News broke this week that Yahoo has purchased the Inktomi search engine for around US$235 million. This is an interesting development in the search engine industry that may impact greatly on exactly where sites get their traffic from. Another new development in the past few weeks is the change to the HotBot service but first, I’d like to look at the ramifications of the Yahoo/Inktomi deal.Here’s a bit of background information on how the Yahoo and Inktomi search engines work. I’m sure everyone knows Yahoo but not everyone may be completely aware of how their search engine works. Yahoo is a directory. This means that it is a categorised list of sites that are listed by human editors. Getting listed in the Yahoo directory requires a yearly payment for commercial sites. You can get listed for free if you have a non-commercial site but it is very hard to do and can take months. Yahoo provides additional results when you use their search function that come from Google. In the past, Yahoo has used other search engines to provide these results (including Inktomi) but has used Google for the last couple of years.
They initially used results from other search engines to just compliment their own. So, if someone searched for something that wasn’t in their directory, they could still get results. The way it worked was that they would provide results from their own directory first and then a user would click on “web pages” to get more results. Strangely, Yahoo actually changed the way this worked during the year so that the results from a search were a mix of listings from their own directory and Google with the Google results being the more prominent of the two. This has essentially made the payment of the US$299 per year for a directory listing an unnecessary expense. Many people still use the directory to browse for sites but, in my experience, more people use the search function.
Inktomi is a full crawler based search engine that provides results for other search engines. They do have a web site but no-one uses it to actually search - it’s more of an informational site. Inktomi’s results formerly appeared in many search engines but in the last few years, their popularity has declined. The main site that currently uses Inktomi is MSN but Inktomi only provides the fifth level of results. MSN provides sponsored listings from Overture, their own Microsoft sites, their own human edited directory results, LookSmart listings and then Inktomi. So, Inktomi does drive traffic to sites but far less than a search engine like Google.
So, what does all this mean to us? It’s hard to say at the moment but there are three options. Either nothing will change (which is unlikely), Yahoo will use Inktomi together with Google on it’s site or it will dump Google and use Inktomi for it’s search results. Yahoo actually owns part of Google, maybe 5%, so there is a chance that they will keep using their results for this reason. Also, Google provide far better results for searchers than Inktomi so Yahoo would be making a mistake to replace Google. But, apparently Yahoo is annoyed that Google has become competition to them through Google’s own site and that Google’s news search service is also providing competition.
Without a crystal ball, it’s very difficult to know what is going to happen but it’s worth making sure that you are prepared for all occurrences. There is really very little that you need to do because it is only the popularity of Inktomi that may change. Even without the searches from Yahoo, Google will still be the biggest search engine in the world due to the fact that it’s own site is very popular and it’s results are also used by AOL (amongst others). So, what can you do to get the most from Inktomi?
Inktomi is the only major search engine that uses meta tags. This is actually the reason that it is not as popular as before because meta tags allow webmasters to “trick” Inktomi into thinking a page has more relevant content than there really is. Therefore, Inktomi’s search results are not very good. However, as there is a good chance that Inktomi will now become popular again, you need to make sure that you have your meta keyword and meta description tags in place. Make sure they are relevant to the page that they are on - you don’t want to be caught “spamming” their search engine. The other thing that will probably make a difference is to get other sites to link to you. Link popularity makes a difference on all search engines except possibly AllTheWeb.
I’ll keep you updated here with any news on what Yahoo decides to do and any changes that I find out about the way the Inktomi generates results.
As I mentioned above, the other major search engine news in the last month is that HotBot has finally updated their site. HotBot is owned by Lycos and was quite a popular search engine a few years ago. It has become far less popular lately - since it was purchased by Lycos and was just left to “die”. It’s results largely came from a mix of the ODP, DirectHit and Inktomi. DirectHit has since become Teoma which is owned by AskJeeves but HotBot went for months after DirectHit ceased to exist saying that it’s results were coming from them.
So, HotBot has essentially become another meta search engine - like DogPile or Excite. It now works pretty much like Netscape does. A searcher can choose which search engine they would like their results to come from. The search engines that you can choose from are Fast (AllTheWeb), Google, Inktomi and Teoma. This may mean that HotBot starts to get some of it’s market share back but as webmasters, there is nothing that we can do to target HotBot. All we can do is target the search engines which provide it’s results.
About The Author
Sean Burns is the author of the WebmastersReference.com Newsletter - http://www.webmastersreference.com/newsletter. More than five years of experience in site design, marketing, income generation, search engine optimisation and more is passed on to subscribers - hype free. Sign up today to get real information of real value to webmasters.
seanb@webmastersreference.com
Written by SEO Tipster on October 9th, 2006 with no comments.
