BAD Mess in Google 1st Search Result for AMAZON

Hard to believe but the first result for amazon in Google organic is a URL that takes you to a redirect page that doesn't go anywhere until you click on link shown (or wait long enough and I didn't have the patience to wait). To the right is the result and below is the resulting page.

If you click on the page you finally get to Amazon's home page. What a mess? I wonder if Amazon is tracking organic? Is anybody else seeing the same thing?

Moving your Site to a New Domain Name - Scary!!

The Google Central Webmaster blog has posted "Best practices When Moving Your Site"; and it confirms everything my team and I have been preaching for years and adds some additional good stuff. A summary in my own words:

- Use a 301 redirect on a file by file or directory by directory basis (this is really hard)
- Check to see if the new pages are in the index and the old pages are being taken out
- Don't change too much at once. Move the entire site, let it settle and then throw up a redesign or vice versa
- Watch to make sure pages aren't ending up in 404s unless absolutely unavoidable
- Make sure all internal links are pointing to the new domain
- Try (this is really, really hard) to get external links pointed to the new domain
- Keep the old site up and running for a while (Google suggests 180 days). [I would never give up control but I might take it offline]
- Submit a sitemap to all engines that accept the standard

They suggest using Google Webmaster Tools on both domains to help track 404s and to ensure that 301s are working. Some great questions and comments follow the posting.

Thanks for the validation and the great information Google.

Google Ads on Yahoo - Screenshot as proof

On the East coast my colleague has seen our client advertising campaigns on Yahoo switch from Yahoo/Overture to Google AdWords. On the West coast I can not duplicate the appearance. Here is a screen shot from the East.

Search yourselves for VMware or Vonage and send me what you see. DON'T CLICK unless you are interested in the product ;) We measure everything!

Google Filling in Forms - security risks & marketing disaster

Seriously this is scary. Matt Cutts talked about Google filling in forms to get at more data. From an SEO point of view it is unnecessary - if the site owner wants stuff indexed they should make it available. WebMama's clients are all directed this way.

From all other points of view I see this as a real problem.

1. Marketing uses forms all the time to capture lead information. And they measure it. Let’s say Google tries to ‘fill out’ the form and get to the inside information once a day for a month. That is 30 hits on the form that were completed but did not convert. Kind of messes with the data.

2. No matter what they say would you, as a security/risk manager, be satisfied that Google isn’t going to try and ‘guess’ the login or password just because the button or form element has something familiar on it like ‘password’. A lot of personal information (aka healthcare) and business information (aka intranet access) lie behind forms.

3. What if the form is about gathering demographic information. I am not sure that the demographics of a search engine or the demographics of some bot with keywords that are randomly chosen is information an advertiser is trying to capture.

“So now we get GoogleBot instead of Donald Duck as the false name on our forms.”

Google Organic Search - Second Search Based On Previous Query

This is important. Danny Sullivan reports from Austrailia today:

Previous Query

Last year, we covered (and here) how Google was changing the ads it displayed based on the previous query someone performed. For example, search for [spain] then do a new search for [travel], and you may notice how the ads will be targeted around Spanish travel (see also Google's help page on this).

Google's never given this feature a formal name, but Marissa said internally the company calls it "Previous Query," the first time to my knowledge that we've had some type of formal name put to it. Learn the name well, because Previous Query refinement is now coming to unpaid or "organic" search results, she said.

For example, if someone were to search for [spain] and then [travel] after that, BOTH the ads and the organic results will be altered to take the previous query into account. To some degree, it will be as if the second query was for [spain travel].

This is a big deal. Big deal. It means that the results for many "single word" queries, which can be hard for sites to rank for when billions of listings come back, will become queries involving two or more words -- and much more specific ones.

When's it happening? "Soon." Indeed, it's already been happening for several weeks for some people randomly selected. Who will get it, when live? Everyone that accepts a cookie. IE, it's not personalized search thing that only happens if you're logged in.

How could a user opt-out. Heh. I didn't get to asking that, sorry. But I imagine any search where the + symbol is used before a word or words will override Previous Query.

