation in the search space. And Bing certainly has seemed to caught the attention of Google co-founder Sergey Brin. Titled “Fear Grips Google”, this New York Post article says: “Sergey Brin is so rattled by the launch of Microsoft's rival search engine that he has assembled a team of top engineers to work on urgent upgrades to his Web service.”

Bing’s market share is also growing. While it’s too early to make any reasonable predictions of long term success, in the week ending June 12, 2009, Bing’s worldwide market share has increased from 13.7 to 16.7 percent, per ComScore. Even though it has Google worried, Yahoo should be even more worried. On the U.S. side, StatCounter reports that Bing has eaten into Yahoo’s market share even more, moving from 7.2% of the search market to 8.3% in the two weeks since its debut. Yahoo’s share is down to 11% with Google at just over 78%.

Author: Chris Pantages with contributions by Laura Reichle, WebMama Team Members

Video and Search - Overview Presentation Stanford 2009

2009-06-21T12:47:00.001-07:00

Why do Video??? This presentation provides some basic information about leveraging the interplay of search and video for direct marketing and branding. It was presented at the Internet Marketing course at Stanford in May 2009.

Video and Search - Overview Presentation Stanford 2009

View more OpenOffice presentations from Barbara Coll.

Wave New World: Executive Summary of Google's New Ambitious Product

2009-06-18T08:53:00.001-07:00

What might email look like if it were invented today?
By Chris Pantages, WebMama.com SEO Expert

During its I/O event, Google introduced its answer to that question, Google Wave. Wave is an extraordinarily ambitious communication and collaboration tool. Wave is an application with elements of email, instant messaging, social media, wiki based collaboration, and, if that weren't enough, allows for integration of an almost infinite number of online applications.

Wave was developed by Lars and Jens Rasmussen, the team behind Google Maps. The application starts much like your current email inbox, with contacts in the left panel of the screen and the messages taking up the center. To communicate, you initiate a ‘Wave’, opening a dialog box into which people you want to write to are added. If the recipient(s) have their Wave application open, your Wave is communicated to them instantly, letter by letter, in real time, instead of waiting for the sender to finish the message and click send. Said Lars, "In our experience, a lot of time in IM is spent waiting for the other person to press 'Done'".

Even more unusual, the Wave can be interlineated with a response, anywhere within the message, at any time. Other recipients can be added at any time, and their responses can be inserted at any point. Multiple people can comment in a Wave simultaneously. While this sounds like it could be confusing, each response from each different person is distinguished by a border specific to that user. Wave's are cataloged in your inbox and anytime anyone adds to it, it is highlighted and moved to the top of your inbox queue. If you want to break off from a multi-person wave into a private conversation, this, too, can be conducted as part of the same Wave.

Probably the most amazing feature of the application is the feature called "Playback". As anyone who has tried to follow an already developed email thread knows, with multiple parties arguing back and forth and attempting to integrate other references, it can be frustratingly hard to follow. Playback solves this problem by allowing any person participating in the Wave to rewind it to any point and view it comment by comment.

Wave can also be used as a collaboration tool. Wave even allows people to collaborate on the same Wave simultaneously, showing the changes on every users screen in real time. These changes can also be unwound with Playback. At any point, the Wave can be exported or a new one created.

But, wait, there’s more! With Wave, you get not only a product, but also a platform. Open APIs allow developers to build new extensions that work with Waves. Online games, polls, and integration with social media services like Twitter and Facebook were examples from the presentation, but the open-source nature of Wave allows developers to built virtually limitless extensions. Wave’s can also be published and embedded virtually anywhere on the web, allowing the Wave to be crawled and integrated into Google’s search engine.

Finally, because of the open protocols of Wave, it can be integrated into organizational networks completely independent of Google using federation. Federation allows users to take the application and tailor almost every aspect of it, even the user interface. As an example, say WebMama decides we want to adopt Wave to carry our own internal messages. Because of the open protocols, we can design our own Wave system, and all the messages are kept on our own servers, completely independent of Google. In this way, it is possible developers can even improve on the version of Wave distributed by Google.

It’s difficult to completely wrap your head around all the possibilities and permutations of Wave. Google has certainly hyped it as the next big thing. If it has a weakness, it is that it seems that its user base is limited. Wave targets those who currently use email as a collaborative tool, mostly high-tech workers who use it as part of their job, or as another social media tool to help people keep in contact with one another. In order for it to be successful, it needs to be more widely adopted. As one of Wave’s developers said, “email is the most successful protocol on the planet.” It’s going to be hard to replace it.

