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Google Starts Auto Stemming Searches

Since the most recent Google Dance started around Nov. 15, this update of the Google database nicknamed Florida has created quite a stir in the ecommerce Webmaster community. The major complaint has been the significant change in the ranking of results and many pages no longer show up in the top of the search engine results. For those with time, read the thousands of postings about it in the Update Florida discussions at WebmasterWorld.

Certainly, the ranking changes will also have an impact on searchers, but even more significant to me is the experimentation that Google is now doing with automatic stemming. Discovered first in the Cre8asiteforums, Google changed its Basic Help page to announce that it is now using stemming.

Basically, Google now takes search terms and looks for grammatical variants of SOME of them. Unfortunately, Google does not make it clear which terms it stems and which it does not. I found no plural or singular variants but did find some examples of verb variants. For example, a search on drink water matches pages with 'drinking' and 'water' while run linux also finds 'running.'

You may be able to identify when it happens by looking for the highlighted terms in the search results, but it is not always obvious when this occurs especially if the hits do not rank high enough to appear on the first page. The stemming does not seem to occur on single word searches or on phrase searches (yet another reason to use quotes for phrase searching whenever possible).

Does this help relevance? Maybe for some searches and searchers, but for precision searching it can also be frustrating. Plus, the searcher is not given the choice of when to use it and when to turn it off. MSN Search has offered a stemming check box on its advanced search page for years. Since Google does not say when they will turn on the stemming and when they do not, they could at least give searchers the choice of when to use it (at least for those of us that use features like the preferences and advanced search options).

Overture sales, advertisers up

Overture Services on Wednesday reported better-than-expected second-quarter revenue as it signed up more advertisers willing to pay for placement in search results.

The commercial search company reported second-quarter net income of $7.6 million, or 12 cents per share, on revenue of $265.3 million. That compares to net income of $17.5 million, or 29 cents per share, on revenue of $152.5 million during the same period of 2002. Analysts had expected the company to earn 6 cents in the second quarter, according to a survey by First Call, which tracks analyst forecasts.

Overture attributed the sales boost to a larger number of "paid introductions"--or the number of times Web surfers clicked on an advertiser's ad--and a rise in the average price advertisers paid for those introductions. The company has also focused on expanding internationally and developing new services for advertisers.

"Our second-quarter results provide clear evidence that we continue to drive the core business while rapidly transforming Overture from a one-product company to a multi-product enterprise operating successfully on a global scale," Overture Chief Ted Meisel said in a statement.

The earnings announcement comes nearly a week after Yahoo said that it will buy the company for about $1.63 billion. With the acquisition, Yahoo will shift from being one of Overture’s biggest portal and search distribution partners to becoming a major player in search-related advertising. Yahoo has reported that Overture provides roughly 19 percent of its revenue.

Overture said its advertisers' links were clicked on 646 million times in the second quarter, compared to 515 million in the comparable period a year ago. In addition, advertisers paid the company an average of 40 cents for each paid introduction during that time, up from 30 cents a year ago and 37 cents in the first quarter of 2003.

The company also said it added 7,000 advertisers in the second quarter, for a total of 95,000. That's up 42 percent from the same period last year and up 8 percent from the first quarter.

Overture has $113 million in unrestricted cash and liquid investments, including cash payments made to complete acquisitions of the Web search unit of Fast Search & Transfer and AltaVista.

Source: Business Week

Top 100 Web Sites Invisible to Search Engines

Report finds Top 100 NZ company websites are a waste of money. Shock New Zealand survey reveals how firms are 'sabotaging' their own ability to be found on the Internet.

Christchurch, 23-Jul-03 - Respected search optimisation company Web Rank has today launched a study on the search engine compatibility of the websites of the country's leading organisations. The study reveals that every website belonging to New Zealand's Top 100 businesses contains significant design flaws that make it harder for them to be found in search engines, thereby negatively impacting the potential revenue of the organisation.

"In designing their sites as they have done, nearly all of New Zealand's top performing companies are sabotaging their own ability to be found by their target market(s)," says Director Kalena Jordan. Most Internet users rely on search engines to find product and service providers. Unless they know the exact website address (URL) or search by the company or brand name, they will try to find what they are looking for by using keywords that describe a product or service's features, benefits or attributes.

Web Rank's extensive analysis, which is available at www.webrank.biz/Top100NZ.htm, reveals where major New Zealand corporations have overlooked search engine visibility in designing their websites. The report also advises how these websites can be improved to help potential customers find their sites easier and increase business generated online. Amongst the many findings, the report revealed that:

Every top 100 Kiwi company website had defects that hindered their ability to be found in search engines. A quarter could not be found for their chosen search terms in either US or New Zealand search engines. 34% are not listed in popular New Zealand search engines. Almost a third are not listed in popular US search engines, and one-in-eight use techniques that could get their site penalised on search engines for "spamming."

The authors say it is amazing that firms may spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on website design and related marketing, but that they often overlook search engine compatibility. "What is the point of paying so much money for a web site that will never be found?" asks Ms Jordan.

Why is search engine optimisation important? Search engine compatibility is loosely defined as employing design elements that help search engines index a website and "understand" it's relevance to a search query. To make a site more compatible with search engines Web Rank, and other Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) experts correct design flaws and implement techniques to ensure a website attracts highly relevant, targeted traffic via those engines.

"Search engine optimisation is the technique of attaining a higher ranking in search engines and directories for relevant search queries, via changes to a site to make it more search engine compatible," explains Ms Jordan. UK studies by Forrester Research show that four-fifths of people find websites by using search engines. According to Australasian market research firm, RedSheriff, four of the 20 most popular New Zealand websites are search engines. In addition, 55% of online purchases in the US are made on websites found through search listings.

How to improve the search-ability of a website
Every effective website should include within the HTML code for each page a TITLE Tag, a META Description Tag, a META Keywords Tag and text-based content. Search engines rely on this information to determine how relevant a website is to any given search query. These elements are often overlooked by webmasters, or are too short and generic to be effectively picked up by many search engines in connection to a search query. Search engine optimisation of a website involves changing the code to include more keywords and phrases that relate to the products and services offered by the business, as well as changes to the site's structural design to ensure it can be indexed and matched to relevant searches.

Web Rank's report "Search Engine Compatibility and the Top 100 New Zealand Company Web Sites" offers businesses comprehensive suggestions on how to improve the search-ability of their website. Using case examples, Web Rank highlights typical mistakes and advises on how these could be improved. The report considers how to use graphics, correct tagging, the right keywords in text, how important links from other sites can be and how firms can avoid being penalised in the search rankings from the inadvertent use of "spam" techniques.

"By ignoring the most important method used by people browsing the Internet, these companies are sacrificing an enormous opportunity to attract more traffic to their websites," says Ms Jordan. "Websites are often a very large expense for these companies, ranging from a few thousand to hundreds of thousands of dollars. To invest such a massive amount of time, money and effort into an online presence and not ensuring it can be found is like constructing a storefront without any doors."

She continues, "It is obvious from the findings of this study that New Zealand companies need to invest in search engine optimisation services to ensure their sites are more search engine compatible and therefore visible to their target markets."

Source: High Search Engine Ranking

Google boosts headline search

Visitors to Google's news-search site can now look up stories by date, location, exact phrases or publication.

Google on Monday unveiled refinements to technology for searching daily news, in its latest effort to become the Web's hub for headlines. Google's new service, called Advanced News Search, allows visitors to scour headlines by date, location, exact phrases or publication. People can use it retrieve articles from more than 4,500 news outlets publishing on the Web.

Advanced News Search adds to the company's ever-expanding set of Web navigation tools and improves on its specialty index, Google News, which was introduced last autumn. For example, Google released a new browser toolbar last month that lets people block pop-up ads and easily update their blogs as they surf the Web. For its part, Google News has proved immensely popular, with roughly 2.5 million unique visitors in June, according to Nielsen-NetRatings.

Advanced News Search lets visitors search for headlines using several parameters. Among other features, people can locate stories that contain an exact phrase, within the Unites States or abroad, or written by a specific publisher such as The New York Times. For now, it only allows people to search by date from June and July 2003.

Still, Google's news update follows advancements at rival search sites. AltaVista, for example, allows visitors to search by region, time frame and publication. In addition, specialty sites such as NewsNow search more than 10,000 news sources, in comparison to Google's 4,500.

Source: ZD Net UK News

Yahoo, AC Nielsen measure retail sales

Yahoo on Monday introduced a specialty research service that allows retailers to track offline sales spurred by online ad campaigns, the Web portal's latest invention to woo advertisers.

The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Net giant partnered with AC Nielsen, one of the United States' biggest media measurement companies, to introduce Consumer Direct, a market research tool. The service taps a panel of Yahoo Web surfers to divulge how effectively online advertising from companies such as Kraft Foods and Unilever drives people to buy in stores.

Consumer packaged goods companies "care about how much they sell (offline), but there's been a question in their minds about how effective their online programs are," said Robert Tomei, senior vice president at VNU, the parent company of ACNielsen. "This program allows them to put the two together.

"This is the first (service) in the industry that really links offline purchase behavior to online site visitation."

Yahoo's research fits into a broader industry offensive to prove the value of Web advertising, a still-hobbled industry after the dot-com fallout. Trade groups including the Interactive Advertising Bureau and Online Publishers Association have organized research on the viability of the medium in the last year. In addition, Net publishers have adopted technology that helps them evaluate the backgrounds and preferences of site visitors to better sell ads.

Yahoo itself employs a research team and technology underpinnings to pinpoint prime audiences of interest for advertisers. By partnering with Schaumburg, Ill.-based ACNielsen, the Web giant will be able to tie retail sales back to types of people that saw its online ads, thereby helping marketers find their best target markets.

Consumer Direct, the first major partnership between Yahoo and ACNielsen, will track the Web surfing habits of 15,000 to 17,000 Yahoo users. These people also are part of ACNielsen's Homescan program, in which they scan the products they buy in stores. ACNielsen will tie both activities together to come up with its research. The company will use the data to determine the return on investment for an online ad campaign, including finding its effect on retail sales and brand loyalty.

Article by Stefanie Olsen
Source: C-Net News

Submitting your website to DMOZ

Today more than ever, in the field of search engine optimization (SEO), there is a very important step that needs to be taken in order to help a website's visibility in the major search engines. That important step is to submit it to DMOZ, or sometimes called the Open Directory Project or ODP.

DMOZ provides a lot of search results for a good percentage of the most important search engines and directories, including Google. First, DMOZ is NOT a robot-driven crawler but rather a large, human-edited directory of the Web. For any submission to be successful, a few important points need to be taken ahead of time:

Step A)
Your full contact information needs to be there. Make certain that your full contact information is easily accessible, preferably with the help of a clearly identified contact button. An e-mail address is certainly not enough. Many ODP editors will tell you if they don't see a real physical or postal address or telephone number, then that website in its particular category is usually tossed away and probably will never make it inside the directory.