Google & Trademarks & UK: A Good Thing For Clients

What is all the complaining about? I am thrilled we will be able to bid on competitor's brand words in the UK and Ireland starting in May 2008. That has always been a successful tactic - for years and years. People seem concerned that the bid price will go up. Yes, the price will probably go up but it has been cheap for a long time and I am sure that smart marketers can find a way to control their Affiliates and Partners. We had to put those controls in in the US/Canada a long time ago. I am not saying it isn't still a battle and that it doesn't take constant policing, it does.

NetImperative- Google Sparks Controversy with New Trademark Policy
BigMouthMedia - Google to Introduce Open Keyword bidding on all terms in UK and Ireland
WebProNews -Google Gives UK Adwords Trademark Bidding
BlogStorm - Big Changes to Google's Adwords Trademark Policy and its follow up reactions

Note - I am constantly surprised by people who think Google shouldn't do this to 'line their pockets'. Of course they should. They are a public company who is accountable for their bottom line to stockholders. It isn't about good and evil - it is about growth and making Wall Street happy.

Google Sitelinks - Observations and Recommendations

Ellen Ferlazzo, WebMama.com Content Optimization Specialist, on Google Sitelinks:

Barb recently asked me to take another look at sitelinks, those links on Google search results below your main entry. Sitelinks are now appearing in the SERPs for smaller sites as well as larger ones.

How do you get sitelinks to show up?

You seem most likely to get sitelinks when users search for your branded term and your home page ranks #1 for that term. But while branded terms are more common, I know some sites that have sitelinks on non-branded terms. This seems to occur most often when the home page rather than an internal page is ranked #1 for that non-branded term. But I have also seen internal pages that are getting sitelinks so it’s not a hard and fast rule. I suspect the algorithms are being tweaked and tested.

As to getting sitelinks, I think the basics are still the key. Make sure you have:

• Clear navigation for the user
• Appropriate title tags, H1s, etc.
• Internal linking on or near key terms pointing to your important pages

Which pages show up in the sitelinks?

Google says the selection is totally automated. Some sitelinks pages are popular pages but others are not. They do not have to be linked to directly from the home page but all the ones I have seen are linked to quite often. Speculation is that Google is analyzing user behavior as well as site navigation to select these. One of my clients has two different sitelinks with slightly different text going to slightly different pages. I suspect one will disappear soon as it doesn’t seem very useful. Once Google has selected sitelinks for you, you can log into your Google Webmaster Tools account and block a particular page from being used as a sitelink but you do not get say in what ones should be included; you can’t even make suggestions along that line.

What text is used in the sitelinks?

Matt Cutts said Google is varying the text used in sitelinks, sometimes a bit from the page title and other times from the link text, which is certainly what I’m seeing today. For one of my clients, they’re picking up the text near a link placed underneath the Flash for those who have Flash disabled. One of their other text links exists nowhere on the home page, but it is a common call to action in one section of the site. Again though, Google is not using the actual linked text here. At one point they were picking up part of a title tag but they’ve changed that to be just part of the link text at this point.

Something else new: a new search button below sitelinks

Several of my client sites now have a search field and customized button “Search theirsite.com”) underneath their sitelinks. On one of them, Google reduced the number of sitelinks from 8 to 6. The other stayed at 8. Experimentation is definitely the name of the game at this point. [note from Barb – this box is a bad things for our clients. Searchers use the box thinking they will be sent to results inside the site, but no, they are sent to another Google page with more ads. Bad user experience and if you ask nicely, Google is taking it down.]

More blogs on sitelinks

Matt Cutts video from Nov 2007
Vanessa Fox from Nov 2007
SeoPedia FAQ from March 2008
blah,blah technology from Feb 2008

More about the Google Patent that relates to sitelinks:

From SEO By the Sea:
Google filed a patent talking about how they "might" use these. Best guesses are that Google is accessing:

* how often the page is accessed
* how long people stay on the page
* the likelihood of making a purchase there

The patent application suggests they're using toolbar-gathered info as well as general SEO practices. The patent also suggests they might eventually present personalized sitelinks based on your past behavior but this does not seem to be happening now.

How links are generated

http://searchengineland.com/070212-093435.php suggests it's mainly based on internal link structure and the popularity of internal pages.
http://www.threadwatch.org/node/8704 suggests actionable web pages get higher value (downloads, contact us, buy.) I suspect Google is trying to provide a mix of information pages and action pages.