During the presentation, the brothers Rasmussen frequently mentioned the product is still in its infancy. In the interest of keeping this post short, I’ve only scratched the surface of Wave’s capabilities and features. Wave will debut later this year. It is possible Google has created the next big thing – an application that revolutionizes email, instant messaging, and, using Google Apps, challenges Microsoft Office and Sharepoint. It remains to be seen if this brave new world will ever be realized.

Other resources

Official Google Blog – includes a link to the nearly 90 minute keynote presentation. Also has links to the Developer’s Blog, Open Federation Protocol, and Open API’s for developers.
Sign Up for Google Wave – be among the first to get Google Wave.
GigaOm’s article tempering the enthusiasm for Wave.

Google Squared: Toy or Tool

2009-06-08T15:45:00.000-07:00

What Is It?

One of the most interesting new developments to come out of Google Searchology was the unveiling of Google Squared.

Google Squared is a new search tool that renders the results in spreadsheet form (“squared” refers to squares populated by the Squared search). Each "square" of information is independently sourced from Google results. Click on a cell, and you can go directly to the site providing the information.

With every search query, Squared will construct a box with headings germane to the search. Always beginning with “Item Name”, a search for ‘sports cars’ might have column headings for manufacturer, horsepower, price, and mileage, while a search for ‘New York Hotels’ might have headings for location, room cost, hotel size and amenities.

After the squares have been populated, you can add items to both rows and columns, either by choosing among pre-populated selections, or by entering free text. You can also remove columns and rows that are not relevant to your search. Typically, seven results make up the initial square. You can get more results by using the “Add next 10 items” link at the bottom of every square.

By using a feature "Add to this Square", additional searches can be compiled in one square for evaluation. Using your Google account, squares can be saved for future use and also shared.

Strengths

Squared is a comparative search engine. On one front, it competes with Wikipedia to the extent people use Wikipedia to find comparative information or lists of things - U.S. Presidents, Biggest Movie Opening Weekends, Worst Natural Disasters in U.S. History, etc. The flexibility to add and remove columns and rows gives the user the ability to tailor very specific queries. While still in its infancy, if Squared evolves to interpret and resolve searches with the insight and precision of a Google internet search, there are grand possibilities.

One such possibility is that Squared could be the world’s most powerful price comparison engine, unlimited by industry. The business models of companies like Pricegrabber, Expedia, or Rent.com are based on providing comparative price results and charging vendors to be featured in their listings. Currently, Squared search results are far too general to be used for this purpose, but the structure of Google Squared certainly lends itself to be direct competition with these services.

Weaknesses

As a comparative search engine, it is by definition limited by searches that have a comparative element. Searching for a specific product or person returned mostly irrelevant results.

In a separate search for ‘U.S. Modern Art Museums’, a search Squared should excel at, Squared returned results from the Netherlands, the U.K., and had headings for type and price. Columns and rows added with free text frequently rendered ‘no value found’ results. Also, Squared does not allow you to sort the results in any way.

SEO for Squared

Presumably, Google will use the same relevancy factors as they use in Google searches to determine how to populate the Squared searches. Based on a search for ‘San Francisco Hotels’, the ‘Description’ snippet was pulled from the first descriptive paragraph on each respective site. One site without any copy had its menu pulled into the snippet. There is no secret to optimize for Squared. The best strategy is to have an SEO friendly site, with relevant content and keywords and phrases used in context on your front page.

As far as applications for Search Engine Optimization, Squared can offer some insight into which results Google feels are most relevant for certain searches. Again, though, this is qualified by Squared’s limitation of only generating relevant results for the most basic of searches. Squared has potential, but right now it’s more of a fun diversion than an analytic tool.

Other Resources:

Official Google Blog - Google Squared release announcement and more details
Search Engine Journal - Want More Organized Search Results? Google Square It.
SEO Roundtable - Google Squared Is Live: What SEOs & Searchers Need To Know
eBrandz - Google Squared Becomes Live With Mixed Results

Thanks to Chris Pantages, a WebMama Team Member, for providing his prospective on the subject of Google Squared. More to come from Chris on Google Wave. Stay Tuned.

