Recently in Search marketing Category
His screen grab on Flickr shows Knol coming in just behind Wikipedia for searches on "music in Capoeira". Matt Cutts commented on Twitter that the results need time to bed down - but funnily enough repeating the search in the UK this morning shows Wikipedia edged down to fifth, behind both Knol and Youtube! (screen grab below)
Jason no doubt hunted long and hard for a search that shows Wikipedia being 'unfairly treated', but he does raise some serious questions - as Google moves into content creation and management, can they be trusted not to give their own properties an undue advantage.
The sun is shining and I'm on holiday next week, so I'm going to err on the side of hopeless optimism and say that they will. The integrity of the algorithm is just too important to be sacrificed simply to support another potential outlet for Google Adwords - once we stop trusting Google's search results, the golden goose really is dead.
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One of the classic "well they would say that wouldn't they" is Google's argument that it is important to be top of both natural and paid search.
Here's the standard bit of Google research on the subject, which suggests that you can treble the amount of traffic to your site by being prominent in both natural and search.
But is that still true if there is no competitive activity on PPC? According to our recent research - which is covered today in iMedia Connection- many prominent UK brands simply don't bother to bid on their own brand terms.
Last year's spat between Google and eBay led to eBay pulling their ppc spend from Google. Hitwise looked at the data and found that there was little or no impact on overall traffic through to eBay over this period.
The story would be very different for non-navigational terms, but for navigational / brand terms it seems that big brands are happy to ignore Google's advice.
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TechCrunch reports that Live Search volumes have grown by 15% since the launch of the much derided Cashback offer a month ago. Fifteen percent may not be that significant in the grand scheme of things - the increase in search volumes takes Microsoft up to 9.2% in share of the search market. But if users are shifting to Live for searches associated with purchases then this might well be taking significant revenue away from Google and Yahoo.
Live Search Cashback has only been introduced in the United States, but a successful launch presumably means that we can expect to see it in the UK before too long.
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There hasn't exactly been a flood of information since then, but now we have another useful post on Google's official blog - an introduction to Google Ranking from Amit Singhal who runs the ranking team within Google's Search Quality Group.
Of course, we don't get an insight into the secret sauce within Google, and I guess we probably wouldn't be able to make much sense of the algorithms even if they were revealled. However, the basic principles behind the ranking process are interesting:
1) Best locally relevant results served globally.
2) Keep it simple.
3) No manual intervention.
The last point will raise some eyebrows - there are endless rumours in SEO circles about particular sites being singled out for ranking penalties. But according to Amit, these changes are simply the result of tweaks to the algorithm. Hmmmm.
Anyway, more information is promised and I can't wait. Google is doing a fantastic job of demystifying the business of getting a high search ranking - which can't be entirely welcome news in those areas of search marketing agencies whose business depends on making the process seem as complex and difficult as possible.
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We took a list of 100 top brands across different sectors and looked at the search results page for searches on the brand name itself. I was expecting a scene of carnage as brands bid against each other in a scramble for valuable traffic. The reality was very different - in fact the remarkable thing really was how little paid search is happening around key brand terms.
- Almost half of all brands - including companies like HSBC, Tesco and Marks and Spencer - are not bidding on their own brand terms.
- 14% of our surveyed brands showed no paid search activity.
- Bidding by direct competitors on brand terms is largely restricted to just two sectors: finance and travel.
The full white paper on Trademark Bidding on Google is now online.
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I sit on the IAB's Search Council which has put these resources together, so I've had the inside track on the hours of discussion (and even argument) that lies behind these documents.
The Search Council is kind of unique in the UK as it is (I think) the one forum where representatives of the key search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN) and many of the big digital media agencies sit around the same table.
I'm glad to see that the resources are actually tackling some thorny subjects (which it would have been easy and tempting to disregard). So you'll find information on trademarks, copyright, privacy for search, invalid clicks and
I think it's a really useful piece of work - but then again, I am biassed!
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The new rules allow anyone to bid against a trademarked term - but not to use that trademark in their ad copy.
I expected to see competitors and aggregators taking advantage of this - but I have to say I'm surprised to see the way Sky News are enjoying their new freedom. Here's the search results page for EasyJet - where Sky News has placed an ad reading: Sky Breaking News. Budget airline plane with 170 people on board went off the runway.
Not too helpful for EasyJet I would guess!
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Examples would be the decision to buy Urchin and then give the software away as Google Analytics. In the UK agency scene, the forthcoming removal of agency commissions - sorry, "best practise funding" will similarly require a rethink of many well-established business practises.
In that spirit was a long blog entry a week or so ago from Udi Manber, an Engineering Vice President in Google's Search Quality team. Udi Manber wrote one of the standard textbooks on algorithms (I can't honestly say that I've read it myself!) and before joining Google was the Chief Scientist at Yahoo! and then the Chief Algorithms Officer at Amazon.
It's an interesting post as he gives away a lot of detail about the processes Google goes to in terms of safeguarding search quality. And he also promises that this is the start of a process of more openness in this area.
I think that this is an important step forward. Given the importance of search results to many different parts of online marketing, it doesn't seem right that the entire process should be shrouded in mystery, or revealed only in the veilled mutterings of the high priests of natural search agencies.
Anyway, whilst I'm being nice about Google, I loved the logo they produced for Charles Rennie Mackintosh's birthday on the 7th June. Since this was a Saturday, many people will have missed it, so here it is again - lovely work!
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As I have previously blogged, that could threaten the surprisingly high proportion of branded search traffic through search engines which represents repeat visits to sites - almost 37% of all search traffic according to research last year from Atlas.
But Atlas also reports that 22% of traffic via search engines is first-time visits to sites from branded searches - people searching for 'dell' or 'dell.com'. I think it would be quite simple to offer a version of Firefox with a database of brands and URLs pre-populated into its SQL Lite database.
That way, a search for 'tesco insurance' would create a dropdown like this...
I populated the database in this instance by browsing through to the relevant sites.
I'd say that this is easier for the user than bothering to do a search for the brand - and is clearly better for the brands who would no longer need to pay a handful of pence to Google for each click on a trademarked search term.
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Currently in beta, Firefox 3 has introduced some fab new technology to the browser location bar.
Users can perform a keyword search through their entire web history from within the location bar. This makes for a fast and convenient way to navigate back to pages that have previously been visited.
The technology goes way beyond auto-complete by offering a keyword search of URLs, page titles and tags from previously visited pages. Results are ordered by 'frecency' - a combination of how recently and frequently you have visited a page (with an adaptive learning algorithm further tuning results for relevancy).
For example, let's say that you have been browsing through Tesco Direct and found a Whirlpool washing machine that you like.
You decide to check back with your partner before making the purchase.
Autocomplete on the URL isn't too helpful... you'd have to know that the URL http://direct.tesco.com/q/R.200-9621.aspx related to your chosen washing machine.
But type 'Tesco Whirlpool' into the browser and Firefox locates the page you want...
Normally this is the kind of heavy-lifting job that people would have taken to a search engine.
Last year, Atlas published an analysis on 250,000 clicks on paid search ads on Google Adwords, Yahoo! and MSN. The report, 'Paying for Navigational Search', showed that 36.9% of clicks were searches on brand terms by repeat visitors to a website.
The big brands moaning about Google's relaxation of brand protection rules in the UK should be praying that Firefox 3 really takes off - the potential is here for companies to get chunks of relevant traffic direct from the browser, just as nature intended!
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