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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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March 7, 2006 SearchReturn Issue #043
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.....IN THIS DIGEST.....
// -- FEATURED POST -- //
"AOL Art"
~ Jennifer Laycock
// -- CONFERENCE RECAP -- //
"Day One"
"Day Two"
"Day Three"
"Day Four"
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// -- FEATURED POST -- //
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==> AOL ART
"How many folks out there made modern art with their AOL
mailers?"
From: Jennifer Laycock
If you put a CD in the microwave for a few seconds, the skin sort
of cracks and you get this awesome lightening effect (on the
surface of the CD, not in the microwave). Hanging up a couple
dozen of those in a dorm room makes for interesting décor.
Ahh the things you learn in college with unlimited AOL CD's at
your disposal.
Jennifer Laycock
Editor-in-Chief (and once bored college student)
Search Engine Guide
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// -- CONFERENCE RECAP -- //
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==> Day One
Vertical Creep Into Regular Search Results
Targeting Search Ads By Demographics & Behavior
Podcast Search
Business To Business Tactics
The primary take away from the first panel on vertical creep was
just how much the search user experience is changing with these
results. Gord Hotchkiss presented heat maps showing the
difference in search user behavior when Google Onebox or Yahoo!
Shortcuts (and quicklinks) or MSN vertical matches are inserted.
It is important to notice how adaptive this has become from a
time when matching news headlines were inserted roughshod into
every query in Altavista and FAST. They may have pioneered, but
now only when certain conditions are met will the SERPs get
populated with vertical matches. Look for image, news, local and
shopping results and many other vertical matches in the future.
The targeting panel seemed an overt attempt to sell search
marketers on the idea that better targeting can lead to increases
in revenue. MSN came out strong showing how they are trying to
innovate in the search advertising space in this way. They
refused to provide specifics regarding their data except to say
it comes from Passport profiles and Experian. This means they
have only few numbers and income level is assumed based on where
users live. It's guesstimation that roughly targets correctly.
Look for AlmondNet to further capitalize on its idea of post
search behavior targeting with their multi-site cookie network
targeting possibilities.
The podcast search panel wasn't very crowded with attendees.
That will probably slowly change as more multimedia search
becomes business critical. Daron Babin of WebmasterRadio warned
about exploding costs the more popular shows become. Also you
must consider technical challenges for delivering the media
without dropping users. Monetizing was a subject that showed
just how bleeding edge podcasting is, although it remains just
a nice code wrapper for allowing better discovery of audio files.
For an example of how important this growth area is, the Barry
Diller keynote audio is now available, you can already find it in
most major search engines and other services including iTunes.
http://media.webmasterradio.fm/episodes/audio/2006/SC022706.mp3
The business to business panel showed how this segment of search
marketing is starting to look a lot like just plain ordinary
search marketing. There are vertical business and industry search
engines that may deserve individual representation. We would
welcome news ideas rather than copying the major engines as there
remains little in the way of innovations from this space.
Certainly, business to business search marketing requires
specific tactics that mean thinking outside the box. Business-
minded search users behave very differently than consumers.
Christopher Grady from Merak Communications illustrated a strong
point showing the sheer number of terms his best clients use to
find his site through search marketing. Seven and nine term
queries brought him some of his best clients. Another interesting
thing, he discussed the lead time he had against competitors for
his keywords since they neglected to adopt search. Since he sells
software, he was able to cleverly soak up marketshare because the
software upgrade timeline was the only touchpoint his competitors
were using to communicate to clients. By the time an upgrade was
due, it was typically a year or two too late. This shows just how
important search should be to business-to-business firms.
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==> Day Two
Fun With Dynamic Sites
Search Algorithm Research & Patents
Blog & Feed Search SEO
Meet The Blog & Feed Search Engines
We missed Mikkel on this panel, (though Detlef did a really bad
impersonation attempt), everyone clapped when they learned Mikkel
and Pernille were having a new baby! The remainder of the panel
went through the motions delivering specifics about what should
be avoided. The audience participation is more where the rubber
meets the road, making this panel a must see. No, search engines
do not use JavaScipt interpretters to process pages, so your
JavaScript menus may be problematic. Yes, if the full path in the
reference is used within JavaScript, search engines can read it.
Whether they follow it or not is entirely at the discretion of
each major engine and how they intend to crawl - not rank. These
links do not typically count towards credit for rankings. No
matter whether the full path is there, the link container is not
properly formed when the reference is found in JavaScript.
Jon Glick worked originally at Altavista. When they were bought
by Overture then Yahoo!, Jon successfully made the transition and
spoke at SES on behalf of Yahoo! several times. He now works with
product shop and review site Become. Jon always puts things very
clearly when talking about search algorithms. He may offer more
material nuggets than anyone, a lot more than Matt Cutts. He was
the one that originally presented the redirect rules slide now in
wide distribution. This time around, he warned that some of the
things people use can help search engines find spam more easily.
An example of this was the smiley face on the original Google
Toolbar that quickly clued Google into simple-minded spammers who
tried to abuse it with their sites.
The SEO for blogs and optimizing feed panel dovetailed nicely
into the meet the blog and feed search engines. In the SEO panel,
the environment was shown to be vacant of marketers and a
veritable opportunity right now for early adopters. There are
either those that don't optimize, which was characterized as
populating containers and using keywords in fields, or there are
spammers that auto-generate the things. The search engine panel
quickly broke down once again into discussion regarding how the
spam is picking up, and what a problem it is. It is a problem
that may be more difficult than other major search spam in that
these engines need to deliver content in as close to real-time
as possible.
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==> Day Three
Linking Strategies
Buying & Selling Links
Search Engine Q&A On Links
Day three was big linking day. In the morning we had our linking
strategies panel that went beyond the basics. Ideas were flowing,
including starting something interesting that gets a buzz, (like
the way JibJab became famous overnight), to something less
ambitious but still cool enough to win Macromedia's Flash site of
the day. Eric has lists of these sites that you can get valuable
links from, the kind of links that bring traffic in their own
right. The day continued into buying and selling links which is
obviously a highly charged issue. We made sure to characterize
this as having a deteriorating affect on the Web, by degrading
the underlying meaning and value inherent in the original
hypertext concept at the core of the Web.
The search engines mentioned that link farms are easy to detect
once they're on to them. The link structure no longer looks
ordinary and instead appears to look like a "rat's nest" of
interlinking. Tim Mayer of Yahoo! missed this panel, as he was
also attending the birth of a new child. Tim will usually talk
frankly with the audience. Stepping up to the plate was Ramez
Naam of MSN who made clear there are other huge algorithm
determinations made that go into ranking, and the value of link
analysis has considerably dropped. Google also confirmed this by
stating there are probably as many as seven primary factors that
determine rankings at Google. The complexity of their search
algorithms has been noted as having over one-hundred total
factors, and linking is one of the big seven.
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==> Day Four
This quiet day for us started with a bang. The organic listings
forum is one of the favorites because there are no presentations,
only audience interaction. During this panel, nothing is left out
and we talk openly about anything the audience brings up. In this
case, the subject of cloaking took up more time than in recent
times. This may be because Google is taking greater action
against European spam now, and David Naylor from the UK was on
the panel. David is a colorful speaker, and he first joked that
when Google stock is dipping, they need to shake up the SERPs and
lower rankings to force more AdWords.
This kind of quip is not unusual for David (or on this panel).
Particularly animated, David went on to say something dangerous.
On the subject of cloaking, he mentioned copying your competitors
and then inserting a few additional instances of keywords to beat
them in the rankings. DR Peck (Green Flash) said that very same
thing from the stage at the first SES in San Francisco 1999. A
great takedown by Greg Boser, (including tying iProspect to Green
Flash), was cause for Green Flash to be permanently eliminated
from the search industry. They were voted off the island. History
in SEO has these interesting stories rarely talked about anymore.
This incident made the news, but Google wasn't on the radar yet,
and mainstream media was neglectful of us until after then.
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