Beanstalk's SEO News Blog

Inspired by a combination of an excellent research paper from Richard Stokes of AdGooroo, Google's Q2 earnings report and the recent happenings in the now getting tiring story of Yahoo! and Microsoft - the most recent article by Beanstalk's Dave Davies is out today. Titled, "The Search Landscape Reflected In Paid Results" it discussed some of the recent changes, how they're affecting the search engines themselves and what we can expect to see in the paid and organic results because of this.

I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Labels: adsense, adwords, google, msn, ppc, seo article, yahoo

Back on February 13th we reported here that a paid listing on Business.om had killed the Yahoo! results for a client of ours. We had the listing removed from Business.com and I spoke with them and asked that any feeds sent to Yahoo! not include our client.

One of the indicators of the issue was that the page was caching at 89k on Yahoo! and was actually redirecting through Business.com when clicked. A few days after the removal of the site from Business.com the cache size returned to normal.

Well, we are pleased to announce that as of last Friday (the 7th) the rankings are back.

So we can confirm that it's a pretty quick bounce-back if you've got a Business.com listing and watched your rankings on Yahoo! tank.

Hopefully this isn't you but if it is - you know what to do (and sorry to our friends over at Business.com but head's up - this is something you REALLY need to address and address it FAST).

Labels: business.com, yahoo

We have a client. Alright, we have more than one but there's one client specifically that I'll be writing about here - let's call him Bruce. Bruce decided one day to purchase a Featured Listing on Business.com. Now, by itself this isn't a bad idea. In fact, in many cases it might even be a good one - but not for poor Bruce.

We noticed that overnight Bruce's Yahoo! results tanked going from page one to ... well ... let's just say "not page one". We also noticed that the cache size of the page suddenly jumped to 89k. As an FYI, the page is NOT 89k and Google has it cached at a mere 16k. So we knew something was wrong but it took a few days before I decided to actually click on the Yahoo! result for the site.

The address bar flickered just a little too much and I tried again. Looking closely you could watch it go from the Yahoo! search address to the Yahoo! tracking URL to a business.com redirection address to the client's URL with ?trackcode=bizcom tacked onto the end. About the same time all this happened (the site dropped in the results for most but not all phrases) the client also noticed an increase in the cost of their ad spend. So Business.com was profiting off of actions that hurt my client's overall ROI and Yahoo! was a participant though I'd yet to figure out whether this was a genuine glitch or a revenue generation scheme that just didn't work out.

The best information I've found on this issue thus far is on SERoundtable.com in their post at http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/002604.html.

A call to business.com did seem to get some results (i.e. "they'll work on getting the site removed") but I'll keep you posted as to how that works out.

So take this as a warning. If you're enjoying solid Yahoo! results and the traffic they provide - avoid a business.com listing like the plague.

Labels: business.com, yahoo

With rumors of a layoff spree in the not-too-distant future, it appears that the future is really here at Yahoo! Reinforcing the "noone is safe" aspect of what we've been told by Yahoo!, VP of Marketing Todd Daum is rumored to have been laid off earlier today. I first head of this layoff over at ValleyWag.com. They're also providing some links to other related reading so worth the read. You can read the news here.

The total number of Yahoo! employees laid off today is slightly higher than predicted at 1,100 bringing the total number of employees there down to about 13,200. There's a good writeup of the scale of the layoffs and surrounding environment on the News.com site here.

Labels: yahoo

Well the fine folks over at Google have come up with a response to Friday's bid by Microsoft for Yahoo! Now, believe me - I understand that business is business and that Google has to respond with a negative spin against their competitors but the blog post and press release they put out made me smirk more than think. The official line, put forth by David Drummond, Senior Vice President, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer for Google, was:

"So Microsoft's hostile bid for Yahoo! raises troubling questions. This is about more than simply a financial transaction, one company taking over another. It's about preserving the underlying principles of the Internet: openness and innovation."

Ummmmm, OK - you've got to be kidding me. Now I mean no offense to Google - love them to bits and use them daily but seriously, the two properties search market share combined still only account for slightly over half of Google's so exactly what is the threat to competition? Google will still have the overwhelming majority of search so really - they can decide how much innovation goes into it. And please - openness !!! When I get my weekly email updating me on the algorithm or when the numbers get put out on searches/day even - THEN that argument might stand. :) He then writes:

"Could Microsoft now attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC? While the Internet rewards competitive innovation, Microsoft has frequently sought to establish proprietary monopolies -- and then leverage its dominance into new, adjacent markets.

Could the acquisition of Yahoo! allow Microsoft -- despite its legacy of serious legal and regulatory offenses -- to extend unfair practices from browsers and operating systems to the Internet? In addition, Microsoft plus Yahoo! equals an overwhelming share of instant messaging and web email accounts. And between them, the two companies operate the two most heavily trafficked portals on the Internet. Could a combination of the two take advantage of a PC software monopoly to unfairly limit the ability of consumers to freely access competitors' email, IM, and web-based services? Policymakers around the world need to ask these questions -- and consumers deserve satisfying answers."

