An error with GA presumably, but why is toolbar search data being included with the GA data in any shape or form?  I *may* have been logged in to Google when I made the search via the toolbar, I can’t remember (I log in and out all the time).

I’m guessing there’s some mix up with data tracking – because I had also been back and forward to Zero Strategy between searches – so perhaps GA has registered the search query and then noticed I ended up on Zero Strategy?  But it definitely wasn’t a direct SERP click through so why is the referral in my logs?

I only noticed due to ZS being a new site so has fairly low search volume right now – how many other odd results are slipping into GA logs?

Scott

The search engine giant’s latest digital marketing venture has been launched in conjunction with the creator of adult animated comedies, Family Guy and American Dad, Seth MacFarlane.

A new series of two-minute long episodes from the creator will run on AdSense member websites, reports the New York Times.

The cartoons will also be placed alongside other advertisements and will be available, but will also be available on the Google-owned YouTube.com, Google spokesperson Daniel Rubin told Reuters.

As many as 50 episodes of the animated shorts are said to have been planned so far.

In a separate move, Sony Pictures Entertainment unveiled plans to release the new action film Hancock for Sony Bravia TV owners before its DVD release.

Google and Sony’s move follow research by ZenithOptimedia, which claimed that online video advertising will grow by 41 per cent this year.

Perhaps they needed to free up some funds?

The 3 companies have allowed ad company, Phorm, to access customers browsing records in order to serve relevant ads to any website publisher wishing to join the scheme.  The proceeds would then be shared between Phorm, the 3 Internet providers and the website publisher.

From the article:

A marketer that wants to reach wealthy golfers, for instance, would not have to restrict itself to advertising on golf sites. Because the ad system would track golfers’ Web habits, it could follow them to other sites and show them golf-related ads there, too.

Queue Homer-esque response, “ewwwwww”!

OK, I have mixed feelings about this.  As a website owner, SEO and marketing professional having revenue and advertising alternatives is pretty good, but I really don’t know how comfortable I am being tracked at that level.  Although the article does say that customers of the ISPs involved will be able to opt out of the scheme (and will only be tracked by unique ID and not personal information), it still doesn’t sit very well with me.

Esther Dyson (tech analyst and investor) noted;

Bombarding consumers with more and more ads, even “relevant” ones, risks sending them to social networking services and other places on the Internet where advertisers find it harder to reach them.

That’s a fair point to a certain degree, although I think if Esther had more knowledge of the SEM industry she might consider whether or not social network traffic is that hard to reach for advertisers.

Small guy might be missing out here

Just going through the signup process at Phorm, I see they start their publisher info request form with traffic details – smallest on the list is 500k – 1 million – so it would seem they are targeting higher traffic sites or possibly networks.  I sent in an enquiry and will post back with some info when it arrives.

The demo seems quite interesting from an advertising point of view though.  The example given on the Phorm site explains the process for advertisers.  You can for example, choose to display ads for a Paris hotel only to users who had browsed French travel sites using the keywords “France” and “Paris” (on page), at least 3 times in the past 30 minutes.

That opens up a world of options for advertisers – instead of customising a few campaigns with vague targeting on Adwords, you can customise entire campaigns to target users at different stages of the decision making process.  Frequent browsing could equate to a greater intent to buy – therefore you can target your juicy sales pages to these people.  On the other hand, infrequent browsing could indicate an interest in a new area, allowing you to target more subtle, informational pages at potentially new customers.

It also means we could target different types of customers who are looking for the same service.  A potential new client with no previous SEO services and an existing client of a competitor looking to change supplier could very well browse different types of sites, looking for different types of information – why not tailor campaigns specifically to each customer type?

However, the one constraint with a system like this is scope.  They have the technology to run the system on – they have the user data to sell to advertisers – do they have the content network to justify such a large remit?  That’s where small website publishers could really make or break the campaign.

Last note on this – one cool feature is that publishers can dictate a threshold fee for their ad real estate (i.e. a minimum price advertisers pay to advertise on the site).  I like the sound of that.

Any thoughts on either being able to track and market users at this level, or being tracked and marketed to like this?

