July 2007
Search Engine Strategy & Optimization Updates for...
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Highlights in this month's updates...
- Google...
›› Temporarily loses their biggest advertiser in eBay spat
›› Adds paid link reporting to their spam reports
›› Launches a batch of international YouTubes
›› Expands their Webmaster Guidelines
›› Adds user generated reviews to Google Maps - Google AdSense...
›› Introduces rounded corners for ads - Yahoo...
›› Gives their CEO the boot, puts founder Jerry Yang in charge - Yahoo Search Marketing...
›› Cuts ad descriptions to 70 characters - Windows Live...
›› Seeks to make it easier for mobile users to surf the web - Ask...
›› Relaunches their search engine as Ask 3D
 | http://www.google.com http://www.google.com/addurl.html http://www.google.com/downloads |
What's new
Google Temporarily Loses Their Biggest Advertiser in eBay Spat
When most people think of eBay, they think of online auctions. After all, eBay is quite possibly the largest marketplace on the Internet. What many people don't realize is that eBay has another highly profitable company in PayPal (which eBay acquired in 2002).
However, you can be sure that Google is keenly aware of that eBay owns PayPal. That's because eBay recently banned Google's version of PayPal (aka Google Checkout) from eBay.
Google naturally did what any multi-billion dollar company would do in such a situation – they organized a protest. This protest was designed to coincide with the eBay Live! conference in Boston. Google called their protest Let Freedom Ring and planned to have it take place on Flag Day at the site of the Boston Tea Party.
eBay was not particularly pleased with Google stealing their thunder during one of eBay's most important conferences, and proceeded to pull all their AdWords ads in the United States (kind of like dumping tea overboard, but Internet style).
Now, eBay is Google's single largest AdWords advertiser by far, and Google, faced with a principled stand or the loss of 2% of their revenue, did what any indignant multi-billion dollar corporation would do – they caved and canceled their protest.
eBay has since decided to return their ads to Google, but is now planning to move more of their ad budget to Google's competitors. eBay also claims that their traffic actually increased after they pulled their ads, although this could have been due to increased media exposure
What this little incident demonstrates is that pay-per-click advertising may not always be the best bang for the buck, as eBay appears to have found out. In fact, eBay argues that the reason they pulled their ads had nothing to do with protests and Google Checkout, but rather with an attempt to reassess how to best spend their marketing dollars online.
They claim that this move had been planned for some time and just happened to coincide with their public spat with Google. If that's true, then Google has real reason to be concerned, as it may indicate that large companies don't need to be quite as dependent on pay-per-click advertising as they might think.
While PPC can be easier to understand than SEO, as well as sending traffic instantly and providing easily measurable ROI, you're likely leaving a lot of money on the table if you're just focusing on PPC alone.
Once you've put in the work of optimizing and promoting your site via SEO, you can enjoy stream of traffic and not have to pay for your clicks. Arguably it's harder work and by no means free, but an investment in solid SEO pays for itself many times over in the long term.
Google Adds Paid Link Reporting To Their Spam Reports
In their ongoing quest to purge their index of spammy sites, Google recently enabled a feature allowing paid link spam reports. Google's stance is that paid links are for advertising and traffic purposes only. With this move, Google has renewed their battle against those people who also use paid links for SEO purposes.
As Google says in this Webmaster Central blog post:
Links are an important signal in our PageRank calculations, as they tend to indicate when someone has found a page useful. Links that are purchased…aren't useful for PageRank calculations. Buying or selling links to manipulate results and deceive search engines violates our guidelines.
Google says this change came in response to their customers' requests, although that seems a bit odd since the only people who typically even know about PageRank are online marketers. The average person typically hasn't heard of, nor cares about, the way paid links can effect rankings or PageRank.
So what does this mean for those who want to buy links to help their search engine rankings? It simply means that if you want to buy links you have to be smart about it.
For instance, rather than buying a text link, buy an article page (aka a presell page). This means syndicating an article on a related website which includes a link back to your site. Since it doesn't match any of the footprints of a paid link it's much more likely to fly under the search engines' spam radar.
As Google increasingly attempts to influence webmaster's behavior in order to make the Internet safe for their own algorithm, a few questions arise. For instance, if a web directory or SEO firm offers a discount on their services in exchange for a backlink is that considered a paid link? What about website templates or software programs that include a link within the template or software program?