Google Testing: Related Searches at Top of Page

Seen here today; related search suggestions at top of page.

Bet this doesn't make IBM happy
at all....

Of course, having a sitelink that says 'change' is not the most effective thing either. [More on Sitelinks in next post.]

8 Google Sitelinks Live for WebMama Clients

All WebMama.com SEO clients now have 8 Google sitelinks showing in results for the search results on their brand name. This is an increase from 4 max sitelinks. [my previous blog post explains more.]

A few examples:

VMware -
HP - (notice the amazingly wonderful links included here that weren't before like printing and multifunction and PCs)
Without effective internal linking and putting important keywords in your link text and their respective filenames - you aren't going to get these kind of results. You will end up with something like this even with the Google update.

Hope your new links help increase traffic.

If Google Implemented its own Optimization Guidelines

An excellent piece of humour on what would google.com look like if they implemented all of their own suggestions for a well optimized site.

http://www.meangene.com/google/design_for_google.html

Thank you to Gene McKenna's imagination. Gene is currently VP of Product Development at the stealth (but not so stealth since the TechCrunch article) travel site Kango. As a Canadian I pronounced this 'cane go'. I believe they think it should be 'kang go' (like the kangaroo). Of course it could be 'can go' which would be keeping with the theme but now I am sounding like Andrew Goodman...

Those Extra Google Links - a bit of control

Google calls them 'sitelinks' and they are those wonderful and yet annoying links under main search result descriptions. Those that have the links wonder at the method by which Google determines which to show and which not to. I have theories that include: how many times you link to the page on your site (which is why it tends to be the 'about' page), how many times others link to that page, what your main navigations' pages are and what they are called, the links to pages with the most visited content based on search clicks from Google organic (which is why white papers get listed), and the ones that show up the most in search results for your brand. Here is Google's blurb about it:

Sitelinks are additional links Google sometimes generates from site contents in order to help users navigate your site. Google generates these sitelinks periodically from your site's contents. Because we generate sitelinks dynamically, this list can change from time to time.

These links tend to show up under results for brand name searches that match the domains. It is obvious there is some filtering on Google's part as to who gets these links and who doesn't. For example: Ford has 4 links as a result of a search for 'ford', fedex has 0 as a result of a search for 'fedex', Coke gets no love and no links for searches for 'coke', 'cola' or 'coca-cola'. Sort of makes you wonder if there is any consistency to the algorithm or the human choices.

But the big news is that you can now BLOCK certain links from being shown*. For example, if you are an online store, why not tell Google that you don't care about people being able to directly navigate to your location map? I am not sure you will get another link to replace it but that is the other big news - Google is going to show up to 8 links. SEOs will see the implications of this immediately. One, other organic/universal results are pushed down the page. Two, internal linking becomes an even more important tactic. [*you need to have a Google sitemaps verified account for your website to do this].

Of course there are those of us that don't have large enough sites or enough links from the external world to warrant those coveted converting links. You will see the following message:

Google has not generated any sitelinks for your site. Sitelinks are completely automated, and we show them only if we think they'll be useful to the user. If your site's structure doesn't allow our algorithms to find good sitelinks, or we don't think that the sitelinks are relevant to the user's query, we won't show them. However, we are always working to improve how we find and display sitelinks.

Google Universal Search Element: Flights

As an example of Universal Search, Google is showing a special area at the top of the page that let's you directly search for flights to San Francisco. I found it on a search for Chicago to San Francisco (no keywords associated with travel you notice). They list the top travel sites (not the airlines) as secondary links, but the primarily link from the special area goes to Expedia. TripAdvisor is not on that list. And why Expedia? Are the travel sites paying to have that link? What other special areas are like this in that Google has chosen a number of sites to highlight with an interactive element?

Image of Special Flight Area:

Fancy URL Manipulations by the Travel Companies

How many of you have seen the 'magical changing URL' tactic? Watch this:

Classic Search Engine Optimized URL on TripAdvisor.
http://www.tripadvisor.com/Flights-g60713-San_Francisco_California-Cheap_Discount_Airfares.html

Now delete some of the words in the URL, thus:
http://www.tripadvisor.com/Flights-g60713-.html
On this one they use a permanent 301 redirect so it never gets indexed.

