Starting From Search

I Now Call Google to the Witness Stand

In Florida, there is an interesting legal case unfolding. The defendant is accused of purveying obscene material from a web site, but the definition of obscenity is based on community standards. As a way to poke holes in this, the defense wants to show that "the community" is actually a lot less moral than they say they are.

How are they going to show this? By using search traffic data from Google. Essentially, the defense is going to try to point out that people will claim to be more moral than they actually are, but in the privacy of our own homes (based on what types of searches people typically perform at their computers) morality is more ambiguous. After all, based on this chart at Google Trends, it appears that Florida’s appetite for porn has increased steadily since 2004.

But search data is not that easy to parse because the search traffic does not get to the underlying intent of the searcher. Just because someone does a search on porn, does that mean that person was actually looking for pictures? We can guess, but we'll never know for sure.

Slate.com has the full story on the case, and the role of the internet in the definition of "community."

Rumor's of Google's Death have been Greatly Exaggerated

Inside the industry, there have been rumors floating around for the last 6 months or so that Google is having trouble retaining people. Fortune even had a piece on the brain drain that is allegedly taking place.

Today, Slate.com has a great piece exploring the validity of the rumors. It's worthy of a read.

Brain Drain at Google?

According to CNN, Google might be facing a brain drain as employees are leaving comfortable jobs to make their own way with their own start ups. (Link: Where Does Google Go Next?)

This reminds me of an article by Robert Cringely that he wrote in May of 2007. In this article (Link: The Final Days of Google), Cringely suggested that Google's downfall would not be Microsoft, but some uber-smart staffer leaving to start their own company.

Of course there will be turn over with 18,000+ employees on the payroll. But these Googlers that left, were not satisfied with developing their projects inside the Google walls. And despite Google offering large sums of cash to keep these people, they left anyway.

It doesn't mean they will create so called Google-killers. But it does demonstrate that even super hot companies cool down eventually and loose some luster.

Changing Search Behavior with SpaceTime

A few weeks ago, I posted about the great things Ask.com is doing. (Read here.) Personally, I think it's a great demonstration of where search should be going.

Now enter an application called SpaceTime. It's not specific to search engines as it is more like a new method for browsing the web as a whole. But the demo does show how searching Google would be different using their application. It certainly have a wow factor, and changes browsing to be a more iTunes like experience. (Gord Hotchkiss has a good review also.)

While it is certainly novel, it won't catch on. Search behavior is getting very ingrained now. Any new search experience has to so greatly improve upon the previous in order for people to put forth the effort to actually change. That is why Windows users will continue to use Windows instead of switching to a Mac. Yes, the Mac OS is better than Windows Vista can ever dream of being. But the benefit a Mac is still less than the the perceived trouble of making the change. It would cause a consumer to learn a new way of doing things when maybe the current way isn't so terrible.

SpaceTime is too large a leap and would require changing too many ingrained behaviors by the general consumer for it to be taken seriously. That is why I think Ask.com is moving in the right direction. It's a big step forward, but builds upon what general consumers are already used to.

Friday Recap

Ask.com gets a new CEO. Ask is doing some great things right now. I hope this does not slow down their progress.

Bill buys Fast. Microsoft said this is to fend off competition from Oracle and IBM. It's not. Everything Microsoft does in search is about Google. All the time, every time.

Critics rail Wikia. They were right to call Wikia incomplete. Founder Jimmy Wales said Wikia would need 2 years to reach any real quality. In the search realm, 2 years might as well be 20.

Google's News Algorithms Fails

MSNBC covers the recent Google News errors from last week. Google puts a lot of faith in their algorithms, but they are not infallable.

Google: Glitch Not Racism

Slate.com: Google's Evil Eye

I love Slate. And from time-to-time they write critical views of Google, when few other media outlets dare to.

Slate is now questioning a consumer right to privacy in regards to Google and the data they capture.

Slate.com: Google's Evil Eye

Slate Uncovers Fun with Google Suggest

I love Slate.com. Their articles range from informative, to shocking, to totally tongue-in-cheek.

Today, Slate takes a fun look at Google Suggest.

