Microsoft Beats Google Search Growth with Live Search Club

New figures released by Compete, an online traffic tracking and information company, suggest Microsoft has finally beaten Google in search "growth" according to its June figures. Microsoft search grew 67.3% from May 07 to June 07, but closer inspection reveals the secret to the phenomenal growth.


According to the Compete announcement post, the majority of Microsoft's growth has come from its Live Search Club. Live Search Club offers games where players can win points that are redeemable on Microsoft products. The clever part is that the games require users to use Live Search to play - hence driving up Microsoft's search usage.

"We didn't see any traffic to club.live.com at all in April. About a third of a million unique visitors went to the club in May, and in June, this shot up to over 3 million unique visitors." said Steve Willis in his post.

Source - Compete July 2007

While search growth of 67.3% sounds impressive, it's important to remember it's based on Microsoft's relatively small share of only 8.4% in May 07 and if they can't turn Live Search Club searchers into loyal searchers - then the growth really doesn't mean much.

I doubt Google will be feeling any pressure at this early stage, but should Microsoft continue to increase its share (even if only measured by Compete's version of traffic tracking), then the search giant might start to pay more attention.

The New Online Advertising Solution for Small Business

As a part of our on-going enhancements at ineedhits we've just released a new and improved Easy Search Advertising service. The revamped service now offers a tiered pricing structure, enhanced reporting and free Yahoo! Clicks for some customers.

The improvements were based on extensive customer feedback, with the goal of providing better campaign flexibility and performance and delivering better returns on investment. The key improvements are explained below:

New Advertising Packages to Suit Your Needs
The new Easy Search Advertising program features a range of packages designed to suit your budget and traffic needs. The tiered pricing structure now makes the program more affordable for a wider range of businesses.



Improved Package Breakdown
As a part of the new advertising packages, we have also added more keywords and campaigns to the program to give wider advertising reach for your business. The packages are as follows:



Enhanced Campaign Reporting
Customers wanted more detailed information on campaign performance and we listened! Campaign reporting now includes the following additional data:

• New campaign goals
• Position of Ads
• Budget Use
• Screenshot of your Google / Yahoo Ad
• List of keywords
• Contact details for your account manager

$75 FREE Yahoo! Clicks
To kick start your advertising campaign we're giving US customers $75 FREE Yahoo! Clicks! If your clicks cost around 50c a click - that's potentially 150 qualified visitors to your website for free! *This offer is only available for Easy Search Advertising Packages that include Yahoo!

Business large and small can now enjoy the benefits of advertising on major search engines Google and Yahoo! with the improved Easy Search Advertising service. If you're keen to get started, head over to the Easy Search Advertising page and choose the traffic package to match your business!

Inside Google's Newest Algorithm Update

Buzz about another Google algorithm update started about 10 days ago when reports of serious changes to rankings surfaced. The dust should finally be settling on the update - so I've taken the opportunity to review the theories on the update.

Dave Davies was one of the first to post an analysis on the update, with his view shared by many across the internet. According to his review, three key areas were addressed in the update; namely Domain Age, Backlinks and PageRank.

Domain Age:
It appears that the Google Algorithm update has increased the importance placed on the age of a site's domain. While using domain age as a ranking factor helps to prevent spammy new websites from stealing top rankings, it tends to disadvantage legitimate sites that are just starting out. The importance of domain age should be a set-up on a sliding scale - with age becoming less important after a specified period, and other factors taking precedence.

Backlinks:
The new update seems to have unusually increased the importance on link volumes again which is ironic considering Google's public denouncement of paid links and unscrupulous linking strategies. So why then would Google reward sites with high volumes of irrelevant links? Many suspect this will be a temporary consequence, and I would expect to see a readjustment sooner rather than later.

PageRank:
It seems the little green bar and enigmatic Google PageRank score is playing a less significant role in weighting the value of links to a website. Many webmasters have become obsessed with getting high PageRank links, ignoring the importance of relevance. While the change is a good thing, it needs to be substituted with a better way of valuing links, which still isn't evident as yet. Perhaps the TrustRank measure which involves manual evaluation of core links will take its place.

All told, the latest Google update seems to have taken a step backwards as far improving the relevance of its SERPs. I'm fairly confident that any irrelevance generated from the update will be rectified by an algo tweak in the near future.

