Universal search being scaled back?

June 5, 2007 at 7:02 am · Filed under Uncategorized, Search Engine Optimization, Internet Marketing, Search Engine Marketing

I was doing some keyword research and was wondering how the new universal search results were playing out. I had blogged about how it was changing the landscape on search results and thought I would do a followup to determine if any changes had occur since then and there has.

It wasn’t a surprise to me but it looks as if they (Google) has started to scale back on the supplemental results (News, Video and Local) they are providing in searches. Local and Video seemed to be holding steady with Youtube being placed 5th in video searches and local not changing at all. News on the other hand looks be on the way out or at the least significantly scaled back.

There is no doubt that there are several reasons for this but the one I think of first is the natural results becoming polluted with non popular results as shown above. Look at the big fat ZERO page rank associated with the Youtube listing. That result knocked someone that did have a decent page regarding that term off the front page. And for what? Because someone is too lazy to add video to the term or click on the video search link on the results page?

Google has a dedicated section for news and it is very simple to navigate to. It isn’t that hard to click one more time for specialized results for the search term. The Blog, News, Video and Local searches are all excellent sources of information and trying to cram them on the first page of natural searches is not a good idea in my opinion.

I am a HUGE fan of automation and reducing the number of clicks it takes to get the content you are seeking. However you need to look at it from another perspective. If quality sources are being bumped off the front page of results due to news or video results and the surfer that is conducting the search could care less about video or news results, well you just made it harder for him/her to find what they were looking for. You following me?

Here are two searches that had contained news results embedded in the regular search results and now neither of them have news results embedded in them.

Dallas Cowboys 
Tennessee Titans

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Being bumped off the front page by video, news and local results?

May 23, 2007 at 11:22 am · Filed under Uncategorized, Search Engine Optimization, Internet Marketing, Google, Search Engine Marketing

You have been bumped by YouTube (video), Local (Google Maps) and News (Google News) but don’t feel bad millions of others are feeling the pinch. I have been deciphering the new Google Universal Results and thought I would share my findings with you.

1. Video just got VERY important.

You may say well that holds true sites geared toward celebrities or bands etc. but wait look at these results. Here is a search on the particular car model Mclaren F1. Here is another example, caveman .

2. News just go important as well.

Here is a Dallas Cowboys search with the News results in the middle of the page and here is a Tennessee Titans search with the results at the top.

3. Local listings are probably more important to small local businesses than anyone else. What this is doing is giving small businesses the ability to compete with larger companies that have larger and deeper pockets. I was actually thinking about developing a search engine exactly for this purpose but declined when I saw Google offering the ability to connect you with the local business by simply inserting your phone number and pressing submit.

Ok what am I talking about? This Gatlinburg cabin search will give you the ability to expand several results to show them on the map. However if you have done your homework you will know that adding the state abbreviation will usually bring in better results as well as higher search count. We have also added rental since it is one of the more popular phrases. So when we do the same search WITH the state abbreviation, Gatlinburg TN cabin rental, you will get a local map automatically being returned with the top three results that have local business listings.

Now PAY ATTENTION, if you learn anything from this post it should at least be this. Those listings that were just displayed in the Gatlinburg TN cabin rental search were NOT in the top 10 natural listings for that search. How is that and how did they pull that off? They had a FREE local business listing with reviews. Again how much did this cost them? Nothing except for the time that it took to sign up for the listing! Now, I know for a fact that there are some campaigns that are paying a $100 or more a day for their adwords campaigns for these keywords. I can only imagine how many small companies that are spending heavily on particular keywords not knowing this.

The next question we need to answer is how to get listed in the top three of the local results :). I’m number one for anything related to Internet in Rogersville TN but that is not surprising since there are only a couple of us in this small town. I will explore that question when I have more time.

BTW the reason why I still live in this small town and have not moved to California or New York is because I love the view from my back yard. The pictures below are views from the top of my hill, in my backyard. I will try to find and add a video later as well. I can see NC, KY, VA and the Smokey Mountains (which is 90 minutes away) on a clear day. It’s a nice view to say the least.

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Who is blogging what?

April 24, 2007 at 9:40 pm · Filed under Search Engine Optimization, Google, Paid Links

Jennifer Laycock over at Search Engine Guide is blogging about how important it is to build relationships with your readers. She is offering three good relationship building tips that anyone could use.

Danny Sullivan’s new conference is coming this June 4th & 5th. This specific conference is named Search Marketing Expo Advanced 2007 and will be held in Seattle.

Brian Turner over at searchnewz.com is blogging about possible scenerios of a paid link shakedown.

A short comment on the Paid Links debate going on now. If I remember correctly purchasing links on websites has been happening for quite some time now. It was a practice before Google existed. Yes it has evolved somewhat but the purpose of purchase has not. You buy advertising in high traffic areas, whether it be a billboard, newspaper, radio, tv or website…. more on this tomorrow.

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Finally a universal sitemap for all search engines.

April 13, 2007 at 9:38 am · Filed under Search Engine Optimization, Internet Marketing, Sitemap Creation, Google, Search Engine Marketing, Yahoo

While Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Ask.com compete fiercely for users and advertisers, they also find it in their own best interests to cooperate on some things. They have recently come together to present a unified solution to help webmasters, and therefore searchers. Yesterday, the four search engines revealed the latest enhancements to sitemaps at the Search Engine Strategies conference in New York, including a new auto-discovery protocol and the addition of Ask.com to the Sitemaps.org group. You can get the full details here.

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