After a couple of months of serendipitous delights, I decided to use Suggest to conduct a serious study of human behavior. Google Toolbar makes it easy to practice armchair sociology—just conjure the first half of any question or statement, and Google fills in the back end. Want to know what questions are flummoxing mankind? Type in "is it true that." The fourth suggestion: "is it true that if you don't use it you lose it." The fifth: "is it true that ciara is a man."

What Search Engines Can Tell Us about Us

I wanted to get back in touch with a friend that I haven't seen in about 3 years. In college we were close, but lost touch when life got busy. We both got married, had kids, etc. So I decided to Google him, hoping to turn up his phone number via a phone book entry.

The very first result told me that he was caught and convicted of a significant crime.

With just a few searches on Google and Yahoo, I learned that he was arrested about 18-months ago. I learned exactly which law he broke, how much time he served, where he served it. Obviously, I was concerned about his family. With a few more searches I was able to learn that he and his wife recently purchased a home in a suburb, indicating they must still be together.

With a few searches I was taken right into the darkest part of his life.

Search is clearly more than just a bridge between keywords and web sites. It is having a cultural impact. How large that impact will be won’t be known for many years. They are becoming an alethiometer of sorts, begging the question: are we really ready to have the answer to every question we seek?

Google is now indexing public government records. In the near future it’s possible someone could do a search on you, and uncover, for example, your divorce records. Is that the first thing you would want someone to know about you?

By the way, I did get his new address and phone number. I'm not sure if I should contact him or not. Google told me his story. I’m wrestling with the question: do I let him tell me his story, or is Google's version enough? Search engines may well now be able provide us information at a rate well beyond our human conditions ability to deal with.

Lewis Black on Google's Street View

Lewis Black, on The Daily Show, had some funny thoughts on Google's new street view application. Enjoy the laugh.

The Daily Show: Back in Black

Google of Today is the New Microsoft of the 90s

Google is on track to be the new Microsoft?

SAN FRANCISCO - The Federal Trade Commission has opened an antitrust investigation into Google Inc.'s proposed $3.1 billion purchase of ad-management technology company DoubleClick Inc.

iGoogle

iGoogle is simply a way to make Google.com a portal site. Sound familiar? It should. It also goes by another name: Yahoo.

I called this back in February 2006, when I said Google is trying to be more like Yahoo. This is also evident in Google's recent acquisitions that are turning Google into a larger media company—something Yahoo has already been for years.

Marge Simpson Uses Google

Google seems to increases their market share each day. Now they can count Marge Simpson as a dedicated user.

Google's New SEO Firm

Ross Dunn has a great write up in which he intelligently questions Google's acquisition of SEO firm Performics as part of the DoubleClick deal.

The fact of the matter is a leading search engine like Google who claims to highly value its "don't be evil" mantra will rapidly lose any remaining credibility if it continues to operate a SEO/SEM company.

DoubleClick's DART and Google

The mainstream press and the blogosphere is jumping with the news of Google acquiring DoubleClick. As I have had time to learn more details, I see that Google appears to have outbid both Microsoft and Yahoo in this deal.

My big concern with this is how DART for Advertisers factors into this. DART can be used as a single doorway to PPC campaigns on mutliple engines, such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, and ASK.

Once the acquisition is complete, I would like to know how much DART information Google have and use? I assume all of it. And therein lies the rub.

I don't want Google to be able to see what and how I'm running campaigns on Yahoo, MSN or ASK. Quite frankly, that is none of their buisness.

Google to Acquire DoubleClick

As just announced by Google:

Google Inc. announced today a definitive agreement to acquire DoubleClick Inc., a global leader in digital marketing technology and services, for $3.1 billion in cash from San Francisco-based private equity firm Hellman & Friedman along with JMI Equity and management. The acquisition will combine DoubleClick's expertise in ad management technology for media buyers and sellers with Google's leading advertising platform and publisher monetization services.

Google has been moving further from building applications from the ground up, and has been moving into acquisition. A la Microsoft of the late 80s?

Yahoo, Where Did Search Go?