It appears that if a technique is being used to manipulate Google's algorithm and can be easily spotted, then Google's going to come after it before long. Always remember, Google doesn't need to be fair or reasonable about these sort of things. It's their index—we just play in it, and spam is what Google says it is.
Google Launches a Batch of International YouTubes
If you're located outside of the United States, you may have noticed that YouTube is a bit US-oriented. It's not just that the entire site is in English, but also that the featured videos tend to relate more to America than anywhere else. Well, that's all about to change.
In a recent press conference in Paris, YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen announced that YouTube is going international. They plan to translate YouTube into the user's local language. So in France YouTube will appear in French, in Turkey it will be in Turkish, and Hebrew in Israel.
Furthermore, the videos which YouTube features will be more in line with the local market and culture. What's more, ratings and comments will be country-specific. This makes a lot of sense considering that many of YouTube's viewers are outside of the United States.
Of course, this is the long term goal. In the short term YouTube has created 9 new national sites:
At the same time Google is tailoring YouTube to the international market, they are also making deals with international media outlets such as the BBC and France 24. The plan is to show content from these organizations, although the media partners will still have control over which content can be viewed.
All of this indicates that Google has big plans for YouTube, the beginnings of which we are now seeing unfold. Last month we discussed how Google is integrating video content into their search results. Now we see that Google is trying to better target the videos which are being shown on YouTube.
It would not surprise us if we soon see integration of AdWords ads into YouTube videos. Once advertisers can be assured that YouTube's videos are being watched by the appropriate market, many will be more than happy to place advertising within those videos.
But before Google monetizes YouTube they clearly want to properly distribute and target it. And the interesting thing is—there seems to be very little serious competition for Google in this venture.
Indeed, this may very well be Google's second online revolution. First they figured out how to tailor targeted search results to online searchers. Now they are figuring out how to tailor targeted videos to online viewers. As Google has discovered, once you've mastered delivering quality content to the right people, making money with advertising is the easy part.
This also explains why Google has put so much effort into getting YouTube videos on as many different types of screens as possible—including mobile phones, handheld devices and even the regular old television set. The broader YouTube's reach, the more money Google can make.
Google Expands Their Webmaster Guidelines
Google just did a fairly significant rewrite of their Webmaster Guidelines, going into much greater detail on topics such as hidden text and links, keyword stuffing, doorway pages, and all that other blackhat stuff.
Rather than cover it all here, we recommend you go read it for yourself. It's always a good idea to keep up on the latest Google dos and don'ts.
Google Maps Adds User Generated Reviews
Google has long been one of the few local search services that didn't allow users to review the businesses listed. Instead, Google pulled reviews from established third-party sources like Frommers.com. But they recently changed their mind and have opened up Google Maps so that any user with a Google account can publish a review for all the world to see. Here's how it's done:
First, search for the business you want to review in Google Maps. This will bring up a map with the business's location or locations. Here's what we got when we searched for ourselves in Hawaii:
Notice the little Write a review link under the business title. Click that and if you're logged in you'll be able to create a rating and review for that business. Here's our's:
Yep, there's nothing to stop you from reviewing yourself. Of course, don't go nuts. Google does allow other users to flag reviews as inappropriate if they feel someone is abusing the system.
Our advice is to keep an eye on your listing and make sure you're not getting too many negative reviews. As the role of the Internet in all of our lives mushrooms, tracking your buzz and managing your reputation have become critical to your online presence.
 | http://adwords.google.com |
Slow month at AdWords. It's a good time to work on organizing your ad groups for maximum profits.
 | https://www.google.com/adsense/ |
What's new
Google AdSense Adds Rounded Corners to Ads
If you've had it with those old pointy-cornered AdSense blocks ruining the look of your sleek Web 2.0-designed site, then you're in luck. Google just announced that they've added the option to use rounded corners on the AdSense ads you display. Here's your new options:
If you want to implement these new effects in your ads, just go to the AdSense Setup tab in your AdSense account. When setting up your ads, in the Choose Ad Format and Colors section you'll now see an option for corner styles. You can go with:
- Square corners,
- Slightly rounded corners, or
- Very rounded corners
As with all things AdSense, choose the format that best integrates the ads into your site, then test to see how it effects your clickthrough rate. Remember, the key to making money with AdSense is to incorporate the look and feel of the ad so closely into your own site that most users think it's actually part of the content. Kudos to Google for making our jobs even easier with this new improvement.