Tell us how the update has impacted your rankings and whether you think the key changes are for better or worse...

The Small Business SEO Checklist

Small businesses are started everyday and many are becoming increasingly aware of the important role search engines play in the growth and success of their business. With the competition for search terms ever increasing, businesses now need to ensure they start on the right foot and make their websites search engine friendly from the beginning.

Here is my 5 point SEO checklist for developing a new website:

1. Do keyword research
Keyword research is an absolute must before you start developing a website. You need to decide which keywords to target and base the rest of the website around them. Use these keywords throughout your content in a natural way to give yourself a great head start. If you're having trouble selecting the right keywords, why not try a professional service.

2. Have analytics in place from the beginning
There's no use performing SEO if you don't know how it's going! Analytics are important to refine your optimization and determine which changes provide the best results. Make sure to install a quality analytics program such as Hitslink or Google Analytics.

3. Make SEO friendly URLs
Using keywords in your URLs and filenames is a great way to show search engines your content is relevant to a particular topic. For example if you run an online candle store, one of your URLs could be candlestore.com/red-candles.html. Keep it to less than 3 hyphens as anymore can tend to look spammy and remember to always use hyphens in your URLs as they are treated as spaces, while underscores are not.

4. Include a sitemap
A sitemap is a great way to help search engine spiders find all the pages in your website and determine their relationship to each other. Create an XML sitemap and submit it to major search engines to provide a clear structure to your site. A simple search on Google will provide you with a range of free XML Sitemap generators.

5. Stay in for the long haul
Search engine optimization isn't about instant gratification. Results often take months to see, and tactics that worked last year may not work as well this year, so be prepared to stick with it.

Bonus Tip: Build a great website
While this tip might seem like a no-brainer, you need to make a website that really offers internet users some value. Ask yourself: "Is my website really the number 1 website for information on this topic?" If not, improve your site to the point where it is.

Use these basic SEO tips when starting a small business to help pave the way to search engine success. Next week, I'll cover some more advanced SEO techniques for existing small business owners.

Google Pay per Action - Now Open Globally!

In March this year, Google announced it was beta testing a new pay per action advertising system for US customers using the Adwords platform. Well behold, beta testing is now open to all advertisers globally.

To summarize, pay per action is a new advertising model where you only pay when somebody completes an action on your website, rather than by click or impression. This action may be an enquiry, signup to a newsletter, use of a free tool, a purchase, or even a page view.

Pay-per-action ads are available to publisher sites in the Google content network, and publishers can choose which pay-per-action ads are displayed based on relevance to their site.

As an advertiser, you can now decide how much you pay for an action. For example; if you have a free newsletter on your website, what is one signup worth to you? Is it $1, $5 or even $20?

This type of pricing lets you control your costs in a much better way. Instead of spending $200 a day on advertising and not knowing if this will produce any sales, you're now assured that $200 in advertising will produce a certain number of orders for you.

Because this is a beta test, users are still limited by certain criteria. To get started with this pay-per-action beta test, you need to meet these criteria:

• Firstly be a Google AdWords advertiser
• Have Google analytics and conversion tracking installed on your website
• Have a minimum of 500 conversions over a 30 day period

Pay per action is a smart move by Google in trying to revamp the poor image of its content network. Google's content network has received bad publicity over the years with the poor quality of clicks it generates and accordingly the poor conversion.

With pay per action now underway and with the newly unveiled content network reports (that show advertisers the individual performance of websites in Google's content network), this may just entice me to switch back on my content network advertising in the near future.

Google Maps - Drag and Drop Directions

Google have made another update to their increasingly popular Google Maps service. "Click and Drag" enables users to change their 'route' when using Google's driving directions. Google Maps provides directions between any 2 places (dependant on your location), however should you want to avoid highways and bad traffic, or simply want to take the 'scenic route' you can now change your route manually!

Say I want to travel from Boulder, Colorado to Los Angeles; Google gives me the shortest route, through Las Vegas, on Highway 15. However, I have family in Santa Fe, and would like to see them whilst I'm traveling. I drag my route through Santa Fe, and presto! Google changes my driving directions!


Coupled with this great feature is the ability to check live traffic conditions in selected cities. Don't want to get caught out in bad traffic? Avoid traffic snares by navigating your path around the worst areas!