Most importantly, if you are wishing to sell anything, you need to build credibility and honesty with your clients. In such a case, giving proper and full contact information on the site is imperative.

Step B)
Do not attempt to SPAM the directory. You should only submit your site once and forget it for at least two to three months. According to DMOZ rules and regulations, you are only allowed to submit to one category. However, in certain isolated cases and if your website happens to be a very large one and offers lots of information, you may be able to submit a second section of it to a different category. As a rule of thumb, it usually takes time for most submissions to be processed.

This is especially true of categories where there are many daily submissions. It is not recommended to submit a website more than once, as it could end up on the lower bottom of the large list of sites to be reviewed and approved, since they are processed according to their submissions dates.

Step C)
Your website needs original and good content. During the course of your work, if you are only trying to publish an assortment of affiliate links or if your site happens to be a "mirror-site" of other websites that are plentiful on the Internet, then you are increasing your chances of your submission being rejected.

If in fact you really have to deal with affiliate products or services, we recommend that you add lots of new content, perhaps a product review category, an industry news section or any other additional information that will tell the DMOZ editors that your site has something original to offer and has lots of great content that will be of good use to their users.

Step D)
Double-check your website for spelling errors or typos. As much as the DMOZ editors are looking for great content, all are only human and will probably be irritated by some typos or spelling mistakes. Our experience with the ODP tells us that professionally written and carefully built websites with great content, usually always make it into the directory eventually.

Step E)
Keep good records of your submission to DMOZ. We strongly recommend in keeping a complete record of the date a website was submitted to the Open Directory Project and to which particular category it was submitted to. If the category you want to submit to has an editor, you should always make a note of who that editor is. Such information would be useful if later you need to inquire about the status of your submission.

Some of you might ask: "How long does it take to get listed?" Recently, we had one site listed within three weeks of submission and, on other less fortunate occasions, we waited over six months for other sites. It is extremely hard to predict anything.

Step F)
Select the proper category for any submission. In Google or Alta-Vista, when people submit a URL to such robotic search engines, there really is not much to think about, since their crawlers or "spiders" will visit and index your site automatically, normally over a rather short period of time. However, when submitting to a directory such as DMOZ, a critical part of that submission process is choosing the right category. One good thing that is recommended is to go online and look where other websites similar to yours have been placed in the directory.

When you get to the category that you think is best, press the "add URL" button. In other categories, sometimes the DMOZ editors might put a note mentioning certain restrictions to that category. It is recommended that these notes be read carefully and that you don't submit to these restricted categories if your site doesn't meet the parameters mentioned.

Step G)
Always contact DMOZ through the proper channels. Finally, a word of caution: if the category where you want to submit does have an editor, it will usually be written at the bottom of the page and you normally should be able to send that editor a message. There is another way to contact the DMOZ editors through their online forum.

Once there, you can ask about the status of your submission, but you must always give them the category and submission date of your last attempt. Additionally, you can always ask a few questions about general DMOZ procedures and rules.

Try your best to meet their rules and regulations and normally your site should eventually be included in their directory.

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Article written by Serge Thibodeau,
President & CEO,
Rank for $ales
Copyright (c) Serge Thibodeau 2003

Nine steps to better marketing for the engines

If you need to write for the search engines and your site visitors too, the following nine tips can be of good help. Always remember that all search engines are like humans: they want good relevant content that will help everybody in the end.

Step No. 1:
First, start by writing attention-grabbing tag lines, written using H1 or H2 tags. This will help you a lot with the search engines. Google gives additional importance to title tags in bold H1 or H2 tags. Additionally, most people are overwhelmed with information from just about everywhere they look, so they "scan read", particularly on the Web.

Always remember that if your headline doesn't get their focus and attention, everything else you write may go unread. Your title and headline must highlight the features and benefits of whatever product or service you are trying to sell on that particular page.

Step No. 2:
Choose just one and unique benefit of your product or service that you wish to underscore above everything else. This is your basic selling mission. In order to help you make the best choice of what that unique benefit should be, you should ask yourself what particular benefit makes your product or service different from your competition.

What truly makes it better or unique? Is it of better quality? Is it easier to purchase? Is it less expensive than competing products? Does it have a longer warranty? What value-added features or benefits does it incorporate?

Step No. 3:
Always remember that testimonials sell. People want to hear from other users our customers that are already using your product or service. Honest, serious testimonials from real humans will help increase your sales, particularly on the Internet where building good credibility is a daunting task.

If you would like additional credibility, ask permission to your testimonial clients if you could include their contact information along with their experience in using your product or service. That last step should really convince your visitors to buy.

Step No. 4:
On your first paragraph, start with your strongest selling features and benefits. The first few paragraphs are particularly important, not just for your users but also for the search engines. When Google spiders a web page, it tends to read the first two paragraphs more and will usually give them increased importance than the rest of the page. Write these paragraphs to initiate a strong desire for your product or service by briefly describing the major features and benefits it will deliver to your client. Don't make the mistake of going into too much detail up front.

You will have plenty of time for explaining these benefits in more detail later. Get your "main artillery" out early if you truly want to succeed.

Step No. 5:
You should write a complete list of all the features and benefits of your product or service, then you should translate each one of them into a direct benefit for the customer, one that he or she will really be able to relate to. One way to effectively accomplish this is to look at each feature, one by one, and then ask yourself: "So what?" Put yourself in your customer's shoes: Why should you care about this feature or benefit? You should ask yourself: "What's in it for me?"

For example, just saying that your product is fast, an underlying feature in itself, you should tell your customer that it will provide them with more free time, hence, a real benefit they can all relate to. You could effectively empower that mental image by putting a picture on that page of people enjoying themselves, reading a book, going to the movies, relaxing or whatever.

Step No. 6:
Always write marketing text and copy that truly underlines the real benefits in a way that makes a strong emotional connection. For example, if your company is trying to sell auto insurance, instead of using sentences such as: "Our company is one of the oldest in the industry", try using: "Avoid the financial risk and uncertainty of insufficient collision coverage, insure your car with us".

Step No. 7:
Try to carefully detect and identify who it is you're writing for and why... What would be the best "tone" to convey, ie: serious or light hearted? Will there be any level of technical terms discussed or more detailed technical topics that will be written? If so, will your audience be able to understand it? What if their level of knowledge is only basic? You should always adapt the language used to your intended audience.

If there are technical terms or topics on your website, it might be a good idea to create a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) or a Glossary of Technical Terms Used.

Step No. 8:
You should always write with as much a natural style as you possibly can. However, never try to be over friendly or pretentious! Simply just write your text the way you would say it if you would be in front of your client or prospect.

Step No. 9:
Lastly but not least, always end your page or section with a clear call to action, one that will also give them perhaps a sense of urgency, such as: "Click here to order now" or "Call us toll free to reserve now". Some site owners and webmasters even include calls to action earlier in the page and get some very good conversion results too. Do whatever you think is appropriate. Your ultimate goal here is to have your prospect order or buy your product or service.

Conclusion
In retrospect, and by reading these nine tips, it would appear to some people that good and efficient website marketing techniques involve "manipulating" in a certain way the emotions of your visitors. Well, to a certain degree, we think it does too, but always remember that selling is a basic form of emotional control that implicates convincing your prospect that they really have to buy your product or service, as it will truly make their life better and that they want to do it now!

Could this be looked at as unethical? Well, it could be, depending on where exactly you draw the line. If you look at step nine, we said that your sales message could perhaps include a sense of urgency. Some would tell you that an often-used practice on the Internet is to include a statement such as: "This offer closes today".

However, most people will also tell you that if you go back to the site the following day, week or month though, that same offer will usually still be available! For most people, being tricked by such a statement does not give much confidence, now does it?

Article written by Serge Thibodeau,
President & CEO,
Rank for $ales
Copyright (c) Serge Thibodeau 2003

Optimising for Inktomi

Everyone is aware that Inktomi is soon likely to grow in importance due to it having been being bought recently by Yahoo! Although no firm date has been given as to when Inktomi results will be integrated in to Yahoo's search listings, it is pretty much accepted that the time is drawing close.

In addition, MSN are likely (despite the recent launch of their own MSNBOT spider) to be at least 18 months away from being in a position to launch their own search engine's results, which seems to tie-in to the surprise announcement earlier this year of a lengthy extension to MSN's contract with Inktomi. Over the past few weeks, Inktomi has also been gaining new partners - most notable being the prestigious contract for the supply of results to the BBC web site (www.bbc.co.uk). Although the future now looks quite bright for Inktomi, they have spent the last few years fighting off (and losing to) the ever growing Star of Search, Google. People tend to forget that in 2000 (a mere 3 years ago), Inktomi seemed to rule the roost in terms of search. Their results were used by many leading search destinations, from AOL to Yahoo! For a webmaster, if you couldn't get listed on Inktomi - you were condemned to almost total invisibility on the web.

Most SEOs had to cut their teeth on preparing client sites for Inktomi's spiders (Slurp - in its' various forms), as well as those of AltaVista (Scooter) and other engines. Googlebot (Google's spider) was an interesting new spider and Google a search engine with "potential" - but was largely ignored for day to day SEO purposes. Now the situation is reversed! The majority of webmasters are focussed on optimisation for Google and many are bemoaning the fact that optimisation for Google doesn't seem to work on Inktomi (or other engines).

Fortunately, those of us who knew how to design pages for Inktomi had learnt early on, that those pages worked very well for Google (and other engines) provided the off-page factors that Google use in their algorithm were taken in to account. In all my years of doing search engine optimisation across the widest spectrum of site themes imaginable, I have never had to prepare a different page for Google (or any other engine) to the one I prepared for Inktomi first. This rather cuts across the argument put by Ammon Johns in a recent article (sorry, Ammon) - but is my experience after the production of many thousands of pages and hundreds of sites.