Ouch.

Now, they raise decent points regarding the past practices of Microsoft but again - what competition? If anything the deal will raise the bar on competition in the industry - but Google knows that. Whenever Google's doing something or buying someone everyone makes a big to-do about it. Well now the shoe is on the other foot and Google gets their chance to point the finger.

In the end the likelihood of Google getting their way and the deal being blocked is low. Heck, the fact that Google's against it probably has some FTC people thinking it's a pretty good thing and heck - it might be good for Google as well. Let's consider this - who is the master of search? (hint - it's Google).

People will choose MSN/Live because it's easy (part of their browser, etc.) people will chose Yahoo! because it's part of other services they use or because it's not Google. Well the former will see their services changed dramatically when Microsoft takes over and the later won't like being part of Microsoft any more than Google and so they'll either give up and go to Google or, the company that I view as the true likely winner in this - Ask (come on - give them a chance :)

Of course only time will tell but I'm looking forward to the journey. This is going to be a very VERY interesting story to follow.

Labels: ask, google, market share, microsoft, msn, yahoo

In a move that oddly seemed to surprise many, Microsoft made an unsolicited bid for Yahoo! today. How much? - only $44.6 billion dollars. This would pay investors $31/share - a 62% premium over the previous day's close.

Steve Ballmer is confident that this is the right move for Microsoft. He's also confident that it's the right move for Yahoo! But is he right?

Based on the discussed layoff of a thousand employees from Yahoo! (as well as their current financial slump) combined with Microsoft's huge wallet, inability to get any solid foothold on the search market and control of the desktop and OS makes this an interesting notion. And it comes an an ironic time ...

A couple days ago I completed a survey for SEOmoz (you can too at http://www.seomoz.org/seo-survey) and one of the questions was, "how (if anyone) can challenge Google". My response was Microsoft based on 2 things; their control of the desktop and their ability to simply purchase Yahoo! which they pitched for last year. And it appears that it just *might* happen.

The combined exposure of these two engines would be roughly 33%, still only slightly past half of Google's and there are other considerations. Yahoo! has a large hold on a variety of other properties that Microsoft would obviously leverage to increase their exposure and work to further monetize. Sites such as Flickr, MyBlogLog, etc. (these are my two favorites so that's why they're the ones listed :)

The down side, many people use Yahoo! as "the Google alternative". If Yahoo! is combined with Microsoft it loses the appeal of being an alternative and becomes a cog in a bigger machine. Will users who've been loyal to Yahoo! leave? Also in my questions list: which algorithm will they lean towards? Will they keep all the Yahoo! properties or spin them off. What will happen to Yahoo!'s staff? (not that they have a ton of security right now anyways)

I have a different take than a lot of people I suppose, I like it and hope it goes through. As much as I like Google and appreciate their excellence - I'd like to see at least some kind of quasi-competition for search dominance. Heck, with a third of the market share when combined maybe I'll here something other than (I don't care about anyone else - I just want to rank on Google) from clients. ;) If the deal goes through then my job gets a bit more interesting and to me, that's a good thing. :)

Now I'm not an economist, nor can I predict the future. I've given a quick summary here of what it a HUGE issue and could change the search landscape dramatically. I highly recommend reading up on this further and keeping up with it as it progresses. To get you started, here are some great resources on the story thus far:

• CNN on the bid
• PC World writes about web users' concerns over the deal
• CNET provides a great walk through on why Microsoft made the bid public this time rather than privately as they did last time (very interesting to learn a little bit about the tactics behind the offers and what we can expect to come)
  

And as a final note, I find it very funny that this deal is going to be reviewed by the anti-trust folks. How's THAT for a waste of the tax payers dollars? Two companies merging so they can together be half of what the leader is. This is building competition not eliminating it. But it'll probably cost a few million dollars for them to sort that out and come to the same conclusion. ;)

Labels: google, microsoft, yahoo

Today, being Thursday, was the day that Jim Hedger and I host our weekly radio show on Webmaster Radio. it was a great show with a focus on Yahoo! in the news and a great interview with Applied SEO's John Carcutt.

There were two big stories about Yahoo! going on. The first was the introduction of Delicious info into the results. While most of us currently aren't seeing it, a beta rollout of the new feature is live to many. For those who can, below the description in the search engine results Yahoo! is placing information from Delicious including the number of times the page has been bookmarked and it's tags.

This of course lead to a discussion about how useful this could be to a searcher and how abused this could be by SEO's. I liken it to the green bar PageRank. When we didn't see it we didn't focus on it but as soon as it became visible it became the crack of the SEO industry (except more expensive in many cases).