And you get the same page. The URL is refreshed to be the original with all the keywords. A permanent 301 redirect is used so it never gets indexed. The display URL is being driven by the combination of 'flights' and the number sequence 'g60713' (which must be the database entry for San Francisco Flights). The rest of the keywords are for search engines.

Clever. TripAdvisor San Francisco flights' page is #1 on Google for:
cheap flights to san francisco
san francisco flights
and a ton of others.

And I said the filename mattered and many disagreed with me. Of course that was back in 2001. I bet they have changed their minds now.

Search Engine Strategies - Full House


I think the Google Dance 2007 really says it all. The place was packed with happy marketers that found SES valuable and overwhelming. [Boy, do you ever get the 'look' when you walk by with a Google Dance shirt from 2002. All the young Googlelites are amazed you have been around that long :)].

More pictures.
Thanks Google.

Search Marketing Agency Mistakes on Google Adwords - Shocking!
Once again my team and I were totally shocked by a bad, bad implementation of an advertiser's search marketing strategy by their search marketing agency. Search is about keywords and creatives, yes, but ultimately it is about landing page conversions and optimization of the spend based on the ROI goals. To bid a high ($10) CPC on a keyword that has no relevancy and, not surprisingly, no conversions - but lots and lots of traffic - is really unconscionable. I don't hold the agency 100% responsible. The client should be watching the bottom line, and the media vendor should be paying more attention to their big spending clients.

The following items should be reviewed/considered when taking on a new client with an existing Adwords campaign. Note: All of these subjects can be discussed without knowing much about the client strategy or target audience; they are just common sense in the search marketing business.

1. Tracking - are they tracking? What tools are they using? Can you 'see' all the way through to sales? If B2B, can you at least see through to completion of a lead form? If not tracking, how do they measure ROI? Asking these questions will help the client either realize the campaigns are half-baked because no one was looking at ROI or give you the chance to review the value of the campaigns based on ROI.

2. Keyword Buckets/Groups - are all keywords in each bucket closely related to each, or are they too general? Keywords should be grouped so that the creatives and landing pages are directly related and relevant. This leads to better testing, thus better knowledge about how to optimize the campaigns.

3. Creative Testing - how many creatives are they testing per bucket? If there is only one text-based creative per bucket, you know that there is a ton of room for optimization and it wasn't being done in the past.

4. Broad Match - are there words that are being broad match that have nothing to do with the product/service represented by the advertiser. Classic example: your company name is Flower and Associates so you bid on the word Flower. Ok, really stupid example but I have seen it happen.

5. Budgets - what is the distribution of media money? If it is a B2B company a significant amount of money should be being spent on Google Adwords. Have the other engines been tested (the should be)? Is 'owning' the category important (ie: IBM may want to own the keyword computers whether it converts or not), then they should be buying on at least the top three vendors and not just Google. Is the daily spend being hit before the end of the day? What keywords are eating up the budget?

6. [And my favorite] Negative Keywords - are they using negates in their campaigns for words/phrases that may result in inappropriate search results to be associated with the advertiser? If you have a keyword like video or conferencing, the advertiser should be smart/mature/whatever enough to negate out words like xxx (fill in your favorite x).

So many more. Feel free to comment and add your own thoughts.

B2B Lead Generation and Conversion Update - MarketingSherpa - June 26th

MarketingSherpa regularly presents findings of research in the B2B marketing space. They have just released an 11 slide summary of their findings on B-to-B Marketing Lead Generation, Nurturing, & Conversion Stats & Tactics. Are there people out there that still believe search marketing is not effective, or even necessary for B2B? This is just another of many, many reports that shows (see Slide #9) the total effectiveness of search engines when it comes to lead generation for B2B companies.

Specifically, the slide entitled 'Where Did They Find You?' shows 83% of the people surveyed ALWAYS go to Google for information. That is why, when we run a search marketing campaign for a company, we put the bulk of the money into Google. If it is about lead generation in the B2B space, it is about Google.

Google Quality Score Post by Amy Konefal (a WebMama.com Team Member)

Google Quality Score: What’s the True Measure of "Quality" Anyway?