"Yahoo!, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., also reorganized its 11,000 employees in December from many overlapping subgroups into three distinct business units: Web communities, advertisers and infrastructure." -- TIME, How Yahoo Aims to Reboot

Yahoo, I have a question: Where did search go?

The only way to compete with Google for search market share is to make search a core value and discipline of the company's business. Google excels at search because it has been a core value of the company since it started. And since 99% of Google's revenue comes from their search offering, it will be a core business value for a long time.

Any search engine in the game can only beat Google if they are as passionate about the search offering as Google is. (Are you listening ChaCha?)

A company that gets into the search game because of the profits in the industry will never be a Google-killer. (Are you listening Microsoft?)

Google Adding Categories?

A long time ago, I pointed out what search engines could learn from supermarkets — mainly categorization. Teoma started this a long time ago and was purchased by Ask, who is implementing it now. But how it has never quite caught on.

Has Google started?

Google Can't Spell?

The blogosphere is raging over whether or not Google made a spelling error on their logo on Valentine's Day.

Google's response:

When you look at the logo, you may worry that we forgot our name overnight, skipped a letter, or have decided that "Googe" has a better ring to it. None of the above. I just know that those with true romance and poetry in their soul will see the subtlety immediately.

Purposeful or not, I say if you have to release an official statement about your logo, then at the very least you did a terrible job with the design.

Google Announces Q4 2006 Revenue

Today, Google announced their revenue from Q4 2006, and the numbers are impressive. The numbers mirror the market share growth repeatedly reported by HitWise.

Highlights:

• Google reported revenues of $3.21 billion for the quarter ended December 31, 2006, an increase of 67% compared to the fourth quarter of 2005 and an increase of 19% compared to the third quarter of 2006.
• Google-owned sites generated 62% of total revenues
• Google's partner sites generated 37% of the revenue
• Aggregate paid clicks, which include clicks related to ads served on Google sites and our AdSense partners, increased approximately 61% over the fourth quarter of 2005 and approximately 22%

Books.Google.Com

The New Yorker has an interesting story and update on Google's Book Search (books.google.com), as well as the legal issues surrounding the project.

A few choice quotes from the article:

Google won’t say how many books are in its database, but the site’s value as a research tool is apparent; on it you can find a history of Urdu newspapers, an 1892 edition of Jane Austen’s letters, several guides to writing haiku, and a Harvard alumni directory from 1919.

As Marissa Mayer put it, “Google has become known for providing access to all of the world’s knowledge, and if we provide access to books we are going to get much higher-quality and much more reliable information. We are moving up the food chain.”

Google's Metaverse

Lot's of press this last few days about Google's Metaverse project. (See here, here, here and here, just to list a few.)

These articles are interesting, not because of what they are saying about Google but because of what they are not saying about Google.

Here is what these articles won't say:

• While everyone is trying to "kill" Google, there will be no mention of how Google is moving into other markets with the same ferocity of Microsoft
• If this were Yahoo, pundits would criticize their "lack of product focus"
• If this were Microsoft... see the first bullet
• That this is likely just an attempt to find more eyeballs for AdWords. See the second bullet

Does Google = King Midas?

He with the Most Toys...

What's better than a massive data center to handle search traffic?

How about more massive data centers...

The internet arms race between Google and Microsoft took a new twist on Friday as the companies announced plans to spend more than $1bn between them on new data centres to handle future rapid growth in online traffic.

Another Google Killer…(Yawn)

While I was away on holiday vacation, I read two articles about so-called "Google killers" – an overused catch-phrase that should affect more people as partially ridiculous.

(Consider earlier recipients of the title, Teoma (here and here), Quaero (here), Baidu (here), and even Microsoft's Live.com (here), and... you get the point.)

And again this month, still none of these new search engine ideas are novel, or novel enough to be called a "Google killer". To me this idea sounds like someone inventing a new elixir and  calling it the "Coke killer”, or an operating system and calling it the "Windows killer." After all, even Pepsi hasn't put Coke out of business, as thorough as their competition and advertising may be.

This week’s entrant to the long line of "killers" is Search Wikia, created by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. It is intended to be a "people-powered search engine" that taps into the essence of Wikipedia, meaning user controlled content.