BING - Quick Comments

2009-06-02T14:46:00.001-07:00

BING is game changing for Google as I believe Microsoft may have leaped them in search quality.

BING takes what Google has shown only in the blended search navigation bar and in 'show options' option, and puts the right information on the first page of results. Microsoft, in BING, has categorized into obvious buckets what you would like to see when you do a search. It has uncluttered the page giving you not only what you want to see about the keyword but provides you with a way of interacting with that 'keyword'.

And if you want to interact with UPS to track a package then search for UPS on BING and you get the track package option in the search results - no hidden short cuts, no 9 other results. http://cli.gs/bing-results

If you want to go to southwest airlines and use search to get there, then search southwest on bing. You get the top results for the site. You get Southwest's navigation (top left column of page). You get related searches and similar sites (listing competitors primarily). You get ads. And you get the customer service number - brilliant. And what you don't get are all the other results, unless you want them - a clean page with a ton of white space.

Does this change the game on SEO? The methodology at my company has always been clear - don't let the search engines dictate what you want them to display. That still holds true. There are three things that continue to need to be applied to sites in order to ensure visibility:
1 - make sure your site is indexable
2 - make sure you TELL the search engines what pages are the ones you want displayed in the secondary links through internal and external linking
3 - optimize EVERY online media asset that you control, on and off the site

All opinions welcome.

80+ Online Resources for the Digital Enterprise - Posted

2009-05-26T17:36:00.000-07:00

The WebMama Team recently posted an update to the toolbox on webmama.com.

80+ Online Resources for the Digital Enterprise

There are a plethora of tools available on the Web to help you develop and optimize your Web site, and during this miserable economy, it’s especially important to have all the tools, tricks and tips at hand and easily accessible.

That’s why we’ve created this list of over 80 online, free resources to make your life easier. You’ll find everything from general site research tools, to analytics, to online marketing, to SEO, to search engine marketing, to social media monitoring, to technical performance; many of which can be used for competitive analysis, search visibility and traffic growth.

We will continue to expand this list, so comment on this blog post and include your favorite top free tool that will help with discovery and management of digital enterprise projects.

If you are a 'digger', please consider digging the page. Thanks.

Google Putting Shopping Results on Right Side

2009-05-19T15:45:00.001-07:00

Just a little proof of Google moving shopping results to the right column above the right side ads. This takes the shopping ads out of organic, thus freeing up visible space for other listings. It also pushes the, what I call , the "wannabe ads" (as in, I wannabe across the top ads) down the page. All comments welcome on how this helps them make money (when shopping results are free) or is it finally the day when Google will start charging for Google Product Search, affectionately known as Froogle?

CANONICAL LINK ELEMENT – Definition & Practical Uses

2009-05-18T07:00:00.000-07:00

CANONICAL LINK ELEMENT – Uses of Tag and VMware Communities Case Study
by Chris Pantages – WebMama.com

In short, “A canonical tag is a simple piece of HTML code that you insert into the section of a duplicate page, letting the search engines know that they are on a duplicate page and they need to find the original content elsewhere, and guide them there.” (Daily SEO Blog)

Matt Cutts, head of the Google Webspam team, consistently refers to it as the Canonical Link Element, but the popular name seems to be the canonical tag. The tag itself looks something like this:

link rel="canonical" href="http://www.website.com/original-content.html"

The value of the tag is that duplicate pages that serve up duplicate or nearly identical content confuse search engines and risk siphoning page popularity away from the main or “canonical” page. By using the canonical tag, website developers can ensure search engines are seeing the original page (the parent page) and not numerous, identical, or almost identical pages – which could be possibly a sign of spam or take up valuable space in search results.

The tag goes only on the duplicate page – and instructs the search engines to redirect any link and content metrics to the original page. In this way, the effect of the canonical tag is the same as a 301 redirect. The canonical tag must be entered on each duplicate page you want the search engine page value redirected.

Unlike a 301 redirect, the canonical tag can only redirect the page popularity within one domain. Also, the canonical tag does not redirect visitors.

The pages themselves must be identical or nearly identical. There is no need to use the canonical tag if your site does not have a structure that allows for users to find the same content through numerous paths, or you have addressed this possibility already by setting the preferred URL in Google Webmaster tools, your CMS, or any other program.