 | http://www.yahoo.com |
What's new
Yahoo Gives Their CEO the Boot, Puts Founder Jerry Yang in Charge
Yahoo announced their CEO Terry S. Semel is stepping down and being replaced by Jerry Yang, one of the company's cofounders. The gap between Google and Yahoo is rapidly getting larger and Yahoo's shareholders are painfully aware.
Semel had this to say at his departure:
The Board and I have talked recently about the need for a leadership team committed to carrying Yahoo! through its multi-year transformation… I was clear in telling the Board of my desire to take a step back sooner rather than later. I believe Jerry and Sue [the new President of the corporation]…are the perfect combination to carry us forward. This is the time for new executive leadership, with different skills and strengths, to step in and drive the company to realize its full potential...
But even though Yahoo is getting their butt (seriously) kicked in the search market, it's important to note that Yahoo still has more visitors than Google, more content sites than Google and the average user spends more time on Yahoo than on Google. Hopefully once Yahoo gets its management problems in order they can rebound. After all, someone needs to keep Google from taking over the Internet and turning search into a monopoly.
Some speculate that Yahoo will end up being sold to a larger corporation such as AT&T or Microsoft. There's also talk of Yahoo teaming up with a site like MySpace or AOL. However, Jerry Yang states unequivocally that Yahoo will remain an independent company.
There's really not much one can say about such speculation, except that we'll be watching carefully to see what fresh directions the new CEO of Yahoo will guide the company toward.
 | http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/ |
What's New
Yahoo Cuts Ad Descriptions to 70 Characters
As we mentioned last month, Yahoo Search Marketing is now chopping ad description sizes in the US from 190 characters down to 70. If you haven't yet modified your ads to meet this new requirement, then we recommend that you do so now. Otherwise, you're going to end up with some weird looking ads that could negatively impact your clickthrough rate.
Titles remain at 40 characters max, with 35 characters max for display URLs. For details on modifying your ads, see this YSM Blog post.
 | http://search.live.com/ |
What's New
Microsoft Seeks To Make It Easier For Mobile Users To Surf The Web
Microsoft recently redesigned Mobile MSN in a bid to win over mobile users. The new Mobile MSN offers a variety of information and services relating to news, sports, entertainment, email, search, instant messaging, and maps.
The great advantage of Mobile MSN is that all of this information and these services can be accessed from a single page. What's more, Microsoft has programmed Mobile MSN to automatically detect the handset being used and optimize the site accordingly. For instance, the font size will automatically change based on one's mobile screen.
At the moment Microsoft does not plan to place ads on the new Mobile MSN, but that should change by the end of the year.
MSN's mobile portal is Microsoft's solution to consumer frustration with surfing the Internet from a mobile phone. Apple is about to offer a different solution with their iPhone which allows people to zoom in and out of a web page. It will be interesting to see which solution better addresses customers needs.
 | http://www.ask.com |
What's new
Ask Relaunches Their Search Engine as Ask 3D
Ask.com's new Ask 3D release of their search engine is a radical redesign of their search interface, featuring a 3-column layout that allows Ask to display far more information for a query than most other engines.
In the left-hand column is the ability to focus your search into more niche topics or expand your search into related terms, a feature Ask has actually offered for quite some time.
The center column is devoted to organic and paid search results, along with a more detailed, encyclopedia-style listing for some of the more popular queries. For example, here's what shows up at the top of the search results for Shakira:
The right column is reserved for images, videos, music tracks (for recording artists), and Wikipedia listings.
Incorporating all this additional relevant media seems like a much more natural way to organize search results. Particularly for a search like Shakira, most users will be looking for more than just links to webpages, and this new Ask design allows them to find what they're looking for without needing to do separate searches for images, videos, songs, and so forth.
We think they've done a great job with this redesign and strongly expect other search engines to follow their lead before long. Yet another way we can expect the nature of search engine optimization to change moving forward.
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