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According to the recent release of the Google Patent Application, many of the things you’re doing to get better page rank and increase your position in natural search are about to be history. It’s frightening how much things are going to change.All of those folks trying to “beat the system” with doorway pages and invisible text are about to be (or have already been) punished by the Google Algorithm.
Why are things changing? Because Google wants to remain the premier search engine, which means returning content that matters to people doing the searches. It’s true, marketers are not Google’s primary customer. People using search engines to find information will always remain Google’s #1 priority.
Think about people using search engines for a moment. Wait, forget about them ? think about yourself for a moment. When you turn to the internet for answers, what do you want? I may be an oddball, but when I’m looking for an answer to my question, I want, yes - an answer to my question. Your prospective customers are no different. To quote Dr. Phil, “People want what they want when they want it.” Are you giving it to them?
If you’re not giving them what they want, they probably won’t give you what you want ( their attention, their contact information, and their money.) But there is one thing you can do that will inspire them to visit your site, make them open your offer, and improve your search engine positioning all at the same time.
So what is the one thing thing?
Provide content. Content is King and content means articles. Content means the information that addresses that web searcher’s issues and needs.
And it’s what Google expressly wants from you. It’s what Google needs in order to remain the premier search engine. It’s what Google will return in the very top positions of search results, even for the most popular keywords. The Patent Application makes it clear that doing this one thing is going to have a bigger impact than all the keyword stuffing and optimization you can do.
All you have to do is write a short (400-800 words) article on any topic that might be of interest to your target market. If you sell computers, write a review of some recently released technology. If you are a consultant, explain how companies can improve using some of the handy tips and tricks you know.
Your tips and tricks don’t have to be the “magic” of your offering. You don’t have to give away the store. There are some things that you consider quite fundamental in your industry - and there are thousands of newcomers who don’t yet know the fundamentals. Through your articles, you will be the expert who shows them the ropes. Imagine how much this elevates their opinion of you. You become an instant guru.
You become known as an expert in your field, someone who really knows what’s going on in your space. What kinds of problems might your target market be trying to solve online? Write an article to explain a solution to them.
For instance:
I use Article Marketer (www.articlemarketer.com) to distribute my articles to thousands of newsletter editors for publication. It costs me $39.95 to distribute as many articles as I want for three full months. It’s a great bargain.
I use a hosted service from Sales Force (www.salesforce.com) to manage my leads. It costs me $65 per month for a full-featured sales force automation and lead management system that I can get to from any computer with internet access. Like my American Express card, I don’t leave home without it.
I use the free service from PRWeb (www.prweb.com) to send out press releases to the media for my clients. Their paid service is about $400, but I’ve always been happy with the results from their free version.
Can you see how telling people about these tools takes nothing away from my own service offering? Giving away this information does one very important thing: it makes my target market happy.
After all, how many people don’t even know that www.articlemarketer.com is a tool they should be using or that salesforce.com offers a web based lead management SFA offering? When they read my article, they get valuable information about something they can use right now to get more traffic, find more prospects, and increase their sales volume. They are satisfied.
Then the magic happens.
When they get to the end of my article, if they like the free information I’ve provided, they will want to know more. I put my website address in the resource box (yep, see below) and I get a flood of traffic to my site. Not just any old traffic though. The people coming to my website are pre-qualified. It’s what Ken Evoy says is crucial in selling online, these visitors are “open to an offer” from me.
They have already proven to have an interest in what I’m talking about, and they already feel somewhat comfortable with me, my style, my approach, etc. When they arrive at my web site, they get a lot of information absolutely free. They can also purchase things I have for sale.
I’ve seen dramatic spikes in my Simplified Selling book sales after distributing an article. The conversion rate is better too ? meaning I get more sales “per capita” than using pay-per-click or buying ads in newsletters.
Of course, it’s not that expensive to buy an ad in a newsletter ? but does anyone have enough money to pay for advertising in every newsletter that reaches a particular target market? Of course not, there are hundreds of thousands of ezines published on the web and in print.
However, publishers need content and they are willing to publish your free reprint article (meaning they don’t have to pay you for your writing) and in exchange they provide a link to your website.
That link shows up in newsletters to be seen by your prospective customers. You also get permanent links on websites - something else that the Google Patent identifies as important when ranking sites.
So sit down, draft out an article on some topic you like, and get it published. Watch as the world beats a path to your door.
Chris Ellington gives effective and easy to implement marketing strategies to small business owners and home business entrepreneurs. His Simplified Selling System has been a favorite of salespeople around the world. Get your free marketing strategies at http://www.simplifiedselling.com.
Written by SEO Tipster on October 9th, 2006 with no comments.
