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SearchReturn Discussion List
"Understanding Internet Search Technology"
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Moderator: Published by:
Detlef Johnson SearchReturn
http://www.searchreturn.com
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January 05, 2005 Issue #027
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.....IN THIS DIGEST.....
// -- MODERATOR COMMENT -- //
"Generations of SEO"
~ SearchReturn
// -- FEATURED POST -- //
"Big Brand Spam"
~ Mike Banks Valentine
// -- CONTINUING DISCUSSION -- //
"Metrics"
~ Andrew Goodman
// -- ESSENTIAL NEWS -- //
"Paid Search Growth"
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// -- MODERATOR COMMENT -- //
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Hello everyone,
There is chatter in forums and blogs on how to go about being
successful in today's SEO community when you might be a newbie.
We wouldn't recommend reading too much into it. Most of the posts
are skewed by the writer's own perspective or awareness of SEO
history. That may be why Danny chimed in to clear things up in a
blog entry titled: Being A Big Voice In SEO.
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/060104-111039
What is now SearchReturn but began life as I-Search, got an
honorable mention as being responsible for the success of many
top first generation SEO personalities, (your humble moderator
included).
For more about Danny, see: http://www.searchenginemafia.com
:)
Stay tuned.
-SearchReturn
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// -- FEATURED POST -- //
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==> TOPIC: BIG BRAND SPAM
"The search engines have a mixed record of doing anything about
spam."
From: Mike Banks Valentine
Thanks for pointing out the Fortune 500 search engine spammers
article by Robert Medford. He's got some cojones for publicly
calling out the big boys and their hired gun spammers, er, I
mean SEO firm. It's nice to see the screen shots and I love his
suggestion that people visit archive.org to view the offending
pages once they've been fixed.
I've done spam reporting to the search engines when my own
clients face corporate search engine spam, but have always been
reluctant to name names in public. One recent case involved a
company that ranked at the bottom of page one *before* I reported
them to the search engines 4 months ago and now they rank #1. No
action by the SE's, no changes at the site.
The offending corporation is still blatantly using <noscript>
tags stuffed with H1 tags that helped gain them that position for
multiple high-value phrases and Google has taken no action, nor
have the other SE's I've reported this to. This is the most
recent of many I've reported and I've seen posts discussing this
at the major forums.
Matt Cutts calls out mom and pop sites in his blog for keyword
stuffing using invisible text, but the moneyed cheaters go
without notice somehow. It would be nice if someone started up a
site to call out other bad boy corporate cheaters, the SE's would
then be held publicly accountable for their reluctance to ban the
big dogs for cheating.
Mike Banks Valentine
http://RealitySEO.com
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// -- CONTINUING DISCUSSION -- //
==> TOPIC: METRICS
"What matters above all is "Searches Referred and Delivered" to
our client sites from all of those searches performed."
From: Andrew Goodman
Mike Banks Valentine wrote about searches performed share versus
search referral metrics. Couldn't agree more, Mike, it's the
referral shares that matter, as we've discussed for some time on
lists like this (I recall that it made I-Search a few times).
IMHO that's one good thing about the Hitwise stats. They reflect
log activity, not lab behavior or panel studies.
Anyone in the business with access to several sites or better
yet, data from a wide cross-section of clients, is aware of these
aggregate numbers.
Looking at these, we can see that (for example) the MSN share of
5.5% or so reported by Hitwise is likely bang on -- it's not 10%
or whatever.
Then again, my Traffick.com site's stats are skewed over the past
two months in favor of Google due to us ranking very high on the
phrase "scarlett johansen." Oh well, what are you gonna do.
It brings up a larger issue, though: data from Hitwise show
Google Images in like 4th place in search referrals!! Stuff like
that can teach a lot. I've noticed Yahoo being quite aggressive
in driving homepage traffic to various Flickr images. Looks like
2006 may be a very, um, visual year. Plus ça change...
--
Andrew Goodman
Page Zero Media
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// -- ESSENTIAL NEWS -- //
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==> Paid Search Growth
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/060104-161552
Essentials: Search growth predictions go way back and are often
conservative estimates that greater growth appears than was
expected. With a focus on paid search, these high numbers seem to
be adjusted to accomodate under-reporting from the past. Will we
see a 41% growth in paid search for 2006? Most of us would agree
there is a lot of room left to grow. Others argue increasingly
higher clicks fees limit growth to a more rational rate. It is
folly to doubt the exciting growth in the years ahead.
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