A volunteer force like this has been utilized before and became an albatross for . Besides, a search engine with user controlled content sounds like it could quickly become a spam magnet.

Next to throw down the gauntlet is Powerset. Their innovative technology claim is that a user can type a search query in "natural language." Sorry, Powerset, but Ask beat you there by about six years.

The other problem Powerset faces is that people do not search in natural language sentences anymore, which is part of the reason Ask re-branded away from their "natural language" search feature. It's still there; they just don't tout it anymore. Why? Because users have long been trained to search with keywords. Powerset would first have to un/re-train this now natural behavior, and then demonstrate it's more relevant than Google. But that's not stopping one of its founders, Steve Newcomb, from saying that Powerset could "become the next Google."

Lest I be a stick in the mud, I'm not decrying the ambitious attempts of these upstart engines; I'm questioning the rave surrounding them. Such claims tell me that the product is focused on the competition. The best products, the ones that truly succeed, focus on the customer.

Don't tell me who you want your new shiny search engine to topple in a few years, tell me why it's useful to me (and my clients) right now.

Google's Click-to-Call Problem

This is rich. Via TechCrunch:

Click-to-call let you click a link next to any businesses listing on Google Local, enter your phone number and then contact the business as Google used a VOIP line to call both phones simultaneously. I was excited about the service when I first reviewed it but didn’t even think about using it to make the local Republican party office call the local porn store until reading about the idea on other blogs.

Google Preparing for Holiday?

...or just trying to bring attention back to another luke-warm product offering?

Note the Google Checkout link at the bottom. Interesting for the typically spartan Google home page.

Links to Ponder

NYTimes has a take down of Google's plans to put ads, well, everywhere.
Struggle Over Dominance and Definition

Google’s chief executive, Eric E. Schmidt, has said the company plans eventually to have as many as 1,000 engineers and sales representatives working on the radio industry.

...

What’s at stake is pretty much everything in the $400 billion global advertising honey pot.

And speaking of ads being everywhere, in another article, Google's CEO Eric Schmidt suggests that placing ads on cell phones could lead to free cell phone service. Google CEO sees free cell phone service. GPhone, anyone?

With Google Image Labeler, Users Help Tag Images in Google Database

Google Image Labeler is a creative application designed to use the collect wisdom of Google users to tag images in the Google database.

Simply, a user signs in (it can be done anonymously) and is paired with another user. Over a period of 90-seconds, a series of image is displayed and each user types in "labels" to describe the image. If the label one user types in matches the label the paired user has typed in, then points are awarded.

Essentially, Google has found a simple was to get users to tag images in the database, much the way images are tagged in Flickr. But by only accepting matched tag/labels from each pair, Google can essentially stop any one person from entering non-relevant tags into the system. It would be fantastic if they also matched this information up to the ALT attribute from the site itself.

While still in beta, the Google Image Labeler is a creative way to get users to help increase the relevancy of rankings in its image search.

Google to buy YouTube?

As I have noted before, Google is having trouble diversifying.

While their search product is still the market leader, so many of their other products, including Google Video, often underperforms.

What should Google do to help bolster its other products? How about steal a page from the Microsoft playbook and buy the competition.

Google is currently in talks with YouTube to acquire the company for $1.6 billion.

Microsoft is not known for originating many fresh ideas. They simply buy them from other companies, bring them inside, them market them.

A new trend for Google?

Why MSN AdCenter will Fail

MSN launched AdCenter this year to close the gap with Google and Yahoo. In terms of market share, MSN sits precariously in third place trying to convince everyone they are a worthy contender.

Third place is not a position Microsoft likes to be in. Nearly every industry has a "fight-like-mad" Microsoft story. Will search marketing experience the same?

Not a chance.

AdCenter has some really nice features as part of the tool and it is easy to use. But the reason why they will not gain traction here is simple – lousy customer service. I have experienced long response times, inability to answer questions, and a basic unwillingness to engage.

Google and Yahoo reps are quick to respond, very helpful and seem to be genuinely interested in helping to set up a pay-per-click campaign that will be successful. They make it clear they are willing to help. Microsoft, on the other hand, acts like, well, Microsoft. No one wants to deal with their hubris, especially in an industry where they are third at best.