So, people have asked me, why optimise for Inktomi first? Why not chase the ultimate goal of Google before turning to the others? The simple answer is PFI. By optimising a page for Inktomi and using PFI, I can adjust the page to get a decent ranking on Inktomi within a matter of days. I then know that provided I can get decent links to the site on which that page resides (Yahoo, DMOZ, and Joeant etc.) - I can be fairly certain that I am going to get a first page listing on Google without having to adjust anything for Googlebot! The rankings on Inktomi give an indication of the ultimate positions on other engines. This is far better than having to wait weeks or months to see what the results are going to be like on Google first. Due to this, Inktomi has been my "secret weapon" for SEO for all the years that people have been ignoring it! Like any SEO procedure, optimising for Inktomi is not rocket-science. Inktomi looks for on-page content laid out in a manner which allows it to understand the page content comprehensively. The facts laid out below are "back-to-basics" SEO, but they work - pretty much every time! A page should consist of:

a) Title Tag - I normally use around 10 words incorporating as many keyword variants for that page as I can, while making it a compelling title. An example for a car hire site could be: "Car Hire Las Vegas, Rental Cars from Auto Rentals Specialists". The above is focussed on all forms of ways that someone is going to search for looking for car rentals Las Vegas and should appear for: Car hire las vegas, rental cars las vegas, auto rentals las vegas, hire cars las vegas etc., etc.

b) Meta Description Tag - I use around 15-20 words re-emphasising the keywords used in the title tag. Example: Great rates on car hire in Las Vegas. Check our rental cars and choose your auto rentals from the specialists at MMT Rental!

c) Meta Keyword Tag - Inktomi still recognises this - just! If in doubt, leave it out - but I (usually as the last thing I do) add the tag for the core phrases I want the page to rank for. Example: Car hire las vegas, rental cars las vegas,auto rentals las vegas,hire cars las vegas.

Note the use of commas and no spaces after the commas. I was always a strong proponent of not using commas in a keyword meta tag - but Inktomi guidelines state this is the way to do it - so who am I to disagree!

Now we move on to the visible body text. I usually design a page so that there is a visible page heading appearing close to the top of the HTML in an H3 Tag. This is a repeat of my Title Tag. Example: H3: Car Hire Las Vegas, Rental Cars from Auto Rentals Specialists H3.

The first sentence of the first paragraph is an edited repeat of my description in Bold. Example: Bold: We have great rates on car hire in Las Vegas. Use the information below to check our rental cars and choose the auto rentals for you from the specialists at MMT Rental!

Then the page should have around 200 words of text describing your services. If you are mentioning models e.g. car types, I put these in list elements (li), with a possible link to the appropriate site section relating to descriptions of the model. This would re-emphasis that the site was about a specific type of car hire in a specific location with words in the list element getting a boost along with the use of the phrase in anchor text.

All images on the page should use alt tags with a single phrase in the tag e.g. the first image may have "car hire las vegas", the second "hire cars las vegas" etc. At the end of the text, I add a final sentence in bold which is a rehash of the first sentence I wrote at the beginning of the body text.

The page is done - well almost! Make sure that the page is user friendly and makes sense. It is pointless obsessing about the absolutely perfect page if it becomes meaningless to the surfer in the meantime! The idea is to incorporate the rules of optimisation in to the overall design of the site. Make sure the page is linked to by the appropriate index page.

Do not be tempted to create doorway pages using garbage content as "filler" around your key phrases. It won't work in the long term for two reasons: Inktomi has the most sophisticated grammatical parser I have seen for detecting auto-generated content. I know, years ago I tested ways to get around it - and couldn't.

Inktomi checks for incoming links -even on PFI pages. If a page is deemed to be an orphaned doorway page with no incoming links, it will drop like a stone! My next step is to put the page in to PFI and 48 hours later it should appear on sites like MSN. 9 out of 10 times - there it is, on the first page of the search results. If it isn't, I adjust slightly and wait another 48 hours. When satisfied, I leave it alone.

I then concentrate on ensuring the site I am working on gains the off-page factors necessary to help it in other SEs like Google. Submissions are made (if the site is not already included) to Yahoo, ODP and other directories including those which are specific to the industry being targeted. I do not look for "un-natural" links like guest books or link farms. I never, never ever crosslink - tempting as it may be! I also don't submit to Google. In fact I haven't used the Google submit button for years. The site will be found (provided you are successful with your directory submission) by all the major crawlers - and in 6-8 weeks time will start to appear on other SEs, with the full strength of the off-page factors kicking in about a month after that.

I have been successfully using this method for the past 3 years and it has worked consistently. There should be no surprises really, it is just laying out content in a manner which search engines like. It is just that on Inktomi, you can test the results of your efforts a little quicker. Try it - it should work for you to!

Article by Barry Lloyd
Source: Search Engine Watch

Overture, HP Strengthen Ties

Overture Services has added an additional year to its contract to provide paid placement search results on Hewlett-Packard notebooks and PCs shipped to U.S. customers. Financial terms were not disclosed.

The company, which is being acquired by Internet portal giant Yahoo! (Quote, Company Info) for $1.6 billion, also expanded the scope of the deal to include computers sold in Canada. Those listings will begin in late summer. Overture senior vice president Bill Demas said, "This agreement underscores Overture's commitment to building deeper, more strategic relationships with existing partners in new and exciting distribution channels."

The previous U.S. agreement was also a one-year deal, Overture spokesman Al Duncan said. Overture listings are generated from 88,000 advertisers who bid for placement on keywords relevant to their business. The company screens the listings and distributes them to its partners -- Yahoo!, MSN, CNN, and Lycos.

HP users can access the pages through a "Search the Internet" keyboard button or a "Search the Web" box on the default homepage of HP Pavilion PCs. Also, users may access Overture results via the search icon on their Web browser toolbar. HP, which boosted its presence in the PC market with the purchase of Compaq Computer, shipped 2.29 million machines in the United States during the second quarter, according to preliminary research released today by IDC.

The strong quarter gave the company a 16.2 percent U.S. market share, second only to Dell, which holds 17.8 percent. Figures for Canada are not yet available, an IDC spokesman said. In addition to the United States and Canada, Overture operates commercial search networks in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Japan and South Korea.

A spokesman for Palo Alto, Calif.-based HP could not be reached to comment on whether the company's relationship with Overture might be expanded to other countries. Additional distribution deals could significantly boost the potential viewers of Overture's paid placement links. Overture's Duncan declined comment on possible future expansion of the deal outside of North America.

Source: Silicon Valley Internet.com

Shopping Search Engines Starting To Click

In the early days of the supposed dot-com revolution, online retailers promised to save you a trip to the mall. Now a crop of new services promises to save you a trip to even those Web sites.

In what has become another lucrative niche on the Web, price-comparison shopping sites, also known as shopping-search sites, are simplifying life for bargain hunters — and making a tidy profit in the process. "We're Consumer Reports and the Yellow Pages on steroids," said Iggy Sanlo, chief revenue officer for privately held DealTime.com Ltd. It's the No. 1 shopping-search site, with 6% of the market in Web site visits, says researcher Hitwise.com.

"Shopping search is the nexus of search and e-commerce," said Sanlo. Buoyed by the key holiday season, it was profitable in the second half of 2002. DealTime, Pricegrabber.com and MySimon are among shopping-comparison services that say they're profitable. And while the all-important holiday shopping season is six months away, many merchants are already factoring these sites into their retail plans.

Think of it as shopping in reverse. Instead of clicking through a morass of retail Web sites, online merchants come to the consumer. The shopper types in what he's looking for, and gets a list of vendors. The sites often compute sales tax and shipping prices, and show how other shoppers rated the product. From there, the user picks one and is taken to the checkout area of the seller's site, which pays a click-through referral fee. Some sellers pay extra to be listed higher as a "featured merchant."

Such sites have been around for years. But consumers, who don't often have personal shoppers offline, are only starting to get used to the idea of virtual aides for online buying.

Shopping-search sites are often lumped into the $1.4 billion paid-search market with sites such as Google, so it's hard to measure their growth. But according to researcher I.think Inc., nearly 60% of online shoppers start at so-called aggregators — which include shopping-search sites, portals and big retailers like Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) — rather than individual stores. And half of those shoppers use search engines or shopping-search sites. The appeal to consumers is clear. But search sites are also a marketing deal for merchants.

According to a May study by Forrester Research, shopping-search sites have become the Web's fastest growing marketing tool, as measured by the number of merchants using them. Twenty-eight percent of sellers use them, and 86% found them to be very effective. That beats banner and pop-up ads, e-mail promotions and deals with shopping portals. Smaller merchants can go head-to-head against giant rivals without the huge marketing budget of a national brand. And since buyers can do all their product and merchant research on the site, most who click through one of the listed prices are ready to buy.

"We're winnowing out the browsers," Sanlo said. "We only send the shoppers." Most of those shoppers come for the bargains, analysts say. The sites make plain which merchants offer the best deal and can alert users when an object of desire falls within reach.

That could squeeze online retailers' already tight margins. "The classic argument about the Internet is that improved transparency drives down price," said Matthew Berk, an analyst with Jupiter Research. "The more visibility you have into pricing, and the easier it is — literally, in a single click — to go to one merchant vs. another, the more price is a consideration."

Price isn't the only issue. Kamran Pourzanjani, president of Pricegrabber.com, says that despite the site's name, 70% of the site's users don't click on the lowest price. Most look at the seller's feedback from other users and often favor better-known vendors. "People don't have a problem paying a little more for a recognized name or highly rated vendor," he said. That's especially true of the site's business users, who make up 55% of Pricegrabber's audience. They use the site to cut costs, but can't afford to deal with late shipments or lousy service. DealTime kicks off merchants who don't maintain ratings of two stars (of a possible five), and Pricegrabber.com has booted dishonest vendors.

These, by no accident, are often sellers with the lowest price. Pourzanjani won't detail sales or earnings for the privately held firm, but says it's profitable and is growing more so. Despite starting with a small pool of angel investment, it's already bringing in enough to pour money back into better technology, advertising and more staff. Still, comparison-shopping sites face e-tail giants such as Amazon.com, which also offer a range of products through a bevy of outside vendors, plus better name recognition and marketing muscle.

Alternative To Amazon, EBay
"Amazon and eBay are still larger than any of the aggregators," said Nielsen/NetRatings analyst Lisa Strand. "And when people think of online shopping, often eBay and Amazon are the first names that come to mind." Another challenge is e-commerce portals, such as Yahoo's Inc. (YHOO) shopping site. Like DealTime and Pricegrabber, these multistorefront virtual malls offer quick product searches and, in some cases, vendor comparisons.

Big retailers, shopping portals and shopping-search sites may not seem to be direct rivals at first, Strand admits. They appeal to different types of shoppers and have distinct business models. They don't even act like competitors. Pricegrabber advertises on Google, for instance, and counts eBay as a featured vendor.

But as time goes on, they're copying many of each other's features and vying for the same audience. Standing out will become even more important, Strand says. She won't have to convince CNet Networks Inc. (CNET)-owned MySimon, ranked by Hitwise as the No. 6 shopping-search site.