Hopefully Yahoo! has learned from Google's error and we'll see some great controls. You can read a great article about the launch on Search Engine Land at http://searchengineland.com/080121-095345.php.

We then discussed the massive layoffs over at Yahoo! reported by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and a whole lot more. Will this be the downfall of Yahoo!? Can they keep up if they have less staff? Are they just trimming the fat? The conclusion - we'll have to wait and see. You can read an article on the subject by Jim Hedger as well on the New York Times site.

After a quick break we interviews John Carcutt from Applied SEO on his interesting business model of white label SEO. He works for other firms, as those firms, gives them the credit and collects the paycheck. Not a bad model and a great guy. Thanks again John from the great hat at SES San Jose 2006 !!!

Labels: applied seo, deliscious, jim hedger, social media, webmaster radio, yahoo

Today is a good day. As we all look towards a weekend that extends for a couple extra days, as many of us share the opportunity to get together with friends and family and as we ponder all the resolutions we're going to break in the new year. But for none of us is today as special as it is for the folks at Google - well - perhaps even happier are the folks at DoubleClick.

Today Google, "... welcomed the U.S. Federal Trade Commission's clearance of its planned acquisition of DoubleClick Inc." This opens the door for Google to purchase the provider of display advertising technology earlier this year (on the last day of SES NY in fact).

Now all that stands between Google and the deal is the European Commission. Eric Schmidt obviously " ... hopes that will soon reach the same conclusion."

But what does this mean for us? Not a whole heck of a lot really - it means that Google get to get better at targeting ads. Yeah, not something they'd do anyways right?

In this SEO's opinion, the deal in no way compromises the right or ability of other companies to compete with Google. In fact, it appears to be the companies themselves that are helping Google take more and more market share. Yahoo! focuses too much on communities, Microsoft got in the race too late, Ask dropped Jeeves, etc. etc. Google has yet to make a major misstep and has enough trust and market share at this point to live through one.

I would also argue that the purpose of insuring competition is to protect consumers and to insure that better products get a shot rather than being crushed by larger properties. That fact of the matter is, the product (search) is free to consumers - the advertising side isn't free but is fixed in it's cost by what the market will bear (which is the same as it would be if Google did have a monopoly) and let's face facts - while I'm not happy with every algorithmic shift, Google has the best and most comprehensive search utility ever created. They aren't crushing their competition unfairly - they're just producing a better user experience.

Now I'm not trying to say that they're completely following their "Don't be evil" motto to the letter each and every day. They're definitely done some questionable things but overall they're providing the service they promise and they're providing it well. And to their favor, when something they do screws up, they can shift the algorithm again a couple days later. If only Microsoft had that same ability when they put out Vista. ;)

If you'd like more information on this purchase you can find a great overview on the Business Week site.

Labels: ask, doubleclick, google, market share, microsoft, yahoo

I've gotta admit, I can't confirm whether this is true or not and I found this info at TheInquirer.net so it's worth noting that it's likely true - but not 100% guaranteed (you know - like our SEO services ;).

Microsoft has been subpoenaed by Grisoft, developers of the AVG anti-virus software (great software - I use it at home) for allowing the website www.avg-soft.com to appear in the SERPs.

Well, at least it did. A search as of a few moments ago for the domain by URL produced 0 results - on MSN/Live at least though it can still be found on both Google and Yahoo! engines but not in what any of us would consider to be "prominent positions". :)

And if you decide to visit the site in Firefox you get the friendly warning "Suspected Web Forgery". You can see an image of it above. You know, in case any of you might want to go there to download the AVG anti virus software.

So it appears supoenas work - at least, if the story is true. :) And to give credit where it's due - you can read the full story on the Inquirer website here.

Labels: firefox, google, microsoft, msn, yahoo

Alright, I just realized that I've been missing some press releases from comScore over the past week (caught in filter) and of course - that's when all the news comes in. Here's a summary of what the stats are saying this week:

December 13, 2007:
Between the dates of November 1 to December 11, more than $20 billion was spent online showing a whopping 19% increase over last year. eBay has coined the second Monday of December as Green Monday (it is the heaviest online spending day of the season) and this year showed retailers $881 million in love, up 33% over last year and setting the record as the heaviest online spending day in history.

December 16, 2007:
The week of the 9th to the 15th marks the heaviest spending date of the season (likely) with $4.7 billion in sales showing a 22% increase over last year.

Today (December 19, 2007):
Top 50 Websites released. Comscore's report of the top 50 website rankings is released. And here are the results:

1. Yahoo! sites: 136,180,000 uniques
2. Google sites - 131,538,000 uniques
3. Microsoft Sites - 119,194,000 uniques
4. Time Warner Network - 119,084,000 uniques
5. Fox Interactive Media - 81,325,000 uniques
6. eBay - 80,510,000 uniques
7. Amazon Sites - 59,058,000 uniques
8. