Posts
Yahoo Glue Pages - Universal & Blended Search
Riddle: Ask.com has well-organized ones, Google has ugly ones, and now Yahoo is implementing them too. What are they?
Answer: Universal search result pages (a.k.a. blended search or federated search).
Universal search pages, or as Yahoo calls them, "Glue Pages," have been showing up on Yahoo India late last week. While still in beta, Yahoo’s Glue Pages appear much more like Ask.com’s SERPs than Google’s. And since I’m still looking for a way to opt out of Google’s hideous universal search, Yahoo’s Glue Pages are a leap ahead along with Ask.com’s SERPs.
Tags: Ask, Google, universal search, YahooApril 2008 PageRank Update and VisualRank
Google datacenters have been busy the past couple of days as they were updating toolbar PageRanks (TBPR) across the board. The last complete PageRank update was in late February. SearchEnginePanel.com maintained its PR2 since getting ranked, and is now up to PR3 from this latest update. I’m attributing the small step to writing fresh unique content coupled with promotion through social media, and some of you may have noticed our posts in StumbleUpon or Digg.
More Google News
Coming soon (or perhaps not so soon) to a Google near you - VisualRank. As the name implies, VisualRank will be the image-equivalent of PageRank for web pages. Images will begin to be weighed and ranked just as pages have, but I doubt it will have much of an effect on image search traffic. After all, PageRank is only a mediocre measurement of a page’s link building initiatives, and is far from being a strong indicator of SERP ranking.
More SEP News
During the announcement of our latest theme in late March, we hinted that we had a little project underway. Well, here it is. We’ve recently added a lexicon to our blog to help decipher some of the more cryptic search marketing acronyms and some general search marketing terms. The list will never be exhaustive, but it will be kept updated to contain the more relevant terms in the industry. So for you loyal SEP subscribers that get our feed through email or a feed reader, stop on by to our Lexicon page and brush up on your vocabulary! 
And Speaking of Subscribers…
Some of you may have noticed that our subscriber count dropped from the 60-70 range to the low 40s a couple of weeks ago. I was curious as to how many actual subscribed readers there are of SEP, and decided to purge the email list of non-readers. Basically, I emailed everyone and told them to reply if they wanted to keep their subscription. So even though the subscriber count is hovering around 40 right now (with only 20-30% being from email), it’s a much more accurate depiction of true human readership.
Tags: Google, link building, PageRank, search traffic, SEP, social media marketingGoogle Website Optimizer Available to Public
It’s been about half a year since Website Optimizer beta was released along with a two-part webinar series that introduced the nuts and bolts of the service. The first webinar was a little shaky from what I remember, and people had issues downloading the right software and getting the sound to work through the phonelines.
Okay. Enough digressing.
Prior to Website Optimizer, conducting A/B and multivariate testing would entail some complicated tailor-made sets of tracking code that was neither robust nor scalable. All of you analytics/ROI/tracking fanatics out there know what I’m talking about. Anyway, Website Optimizer has been declared out of beta and ready for the masses! I’m surprised that it wasn’t released earlier because it fills a void that few third-party systems out there can fill efficiently (and cheaply).
Their website says:
Website Optimizer, Google’s free website testing and optimization tool, allows you to increase the value of your existing websites and traffic without spending a cent. Using Website Optimizer to test and optimize site content and design, you can quickly and easily increase revenue and ROI whether you’re new to marketing or an expert.
Website Optimizer is indeed free and a valuable tool for split testing, but I can only partially agree that it can be done "quickly and easily."
Tags: Google, SEM, toolsGoogle Search Results Becoming Case-Sensitive?
There have been a few reports from the search community that Google is showing signs of being case-sensitive. I’ve ran a dozen or so test searches myself with varying uppercase and lowercase letters, but there hasn’t been any changes in the search results. The total number of search results found differed by less than 10%, but this isn’t out of the ordinary.
So what does this mean if case-sensitivity becomes more prevalent?
For the average searcher, you’ll be able to (in theory) get more relevant results by using uppercase letters where appropriate. If you’re looking up the name of a particular brand of product or service, then you might find it useful to apply some capital letters. This will especially come in handy if your query involves common words.
For example, a search for "band aid" might give you advice on starting a band, while "Band Aid" will list product information for your boo-boos.
Tags: Google, keyword researchHitwise’s March 2008 U.S. Search Results
Last week, Hitwise announced the latest figures of March’s U.S. search engine searches based on a sample of 10 million U.S. Internet users. Google achieved an all-time high, while the other G.Y.M. members (Yahoo and Microsoft) sunk to all-time lows. The results are summarized below.
Percentage of U.S. Searches Among Leading Search Engines
|
March 2008 |
February 2008 |
March 2007 |
|
|
|
67.25% |
66.44% |
64.13% |
|
Yahoo |
20.29% |
20.59% |
21.26% |
|
MSN / Live Search |
6.65% |
6.95% |
9.01% |
|
Ask |
4.09% |
4.16% |
3.48% |
Source: Hitwise
The remaining 1.72% of searches is shared among 46 other search engines in Hitwise’s study.
Apart from the search engine giant continuing to rack up U.S. users, particular verticals have been gaining tons of search momentum. Since March 2007, the categories of Travel, Entertainment, Business and Finance, and Sports have all shown double-digit increases in their shares of traffic coming directly from search engines.
Tags: Ask, Google, Hitwise, Microsoft, Yahoo