MySimon aims to stand out as a "warm and familiar environment," said Tom Jones, CNet's senior vice president for shopping services. The effort includes the friendly face of its namesake mascot, Simon, and reviews and other content from CNet's other sites. That's helped it, more than any other site, attract women shoppers, a prized retail constituency. This month it's beefing up its technology by adding soon-to-be-announced features. It also plans to promote the site more heavily through its network of news and review sites.

CNet also runs comparison-shop site Shopping.com, targeted to a different, more technical audience. The firm doesn't break out financials for its units, but officials say MySimon is profitable. General-purpose search engines are dipping their toes in the market, too. Google is tweaking Froogle, a product-centered version of its search engine. It lets users search printed mail-order catalogs scanned and indexed by its system.

But Jupiter's Berk doesn't see search engines taking the place of shopping sites soon. What makes them good for searches — finding a needle in a haystack — makes them ill-suited for broad product and vendor comparisons. New entrants, however, could pose a bigger problem. It doesn't take much money to get a shopping-search site up and running, which could prove a big headache for firms that have spent millions to join the big leagues.

Many have already turned to print and online ads to build their brands. Though setting up a Web site is easy, gaining critical mass is the real challenge. As DealTime's Sanlo points out, the market is a virtual "pet cemetery" of failed brands, including RUSure and Productopia. "If it were that easy, AOL, MSN, AltaVista, EarthLink, ATT, Excite and iWon wouldn't outsource their shopping searches," he said.

Source: Investors.com

Google and Switchboard Strike AdSense Deal

Switchboard To Integrate Relevant Content-Targeted Advertising Into Local Search With Google AdSense.

Switchboard Incorporated, an online yellow pages portal, today announced an agreement with Google, developer of the largest performance-based search advertising program, that integrates content-targeted advertisements through the Google AdSense program into the Switchboard Yellow Pages.

As one of the pioneers of local search, Switchboard provides a highly optimized platform for integrating content-targeted advertising with local content. In addition, Switchboard will share in the revenue generated when their users click on Google advertisements. Using Switchboard’s enhanced merchant information - - rich data about a businesses’ product and service offerings - - Google will serve relevant content-targeted advertisements on yellow pages results and a variety of other pages throughout the popular online directory.

The alliance will provide Google’s advertisers with broad exposure to Switchboard’s more than 5 million unique online users executing local searches each month. “Content-targeted advertising has been typically targeted at editorial and informational content. With Google AdSense, we are moving content-targeted advertising to a new level of performance and relevance, because Switchboard’s users are ready-to-buy," said Dean Polnerow, president and founder of Switchboard Incorporated.

“Our extensive local merchant content and the local orientation of our users’ searches provides Google with a unique opportunity to target content-targeted advertising on our local business search results pages." "Switchboard’s extensive local content enables Google’s advertisers to reach a very targeted audience through relevant yellow pages results," said Omid Kordestani, senior vice president of Worldwide Sales and Field Operations for Google. “By adding Switchboard to our growing network of AdSense website publishers, we continue to validate the effectiveness and importance of content-targeted advertising as a medium to reach qualified customers.”

Google's other high profile AdSense partners include Blogger, AOL, Ask Jeeves, Earthlink, Amazon.com, and BurstMedia.

Source: WebAdvantage.net

The scope of a search engine's patent portfolio

Dominance in Web search may be determined by the scope of a company's patent portfolio, rather than its ability to shuttle people to Internet sites.

At least, Yahoo Chief Executive Terry Semel seems to think so. With the Web portal's proposed $1.63 billion buyout of commercial search specialist Overture Services on Monday, Yahoo would acquire 60-plus patents related to technology and processes for indexing the Web, as well as for pay-per-click and bidding systems to grant sites higher placement in search results.

In his brief comments to investors Monday, Semel highlighted the role intellectual property (IP) played in his decision to buy Overture instead of building a rival system to replace its two-year partner. "We'll add...to our technology assets Overture's impressive intellectual property portfolio of both algorithmic and sponsored search patents," he said. "These are some of the key reasons we have opted to acquire Overture. We believe that the advertising industry is in its earliest days of a great future."

The search market is expected to be reap $4 billion in revenue by 2005, according to researchers. As the industry matures, the competition for a piece of that large pie could lead companies to bulk up their IP legal teams, much like in other industries such as online advertising sales during the dot-com bust. "Yahoo has been giving this issue more weight than others," U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray analyst Safa Rashtchy said.

Overture has already filed two lawsuits against rivals Google and FindWhat, and plans to "vigorously protect its patents," the Pasadena, Calif.-based company said Wednesday. Overture, formerly called GoTo.com, claims the rights to a system and method for Web sites to influence their rankings within search results. The company auctions keywords, giving the top bidders the highest placement in searches that use those terms. Overture's system also uses a pay-for-performance model, under which advertisers pay the bid price only when someone actually clicks on a displayed link.

The business was ridiculed at first, but proved its worth in recent years, eventually attracting America Online, Yahoo and Microsoft's MSN as customers. AOL recently dropped Overture in favor of rival Google. Behind the scenes, Overture has long sought to protect its growing market dominance, having hired a staff of IP experts and aggressively wielded its portfolio of pay-for-performance search patents against rivals.

Overture sued FindWhat.com in February 2002 after FindWhat filed a summary judgment request in a New York federal court in an attempt to fend off any potential infringement charge from Overture. Two months later Overture filed a second lawsuit, charging Google with patent infringement in its pay-for-performance ad system. According to the Google lawsuit, Overture's patent covers 67 separate claims, including exclusive rights to a "system for enabling an advertising Web site promoter using a computer network to update information relating to a search listing within a search-result list generated by an Internet search engine."

Overture CEO Ted Meisel on Monday touched on the growing importance of IP to the company. "We…have been No. 1 based on (our IP), have engaged in some licensing of that," he said, adding that it’s "not at this point material, but I think it's just indicative of the value of the IP in that area." Google declined to comment on the IP issue.

Overture insiders say that when the company bought AltaVista and the Web search assets of Fast Search & Transfer, patents played a big role in the decisions. With respect to AltaVista, Overture owns some of the oldest patents on Web search. When Altavista was part of Digital Equipment Corp., it secured seven patents related to Web crawling technologies, seven on indexing and two on query processing. It has 16 patents pending related to forward-looking search technologies.

The push for patents
Overture and Yahoo aren't alone--all of the key players in search have been amassing patents lately. Earlier this year, Google was granted a patent from the U.S. Patent Office for a method of determining the relevance of Web pages in relation to search queries. Google founder Larry Page patented PageRank, its formula for calculating the importance of Web pages based on the number of other pages linked to it. Google also has three outstanding patent applications.

Meanwhile, Microsoft holds general search-related patents including methods for searching directory listing information, a system for improving search area selection and a third for "concept" searching using a Boolean or keyword search engine. Online retailer Amazon.com also has a patent application that could affect search-related advertising. In March, it updated a patent application for a method of auctioning advertisements that appear on a Web page to the highest bidder.

Business method patents, such as Overture's bid-for-placement system, are common but controversial within the computer industry. A U.S. appeals court significantly expanded the definition of business processes that can be patented in a 1998 decision in State Street Bank v. Signature Financial Group. The ruling opened the floodgates to patent applications from e-commerce companies seeking to protect their services. Amazon.com, Barnes&Noble.com and Expedia are among the major names to become entangled with patent suits, most of which ended in settlements.

Lately the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has been curtailing its grants of various business methods patents because of criticism that the patented ideas were overbroad and obvious. Patent cases are notoriously hard to win. If patents are too broad they can become obsolete and if they're too specific it can be hard to prove infringement.

"No matter what, this industry is growing so large that if someone has a valid patent on a fundamental part of search or paid listings it will have a big impact on the industry," said Phillip Thume, chief operating officer of FindWhat.com. "But only when someone tries to enforce them do you find out if they are valuable." Because of the uncertainty over patent enforceability, companies often seek to secure patents as a defensive measure aimed primarily at preventing rivals from threatening them with infringement suits.

"Having patents on your own technology, business and inventions is invaluable in today's competitive market, even if you're not enforcing your rights directly against others, they become invaluable when you get sued or threatened," said Neil Smith, senior partner at Howard Rice and a specialist in IP litigation. "You can have counter claims for infringement of your own patents, or cross-license with" the plaintiff. "It gives you something to trade or helps you stay out of trouble when you're dealing with companies that are competitors."

But other legal experts said they are worried that advancements in search technology might be stifled due to patent conflicts. "If (search companies) turn around and offensively try to shut down competition then you could see significant lags in innovation and dimishing the quality of people's access to information," said Jason Schultz, staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Story by Stefanie Olsen
Source: C-Net News

Web Giants Seek Fortune In Search Ads

People sneered in 1998 when Web ad pioneer Overture Services Inc. introduced the Web's first all-commercial search engine. The idea of moving advertisers' links higher in search results based on how much each advertiser was willing to pay outraged purists who said paid placement would spoil the search experience.

But in the serendipitous way the Web evolves, the search engine originally known as GoTo.com tweaked its strategy and soon became the Internet equivalent of the Yellow Pages. Its commercial links were presented as enhancements rather than replacements for Web search results, much as Yellow Pages list all businesses in alphabetical order and allow some greater visibility if they pay for special ads.

Rather than marketing itself as a stand-alone Web site, Overture offered its paid listings to big networks on which people already did a lot of searching, such as Microsoft Corp.'s MSN and Yahoo. Thus was born the business that Yahoo said it plans to buy this week for $1.6 billion in cash and stock. The purchase is widely regarded as an effort by Yahoo to gird for competition with Google, the popular search engine that also was born in 1998 and has risen to become the top resource for searching the Internet.

Google last year developed its own advertising system to compete with Overture and began distributing sponsored links to America Online, EarthLink and other Web sites. One clever part of the two systems is that advertisers pay only when users click on their links and visit their Web sites. Another is that advertisers bid against each other for links, setting ad prices in dynamic auctions. The success of the innovation has not been missed by Microsoft. Nearly one-third of the 4 billion Web searches conducted in May were run by Google.com, compared with 25 percent by Yahoo, 19 percent by AOL and 15 percent by MSN. Google's share was only 25 percent as recently as January, according to market researcher ComScore Networks.

Microsoft has announced plans to create its own Web search engine, even as rumors flew that Microsoft was considering making an offer to buy either Google or Overture. Google and Microsoft have been mum on that subject. The jockeying feels so 1999ish, doesn't it? Overture's sponsored search results, after all, are so new that it's hard to explain exactly what the company does. And that, you may recall, was routine in the 1990s, when unproven Internet companies used their price-inflated stock to buy start-ups that were even younger and more unproven. Most investors didn't even understand what the big dot-coms did, much less what the peewees they spent billions to acquire claimed to accomplish.