With Street View only just released, it appears Google is doing all it can to ensure that they remain at the top of the Maps / Local game! Find out more about how you can use Google Maps to help you get from A to Z, and anywhere in between!

Put Your Business on the Map. Help customers searching for your products or services find your front door. Get a Local Search Listing and get found today!

New Yahoo! SmartAds - Unrivalled Dynamic Online Advertising System

Yahoo! has just unveiled a new SmartAds program which promises to provide unrivalled levels of relevance and targeting for online advertisers. Now creative and messaging will be dynamically merged - presenting Yahoo! users with more tailored advertising than ever before.

After the recent merger of their search and display advertising divisions, this new smart advertising program has many in the online advertising space taking notice. While SmartAds are only being used in the travel category at present with limited expansion plans for 2007 (2 other verticals by the end of the year), the behavioral targeting intelligence behind the system is the real genius.

The biggest challenge for any advertiser is to merge the right message and creative to the right audience. Yahoo! SmartAds allow advertisers to harness the wealth of behavioral information Yahoo! gathers, both through cookies and Yahoo! members who sign in, and use this information to tailor campaigns on the fly.

"Yahoo's SmartAds gives marketers what they have long wanted from online advertising: the ability to deliver more personalized marketing messages to consumers, and still engage very large audiences with their brand," said Todd Teresi, Yahoo!'s senior vice president of display marketplaces.

Companies or agencies can create a range of unique creatives and by providing Yahoo! various offers or messages, SmartAds will display the best combination of each based on the behavioral data of the user.

According to Teresi, SmartAds generally generated click-through rates, two to three times higher than static, non-personalized ads during the four month beta testing phase.

At this stage, SmartAds is only being sold by Yahoo!'s sales force and is probably only suitable for bigger budget advertisers. Lets just hope the advertising platform is scalable and this long overdue behavioral targeting is made available more widely in the not to distant future.

Google's Latest Acquisition: GrandCentral

Google have announced their latest acquisition, GrandCentral Communications, a company that provides services for managing your telephone communications online.

The basic premise of GrandCentral is "one phone number for life". This allows you to keep a single number when you change jobs, homes etc. The number then links to any of your current phone numbers depending on the caller's relationship to you and what you're doing at the time.

From the Google blog:

"GrandCentral is an innovative service that lets users integrate all of their existing phone numbers and voice mailboxes into one account, which can be accessed from the web. We think GrandCentral's technology fits well into Google's efforts to provide services that enhance the collaborative exchange of information between our users."

Techcrunch speculates that GrandCentral will be used in collaboration with Google properties GTalk and Gmail and could be the next step in Google's competition with Skype and other instant messaging platforms.

This latest acquisition is the 11th by Google this year, which has already surpassed the 2006 tally of 9. If Google continues to expand at its current rate, it will end up buying 24 companies in 2007, 3 times more than last year.

Google Is A Machine; Mahalo, Our Human Search Savior

The NY Times article details Google's dominance of the search market (Google earns more in a single quarter than Yahoo does in an entire year) and business in general (Google's 2006 net profit margin is 29% versus Amazon's 1.8%). They state Ask's long running argument (possibly soon to be NotWikiaSari's): even 1% of the search industry is worth over $1B (citing, but not linking to, Don Dodge's post of the same name).

But once you get past all that, the article is really about what seems to be the latest wave of Google killers: human-powered search engines like Sproose, Cha Cha and (of course, the meat of the article) Mahalo. And Randall Stross (author of the NY Times article) has been drinking the Mahalo Kool-aid. He states:

To those in the trade, outsmarting the algorithm is called "search engine optimization." For the rest of us, it produces Web pages littered with spam.

Now I understand why SEO has such a bad reputation-one of the only ways we get mentioned in journalism is in a negative light. (Don't think this happens? Where I grew up, the local TV news stations had actual bans on mentioning a particular city in the area unless the story had a negative slant. The anchors acknowledged and complained about the ban, but followed it.)

Anyway, to hear Stross tell it, Mahalo is the SEO/spam (they're the same thing, right?) killer that will take down Google. After all, Stross says, they're funded by the same people that funded Yahoo and Google, so those VCs must know something about search. No comment.

