Beanstalk's SEO News Blog

Some interesting statistics from the fine folks at Neilson/NetRatings regarding Yahoo! MSN ranking #1 and #2 of all online search engines and portals. The stats below are for the week ending December 27, 2005:

Top 10 Online Search Engines/Portals & Communities Destinations:

#1 - Yahoo!
Audience - 69,659,000
Active Reach - 53.9%
Time Per Person - 1:11:56

#2 - MSN
Audience - 61,280,000
Active Reach - 47.41%
Time Per Person - 0:38:48


#3 - Google
Audience - 56,150,000
Active Reach - 43.44%
Time Per Person - 0:20:27

#4 - AOL (draws search results from Google)
Audience - 49,643,000
Active Reach - 38.41%
Time Per Person - 2:09:05

#5 - MySpace
Audience - 14,775,000
Active Reach - 11.43%
Time Per Person - 0:54:09


Now it's important to note that these statistics don't actually mean that Yahoo! and MSN are now in front of Google for the number of searches they process. These stats are overall visitors to the site and thus, someone visiting MSN for their MSN mail or Yahoo! for their store will increase the numbers (which also explains the significantly longer period of time people spend on Yahoo!). Additionally, one has to consider the number of engines that Google provides the results for (such as AOL at #4).

Nonetheless these numbers do indicate a shifting in the wind. Perhaps an indication that what we wrote in our last newsletter regarding MSN increasing their marketshare through 2006 is starting a bit early.

The most recent edition of Beanstalk's monthly "Climbing The Beanstalk" newsletter was published today.

For those of you who are not subscribed to the Beanstalk SEO newsletter (which you can sign up for using the box near the top of our right-hand navigation) you can read this month's copy online at http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/articles/newsletters/27dec05.htm.

The management and staff at Beanstalk Search Engine Positioning would like to wish all of our clients and visitors a very happy holiday season. You have helped Beanstalk have an outstanding and enjoyable 2005 and we look forward to serving your SEO needs in 2006 (be them through our services or just getting useful information on our SEO blog).

Because I'm not a sadist, demanding that staff work when I'm not going to be and because I want to enjoy some time with my family this holiday season, Beanstalk will be closed Friday December 23rd and Monday December 26th.

We will resume operations on the 27th and look forward to hearing from you then.

Sincere best wishes for the holidays and for a prosperous 2006.

ComScore today released their most recent statistics on consumer online spending over the holiday season of 2005. The spending increase continues to hold steady at 24% higher than in 2004.

ComScore estimates that online non-travel spending will exceed $19 billion in 2005.

Statistically next week should show a significant decline over this past week however the trends appear to show that people are also spending more closer to Christmas with a much lower decrease last week over the week before than was the case in 2004.

You can view the full report on the Beanstalk website in PDF format here.

ComScores latest report put out yesterday shows a continuing of the 24% increase in online business transactions this holiday season. This upturn has held steady since the first ComScore report on November 23rd. In their update on December 9th we got to see which sectors saw the highest increases and in their latest report they've broken down which days and weeks have been the top performers.

All told this data is extremely valuable and will definitely help us all prepare for the holidays next year. That may seem a distant consideration but as well all know (especially those of us that cram our shopping into the last few days) it's never to early to start preparing for the holidays.

Google today released some new extensions for Firefox to help you "live better on the web". These extensions help protect your privacy and make life easier for bloggers and those interested in blogs.

For Privacy:
Google Safe Browsing For Firefox alerts you when a page you may be on that's asking for personal and/or financial information may be doing so under false pertences. You can read more and download it from the Google website at http://www.google.com/tools/firefox/safebrowsing/.

For Bloggers:
Google has released Blogger Web Comments For Firefox that enables people to see what bloggers are saying about any given page you may be on and simplifies the process of taking that content and adding it to your own blog.
You can read more on it and download it at http://www.google.com/tools/firefox/webcomments/.

I should note that these are only available to people running Firefox version 1.5 or later. To download the most recent version of Firefox you can do so off the Mozilla website at http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/.

Ranking your website on one of the major search engines is great for any business. Ranking it highly on all three major engines is even better. :)

In this article we touch on the various considerations you will need to make to rank your site highly on all three major engines. this article will be followed by a 4-part series in January of 2006 which will get into more detail on optimizing for each engine specifically.

You can read this article on our website at http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/articles/search-engine-positioning/big-3.htm.

As part of our continuing effort to insure that our clients receive the high level of service they have come to expect from Beanstalk and to further insure that our guarantee obligations are met we will not be accepting any new clients until after January 1, 2006.

While we genuinely appreciate your business, our first obligation is to our existing clients and we thus cannot accept new ones at their expense.

We thank all our visitors and those requesting our services for their interest. Please feel free to contact us to be notified when the hold is lifted.

Thank you for your understanding.

ComScore released their first set of holiday shopping stats back on November 23rd which indicated a 24% growth to that point. Was it that people were starting their shopping earlier? Apparently not.

The predicted % growth over last year holds steady at 24% in the non-travel related sectors with a 59% increase in sports and fitness. Broken down by sector the percentage increases are as follows:

• Sports & Fitness - 59% increase
• Furniture, Appliances & Equipment - 50% increase
• Apparel & Accessories - 37% increase
• Home & Garden - 36% increase
• Video Games, Consoles & Accessories - 30% increase
• Total Non-Travel Sales - 24%

This reflects a significant change in consumer behaviour as more-and-more people are becoming secure with their online shopping habits. The reason for this will be discussed further below. For now, those of you interested in reading ComScore's full report can do so in PDF format here.

Which leads many to the question as to why more people are comfortable shopping online. Taking out the human factor of time (i.e. we have less of it) there is also the awareness of what consumers can now do online with their credit cards regarding servicing their accounts. ComScore, in a separate report, also revealed that there was a 28% increase in the online servicing of credit card accounts. This means that people are finding information easily on their accounts and can even dispute charges online. The more informed we are on a subject the more comfortable we are with it and thus, the more information we have and can access online regarding our credit cards, the more we seem to use them. You can view the details of this report on the ComScore website at http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=663.

Very good information for anyone who sells products and/or services online.

Many lists have been written of the various factors used to rank websites however I've yet to see one so well researched and presented as the one on the SEOmoz website.

The contributors to this list include:

• Danny Sullivan
• Dan Thies
• Jill Whalen
• Scottie Claiborne
• among others
  

The list was brought to my attention by Frederick Townes at W3-EDGE Web Design. Thanks Frederick!

You can find the list of rankings factors along with their predicted importance and category on the SEOmoz website at http://www.seomoz.org/articles/search-ranking-factors.php.

Well it appears there's yet another update going on, this time on MSN. Results are currently popping in and out with significant flutuations indicating the change to a new algorithm.

As always, we'll be watching closely to see how this pleays itself out and again - as always, you should keep watching Beanstalk's SEO news blog daily for updates on this and other important search engine and SEO news.

A new update on Google that's taken place either last night or early this morning appears to have returned the rankings to the results viewable before the update on November 29.

Apparently the folks over at Google have a "Ctrl +Z" function on their algorythm too. :)