One difference now is that Yahoo and Overture are profitable and therefore hardly unproven. Yet their pending marriage nonetheless shows how key questions about the Internet media business remain unsettled long after the dot-com bubble burst. It's still not clear, for example, which pieces of the Internet puzzle media networks really need to own, rather than simply "renting" from partners. At one time the hot asset was Internet access -- dial-up lines that propelled AOL to fame. At other times it has been traditional media content -- that stuff that led AOL to its disastrous purchase of Time Warner. These days the asset everyone is scrambling to control -- Web searching -- is the same one that was hot before the Web went commercial. During the dot-com frenzy, sites such as Yahoo that began by organizing directories of Web sites decided it was better to collect content to keep people on their sites longer. Yahoo and rivals paid other companies to display their search results, viewing search as a commodity they didn't need to own.

But after Overture and Google showed how effective ads could be when placed alongside relevant search results, the role of Web searching in Internet commerce seemed bigger. Consider, for example, that researchers at ComScore Networks recently found that people who click on sponsored links in search results are twice as likely to buy something as people who click on unpaid search results after running the same query. ComScore also found that paid search links had four times the click-through rate of unpaid search results for the same queries.

"It shows search represents a viable marketing opportunity that is well suited to the Web," said James M. Lamberti, a ComScore vice president. "It gives marketers an opportunity to communicate with the consumer at the very moment they express an interest or a need." Google and Overture have expanded their sponsored-link systems into areas besides search, attempting to show relevant ads based on what kind of Web page someone is viewing, such as sports scores, stock quotes or news about Chinese politics. That strategy was originally attempted by several big Internet ad networks that delivered banner ads to thousands of Web sites in the 1990s; most died when the stock market crashed.

Safa Rashtchy, an analyst with US Bancorp Piper Jaffray, noted that both Microsoft and AOL, at least for now, have fallen far behind Yahoo and Google in the race to exploit the value of Web search to Internet commerce. "Google and Yahoo are creating a duopoly in Web search and going at it full force," Rashtchy said.

What a turnaround from just three years ago, when AOL was still king of Internet advertising, Microsoft was its key rival, Yahoo was perceived as an Internet lightweight and almost no one had heard of Google. But on the Internet, change regularly rolls through like a tornado and turns everything topsy-turvy. So hang on to your mouse; more twisters are coming.

Source: Biz Report.com

Q&A with Google News developer

Google News extracts articles from more than 4,500 sources worldwide, then automatically clusters them into groups by subject matter.

Krishna Bharat, the Google Senior Research Scientist who conceived of the idea, answers questions about the history and future of Google News.

"Relevance is determined by information retrieval techniques that look at the distribution of words in the article and surrounding pages on the web," he says. "If the article matches the query well it is deemed relevant and gets a high score. Other factors include the importance of the source, timeliness of the article, and importance of the news story, relative to other stories in the news currently."

Cyber Journalist.net

Yahoo drafts allies for portal tool

Yahoo struck deals with Oracle and with Internet content gatherer Moreover Technologies to bolster its product for building corporate Web site portals. Under the agreement with Oracle announced Tuesday, the database company will integrate My Yahoo Enterprise Edition into its 9i Application Server software.

The partnership with San Francisco-based Moreover should widen the range of information available through Yahoo's corporate portal application.

Steve Boom, senior vice president of Yahoo Enterprise Solutions, said that Yahoo is pursuing deals with companies that can supply information important to a wide range of business users. "The part of the market that is not being addressed is finding the right mix of content for the average knowledge worker," said Boom. "There's a lot of content out there for highly specialized workers, but we're working on content that has broad appeal."

My Yahoo Enterprise Edition is the Web giant's latest portal software, which is used by companies to consolidate and filter information from a range of sources into a single interface that can be seen by employees, customers and business partners.

The system offers an array of "portlets," which allow users to drop links to industry news, stock quotes and Web-based applications into their own portal sites. The Yahoo deal could help drive sales of Oracle's database, application server and business software. According to the Redwood Shores, Calif.-based company, some 16,000 users are already using Oracle9i Application Server.

Yahoo has also formed relationships with business software companies such as BEA Systems, SAP, Sun Microsystems and Tibco Software. Boom said Yahoo is in partnership talks with a number of other portal software makers. Customer demand will direct Yahoo's ally-making decisions, he said, noting that users had been putting pressure on the company to establish a deal with Oracle.

A free demo of My Yahoo Enterprise Edition is available for download, and a 30-day trial version of the application will be offered for users of supported portal software platforms in August, according to Yahoo. The deals come as Yahoo continues to gobble up pieces of the Internet search market. On Monday, the company announced it would buy rival Overture in attempt to garner a larger slice of the online advertising market.

Story by Matt Hines
Source: C-Net News

Yahoo Declares War On Google

Yahoo! Inc. and Overture Services, Inc. today announced they have signed a definitive agreement under which Yahoo! will acquire Overture.

The last piece of the search battle has been put into place, but the war has only begun. All the competitors except for one are now in position and ready for the beginning of a serious and interesting battle between the titans of the online world. Here is the line-up of competitors that looks much smaller now with the battle really coming down to three companies Microsoft MSN Search (coming MSNBOT), Google and Yahoo. The AOL camp seems to be the glaring hole in the brewing battle. The other search players like AllTheWeb.com, AltaVista.com and HotBot.com are so far behind that they hardly register on the radar screen.

Microsoft, Google and Yahoo have been battling for years to gain online users and some have even become partners. The best example is that Yahoo used Google results for many years and then Yahoo acquired Inktomi search technology. Google gained dominance from riding the back of Yahoo for years and ultimately drove Yahoo to be concerned about Google’s fast growth. I think Yahoo felt threatened by the fast growth of Google and that it would eventually capture all or most of Yahoo’s users. Yahoo was right in thinking Google could sink the Yahoo franchise. I think because Yahoo relied on Google so much that they may have lost millions of users to Google, but I also must say that Yahoo may not have made it through the last few years without the Google search technology.

Then you throw in Microsoft’s interest in keeping MSN an important online brand and their recent announcement that they are building a crawler-based search engine and sponsored link program.

AOL and MSN should have long-term worries about the online power of Yahoo and Google. It appears that the major dial-up ISP’s AOL, MSN and Earthlink are running behind Yahoo and Google. MSN appears to be the one in the lead in this battle to make the needed transition from being a dial-up ISP to a provider of online broadband services and content. In my opinion, Yahoo and Google are sitting in a much better long-term position than any of the major dial-up ISP’s to dominate the online space.

This battle will ultimately decided by high-speed cable and wireless Internet access providers. I just don’t see AOL keeping its present dominance. I do see a clear separation coming between Internet access provider and content provider. AOL and MSN will not hold on to dominance online as ISP’s but as content providers to wireless telco and cable TV providers.

I think the Internet will be the technology used to deliver what we know today as cable TV, telephone and radio communications. We will most likely see major streaming media channels and online services being provided through those wireless telco’s, cable TV and radio network providers like digital radio and XM Satellite radio. The brands we know today will mostly be the brands we know in the future. My 5 year prediction is that the top online brands will line up like this: MSN, Google and Yahoo with AOL bringing up the rear.

I think MSN will be the ultimate leader online because of its coming search technology and its growing strength in content and streaming media. Google is about to go public and that will give them the cash they need to acquire more content technology. It will be fun to watch Google expand its wings and user base over the next few years. I think Google or Yahoo will acquire Real Networks and that will give them the leg up on AOL. It is a real possibility that Google could be the ultimate in online giants.

Article by Rob Greenlee
Source: Web Talk Guys Radio

Search industry: Yahoo to Acquire Overture

Yahoo! announced that it will acquire Overture, one of the largest providers of paid listings to search engines and other web portals.

Under the terms of the agreement, each outstanding common share of Overture will receive 0.6108 shares of Yahoo! common stock and $4.75 in cash, reflecting an aggregate purchase price of approximately $1.63 billion.

"The combined assets position Yahoo! as the largest global player in the rapidly growing Internet advertising sector," said Terry Semel, chairman and chief executive officer, Yahoo! Inc. "Together, the two companies will be able to provide the most compelling and diversified suite of integrated marketing solutions around the globe, including branding, paid placement, graphical ads, text links, multimedia, and contextual advertising."

We'll be updating the story throughout the day today as it continues to unfold. Danny Sullivan will take an in-depth look at the acquisition in tomorrow's Search Engine Update. Meanwhile, here are some links to other sources of information about the transaction.

Source: Search Engine Watch

Business News: Blogging Goes Corporate

This year, Macromedia -- the company that makes Flash and Shockwave -- has posted a $305 million quarterly loss, laid off 110 people and lost a $2.8 million copyright infringement suit to Adobe.

But for all the company's apparent troubles, in the last week there's been a lot of good feeling directed toward the firm, with people saying that Macromedia is one of the few companies to appreciate the new topography of the Web. Not only has the company started to tailor its software to the needs of people who run their own weblogs, but it's also dived headlong into the much-hyped "blogosphere" itself, setting up its own weblogs as a way to nurture ties with its customers.

Macromedia calls this "the blog strategy," and some see the company's moves as the start of a trend. These days, it's almost unfashionable for a self-respecting Webophile to not have his own blog; if Macromedia's effort is any indication, soon a tech company that doesn't embrace weblogs may seem equally dated.

(For the uninitiated, a weblog, or blog is a frequently updated website of personal ideas, thoughts, musings, news, information, or discussions of what one has eaten for breakfast.) Late last month, when Macromedia released new versions of four of its applications, it expected that its customers would have lots of questions about how to use the new stuff, said Tom Hale, the company's vice president in charge of developer relations.

Macromedia's software -- Flash, Dreamweaver, Fireworks and Cold Fusion -- builds and maintains websites, and the many new features in such complex applications can take some time to get used to.

"We were releasing a tremendous amount of software to the Web," Hale said, "and you pretty much don't know what's going to happen when you release that much that quickly."

The firm needed a way to quickly respond to questions developers might have as they use the new products -- and although some at Macromedia thought about creating a blog on Macromedia's site to address customers' questions, "we decided to experiment with the (third-party) blogs," Hale said.

Sites of interest: Business Blog

Serge Thibodeau Live

Source: Wired News

Yahoo plans IT centre in Bangalore

Global Internet company Yahoo! on Monday announced the opening of a software development centre in Bangalore, its first such facility outside the United States. The Bangalore centre will focus on product innovation and leading-edge technology development for Yahoo! worldwide, Yahoo Software Development India Pvt Ltd CEO Venkat Pachapakesan and COO Bharat Vijay said.

The Bangalore centre, to be launched next month, plans to have 150 highly skilled software engineers by the end of 2004, they said. Panchapakesan and Vijay said the Bangalore centre would be engaged in the area of software technology for its parent Yahoo! Inc, headquartered in Sunnyvale, California.