Scott

 

Pretty neat huh?  I’m seeing the additional search box added to quite a few SERPs today – seems to be only for site names just now.  I know TheBestOf use the Google Search Appliance for internal searches and I also see the search box on results for Youtube, Amazon and a few other big names.

Searching using the additional search box simply carries out a Google search for the keywords + site:domain.com, rather than producing customised search results from the company using the the search appliance (which would have been cool).

What’s worrying is that it is a slight step onto the toes of webmasters here.

• Say someone searches for your company name and they get this secondary search box that prompts them to “search your site”.
• Say then they decide to search your site.
• How do you feel about them getting these results:

Yup, 10 nice local results in what is essentially a refined site: search.

Explain to me the relevancy of that for users please Google?  They search for a business by name and instead of serving the right information, Google prompts to refine the search and plasters in some more results from other sites.

I guess as a new feature it’s pretty cool, but you have to wonder if everyone will be happy about the potential use for this.  It’s all very well Google setting out on a mission to index the web, but surely there has been a line crossed when Google can potentially show results from your competitors when a Google user is…

1. Specifically searching for YOUR business…
2. Wanting to search YOUR site…

What do you think?  Would Search Engine Watch be happy if a user used their site search and was returned results from Sphinn? Hmmm.

Scott

Page 2, the Wikipedia page for “SEO” which is classed as a “disambiguation” page (lists different meanings of a word / abbreviation).  Fair enough, useful for users of Wikipedia who happen to come across it, but the page itself even states:

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

If Wikipedia has the sense to admit the page is pretty much generic crap, then shouldn’t Google also make this association?  It can’t be that hard for Google to mark down disambiguation pages from Wikipedia.

Scott

This new scheme looks pretty cool and seems to be somewhat of a competing service to Google’s Universal Search / Local Search / etc.  Check out the screenshot on the Y! blog – basically it means your Yahoo! search results could include more features and deep links to your site, including reviews, photos, contact details and price information.

From the Yahoo! blog:

Because the platform is open it gives all Web site owners — big or small — an opportunity to present more useful information on the Yahoo! Search page as compared to what is presented on other search engines. Site owners will be able to provide all types of additional information about their site directly to Yahoo! Search. So instead of a simple title, abstract and URL, for the first time users will see rich results that incorporate the massive amount of data buried in websites — ratings and reviews, images, deep links, and all kinds of other useful data — directly on the Yahoo! Search results page.

Not only is this an interesting (and pretty clever) move from Yahoo!, it also indicates a shift for the future of search and search engine optimisation.  I love the revised look for the Y! search results – I think this rolled out to the live SERPs would be a great change for Yahoo! and will most likely force the hand of MSN and Google who will need to keep up (although in fairness, Google has led the way in the past with new features like this).

It will take a bold step from any search engine to make the move from old school SERPs to new SERPs – Google have gone some of the way over the past year or two, but having been playing it relatively safe by keeping everything under the “beta banner”.

More doors opened though, means more ways for people to spam!  I know Google Local do keep a tight control of data that powers local results in listings – but that’s just a few big sites providing most of the information, with loads of small sites providing a small proportion of the listings.  By allowing webmasters to dictate so much data that will be reflected in live SERPs, Yahoo! could be setting themselves up for a lot of work to keep a solid level of quality control over the process. 

A lot of work?  Yes, but I do think it is entirely within the realms of any of the big search engines to manage this well – and I also really do think they should do it.  

For SEOs it could make for an interesting future.  More data to play with + more control over SERPs = great for us.  But think about it:  more data on page 1 = less people browsing to page 2 (or even to below the fold on page 1).  Where title tags influence click through rates now, user reviews, contact details and other supplementary information might influence CTR in the future.

Not a bad thing, but certainly may offer a larger challenge for the Internet marketing community.  What do you reckon?

Sign up for more information about the release here and WebmasterWorld discussion here.

Scott

(minor gripe – why do Yahoo! still have a link to Threadwatch on the blog roll?)

Isn’t it about time that Google had a little look at how hard and fast Wikipedia is ranking in the SERPs?  Wikipedia now ranks number 1 for the term “pagerank“, with the official Google PageRank page at 2. 