He even asked Matt Cutts about it (so Matt knew this was coming):

Google contends that its search engine relies on humans and machines. Matt Cutts, a software engineer who heads Google's Webspam team, said users who place links on their own Web pages pointing to other sites provide the raw information about valued sites that is incorporated into Google's PageRank algorithm. How best to utilize that information requires continuing work by human engineers. "Algorithms don't leap out of Google like Athena from the head of Zeus," Mr. Cutts said.

True, but one could argue that at Google the machine has the final say. Once the query is fed into the "engine," the results are presented without manual adjustment.

Oh really? That's not what the New York Times said three weeks ago: Udi Manber, Amit Singhal, Matt Cutts-are they not humans working on search at Google? The article went in depth about the people involved in Google's search and how the engineers behind the algorithm work. From that article:

-Google- has hundreds of engineers, including leading experts in search lured from academia, loosely organized and working on projects that interest them. But when it comes to the search engine - which has many thousands of interlocking equations - it has to double-check the engineers' independent work with objective, quantitative rigor to ensure that new formulas don't do more harm than good. . . .

Some complaints involve simple flaws that need to be fixed right away. Recently, a search for "French Revolution" returned too many sites about the recent French presidential election campaign - in which candidates opined on various policy revolutions - rather than the ouster of King Louis XVI. A search-engine tweak gave more weight to pages with phrases like "French Revolution" rather than pages that simply had both words. . . .

The reticent Mr. Manber (he declines to give his age), would discuss his search-quality group only in the vaguest of terms. It operates in small teams of engineers.

"The machine has the final say," Mr. Stross? The "machine" is all these engineers' baby-and when it's broken, all these engineers work to fix it. I gotta admit, Google's model for using humans to return good results certainly scales better than Mahalo's.

Let's be honest: the only reason Google's in the story is because Google gets people's attention and Mahalo doesn't.

70% Of Consumers Search for Local Businesses Online

Local Search Engine Listings have changed the rules of local advertising. 70% of consumers now use search engines to find local products or services. Online local listings are replacing traditional directories like the Yellow Pages, so if you don't have a local listing

Expert Tips On Duplicate Content

Exclusive Video: If you optimize your site with respect to the search engine industry, I'm sure you are aware of the specter of duplicate content. Even accidentally repeated content can cause ranking issues, something we are all trying to avoid.

At the Seattle SMX Conference, our own Mike McDonald caught with Google engineer extraordinaire Matt Cutts to discuss this very issue. Cutts himself acknowledges duplicate content is an interesting dilemma even for Google to tackle, something he indicates while discussing the concept of content reclamation:

"You always have to worry about how it can be spammed. What if someone innocent doesn't claim their content and then and smart spammer comes along and claims everybody else's content... That's a tricky thing."

The second session from the Search Marketing Expo in Seattle was focused on the issue of duplicate content.

Eytan Seidman, Lead Program Manager, Live Search, Microsoft said you should be concerned with duplicate content on your site because it fragments your pages in some way. In order to avoid duplicate content, he said to keep session parameters simple.

For local sites he recommended having unique content on them and if you don't have different content, you most likely don't need multiple pages. To avoid people copying your content, he said to tell people that are going to use your content to attribute.

Peter Linsley, Senior Product Manager for Search, at Ask.com gave a standard definition of duplicate content saying it was the same content on multiple urls. The reason it is bad for search engines is because users do not want to see the same content result.

As for avoiding duplicate content you should use copyright or creative commons notice. Also make the content unique and difficult to be taken out of context.

Amit Kumar, Senior Engineering Manager, Yahoo Search, said that Yahoo tries to crawl links from duplicate, less; so fewer visits from the crawler could mean that the content may be considered duplicated. He added if you get content from somewhere else you should attribute.

Vanessa Fox, Google, Product Manager weighed in on duplicate content saying they want to show unique information so they want to avoid duplicated information.

If you have pages that are fairly similar, you may want to consider combining the two. In some cases, pages that are similar just need to be distinguished from one another a bit more.

On client site redirects, she said a 301 is considered a client side redirect because the client is actually taken from one page to another and the crawler can see the message.

On search engines reaching out to Word Press and blog software types to avoid duplicate content, she said there is a lot they can do as far as working with the CMS software people to come up with better solutions so end users won't have to worry about duplicate content.