It would focus on key engineering areas for Yahoo, including development of its key products like finance, search, mail and messenger, data mining and research, e-commerce, security, core infrastructure and database technologies, they said. To a question, Panchapakesan said for the Bangalore centre, Yahoo! Inc has no plans to move jobs from the US.

Recruitment for the India centre would be made locally as the country had a vast pool of talented engineers. The India centre, which would primarily focus on software development and internet-based product innovation, is already in the process of recruiting around 100 software engineers, he said.

The new facility would work in tandem with the US R&D centre to keep up with the growing needs of the industry, they said, adding, it would help build products for Yahoo's business units across the globe.

It would work on development of highly scalable server technology, UNIX/C/C++, Server technologies, Middleware, TCP/IP networking, FreeBSD, Apache, Oracle/MySQL DB and Data Mining Algorithms, among others, Vijay said.

Source: Rediff.com

Google now has over 1,000 employees

The Ph.D.s, tie-dyed shirts and colorful decorative balls of the Googleplex will soon be moving to one of Silicon Valley's biggest office parks, a further sign of the search star's growing prominence in the tech world.

Mountain View, Calif.-based Google said this week it will sublease the Amphitheatre Technology Center from Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI), which has occupied the space for about five years. The property, which is about 506,000 square feet, is across the highway from Google's current headquarters and includes amenities such as volleyball courts and a fitness center. Google, which will move in phases over the next several months, is relocating to accommodate its growing staff roster.

It employs more than 1,000 people, with 800 in its Mountain View offices, and has nearly 150 job openings posted to its Web site, not including those at international offices.

SGI is relocating its headquarters to nearby Crittenden Technology Center, where it leases additional space. SGI expects the new lease arrangement to reduce its net occupancy costs by $14 million to $17 million per year, starting in July 2004. The company, which is under financial hardship, has to reduce costs in order to break even.

Source: C-NET News

LookSmart Signs Search Deal With Lycos

As the paid inclusion market heats up, Internet search company LookSmart yesterday announced a multi-year agreement with Terra Lycos, the global Internet network, for search distribution on Lycos.

As part of the agreement, LookSmart will provide its new high-relevance commercial search product to Lycos beginning late in the third quarter of 2003. LookSmart will become the primary provider of general web search results for a large number of commercial terms. In addition, Lycos will have the option to resell LookSmart's LookListings to thousands of Lycos InSite customers, Lycos's paid inclusion and paid placement search engine marketing platform.

The deal with Lycos comes as LookSmart competitor Overture Services girds up for a paid inclusion product launch. In related news, earlier in the week LookSmart announced its New LookListings, designed to make it easier for businesses of all sizes to purchase cost-effective traffic and manage their campaigns across the LookSmart Network of distribution partners. LookListings replaces the company's former "Small Business Listings" and "Large Business Listings" products.

"Ever since we launched our online small business product last year, we've been hearing from customers who want to list more than just their homepage and have more control over their campaign management, yet didn't have the budget to qualify for our large advertiser solution," says Peter Adams, cto for LookSmart. "New LookListings will let these customers drive traffic to any number of category and product pages, increasing sales and improving ROI, while also giving large advertisers increased flexibility in the way they manage their campaigns."

Source: Technology Marketing.com

Google cache raises copyright concerns

Like other online publishers, The New York Times charges readers to access articles on its Web site. But why pay when you can use Google instead?

Through a caching feature on the popular Google search site, people can sometimes call up snapshots of archived stories at NYTimes.com and other registration-only sites. The practice has proved a boon for readers hoping to track down Web pages that are no longer accessible at the original source, for whatever reason.

But the feature has recently been putting Google at odds with some unhappy publishers. "We are working with Google to fix that problem--we're going to close it so when you click on a link it will take you to a registration page," said Christine Mohan, a spokeswoman at New York Times Digital, the publisher of NYTimes.com. "We have established these archived links and want to maintain consistency across all these access points."

Google offers publishers a simple way to opt out of its temporary archive, and scuffles have yet to erupt into open warfare or lawsuits. Still, Google's cache links illustrate a slippery side of innovation on the Web, where cool new features that seem benign on the surface often carry unintended consequences. The issue is particularly relevant at Google, a company that prides itself on creativity and routinely floats trial balloons for new features and services. Its culture of innovation may become increasingly risky as Google, which draws millions of visitors to its site daily and redirects them to others through secretive search formulas, cements its position as one of the most popular and powerful companies on the Web.

At the heart of Google's caching dilemma lies a thorny legal problem involving a core Web technology: When is it acceptable to copy someone else's Web page, even temporarily? Google's cache, a feature introduced in 1997, is unique among commercial search engines, but it's not unlike other archival sites on the Web that keep digital copies of Web pages. Google's relatively little-known feature lets people access a copy of almost any Web page, within Google's own site, in the form it was in whenever last indexed by the search giant. That could mean the page accessed is either minutes or months old, depending on when Google last crawled it.

Unlike formal Web archive projects, Google says its cache feature does not attempt to create a permanent historical record of the Web. Rather, the company actively seeks to delete dead links; once a Web page disappears, the search engine seeks to purge that record and any related cached page as quickly as possible. Still, Google's cached pages have proven to be a treasure trove for investigators seeking to recover data pulled from public Web sites. In one high-profile example, security and privacy expert Richard Smith copied Web pages detailing the backgrounds of Dr. John Poindexter, head of the Pentagon's Information Awareness Office (IAO), and other officials, from the Google cache days after they were removed from the IAO Web site. The pages were deleted after public reports surfaced on the office's development of a massive computer system to spy on Americans and potential terrorists.

"When something's been yanked, Google cache is a good place to grab it and save for posterity, because you don't know how long Google will have it," said Smith. Google claims its caching feature benefits Web surfers by letting them access a site that may be malfunctioning or offline. Also, its cached pages highlight terms that match a search query "to make it easier for users to find relevant information," according to a spokesman at the Mountain View, Calif.-based company.

Lawyers, start your search engines
As seemingly benign and beneficial as it is, some Web site operators take issue with the feature and digitally prevent Google from recording their pages in full by adding special code to their sites. Among other arguments, they say that cached pages at Google have the potential to detour traffic from their own site, or, at worst, constitute trademark or copyright violations. In the case of an out-of-date news page in Google's cache, a Web publisher could even face legal troubles because of false data remaining on the Web but corrected at its own site. For this reason, search experts and copyright lawyers expect the issue to come up in a court of law, joining the leagues of copyright disputes that have surfaced because of technology innovation.

"It's very much an issue that has yet to be tested, and I fully expect that it will be," said Danny Sullivan, industry pundit and editor of Search Engine Watch. Admittedly, Google's cache is like any number of backdoors to information on the Web. For example, proxy servers can be the keys to a site that is banned by a visitor's hosting Web server. And technically, any time a Web surfer visits a site, that visit could be interpreted as a copyright violation, because the page is temporarily cached in the user's computer memory.

The digital universe is constantly changing, but its content can be either fleeting or permanent. Several Web sites, including the Internet Archive Wayback Machine and the Sept. 11 Digital Archive, have surfaced to preserve information on the Web and to keep permanent historical accounts of events and Web pages. Yet, many more pages, and even those in Google's cache, are eventually lost in the digital ether. The average lifespan of a Web site is 100 days, according to estimates by the Internet Archive. Still, copyright lawyers and industry experts say that there are legally uncharted waters around a commercial caching service.

"Many of us copyright lawyers have been waiting for this issue to come up: Google is making copies of all the Web sites they index and they're not asking permission," said Fred Lohman, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "From a strict copyright standpoint, it violates copyright." Most search engines make a statistical record of a Web page when they "spider" it, or use "robots" to scan the page for meaning or context to related queries. For example, the engine can point to specific information contained on a page that's related to a search term, but it often doesn't have the complete picture of the page. Google goes one step beyond, however, by taking a digital picture of pages and making it available to visitors in cached links. Those pictures exist temporarily on its site until the next time Google crawls that particular page, which can happen in a few days or in six weeks or more.

Legally, what could differentiate Google from other archival sites that record pages is that it is a commercial site and that it has enormous scope and influence on the Web. But what's kept the feature off most Web sites' radar is that, anecdotally, most people don't click on the cache. Even Google says people only "occasionally" click its cached links. If more people did, Web publishers might lose visitors--and potentially advertising dollars, which no one can afford to lose as Web publishing gets back on its feet.

Practically speaking, Web sites can "opt out," or include code in their pages that bars Google from caching the page. A tag to exclude "robots" such as "www.nytimes.com/robots.txt" or "NOARCHIVE" typically does the job. And that's largely what's kept the cache feature from being controversial. Search Engine Watch's Sullivan said that, even though some publishers are wary of the caching feature, many don't block Google's robots for fear of losing favor in the company's powerful search rankings. He said some Webmasters believe there's a stigma associated the "no cache" tag, because many sites that use it have been accused of attempting to use banned methods to manipulate Google's rankings. Google said the "no cache" tag does not affect rankings.

Some legal experts say Google may be on shaky ground by caching first and asking questions later. A provision in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) includes a safe harbor for Web caching. The safe harbor is narrowly defined to protect Internet service providers that cache Web pages to make them more readily accessible to subscribers. For example, AOL could keep a local copy of high-trafficked Web pages on its servers so that its members could access them with greater speed and less cost to the network. Various copyright lawyers argue that safe harbor may or may not protect Google if it was tested.

"Most people agree that the caching exception in the DMCA is obsolete," Lohman said. "I don't think it would cover Google's cache. Google is not waiting for users to request the page. It spiders the page before anyone asks for it." Still, other lawyers argue that Google's practice would be protected by fair-use laws. A judge might look at the market impact of Google's caching and find that it's valuable, given that it could ultimately drive traffic to the cached site. Or the reverse could be true, depending on the nature of the page.

For its part, Google is confident that the service is within the law. "We've evaluated this from a legal perspective, including copyright law, and have determined that Google's cached page service complies with the law," a Google spokesman said. A similar issue has played out in the courts in an image-searching case, Kelly v. Arriba Soft, filed in April 1999. Leslie Kelly, a photographer, sued the company for copyright infringement when its visual search finder cataloged thumbnails and full-sizes of his digital photos and made them accessible via its own search engine.

The court initially ruled against Kelly based on the "established importance of search engines," but Kelly appealed and won. In Feb. 2002, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held that Arriba's use of thumbnail images of Kelly's photos was fair use, but its display of full-size images was not fair use, because it was likely to harm the market for Kelly's work by reducing visits to his Web site and by allowing free downloads. But the opinion on full-size images was remanded by the 9th Circuit Court this week and is set to go to trial in the lower court of central California. Judith Jennison, defense lawyer for Arriba Soft, said that one of the issues in the case is that Arriba Soft, in its process of indexing the Web, made copies of Kelly's photos and saved them for 24 hours in its servers. The 9th Circuit Court agreed that creating that copy is fair use under copyright law, she said, adding that there would be a slightly different analysis in a case related to Google. Also, the fact that the search site has an opt-out program would likely illustrate that the market for original copyrighted works can be protected, which is a significant factor in fair-use analysis.

"In Google's case, the result would likely be the same, because the temporary caching for indexing purposes would be fair use per Kelly v. Arriba Soft," Jennison said. While it seems that many Net publishers haven't formed an official policy on Google caching, they say they are examining how it affects their business.

Randy Stearns, executive producer for ABCNews.com, said he's somewhat concerned about his company's news pages being archived temporarily on Google, because readers might access information that is not up-to-date or, in the worst case for a daily news outlet, is inaccurate. Theoretically, if a news report was issued with errors and was subsequently fixed on the publisher's site, but the erroneous report still existed in a cached version, it could raise legal issues for the publisher, he said. Other publishers dismiss any threat, saying that not enough people actually click on those links to be a detriment to traffic. "People who find objection to what Google does likely spend enormous amounts (of time) on their content and refresh it regularly," said Harry Lin, head of ABC.com.

In contrast with the priorities of some news publishers, Web archivists say preserving pages as they first appeared can offer important documentary records for historians and others. Brewster Kahle, head of the Wayback Machine, said many people use its archive for patent research, or "prior art" searches. Designers and students have used the archive to see the evolution of Web site design and display, he added, and the Smithsonian has used subsets of the collection in the Presidential Election memorabilia room.

News publishers agree that Google's cache is also valuable if, for example, their site was inaccessible because of technical difficulties. "It's a great, wonderful feature, and I don't know that copyright laws would protect them," said Search Engine Watch's Sullivan. "But most people are concerned about getting into Google, not getting out of it."

By Stefanie Olsen
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

Blogging life: Google-Watch Blogometer

Blogging buzz is all about links, which are always increasing, and about Google rankings, which are largely based on link popularity. There's something wrong with this picture.

What about Joe surfer -- does he actually click on these blogs? The first two graphs below are based on page views of blogs. A blogging software company shows on-the-fly daily counts of their top blogs on a regular web page. We fetch this report at the same time toward the end of every day, and add up the counts to generate this graph. Each of the blog owners places a JavaScript clear GIF counter on any of his pages that he wishes. This technique means that crawlers and other automated devices tend to be excluded, which leaves real eyeballs using actual browsers.

We're interested in long-term trends. At Google Watch we suspect that the blogging buzz, fed as it is by perpetually-increasing linking juice, is not justified by the number of actual readers that these blogs receive. We started collecting traffic data for blogs on June 16, 2003. The first graph shows daily totals, while the second is based on weekly totals. The last day shown is always yesterday, and the last week shown is always the week that ended yesterday.

The average that defines the 100 percent line consists of all of the data shown on each graph, and is specified in the upper right corner.

Click here to read the whole story on Google-Watch.org

Microsoft brains compete with Google

Microsoft has hired top scientists in a quest for search algorithms that will allow it to compete directly with Google.

Microsoft is actively working on new search algorithms it will use to power its own search engine to take it into competition with Google, according to the head of the company's Theory Group. Speaking in Sydney at the Fifth International Congress on Industrial and Applied Mathematics, professor Jennifer Tour Chayes said Microsoft is patenting new search algorithms with a view to replacing the Inktomi technology currently powering MSN's search with Microsoft's own.

"Since Yahoo acquired Inktomi, Bill [Gates] has decided we need our own capacity," she said, adding that the company is already patenting new algorithms it believes have the potential to power a new search engine. Microsoft last month launched a new search program called MSNBot, which trawls the Web to build an index of HTML links and documents -- functions previously left to Inktomi and other partners.

It is believed to be the first step in a multi-year plan to build new search technology that encompasses home and business users, with the ultimate goal of the technology being to bind Microsoft's various Web sites, applications and the Windows operating system. Beyond search, Chayes believes filtering is the next killer application that will require the input of high mathematics. "As computers become more pervasive, we are going to be assaulted as we walk around," she says. "To take advantage of all the good things IT has to offer, you will need a filter. We can't all have a secretary do the filtering for us, so there'll be a theoretical solution."

Founded to perform blue sky research -- one of Chayes' speeches to the ICIAM is entitled "Phase transitions in combinatorial optimisation" -- Microsoft's theory division has already contributed directly to product development, notably the new version of Active Directory shipped with Windows Server 2003. "The product team asked us for assistance with a bottleneck where an algorithm was preventing us from working with larger networks," she said. "One of our team, Laszlo Lovasz, developed an improved algorithm in a day."

Despite this incredible service, the theory group is not a resource available on tap within Microsoft. "We have people dedicated to interfacing between the product and research groups, so that when a problem comes to us it is very well described" Chayes says. Perhaps the best reason for this is the stature of some of the team's researchers: Lovasz is a winner of the Wolf Medal, one of the world's leading mathematics prizes, and is also a former Yale Professor. Others in the eight-strong permanent team have won the Field Medal, mathematics equivalent of the Nobel Prise.

And what of phase transitions in combinatorial optimism? Chayes explains that understanding how phase transitions -- for example from liquid to gas -- can be expressed mathematically may make it easier to solve problems like load balancing servers, so that limited processing resources can be applied to multiple tasks more efficiently. Understanding this phenomenon, she says, means a thorough understanding of how water boils may help enterprises wring more out of their servers.

"We're a very far out group at Microsoft," she says. "It could be 50 years from now before some of this work is used."

Source: News ZD Net

LookSmart Combines Small, Large Biz Products

Paid inclusion leader LookSmart (Quote, Company Info) announced on Tuesday that it would combine its separate products for small and large businesses into a single offering called LookListings.

LookListings will give small advertisers more options for building their paid inclusion programs, allowing them to add search listings for multiple Web pages. Previously, small businesses could only list their site's homepage, and couldn't link directly to product pages. "The marketplace has changed," said Dakota Sullivan, LookSmart's vice president of marketing. "Today, there's a lot of demand even from very small Web sites to list multiple pages."

The move comes as LookSmart awaits company in the paid inclusion market. Paid search heavyweight Overture Services has plans to launch its own paid inclusion product shortly, which will compete directly with LookListings. In addition to opening up multiple Web page listings to all advertisers, LookSmart said the new program would give small advertisers access to its reporting center, where they can gauge the performance of their campaigns.

LookListings also overhauls the pricing model. Previously, small advertisers were charged 15 cents per click for 5,000 clicks. Large advertisers would negotiate their click rates. Now, all advertisers can have 5,000 clicks at 15 cents each month. Beyond that, the cost per click is now set according to category. For example, for each click online gaming sites pay 75 cents and book sites 23 cents. "We believe that a category-based model give complete transparency and futher levels the playing field," Sullivan said, adding that the category prices still reflected a 20 to 25 percent discount on comparable keyword listings on Overture or Google.

LookSmart provides paid inclusion for MSN, About.com, and CNET Networks, among others. Like its brethren in paid search, LookSmart has assiduously courted small businesses. Last quarter, the company reported that its small business segment grew 13 percent to 38,000 advertisers.

With paid inclusion, an advertiser pays to have certain Web pages included in a Web search crawl. Unlike paid search, it does not guarantee placement on the results page, but paid inclusion listings appear in the main search results. The market for paid inclusion is small but growing quickly. Investment bank First Albany pegs the paid inclusion market at $200 million today. LookSmart has guessed the market could grow to be worth as much as $3 billion in 2007.

In May, LookSmart warned that its annual financial results would be hurt by increased competition in the paid inclusion sector. The company said the earnings hit was necessary in order to invest in product development.

Source: Silicon Valley Internet.com

Freeserve dumps Google

Britains' largest Internet service provider, Freeserve, is no longer using Google as the default search engine on its portal.

Instead it is using pay per click listings from Overture coupled with regular search engine listings from AlltheWeb.

We love Google, but it is good to see that they get some competition, also in the UK.

Freeserve is part of the French Wanadoo group. Apparently all of Wanadoo's sites will switch to Overture/AlltheWeb.

Source: Webmasterworld and net4nowt

Ranking a website for sales and performance

Ranking a website for sales and performance can be easy, if only you follow the right steps. There are no shortcuts, no easy way out, if you truly want to succeed. As with any serious undertaking, the right way to successfully optimize and position a site requires planning ahead and executing the project step by step.

If you follow all the advice given in our articles on the Rank for $ales web site, you will do extremely well; better than your competitors in many cases.

Start by the beginning: the right keywords
Even if your web site ranks number one in Google and most of the major search engines, it is of no value at all if it brings you unqualified, off-topic traffic. A properly optimized web site with all the right keywords and key phrases will not only bring you traffic, but targeted traffic.

People visiting your web site will have a real need for the products and services that you offer. Recent studies and market surveys confirm that most Internet searchers use the major search engines to rapidly find the products and services that interest them.

Using the right keywords and key phrases will insure that they will find your web site and they will purchase what they need from you. No successful and in-depth optimization project can be seriously done without the help of Word Tracker to effectively identify and use the keywords that are just right for you.

What may be good for one of your out-of-state or out-of-the-country competitor may not always mean it will be good for your business too. Local variations in the economy, geo-political concerns or a host of different factors can, to a certain degree, affect the optimum choice for the right keywords that should be used.

For example, if your website sells airline tickets, obviously those needs can vary a lot from one country or continent to another. The same is true for most industries. A steel products manufacturer in the US could have different keywords and key phrases than some of its European competitors.

Using a powerful search tool such as Word Tracker can help you a lot in the clear identification and definition of the exact keywords and key phrases you should in fact be using.

Avoid using spammy techniques
If you truly want to rank for performance, don’t resort to illegal methods or spam in an attempt to rank higher. That will just ban or seriously penalize your web site. Instead, write quality, search engine friendly content. Ensure that each page is structured so it is obvious to a search engine that the page is truly relevant to a specific keyword.

Also make certain that your pages and all the rest of your site can be read by a search engine spider.

Try in creating a reference point if you will, associated with your keywords. A reference point could be similar to a balance of an authority, which could have many quality links to it from other sites and pages associated with that specific keyword. In order to rank better, you need to participate in a reciprocal link exchange program (RLEP for short).

Actively try to get other quality sites to link to you. To be effective, be certain that those sites are in the same field as you are. Stay in the same industry. You can get excellent results by simply following the above rules.

Check that you are not being penalized unfairly for content that may be interpreted as spam, or for being on the same IP address as someone who has been barred from search engines for delivering spam. If possible, contact the search engines that are not listing you and check what is wrong. Let supply and demand decide. Market forces should mean that those search engines that produce the best, most relevant results will flourish, and those that don’t will ultimately die.

The current prevalence of spam is preventing this from happening. Finally, if you think you can calculate relevancy better than the current availability of search engines, don’t deliver spam to attempt to control their listings. If you do, in the end, you will lose.

How PPC programs can make a difference
Purchasing keywords and key phrases in Overture and Google could represent a faster way for you to drive fairly targeted traffic to a web site and could be most effective in testing or promoting new products, seasonal services or other short-term needs. Additionally, it can provide short-term results, to fill a certain vacuum between real ranking results and its underlying campaign launch.

But these benefits all come at a certain price, ie: a price that isn’t always under one’s control at any time. Hence, conservative investment in PPC programs is a crucial and permanent ingredient to any serious search engine marketing campaign and should be viewed as a supplement only to “native” SEO.

Given all these facts, and throughout your SEM campaign, as your natural visibility generated through native search engine optimization regularly increases, your dependency on keyword and key phrase purchasing should lower with the passage of time.

Always remember that search engine optimization is a science as well as an art. It is a delicate balance of the two that will help nurture the best results in the engines. Every PPC program analysis process, like native search engine optimization, is based on such things as keyword density, placement, optimization and general link structure in the whole site.

As with any other SEM program, it is crucial that a company first understands the actual surfing habits and buying styles that Internet searchers demonstrate when looking for specific services, products or information using today’s modern search engines.

Article written by Serge Thibodeau,
President & CEO,
Rank for $ales
Copyright (c) Serge Thibodeau 2003

All you ever wanted to know about Meta Tags

For the past two or three years, many search engines such as Google and a few others have given less and less attention, and in some cases, no attention at all to Meta Tags. The sole reason for this is simply because in the past, in the go-go days of the Internet, ie: before 2000, many web site owners and webmasters stuffed their meta tags with useless information, basically spamming the search engines.

It wasn't long for the engines to realize they were victimized and since that time, many of them now pay little if no attention at all to most Meta Tags. However, what if some day they come back? What if, at a future date many of the major search engines decide that the "penalty" has served its purpose and that its now time to remove it? Not putting any meta tags in a website may not be a good idea, since it only takes a few minutes to write them in the first place!

Meta Tag definition
Making a true definition of Meta Tags is a lot simpler than explaining their functioning and by exactly which search engines. The only reason to this is simply because very few engines clearly explain with any amount of precision what they do look or don't look at and just how much importance they will actually give to any such and such parameters. Let's begin with the easy part: Meta Tags are snippets of HTML code concealed into the pages of a website that are used by the major search engines in an attempt to store certain data about that website.

Such meta tags contain descriptions, keywords and key phrases, important site title information, etc. Such meta data is part of the many things search engines are seeking when trying to properly index a website.

To be sure, meta tags are not truly necessary when a webmaster writes or creates new web pages, or makes any kind of modifications to them. There are a few observers in the search engine optimization industry who claim that meta tags are completely useless. Such strong statements can be a bit misleading. Of course, you are still free to believe them if you like, but that may not be such a good idea. While not technically mandatory, Meta Tags can, in certain cases, help the rankings of a given website, provided certain other essential rules of SEO are maintained.

Once a new website is created and put online, search engine crawlers (spiders) will visit that site and try to index it in their database. Most major search engines operate differently and, by the same token, they each weigh different parameters of a web site according to their own (proprietary) algorithms. As a few examples, Google places a lot of emphasis on its Page Rank algorithm, Alta-Vista will place a lot of importance on the description tag and Inktomi tell you in their terms of use that it indexes both the complete text of the particular web page submitted, as well as all the meta-tags of all pages.

At the other end of the scale, there are other search engines like Exact Seek that are "pure-vanilla" Meta Tag search engines which will spell out that: "Your site will not be added if it does not have Title and Meta Description tags." Inktomi also makes an extensive use of the keywords tag. Naturally, as can be expected, not all search engines work the same way nor do they have to. Certain search engines will place their importance on the actual overall content of the site.

Most major search engines have in excess of 125 individual elements and parameters they actually analyze when trying to rank and index any given website. Some of these important elements deal specifically with the way the pages were structured and also depend on other important factors such as keyword density, etc.

They will also take a note of websites that have omitted basic steps such as non-existent Meta Tags. For such search engines that have significantly decreased if not eliminated the importance of Meta Tags, there could be specific situations where the mere presence of Meta Tags could gain much more in importance. A good example to this could be websites making heavy use of rich graphics, or Flash content, but very poor or non-existent textual content anywhere on the site.

In the world of search engines, it is unfortunate to think that a picture is worth about 1,000 words to most people, but mean absolutely nothing to search engines. Search engines are totally blind when it comes to reading a picture or graphic of any kind.

When a website offers poor or non-existent textual content, the engines have to be more dependent on meta tags, in an effort to index it and add it to their database. With the most carefully written and designed websites, even if all the proper steps were taken to make certain the right Meta Tags are carefully edited and put in all the right places, unfortunately, some search engines will still completely ignore them. As helpful as some Meta Tags can be in certain search engines, good content in the site is still imperative.

Nothing can beat good, targeted & relevant content, filled with keyword-rich text spread evenly and categorized in all the carefully-defined sections of the site. As stated above, in such cases where the engine visiting your site depends on that content, it may be the only thing that will effectively work for your website.

The very best way to successfully use Meta Tags
To be really effective, Meta Tags should always be located in the HEAD area of an HTML document. That area is completely at the top of all pages. It starts just after the HTML tag and ends immediately before the BODY tag.

Additionally, you should always make certain that your meta tags don't have any line breaks. Doing that would trip the search engines as they will probably see bad HTML code and could ignore them completely. Also, try not to use any capital letters in your code, as well as any repetition of words, phrases or terms within the keywords tag. Don't make the mistake many webmasters are still doing by "stuffing" meta tags, as it could seriously penalize or ban your website.

How to effectively edit Meta Tags
The Meta Description tag is important as many major search engines will display this summary, along with the title of your specific page in their search results. This is usually what you see on the pages of Google, Yahoo, Alta-Vista and most of the other engines after a query was initiated. It is recommended to keep this description reasonably short, concise and to the point. Also make certain that it's an appropriate reflection of that particular page's content.

Keywords represent the important search words and terms that people will enter into a search engine's query box. You must choose only relevant keywords. If these keywords and key phrases are going to be written in your keywords tag, they must appear in the actual body content of that specific page. With the exception of Google, most major search engines will actually compare your meta content with what is actually written on that page. If it doesn't match, your website could receive a penalty and thus suffer in the search results.

Almost everyday, we encounter commercial websites that have this tag written incorrectly. That Meta Tag is incorrect because some crawlers can't properly handle spaces between the words in the tag or the word "all". Most major search engines will assume by default that you want a website to be indexed and that all links are to be followed and indexed in its database.

Remember that using the wrong syntax can actually result in the crawler coming to a bad conclusion and wrongly penalizing that page completely. On the other hand, if you really do not want a certain page to be indexed or followed, then you must substitute "noindex" and or "nofollow" into the tag. It is also strongly recommended to properly use the Robots.txt file exclusion protocol.

Conclusion
The Web is constantly growing at a rate of approximately 6 Million new pages everyday! Google currently indexes in its database over 3.4 Billion pages all over the Web! With most of the search engines indexing only a small fraction of that great number, meta tags can be used as an additional way to reasonably ensure a proper categorization for any given website.

If you always use terms that are really relevant in all Meta Tags, you are significantly increasing your chances at a better ranking in the engines. Properly and effectively using the right meta tags could yield satisfactory results, both in the short-term and longer term periods.

Carefully implementing Meta Tags can only work for you, never against. In the future, if they become more widely accepted and most major search engines increase their importance in them again, you will be happy you used them properly. Additionally, you will be glad you won't have to re-write them all over again!

Article written by Serge Thibodeau,
President & CEO,
Rank for $ales
Copyright (c) Serge Thibodeau 2003

Overture unveils content ad service

Overture Services Inc. on Monday launched a product that delivers ads linked to key words on Web content sites, as it battles rival Google Inc. in the lucrative targeted-advertising market.

"Overture plans to diversify both its product offerings as well as its revenue streams,” says Bill Demas, general manager of Overture’s partner business and solutions group.

Overture’s new contextual advertising product is called Content Match. Google and Sprinks, a property of magazine publisher Primedia Inc., already provide similar services.

Contextual advertising is an expansion of the highly profitable Web-search advertising model popularized by Overture and Google, the No. 1 Web search company in the United States.

Advertisers that subscribe to such programs bid for the right to have their ads tied to certain key words on content pages and pay each time an Internet user clicks on their ads, which receive prominent placement.

Pasadena, California-based Overture estimates that the contextual advertising market could grow to $2 billion annually by 2008.

Current users of Content Match include Overture partner MSN, Microsoft Corp.’s Internet property, automotive information site Edmunds.com and MyFamily.com’s network of genealogy Web sites.

Source: MSNBC

Content Management Software & SEO

(Updated from our March 3rd, 2003 article). A lot has been said about Content Management Systems (CMS) in the past. Since search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimisation (SEO) are now such a growing part of the main marketing objectives for companies of all sizes, extra attention and caution must be used before the purchase of any such CMS software or programs.

When people today are looking to buy a certain product or service or need information on a specific subject, most use the power, speed and flexibility of Internet search engines. However, in the last two years, some companies have been developing their web sites and creating new or additional content with some of those so-called CMS packages. Some of the CMS programs available today may in fact negatively affect the visibility of your web site in the SERP’s (Search Engine Results Pages).

The main reason for that is some of them were not designed with search engines in mind. They were designed for what they are supposed to do: to help manage the contents of certain documents! That said, how can a company that has made extensive use of such CMS software reasonably insure itself that their site will do well in the search engines?

Some well-designed CMS solutions that give good attention to search engines when they were designed could possibly contribute to SEO work by standardizing its presentation, labelling of content and to a certain degree, its structure which is crucial to most search engines when evaluating how a particular page or site section should rank in the engines.

If a CMS package was truly designed with search engines in mind, it could be helpful for updating and some maintenance chores of certain dynamic sites, but even with some of these features present, there could be certain areas where it can still negatively affect some of the best SEO strategies. Rank for $ales advises caution in using them in such instances. Some CMS software packages can cost a lot of money, so be careful when shopping around and don’t be afraid to ask pointed questions, especially as it pertains to search engine visibility.

Whatever CMS software package you are analyzing, make certain th