Sometimes big companies fail to realize that it is still basic customer service that can undo sales. I work with Fortune 1000 clients. I can imagine what it is like for small advertisers.

While PPC campaigns need to always be about the client’s business objectives, what do you think people like me will suggest to our clients when they ask for a recommendation? I know that I can provide great market reach and customer results with a Google/Yahoo combo. Why is Microsoft failing to help advertisers see the value in their product by treating them like they don't care?

Great Quote on Search

If you trust Google more than your doctor, then maybe it's time to switch doctors.
-- Jadelr and Cristina Cordova, Chasing Windmills

comScore: Yahoo Up, Google Down

After 11-months of ever-increasing market share, Google’s run has finally slowed, according to comScore.

While still holding a commanding 43.7% of all web searches, it is down 1% from this period last year. Both Yahoo enjoyed a slight increase for the second consecutive month.

Of course, these numbers will all change once Google finishes search integration with MySpace.

SEO is the Click Fraud Killer

Click Fraud is a two-tiered problem. One is technological and the other public relations. One battlefield is the algorithms that ferret out invalid clicks and the other is dueling press releases and media outlets. Today’s news covers the later.

Independent click-fraud firms that sell click-fraud monitoring services are heightening the fear of click fraud. Or so Google says.

But while these firms may have a financial incentive to make the problem seem larger than it is, so to does Google have a financial incentive to make it seem smaller. Half the fight is over perception of the problem and not the problem itself.

I do agree with Google that the problem has been overstated in the media. It’s the hot topic of the moment which can be easily turned on its head, as I did in a previous post. [Post link: Doesn't It Mean Paid Search is 85% Effective?]

But what is most frustrating to me is that while there is much speculation regarding potential solutions for click fraud, I rarely see anyone talk about the most natural  solution—optimization!

SEO is the click fraud killer. A higher natural ranking means that an advertiser can spend less on pay-per-click and get the same results.

The Big Four Not so Big?

Slate.com has a good read today: The Not-So-Fantastic Four: Why Yahoo!, eBay, Amazon, and AOL are Tanking.

The main issue of the article seems to be about the inability for four companies to diversify. I think there is more to it than that. After all, when it comes to failed attempts to diversify, Google has its share of challenges. Yet their stock price is sky high.

I think, simply, all the "new media" companies of the 90s (such as the big four listed in Slate), now have the same look & feel as all the "old media" companies we have known forever. We are no longer smitten with things that are "cool," but want things that are useful.

Top 4 Sites in Global Traffic are Search Engines

From time to time, I pop over to Alexa's Global Top 500 out of curiousity. I'm not the least bit suprised to see the top 4 are search engines—Yahoo, MSN, Google and Baidu, a Chinese search property.

(The 5th spot is held by QQ.com, an instant message service in China. If my memory serves me correctly, the search feature there is run by Baidu. So one could argue that the top five are all search properties.)

The top spots have changed slightly from when I last posted about this 3 months ago. Not to sound like a broken record, but I will repeat the point I made then: A few years ago, companies (and individuals) wanted to list their products on Amazon and eBay because that is where the eyeballs of the world were. Where should you list your products today?

Technorati Tags: alexa, china, baidu, qq

Yahoo!, Microsoft Acting like Friends

I try to stay focused on search-related topics. Which is why I rarely cover other products released by search engine companies (notice my lack of entries on Yahoo! Answers, or the rumors of Google entering the Radio Ad market, for example) unless I think it will have a specific impact on their search offering.

I'm intrigued by the news that Yahoo and Microsoft are going to make their respective instant messaging clients interoperable. This is not typical Microsoft behavior. They usually demands other companies, and even customers, bend to their own standards.

This is going to re-ignite rumors of a Yahoo-Microsoft merger, which could be Microsoft buying Yahoo outright, buying a partial stake or a true merger, depending on who/what/where you read. The two companies have reportly been discussing various options for more than a year.

Microsoft has announced their intention to spend upwards of $2 Billion in 2007 to catch Google. Could this new business colaboration with Yahoo be part of a larger goal?