11 Tips for Pay-Per-Click Success

This list details some very important points to keep in mind when creating or managing any pay-per-click campaign. Is this all there is to know about pay-per-click advertising? Absolutely not, but for those new to PPC it should serve as good place to start. Additionally, pay-per-click veterans or at least the moderately-seasoned will want to touch upon these points now and then to brush up on their fundamentals.

1) Do your keyword homework.

Use Google's free Keyword Tool or sign up for a WordTracker account to find out which keywords are the most competitive. The more competitive the keyword, the more expensive your clicks will be. While you're finding out which keywords are too expensive you'll come across some that aren't being targeted heavily by advertisers. Take a good look at these - they may be your keys to a successful niche campaign.

2) Don't bunch your ad groups.

You should be striving to separate your ad groups by keyword. Whatever your target, separate your keyword lists into closely related groups containing the same target words and write ads geared specifically to those words. Your ads will show up higher in results based on their quality, and search terms show up bold in results - a click-through rate booster.

3) Drive home your selling point.

What's your offer? Why are you better than the others? Remember that your ads are going to display with your competitors. The difference between a user clicking your ad and clicking a competitor ad is about 100 pixels on the screen - or a millisecond of time. You need to convince them that you are the one they want. You are better. Grab them.

4) Don't send users to your home page.

This is perhaps one of the worst things you can do to your Pay-Per-Click campaign. Internet users are notoriously impatient. Send them to your home page when they were searching for a specific product or service and see how fast they leave. Don't waste your advertising budget - send them to optimized landing pages.

5) Optimize your landing pages.

Your landing pages need to drive something home immediately for your users: "you have landed in the right place." They need to know that, yes, this is what they were looking for, here it is, here is why it is better than the rest and here's the easy thing they need to do to get it. In most cases you'll need to create multiple landing pages based on your different ad groups and keywords, but look at it this way - if your users aren't landing at pages geared exactly to their search phrases they'll leave and take your advertising budget with them.

6) Don't lie in your ads.

People aren't dumb. If you promise something in your ads you had better well deliver. Otherwise you'll not only waste advertising dollars but damage your brand. Be honest, and focus on points that make you stand out from the competition. Grandiose ad text might bring in clicks, but if it isn't the truth it won't bring in conversions.

7) Your domain name counts.

In most cases you can display a domain name that you own as the "display domain" but point the ads to a page on a different domain. Why does this matter? If you own a domain name that contains the keyword text it will show up bold and increase conversions. Enter the optimized domain as the displayed domain, point the ads to your landing pages and you can expect higher CTRs in most cases.

8) Utilize negative keywords.

Google has a new Negative Keyword Tool that will allow you to find negative keywords that you should specify for your ads. Negative keywords are those that you don't want your ads to display for. For example, if you're selling "blue widgets" you don't want to display your ads to those users searching for "free blue widgets." If you don't use negative keywords you are missing out on a chance to get more targeted traffic to your landing pages, and this can really hurt your conversion rates.

9) Test, test, and test some more.

The greatest thing about internet advertising is the ability it grants you to measure your success. It's easy to create A/B split tests with Pay-Per-Click advertising. Change one word, add a comma, include a value proposition. . .just make sure you only change one thing for each split or you won't know which variable it was that made the difference! You'll find out right away that this is a great way to optimize your click-through rates - just don't forget that clicks aren't everything!

10) Don't focus too heavily on CTRs.

Getting tons of clicks isn't always the name of the game. In fact, if you aren't using proper techniques to ensure that you're getting targeted traffic and sending it to well-optimized landing pages you can blow through your advertising budget in no time flat. Remember that the success of any advertisement is getting back more than you put in. It's an investment, not a cost - so do all that you can to better your rate of return!

11) Don't pigeonhole yourself.

We all know that Google AdWords is the most popular Pay-Per-Click service out there. Your competitors know it, your users know it - even your grandma might know it. It would be foolish to ignore Google as a venue for advertising, but don't forget that there are other search engines out there who offer similar services. Yahoo!'s new Panama search system is catching on, and Microsoft's adCenter is nothing to sneeze at either. Both companies are currently offering sweet promotional deals to new Pay-Per-Click advertisers to stay competitive so take advantage and diversify!