Not sure how long this has been the case, but aren’t we beyond the point where perceived authority takes precedence over relevancy?

Google obviously needs a SEO – their title tags are shocking!  Perhaps they should give BMM a shout? Their PageRank article had awesome title tags!

Scott

The key areas that grabbed my attention were comments like “it’s not my business” and “I don’t taddle tale” – I find it incredible that in this day and age there are still businesses out there that still feel that somehow Karma will come back and bite them on the rear end if they do something like reporting paid links!

Why is reporting paid links to Google any different from reporting spam elsewhere?

Sphinn has a “report as spam” button for each post and only today they introduced a “Desphinn” button.  Why is using that any different from reporting a competitor for buying paid links?

The Sphinn spammer is just another business trying to market their product or services – they just choose to do it a different way than you might agree with.

How about using the Digg bury feature?  Lots of people use that, including many businesses who also use Digg to promote their business in one way or another. 

Askimet then?  Comes as default in Wordpress and loads of people use that to stop spam.  But the same people also promote their blogs by commenting on other blogs.  OK, you may do it by leaving good comments and not just what we would call “spam”, but the principle is just the same – you are commenting to promote your business.

Perhaps forums are different?  Maybe every person who has run a forum and deleted some link spam suddenly doesn’t have the right to post on other forums using their signature or profile to promote their sites?

Maybe some offline examples?  Would you report a company dumping rubbish outside your premises?  Or a competitor flaunting ASA guidelines in their adverts?  Or a competitor using sub par materials in their products?

What about some extremes?

Perhaps your own personal ethics won’t let you report paid links to Google, but where do you draw the line with your “I don’t taddle tale” / “It’s not my business” philosophy?

Would you report a business to Trading Standards if they were ripping off their customers?  I would (and have).  Not because I particularly want to interfere with their business, but because MY BUSINESS can be negatively affected by their actions.  If dodgy Internet marketing services are ripping off customers, then the industry gets a bad name and it makes it tougher to convert new sales.  Even that aside, I do feel some responsibility to take action in certain (extreme) cases - could you sit back and do nothing while you know someone is about to be ripped off?

There is no hypocrisy in marketing!

One of the core arguments against reporting paid links is that it makes you something of a hypocrite if you buy paid links, but also report competitors for doing the same.

That’s nonsense.  Why?  Re-read the last line and pick out the keyword – “competitors” – people you are in competition with.  If you are in business or marketing then your are playing the game to make money.

Yes – do that within the realms of the law and your own personal (or society’s) ethical guidelines, but I think people really need to take stock of what exactly falls within those “rules” and what doesn’t.

Competitive business is about leveraging what you can to succeed.  On the whole that involves taking positive steps to improve your situation (like marketing your business or building a quality site) – but there are times where taking negative actions towards your competition can be a perfectly acceptable approach.

SEOs have one thing in common…

…we all want to be number 1!

We do that within the rules of whichever battleground we happen to be competing on.  On social media type sites that means ensuring your submissions meet their guidelines (and for some it means using loads of fake accounts to get to the front page) – there are no ethics involved there – it’s just down to your personal preferences.

Google has many more fronts to fight on and each offer a number of options for us all.  Reporting paid links is just one of them.

I’m not saying that we should form some kind of “Google paid link brigade” to police the web – the people that comment saying that Google should sort out their own algorithm are completely right.  But the reality of the situation is that we have the option to wait (possibly for a long time) for Google to find our competitors trying dodgy techniques, or we can make a move to speed up the process.

I don’t know about you, but I prefer to have as much control over the success of my business ventures as possible – waiting for Google to catch the competition when I could give them a hat tip doesn’t really make business sense to me.

Bitterness towards Google

I get the impression that more and more SEOs view Google in the way that people used to (and still) view Microsoft.   Perhaps they have been burned by past Google updates or maybe they are just getting sick of seeing dodgy SEO techniques win over good old fashioned “white hat” techniques?

Our industry has been so focused on Google for so long, I think we’re losing sight of how that relationship should really fit into our business models.  Google isn’t the enemy regardless of how badly you may have been burned in the past.  Google is a source of a lot of business, sales, exposure and opportunities for us all.  I’m no Google fanboi – the ‘plex has been as big a source of pain for me as it has any other SEO out there!   I just think we need to step back a little and take stock of the situation.