This all reminds me of the Arab proverb: The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Everything You Never Thought to Ask About Google

Baseline has an excellent primer on Google. It's lengthy, but a great read if you want to see how the giant works.

Link: Baseline: How Google Works

Technorati Tags: search, google, technology

Google Struggles to Diversify

Not that I was looking for validation on my last post, but it's fun to see that BusinessWeek Online landed on my side.

...Google Talk, an instant-messaging service launched last August, now ranks No. 10, garnering just 2% of the number of users for market leader MSN Messenger, according to comScore Media Metrix. Three-month-old Google Finance, heralded as a competitor to market leader Yahoo! Finance, has settled in as the 40th-most-visited finance site, according to data from Hitwise, a competitive intelligence firm. Gmail, the e-mail service that was lauded at its 2004 launch for offering 500 times as much storage space as some rivals (they quickly closed the gap), today is the system of choice for only about one-quarter the number of people who use MSN and Yahoo e-mail.

Technorati Tags: google+checkout, search

Google Checkout Launches: Why It Won't Matter

Today, Google Checkout opens for business. Google describes it as a, "a checkout process that makes online shopping faster, more convenient and more secure for Google users."

The last part of that sentence is the most important: "...for Google users." To be a merchant, a business has to also be an adwords advertiser.

If Microsoft did this now*, everyone would call it over-reaching. But Google has plenty of media love right now. Case in point: two weeks ago, Google released an online spreadsheet. It lacked any real features (read: it was crap). But the press gave it plenty of favorable ink.

John Battelle, who wrote "The Search", said this may be a breaking point for Google -- few may trust Google this much to also be their wallet. I agree with him.

With Checkout, Google does have something going for it—more methods of secure buying are needed on the internet. But making merchants also have to be a part of adwords system will be a little too much, especially since there are already great, secure transaction tunnels that do not carry this sort of overhead.

This will be the Star Wars: Episode One of the payment world -- lots of hype, little impact.

* Microsoft did give it a whirl with a product called MSN Wallet. It was shut down in March 2003.

Technorati Tags: google, checkbook, adwords

Does Size Matter?

In an article titled, "Hiding in Plain Sight, Google Seeks More Power" in the NYTimes today, we get a peek at one of the major fronts in the search war -- server space.

Two interesting quotes from the article:

Today even the closest Google watchers have lost precise count of how big the system is. The best guess is that Google now has more than 450,000 servers spread over at least 25 locations around the world.

...and...

Microsoft's Internet computing effort is currently based on 200,000 servers, and the company expects that number to grow to 800,000 by 2011 under its most aggressive forecast

That's a lot of servers, but one important thing to point out. Microsoft's farm will be running windows. At least 100,000 of those servers will crash every day. =^)

Vacation Post 2

Another quick vacation post before I wander up into the Rocky Mountains for some kid-friendly hiking.

Google extends market share for ninth straight month, as reported by CNET. Anyone actually surprised?

Steve Wozniak's memoir will be out soon. I would not expect this Steve to sling any mud at the other Steve, but I did notice that he is complementary of the search industry, saying "Google and Yahoo! are very innovative."

Bill Wise on why he thinks MSN Search will move up. I think he has some valid points, but the major issue facing MSN Search is not technology, but branding. Google is a hot, exciting brand -- Microsoft is the polar opposite.

Google Announces Google Co-Op

Today Google announced the release of Google Co-Op, a beta project that is intended to allow uses to tag sites in their areas of expertise.

From the press release:

Google Co-op beta is a community where users can contribute their knowledge and expertise to improve Google search for everyone. Organizations, businesses, or individuals can label web pages relevant to their areas of expertise or create specialized links to which users can subscribe.

This would be interesting if it didn’t sound just like Squidoo. I wonder if Seth Godin is going to chime in on this soon?

Google has struggled to create anything resembling a community product. Orkut never grew into anything significant (except, curiously, in Brazil – 72% of Orkut users are Brazilian), and Google Talk can’t boast the numbers of Yahoo IM or AIM.

It’ll be interesting to see if this product soars or stumbles, and if/how people use it to build links to their own sites in an effort to boost their own rankings.