11 Tips for Pay-Per-Click Success

This list details some very important points to keep in mind when creating or managing any pay-per-click campaign. Is this all there is to know about pay-per-click advertising? Absolutely not, but for those new to PPC it should serve as good place to start. Additionally, pay-per-click veterans or at least the moderately-seasoned will want to touch upon these points now and then to brush up on their fundamentals.

1) Do your keyword homework.

Use Google's free Keyword Tool or sign up for a WordTracker account to find out which keywords are the most competitive. The more competitive the keyword, the more expensive your clicks will be. While you're finding out which keywords are too expensive you'll come across some that aren't being targeted heavily by advertisers. Take a good look at these - they may be your keys to a successful niche campaign.

2) Don't bunch your ad groups.

You should be striving to separate your ad groups by keyword. Whatever your target, separate your keyword lists into closely related groups containing the same target words and write ads geared specifically to those words. Your ads will show up higher in results based on their quality, and search terms show up bold in results - a click-through rate booster.

3) Drive home your selling point.

What's your offer? Why are you better than the others? Remember that your ads are going to display with your competitors. The difference between a user clicking your ad and clicking a competitor ad is about 100 pixels on the screen - or a millisecond of time. You need to convince them that you are the one they want. You are better. Grab them.

4) Don't send users to your home page.

This is perhaps one of the worst things you can do to your Pay-Per-Click campaign. Internet users are notoriously impatient. Send them to your home page when they were searching for a specific product or service and see how fast they leave. Don't waste your advertising budget - send them to optimized landing pages.

5) Optimize your landing pages.

Your landing pages need to drive something home immediately for your users: "you have landed in the right place." They need to know that, yes, this is what they were looking for, here it is, here is why it is better than the rest and here's the easy thing they need to do to get it. In most cases you'll need to create multiple landing pages based on your different ad groups and keywords, but look at it this way - if your users aren't landing at pages geared exactly to their search phrases they'll leave and take your advertising budget with them.

6) Don't lie in your ads.

People aren't dumb. If you promise something in your ads you had better well deliver. Otherwise you'll not only waste advertising dollars but damage your brand. Be honest, and focus on points that make you stand out from the competition. Grandiose ad text might bring in clicks, but if it isn't the truth it won't bring in conversions.

7) Your domain name counts.

In most cases you can display a domain name that you own as the "display domain" but point the ads to a page on a different domain. Why does this matter? If you own a domain name that contains the keyword text it will show up bold and increase conversions. Enter the optimized domain as the displayed domain, point the ads to your landing pages and you can expect higher CTRs in most cases.

8) Utilize negative keywords.

Google has a new Negative Keyword Tool that will allow you to find negative keywords that you should specify for your ads. Negative keywords are those that you don't want your ads to display for. For example, if you're selling "blue widgets" you don't want to display your ads to those users searching for "free blue widgets." If you don't use negative keywords you are missing out on a chance to get more targeted traffic to your landing pages, and this can really hurt your conversion rates.

9) Test, test, and test some more.

The greatest thing about internet advertising is the ability it grants you to measure your success. It's easy to create A/B split tests with Pay-Per-Click advertising. Change one word, add a comma, include a value proposition. . .just make sure you only change one thing for each split or you won't know which variable it was that made the difference! You'll find out right away that this is a great way to optimize your click-through rates - just don't forget that clicks aren't everything!

10) Don't focus too heavily on CTRs.

Getting tons of clicks isn't always the name of the game. In fact, if you aren't using proper techniques to ensure that you're getting targeted traffic and sending it to well-optimized landing pages you can blow through your advertising budget in no time flat. Remember that the success of any advertisement is getting back more than you put in. It's an investment, not a cost - so do all that you can to better your rate of return!

11) Don't pigeonhole yourself.

We all know that Google AdWords is the most popular Pay-Per-Click service out there. Your competitors know it, your users know it - even your grandma might know it. It would be foolish to ignore Google as a venue for advertising, but don't forget that there are other search engines out there who offer similar services. Yahoo!'s new Panama search system is catching on, and Microsoft's adCenter is nothing to sneeze at either. Both companies are currently offering sweet promotional deals to new Pay-Per-Click advertisers to stay competitive so take advantage and diversify!