Search Engine News and Analysis

AOL, hoping to revamp its services, has a new branding strategy in place. Plans now focus on the AOL search engine and targeting specific niche audiences. Some naysayers are already contradicting its efforts; however, the results remain to be seen. Will other struggling search engines join the bandwagon?

Until recently, there were five major players in the search engine world: Google, MSN, AOL, Ask.com, and the Yahoo! search engine. These top Internet search engines quickly could be narrowed down to four, however; AOL uses the Google algorithm and will yield nearly identical results. Further narrowing is rapidly occurring - Ask.com seems to be stepping out of the spotlight to focus on specific markets, and in early March 2008, Microsoft began attempting to purchase the Yahoo! search engine. If there are just two top search engines with which to be concerned, what does this mean for your business and for SEO as a whole?

The Wall Street Journal broke incredibly sad news [last week]... indeed I think it is one of the saddest moments in my SEO career. Ask.com is letting go of 40 employees and conceptually restructuring itself by moving away from mainstream search and focusing on question-related searches for their supposed primary audience "middle-American, predominantly female consumers."

It’s the end of the world as we know it, the search world that is, and the start of a whole new universe. Allow me to introduce Universal Search, the practice of displaying search results that include all forms of media including: videos, maps, news, photos, PDF files, shopping feeds, and social, all in one comprehensive results page for the online searcher.

Two days ago I was performing a rather dull set of SEO experiments when I noticed something very disturbing. While testing Google’s SERPs against keyword phrases inserted into the Metamend Facebook profile, I found a Chinese SEO company had completely stolen the Metamend source-code, images and all. The Chinese firm, Okwoo.com had slightly altered and translated the site-text into a Chinese language but had left blog postings (many of which I wrote) in the English language they were originally written in. It’s called site jacking and it happens more often than a reasonable person might realize.

What many people failed to realize was that when Google purchased DoubleClick, it now was also the owner of a very large search engine optimization company called Performics, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of DoubleClick.

The future of search is unclear - what is clear is that change is rapidly happening for all of the top Internet search engines. Google as always is the frontrunner for many of these search trends, but even little guys like Ask.com are making waves. In this article, I will attempt to cover some of the more interesting search trends that are occurring today with the top Internet search engines - but I am by no means being comprehensive about the subject. Things are changing on a weekly, or sometimes even daily, basis, and future articles will cover additional developments in depth.

For the past six or seven years, one of the most dominant factors in determining page or document placement has been an evaluation of incoming links. Google pioneered the method, known as Pagerank, in its original algorithm and has refined it ever since. The recent flap over Pagerank revaluations might provide SEOs a broader hint at changes happening behind the scenes at Google and other major search engines. While unintended, Google might be signaling a step away from Pagerank as a primary means of recommendation and valuation.

The SEO world is abuzz today with Google's smack in the face to a number of websites that are selling obviously paid-for, keyword-rich text links.

Imagine yourself as an SEO servicing a fairly large client or business. The client has tens of thousands of unique URLs in their domain(s) and more content than you can reasonably shake a magic wand at. To make matters more complicated, they are getting creamed by their competition under their most important keyword phrases on Google. They want you to turn their situation around and it has to be done within their concept of a reasonable time period.

As sure as the sun shines behind the clouds on a rainy day, a major shake-up in the search marketing industry is coming soon. The signals are being sent and received through-out the various sectors of search and online marketing. Change in any marketplace, when it does come, is often swift, brutal and merciless. For some SEO practitioners, this one will be especially so. While the search marketing industry has been bracing for change for at least a year, the movement is now picking up speed and gathering momentum. As SEOs, our working-world is going to look very different this time next year.

You go to Google and enter your search term. Big Brother, the totalitarian character from George Orwell's novel 1984, watches with detached interest. You see, to Big Brother, you are only a number - but he'd like to know as much about you as he can. Knowing you allows Big Brother to do many things - both good and evil.

Feedburner is a central hub of hundreds of thousands of blog and podcast feeds owned by corporations, small businesses and individuals alike that can use its software to publicize their feeds, monitor subscriptions and user interaction, and to monetize their feeds. So How Might Owning Feedburner Help Google?

Three major events took place on, at, or around Google last week any one of which could radically change the company and its relationships with its users, advertisers, and ad delivery partners. Two of the events will have long lasting effects Google’s look and operation while the other has a direct effect on the public’s perception of Google as a trustworthy company.

An interesting stat was released by the B.C. Regional Science and Technology Network yesterday. A report it commissioned revealed that revenues generated by the south-island tech community surpassed those of the tourism industry making high-tech the leading economic driver in Greater Victoria in 2006.

The following is Part 2 of the coverage of the Search Engine Strategies (SES) New York presentation called “Mobile Search Optimization” by Cindy Krum of Blue Moon Works, Gregory Markel, President of Infuse Creative LLC and Rachel Pasqua, Director of Mobile Marketing at iCrossing.

Let's face it - any search engine optimization company knows that the industry has carried a collective black eye for many years. This is unfortunate, because there are many firms out there that do outstanding work and who must struggle for simple legitimacy simply because there are so many fly-by-night companies and snake oil salesmen out there.

After publishing last week’s article on “Yahoo Panama - Pros and Cons” I have had a few readers contact me with notable “Cons” they have experienced with the recent upgrade process. While I know I had not covered all possible negatives to Panama in my article these items are certainly worth adding to the list.

After several months of waiting, this new backend is a welcomed change as Yahoo finally moves into the future but as with any new system, it is not without its pros and cons.

Late last week, Google introduced personalized search results for all Google account holders. Whenever they are logged into a Google service, sites that they find popular are weaved into organic search results. While Google users might not notice effects immediately, over time the contents of their personal Google Search History files and Google Bookmarks will be used to determine search rankings based on each users unique profile.