We have no problem reporting spam on Sphinn.  We don’t ignore it and say, “well that’s Danny’s job to clear all that up”.  We don’t look at it and think we will be considered a hypocrite if we report it (yet we are probably closer to the people spamming Sphinn than we are to competitors in Google SERPs).  Same goes for any forum, blog or social media site we come across.

The exception to the rule

The one argument I can understand is that if you are buying links yourself and you don’t to report competitors just incase it brings a little too much attention to particular SERPs.  Fair enough.  That’s a sound business decision – you weight up the risks and make a choice based on that – no more could be asked of a savvy business person.  I think more of us need to make decisions based on solid business risk assessments and not some odd view of ethics or bitterness towards Google.

Do I, don’t I?

Just to clarify, I’m not presenting myself here as some champion of paid link reporting – I have reported a handful in my time, but not a particularly large amount.  Mostly sites with strong rankings who are pushing the paid link thing a little too far (thousands of links – in one case over one hundred thousand!).

I still prefer the strategy of building a good site so I’ll leave you with a quote from David Wallace’s article as I don’t think I could possibly word it any better:

“Do I think paid links should be a site’s only strategy? No I don’t. The bottom line really comes down to this – if we would spend more time making our sites the very best they can be, we might not have to worry about what the competition is doing because we will be so far ahead of them to even notice them in the first place.”

When does it become your business and why does reporting paid links fall outside that category?  Are you worried that Karma will end up reporting you?  Sorry to say it, but I really think you are kidding yourself if you think that closing your eyes and hoping it won’t happen will remove the risk of it actually happening.  If you are doing something that carries a risk, then whether or not you report your competitors for the same won’t increase or remove that risk.  It just might give you a competitive advantage for a while though.

Scott

Shocker!

Let’s have a think about this.  You are making $5k / $10k / $20k / $50k / $100k a MONTH by spamming the company that is paying you.  Collectively, you and the other people like you are taking 10’s of millions (probably more) of advertiser spend from businesses because you spam Google and prevent them from achieving good organic results without pro SEO help (forcing them into Adwords).  You are also probably the person that moans regularly about how much money Google is making.

Yet you seem surprised, and in cases, disgruntled that this situation has popped up.

Newsflash – everyone else saw this coming a mile off and it’s long overdue.

Credit where credit is due though – I do have a lot of respect for some MFA producers – they do it well and I suspect that most not only have great SEO knowledge but a few of the greats are pretty damn good businessmen as well.

But seriously – this was always going to happen and most people know that.  Just like the good life of 5 years ago where you could grab number 1 rankings in Google overnight are gone, this honeymoon period for a lot of people is coming to an end.

I think it’s a good thing.  Not that I have any “ethical” objection to web spam which seems to be the main argument against it (within the SEO community) – it’s more that a lot of legit businesses have ended up having to fork out much more money on PPC spend just to keep up and I think this is a little unfair on them, especially small businesses.

It was always a short term strategy and the savvy webmaster should have known this and prepared as such – even if they didn’t see that particular business model lasting, then they should (and I believe most will have) seen that it needs to be integrated into a longer term strategy.

But why did Google take so long to act?  MFA sites are as old as Adsense and lots of people were shouting for Google to make this move as long as I can remember.

Perhaps it is only just starting to hurt Google’s bottom line – maybe the general perception of Adsense has become so low that Google needed to make the move now?  Or maybe they just loved the huge influx of spam data to allow to prepare for the next level of the search engine wars?

Who knows, but I’m glad this move has come.  I don’t expect it will have a serious negative impact on many people (after all, most of the people involved have made a serious amount of cash from it) and will begin to have a positive affect on other businesses (lowered PPC costs).

Where next for the full time spammers?  Maybe they will go legit or maybe we’ll see some of this cash being invested in serious online ventures?  Probably most will retire or find another way of monetising web spam, but I would prefer to see them invest in longer term ventures – I think it’s better for the web and better for the SEO industry that way.

MG