It is part of the WebMama methodology to never leave it up to the search engines to decide what pages achieve high visibility in search results. The canonical tag can help direct the engines to the parent or main page.

All major search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask) have agreed to honor the tag.

Uses for the Canonical Link Element

Basic Uses

The most basic use of the canonical tag is to mask systemic differences in a site’s URL structure. The canonical tag can be used on the non-preferred URL to transfer the visibility to the preferred URL.

www.example.com vs. example.com
http://www.example.com vs. https://www.example.com
www.example.com vs. www.example.com/print (for “print only” versions of pages)

It can work between secure and unsecure pages.

A preferred location can also be addressed in Google Webmaster tools and Yahoo Site Explorer. These preferences can also be expressed in a sitemap.

Advanced Uses

The primary use for the canonical tag is for pages that have unavoidable duplicate content issues:

You have different landing pages (a/b testing, etc) for the same content
Different URLs depending on the path you take to get to a page. For example:
- A site that generates different URL’s for products based on “sort by” choices
- Pages that allow breadcrumbs to alter the URL – different paths create different URLs for the same terminal page.
You add tracking codes or session ID’s to track the user’s path through the site, therefore resulting in different URL’s for each parent page
In community discussion forums, replies/comments to each thread/question may be set up to look like separate files while the content is almost identical. This leads to lots of pages that look like duplicate content.

Case Study: VMware Communities –
http://communities.vmware.com/community/developer?view=discussions

The VMware Communities website has an architecture that unfortunately generated duplicate content, due to the fact that "thread" pages include a number of messages, and each of the individual messages were duplicated in a "message" page.

A discussion thread has a URL like this:
http://communities.vmware.com/thread/208441
has 3 replies like this:
http://communities.vmware.com/message/1243852#1243852
http://communities.vmware.com/message/1243992#1243992
http://communities.vmware.com/message/1244024#1244024

VMware decided to implement the canonical tag to the thread URL and each of the message URLs in order to tell the engines explicitly which page was the main/parent page – in this case, the single thread page. It was an easy implementation -- just a small amount of code to calculate the /thread URL for each message, and then adding the one line to the section of each page. It appears it took less than four days to implement in Google.

Miscellaneous Items

The original page URL should be an absolute URL as a best practice.

Per Google, the canonical tag is not a directive but it is “a hint that we honor strongly. We'll take your preference into account, in conjunction with other signals, when calculating the most relevant page to display in search results.” Canonical tags can be chained (e.g. page 3 refers to page 2 which refers to page 1 → link power from pages 2 and 3 go to page 1). This practice, per Google, is not recommended but permitted.

Some CMS systems already have plug-ins that allow you to specify canonical pages from the front-end. Drupal, Wordpress, and Magento already have plug-ins. If the tag gains traction, expect there to be more.

Other Resources

SEOmoz has one of the best summaries/articles.

For the more intrepid, Matt Cutts' Blog has a link to a 20-minute video he did explaining the tag and the slides he uses as part of the presentation.

Insightful Sitelink Results: Phrase From Blog, Result from Website

2009-05-13T09:55:00.001-07:00

Like all companies should, I track the reputation of my brand on the search engine organic, paid, twitter, video, facebook, etc results. I especially look at Google.co m for the search keyword webmama.

Recently the sitelinks changed. The pages that each link points to did NOT change but the phrase that appears in the list did. Two of the sitelinks now show phrases from a blog postings of mine at blog.webmama.com but point to the same page on www.we bmama.com that they previously did. [The blog posts do link into the same page as well.]

What used to be nice, clearly worded link text is now weird to searchers I am sure (see image below). When I first saw the new links, I did a search on Google for the phrase: webmama 'present in front of an audience'. This turned up a blog post from July 2007 posted about the now extinct SES Latino conference. The link in the blog post said exactly that 'present in front of an audience' and it linked to the speaking page on my website.

The other link that changed, much to my chagrin, was the SEO audit link. I used SEO in lower case in a blog post in March 2008 and that is what Google picked up. The blog post also appeared in blogcatalog.com with exactly the same text. I have since retroactively changed the blog post wording to capitals and am waiting to see how long it takes Google to update the site link. I am always watching traffic to see if I lose ground on clicks to the audit page.

New Sitelinks:

Old Sitelinks:

How I found the link text that was showing up in the sitelinks: