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Search is Evolving

As the Web grows exponentially, search engine databases suffer from information overload. As a result, technology and consumer search behavior adapts and changes. One of the early attempts to make search easier was the use of metadata in search. The search engine, Clusty came out in 2004 to “deliver groups or clusters of similar results rather that millíons of search results in one long líst.” The clusters were supposed to help users see search results by topic so they could more easily find what they were looking for.

Another of the early changes to search was the development of multiple databases within general search. Whether you go to Google or Yahoo, you’ll see category choices such as Web, video, images, local, news, etc. These are all different databases that can help you target specific queries. Google aptly named this concept its OneBox solution; you could access many different databases from one box.

Along with the development of multiple databases on niche products or subjects came the vertical search engines. These verticals are particularly useful for B2B companies. The latest trend in the evolution of the market is social search engines, which give consumers the ability to interact with search queries, putting the human touch in search results. Social search engines seek to connect people through personalization and human understanding, using community knowledge to íncrease relevance.

Consumers Are Key Drivers

Social search highlights an important point to remember: consumer behavior has become a key factor in driving the search economy. Consumers are performing more searches as the Web becomes legendary for finding information quickly and effortlessly. It used to be that search was second to email in Web activities, but in 2006, Marketing Sherpa reported that search surpassed email, becoming the most popular online activity. comScore reported that the number of searches in the U.S. grew by 28 percent, year-over-year in August 2006.

While search behavior is changing, the proliferation of Web 2.0 platforms and applications such as social networking, RSS and blogging are impacting search, making it even more complex. The information universe is becoming too vast and complex to catalog by keywords alone. This has resulted in the development of expanded search opportunities into local search, vertical search and social search. Many times, consumers are slow to adopt new search resources. Local and vertical search took several years to gain a foothold. Social search is still in the early stages of development.

Local Search

Local search is a key growth area. Borrell Associates estimates that local paid search spending reached $1 billion in 2006 and will reach $1.7 billion in 2007. It will continue to rise, reaching $4 billion by 2010, when it will account for 47 percent of local online advertising.

The U.S. Government estimates the number of small businesses at 24 million, all of whom are in a great position to leverage the power of local search. While many small businesses still don’t have Web sites, the promise of local search is there for the asking. These businesses spend $90 billion annually on local advertising, mostly in traditional media. This reflects the potential for online advertising growth as businesses shift monëy from traditional to online advertising because of its effectiveness and ROI.

Nielsen/NetRatings shows that Google is catching up with Yahoo on local searches. Verizon SuperPages and SBC’s YellowPages are also big players. As users continue to use the local search option on major engines, local search continues to gain in popularity and advertising revenue. Now is a great time for a small business to get into search engine marketing on a local level. The field is relatively open and not nearly as competitive as the general search engine results.

Vertical Search

Another good option for niche businesses is optimization focused on vertical search engines. Vertical search engines, along with the new social search engines, are beginning to lure consumer and B2B searchers away from the general search engines as the desire for more targeted answers and the ability to pose more focused queries increases. This is an indication that general search leaves many questíons unanswered, resulting in lower productivity.

Vertical search engines can provide the targeting that general search engines lack. This is why they are becoming increasingly popular. The market leaders in search, Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, all are focusing efforts in the vertical space in order to respond to the needs of users. Social search is also on the rise with social search engines like Collarity and Rollyo allowing users to limit irrelevant results and benefit from the collective intelligence of previous searches.

Social Search

The interesting thing about social search engines is that they change search algorithms to include the human factor rather than depend solely on computer data. They not only include consumer-generated content, they can also include human intent. Collarity delivers search results with consumer-driven answers to queries and allows searchers to select various aspects of a search query. Rollyo allows users to create their own search engine roll, serving information from a preselected líst of sites and/or from other users’ rolls. The social dimension of the Web and search engines is a fast growing phenomenon, and the major search engines are also experimenting with social search. We’ve had Yahoo Answers and Google Base in beta for a while, and Microsoft is reportedly negotiating with Eurekster for social search technology.

As search technology moves forward, new search models will continue to be launched. As the mobile Web and mobile search continue to expand, search queries will drive commerce around the world anytime anywhere, across platforms. This can only enhance the role of search in Internet marketing.
About The Author
Claudia A. Bruemmer is a former Managing Editor of ClickZ (1998-2001), where she achieved the editorial success resulting in its first sale to Internet.com. Currently a freelance Internet writer, her clients include Bruce Clay, Inc., Search Engine Watch, TopTenWholesale and more. She can be reached at cbruemmer@bruceclay.com and has a website under construction at claudiabruemmer.com.

Many people have written about this phenomenon in time’s past. I have even written about it myself. When I wrote about it, my point was to show the importance of anchor text in a link to build the value of a web page in the Google search engine result pages (SERPS).

The “miserable failure” GoogleBomb came to exist within a loophole within the Google algorithms. Google puts a lot of value on the anchor text that points to a particular web page. It is part of their “one link – one vote” philosophy as to the value of a web page.

Bloggers joined forces to create thousands of links pointing to the White House website with the words “miserable failure” in the anchor text. The shenanigans of the George W. Bush bashers were eventually countered by their fellow bloggers on the other side of the political aisle. Eventually, the search phrase “miserable failure” would also bring up the Michael Moore and Jimmy Carter websites in the top few results for that search phrase.

The average person who did not understand the nature of the SEO game would occasionally stumble across these esoteric search phrases and get him or herself into a huff, because they thought that Google was stating their own political views. Of course, Google really does not have an opinion, at least not one that would ever appear in their search results.

The GB Update…

In this case, the GB Update is not so-named because “George Bush” disappeared from the “miserable failure” search results. Instead, it is so-named because it is the “GoogleBomb” update, which Google implemented in January of 2007.

Once the update was implemented, the “miserable failure” search began to only return pages that talked about GoogleBombs from a technical standpoint.

With the GB update officially rolled out, people began the standard Google-update panic process.

Hundreds of posts began appearing on forums concerning the GB updates and the fear that link-building efforts undertaken by search engine marketing (SEM) companies and webmasters would be hurt as well.

So, I did a bit of research. I have run several linking campaigns on my own behalf, and on the behalf of clients. Those campaigns were put together with a mix of keyword phrases nestled in the anchor text of links to our websites. I checked the status of all of the websites I represent, and without fail, our linking campaigns had not been hurt by the GB update.

Interesting Changes From The GoogleBomb Update

According to Matt Cutts of Google, the changes in the GB update were all completed within the Google algorithm. Cutts has always said that Google does not like to manually rearrange the search engine results, so an algorithmic solution to the GoogleBomb was in order. A few of the Google engineers worked together to find a solution to the GoogleBomb issue.

In an attempt to understand what had changed, I looked at a few of the more notorious GoogleBombs of past and discovered some interesting facts.

Broken Google Bombs:

• “Miserable failure” no longer returns George W. Bush, Michael Moore, or Jimmy Carter websites.
• “Worst president ever” now only returns pages that make the claim the GW Bush has earned that title.
• “Waffles” no longer returns results that point to the John Kerry website.
• Tony Blair’s homepage no longer comes up under the search term “liar“.

Unchanged Google Bombs:

• A search for “Scientology” still has the “Operation Clambake” listing in the #2 spot (2007-01-31). Operation Clambake is a website that is critical of Scientology.
• “Clíck here” still points to the Adobe website (although this was not actually a GoogleBomb).
• “French military victories” still goes to the same page on Albino Black Sheep when you hit “I feel lucky” on Google’s search page. (I still get a kick out of this one.)
• The “great president” GoogleBomb survived. It still points to Bush’s bio on the White House website.

The Question On Everyone’s Mind

Everyone seems to be asking the same question. How does Google defuse Google Bombs?

Well, Google isn’t saying, so we are left to figure it out on our own. Based on what I was able to uncover in my study of Google Bombs, I came up with a theory. What I have been able to take from the results shown above is that Google may have targeted only “negative links”. If you want to review what is shown above, all of the Google Bombs that are now gone had negative connotations to them. All of the Google Bombs that survived can be construed as having positive, or at least non-negative, connotations to them.

If my assertion is correct, then average, ordinary webmasters will have nothing to fear from the Google Bomb update. My sites and my clients’ websites also reflect that the Google Bomb update did not have any affect on us.

Maybe I am just grasping at straws, but I don’t think so. You be the judge… “Worst president” is gone, and “great president” survived. To me, that says a lot.

The Google Bombing Legacy Continues…

Following my logic, Google Bombing is still a possibility for those who Google Bomb with a positive set of anchor text keywords. So, some Google Bombs will continue to live well into the future.

In 2004, Search Engine Watch suggested that Google Bombs are better defined as Link Bombs, since they can affect all of the major search engines, including Yahoo and MSN.

Google has finally addressed link bombing in a positive way, but Yahoo and MSN are still prone to link bombing attacks. For example, as of this writing, MSN still has George in the top spot for “miserable failure” in the MSN Live results.
About The Author
Bill Platt has been involved in article marketing and link building since 1999. If you are in the market to have someone build keyworded anchor text links to your site, using unique and interesting content as the foundation, then Bill’s team can help you: LinksAndTraffic.com – If you would prefer to talk to Bill by telephone, he can be reached at             405-780-7745 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 405-780-7745 end_of_the_skype_highlighting between 9am-6pm CST, Monday thru Friday. Platt Services, Inc.

The Difference Between Products and Services

The point of the story Harry Beckwith was making was that there is a big difference between products and services. To quote from his book, “Products are made; services are delivered. Products are used; services are experienced.” In this case, recordings are products and concerts are services. This got me thinking of my own experience, perhaps not quite so genteel as Mr. Beckwith’s but instructional, nevertheless.

Marketing Is Creating Memorable Experiences

When I was a young man, just after graduating from College in New England, I started working in the family business. My father exiled me to the shipping department where he figured my newly earned business degree wouldn’t get the company in too much trouble. One day he came out from his office to the plant floor where I worked and said, “Come on, let’s go to lunch.” My father knew I didn’t eat lunch so this was a special moment, as he didn’t bother asking me to lunch at work. Perhaps this was the day that I would finally be allowed into the ranks of real businessmen who worked in the office and wore ties to work.

As we got into the car I asked where we were going, to which he answered, “The Dirty Bagel.” He looked over at me and saw me roll my eyes and grunt in disgust. Of course I knew the place he was taking me. Every businessman in Toronto who worked in the garment district knew “The Dirty Bagel.” It was a legend more than a restaurant.

Its real name was just “The Bagel” but everybody called it “The Dirty Bagel” to distinguish it from another uptown, neighborhood place where the same businessmen eat breakfast on the weekends and where their wives lunched after shopping. Back then it was rare for upper middle class women to work, so they shopped and ate lunch when they weren’t taking the kids to the dentist or hockey practice.

“The Dirty Bagel” and the “The Bagel” both served the same kind of food, simple meals, bagels and coffee. The downtown version was old, grimy, and well worn, while the uptown version was new, well lit, and well … cleaner. The waitresses in the new place were middle-aged, chewed gum, had pencils stuck behind their ears and called everyone “Hon.” The waitresses in the downtown version were old, actually ancient, spoke with thick European accents, and were just plain nasty. If you asked for an extra pad of butter or more cream for your coffee, instead of getting a “Sure thing Hon” you were more likely to hear something like, “Sophia, listen to Mr. Big Shot, he wants more butter. Hope he knows a good heart doctor…” and as she turned to leave you probably over-heard some Yiddish profanity under her breath.

Now you may be thinking, why would a bunch of rich, privileged businessmen who owned their own businesses, wore expensive silk and mohair suits, and drove Lincoln Continentals, put-up with nasty old ladies who tossed the food on the table and treated you like you were in prison? At least that’s what I wanted to know.

On this particular occasion, the food arrived skidding across the table like a curling stone looking for the button (that’s the red center of the bull’s eye for the uninitiated). After mopping-up the spilled coffee and reassembling my bagel and egg salad, I asked my father, “Why on earth do you come here, the place is old, the waitresses are nasty, and the food is something you could brown bag?” My father looked at me, smiled and said, “It’s for the ‘experience.” And then he took a bite out of his giant twister bagel and winked.

These businessmen were old school, not an MBA in the bunch. They survived the Depression and built substantial businesses with little or no formal business education in conditions that were quite frankly antagonistic. No matter how successful they became, they always remembered where they came from and what was important. These men were characters, who built their businesses by force of personality and shrewd decision-making. “The Dirty Bagel” offered these men an experience that kept them grounded and reminded them how they got to be successful.

Of all the lessons I’ve learned about business and marketing over the years, this was probably one of the most important. It’s about the experience stupid!

If Your Website Isn’t An Experience, What Is It?

Today every business has a website but so many are sterile, impersonal and lack any kind of meaningful experience for the visitor. Businesses spend so much time worrying about driving traffíc to their websites that they forget what happens when people arrive.

If you provide your website audience with an experience, it is something your competition can’t appropriate. On the other hand, if all you’re providing is a commodity, it’s something somebody else will eventually provide cheaper and faster in which case you may end up eating at your own version of “The Dirty Bagel” and not because you want to remind yourself where you came from, but rather where you’re going.
About The Author
Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design firm that specializes in Web-audio and Web-video. Visit www.mrpwebmedia.com/ads, www.136words.com and www.sonicpersonality.com. Contact at info@mrpwebmedia.com or telephone             (905) 764-1246 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting (905) 764-1246 end_of_the_skype_highlighting .