In this blog Amy talks about the return of the click-through rate being an important (man it hurts to say that) measure in order to stay at a reasonable price and good position in Google Adwords. A few words from Amy's Google Blogoscoped posting:

"However, those keywords that are getting lower click-through rates due to the use of strategic, pre-qualifying ad descriptions that are written for conversion, could end up being deemed ‘poor quality’ by Google. The result often is that the advertiser is forced to pay much more per click to compete in the listings (I’ve seen minimum bid requirements up to $20 per click!). Even when that very same set of keywords combined with the pre-qualifying ad description happens to be the winning combination that produces the most conversions and highest ROI for your company!"

and

"But what I’d suggest to Google and Yahoo is that they look at this from a longer-term perspective. Who is going to bring you more money over time? The advertiser who is successful because they’ve adjusted their campaign to maximize conversions... therefore seen that PPC can be one of their top ROI-producing marketing channels... therefore moved more of their dollars from traditional marketing to PPC ... and are sustaining and increasing this budget more and more over time? Or the marketer who may very well be producing a large volume of clicks, impressions and a high click-through rate for their company... but quite possibly may not be impacting their company’s bottom line?"

Thank you Amy for your perspective.

What Do You Do To Promote a Blog?

I have a blog. I have had a blog since March 2003. I am now serious about the WebMama Blog. So what do I do to get more people to read it? I am not a big fan of link building except for new sites, so I am treating my blog like a new site and submitting it.

Search Engines: The good news is that I host this blog on Blogger.com; aka Google. My postings appear in Google Blog search within 30 seconds. Technorati picks it up not much later. Now that Universal Search has hit the stands (more about that later), it is often that my blog posting shows up in google.com search results, in addition to webmama.com listings - cool! And the tags are the primary driver of those rankings.

Directories: I have been paying my way in or asking for a listing in a few directories. In the internet marketing world there are many. Sure I become one of many in my category but it provides another way for potential visitors to find the WebMama's Blog as most of the directories have a place for listing a blog in the profile. This is finally getting me to add WebMama.com to some SEO directories (example: SEO Consultants) out there and getting me to update my profile on SEMPO. I plan on adding my blog to at least one directory every 2-3 days for the next few months.

Friends and Colleagues: I am reaching out to business friends to let them know that I am active on my blog and have some useful thoughts about the search marketing industry. Example, Lee Odden added me to his BIGLIST Search Marketing Blog this morning. Thanks Lee.

Press: I personally contacted people at SearchEngineWatch, Clickz, and SearchEngineLand to make sure they are watching my blog for potential news. Kevin Newcomb at the SearchEngineWatch Blog has linked from their blog to mine a few times; when he likes what I have to say.

WebSites: I have used FeedRoll to dynamically add my blog posts to the home page of my company's website.

So, as I tell my clients, link building is about visibility on relevant websites and it isn't about PageRank. It really is all about quality traffic. I guess if you are visiting here you are quality.

Google Buys Application Security Company - GreenBorder.com

So Google is buying a security company. No a big surprise. The more data they collect, and the more applications they put on the desktop, the more vulnerable their users become. Here is a quote from June 27, 2006 written by the Silicon Valley Watcher (clever group them):

Green Border could provide a lot more value if it became part of a say a Yahoo, Google, or an Amazon toolbar. It could protect e-commerce transactions and guard against identity theft on a far larger scale than selling individual consumer licenses. And the big online sites would be able to encourage safe e-commerce before more and more people get burned and stay away from online shopping altogether.

Security for e-commerce transactions is a good point. With Google using an even BIGGER image in its ads to point people to Google Checkout so they can use Google Wallet for purchases, e-commerce will heat up and Google become more relied on to be 'trusted'.

Hello! Google/Microsoft as your Search Marketing Agency??

Dear Past, Current and Future Clients:

Does it make sense for your media vendor to be managing your spend on media buys? To be making strategic decisions on how you distribute your advertising money and at the same time supplying the analytical tools you use to determine ROI!

Aside from the totally obvious value of both companies owning major ad-serving networks, it seems a great way to get better direct control over advertisers accounts. How long before the clients start moving either to in-house management or finding other search marketing companies like WebMama.com that are not potential acquisition targets?

Hey Harrison - Hope you left Aquantive with lots of stock when you went to Microsoft. And, by the way, you can have your old job back without switching logos on your business card this time.