Technorati Tags: google, co-op, coop, google co-op, squidoo, seth godin

Hyphens or Underscores in URL? Do What the Engines do.

Not long ago, in one of my "Searching for Truth" articles, I posted about the difference between and preference for using hyphens or underscores in a URL.

Quick recap: If a company sells Blue Widgets and they want to rank high for searches related to Blue Widgets, one of many techniques to use is to include the keywords in the URL. Which is more effective, an underscore (www.YourSite.com/Blue_Widgets) or a hyphen (www.YourSite.com/Blue-Widgets)? The question revolves around if an engine is more likely to see Blue_Widgets or Blue-Widgets as two distinct words.

I went into this topic in much more detail in this post, where I also stated my opinion.

While I posited my preference for underscores, a Google engineer named Matt Cutts clearly states that hyphens should be used.

Search engines keep their algorithms under lock and key. People like me often work like detectives to figure out the best ways to optimize sites, using all sorts of information as our guide.

One thing I rely on is simple observation of what the engines themselves do. Obviously they are going to optimize their own sites against their own algorithm.

For example: want to see if MSN Search uses meta tags? Just hop over to www.Microsoft.com and view the source code. Since the webmasters of Microsoft went to the trouble of adding meta tags, it's a safe bet that MSN Search reads them. (How they are factored into the ranking algorithm is another issue.)

So in the case of the hyphen/underscore debate, let's take a look at what Google does, which is highly revealing.

Matt Cutts says to use hyphens, yet on Google.com the underscore is in use. One needs to look no further than the home page:

The URL for the language tools is: http://www.google.com/language_tools?hl=en
Google's Advanced Search page: http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en

If Google will use an underscore, then the algorithm must be able to determine that “language_tools” is two, distinct words. But then again, Google doesn’t worry about rankings for their own site. But they should follow their own advice, if that advice is truly important.

From my experience, I have seen no difference in results between an underscore and a hyphen. My guess is that it doesn't really matter from Google's perspective if you use hyphens or underscores, in the same manner that it rarely matters if you spell the search term correctly anymore. Google easy adjusts for our lazy spellings.

Some may prefer to do what Google says, but I would rather do what Google does. Or is this a case of do what I say, not what I do?

Technorati Tags: google, meta tags, msn search

Omid Kordestani – Google's Version of The 5th Beatle

In this weeks issue of Time, the magazine spotlights 100 people that have shaped our lives.

Among those stand Omid Kordestani, a little known, but powerful force at Google.

A short read, but worth it. Link: Time: Omid Kordestani

Technorati Tags: google, omid kordestani

Would You Pay to Skip Ads?

I have been running Gmail and Yahoo Mail side-by-side for the last month. I have found them both to be great email solutions, each offering great benefits. I’m curious to see who steals the more innovative features from the other first.

Both services advertise as part of the offering, but Yahoo lets you buy your way out of seeing ads. For $20 a year, you get several enhanced mail features plus a completely ad-free environment.

I started to wonder if users would be willing to buy themselves out of ad networks in other areas – mainly on search.

Both companies make an enormous amount of money serving pay-per-click ads as part of their search results. But would users be willing to pay to not see them?

A majority of users click on an organic link, not a paid one. But the paid links are clearly useful to many people, based on the growing profits of Google and Yahoo.

Maybe the question can be taken to a larger realm. Advertisements are finding their way into nearly every channel – including video games.

Would you be willing to pay to not see them?

Highest Trafficked Sites on the Web are Search Engines

Not so long ago, Amazon and eBay were the top trafficked sites on the Web. They would alternate at the top spot, as the web's head honcho.

Authors wanted their books listed on Amazon, and individuals and companies selling nearly anything under the sun wanted to be listed on eBay. (And they still do, they are great resources.)

According to Alexa’s traffic rankings, Amazon and eBay have been displaced by (surprise!) search engines. Yahoo, Google and MSN hold the top three spots in global traffic and US traffic.

A few years ago, companies (and individuals) wanted to list their products on Amazon and eBay because that is where the eyeballs of the world were.

Where do you want your products listed today?

Technorati Tags: google, msn, ecommerce, seo, search, yahoo