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The date: 29th July 2005. The time: early morning. I got out of bed and fired up my PC. Opened my browser to check my site. Had a look at the third-party Google toolbar plugin (http://toolbar.google.com/) on said browser (FireFox). It showed grey.Ice formed in my stomach. I opened my bugged version of Internet Explorer: my PageRank was 0. By now I was frantic. I went to http://www.google.com and typed in ’site:www.tigertom.com’: no pages listed. I did this for two other satellite sites of mine: ditto.
What had happened?
TigerTom.Com (http://www.tigertom.com) had been banned by Google. I went to the WebmasterWorld forum (http://www.webmasterworld.com), and found out the awful truth. Google was doing one of its periodic updates of its algorithm, and had filtered out my sites completely.
Further research there, and a bit of soul-searching, revealed why. I had too many pseudo-directory pages with auto-generated external links. Snippets from search engine results were used as descriptions of said links. Said links were run though a redirect script. These are hallmarks of pseudo-directories and ‘AdSense scraper’* sites. Google is reportedly trying to filter these from its ‘SERPs’**. I say reportedly, because Google doesn’t announce these purges. They are inferred.
To compound my sins, these pages were also effectively doorway pages?.
The theory was that legitimate sites had been hit as ‘collateral damage’. I say theory, in that Google rarely comments on individual cases. It won’t tell you exactly why your site was banned. I guess this is for reasons of time, and to give no clues to spammers.
In my case the ban was justified for my two satellite sites; while not looking like spam, they were effectively doorway sites.
My main site was different. It had offending pages, but was mostly a diverse labour of seven years; a personal site on steroids.
Google bans sites algorithmically: a site that fits their ’spammer’ profile gets dropped via software from their index automatically. Real spammers shrug their shoulders and move on; honest webmasters write emails begging for mercy.
Like me.
I did some searching via Google, to find out how to do a re-inclusion request. Here’s how:
1. First, you check your site is truly gone, by going to http://www.google.com, typing ’site:www.yourdomain.com’ without the apostrophes. If it returns no pages at all …
2. You check Google’s webmaster guidelines at http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html. These are not really guidelines; you should treat them as iron-clad rules.
3. You stop the offending content from being web-accessible, permanently.
If you’re familiar with Apache web-server mod_rewrite you can:
- Send a 410 ‘Gone’ response to requests for the offending pages, or
- CHMOD them to 600, which will return a 403 ‘Forbidden’ response, or
- Move them to a different directory if you need to keep them, or
- Just delete them.
Don’t try to be clever. Just get rid of them.
4. You go to http://www.google.com/support/bin/request.py, tick the relevant boxes, and type ‘Re-inclusion request’ in the subject box of the form.
4a. You add the complete URL of your site i.e. http://www.naughtydomain.com,
4b. You state that you have read the webmaster guidelines above,
4c. You admit what you did wrong; simply, succinctly, with no carping or special pleading.
Don’t try to be clever. Don’t argue. Don’t lie. Don’t waffle.
Google has cached copies of your site. When an engineer checks your site, he’ll look for the offending content, and compare it against their cache. He’ll spend about two minutes on it; don’t give him a reason to continue to exclude you.
4d. You ask for re-inclusion.
5. You wait.
In my case, it took about a week; a long, unpleasant, fretful week. I sent follow up emails saying what I was doing, and a fax, and I was going to write letters if that didn’t work. That was probably excessive. Once you have a ticket number, that’s all that should be necessary.
They emailed a standard reply saying “the problem had been passed to their engineers”. That’s good. I understand they send no reply to spammers.
A week later my site was back in. Lesson learnt. To make sure I’m not so vulnerable again, I’m splitting my content to different sites, on the principle of ‘best not to have all your eggs in one basket’.
Have I learnt anything from this? Yes. Have more than one site as your ‘money-maker’. Spend less time on search engine optimisation and more on traditional marketing. Come up with a unique selling proposition that compels people to link to your site. Easy(!)
——
* A site specifically set up to host Google Adsense advertisements (http://www.google.com/adsense). Usually of low quality, consisting of pages of links to other web sites, text copied from free-print articles, and a big Google ad block ‘above the fold’.
** Search Engine Result Pages
? Doorway pages are low-quality keyword-rich web pages whose sole purpose is to lead the viewer to the ‘real’ content, usually whatever the site is selling.
About the author: T. O’ Donnell (http://www.ttfreeware.co.uk/) is an ecommerce consultant and curmudgeon living in London, UK. His latest project is an ebook on buying property in Spain (http://www.tigertom.com/spanish-property-for-sale.shtml). His blog can be read at http://www.ttblog.co.uk/.
Written by SEO Tipster on October 9th, 2006 with no comments.
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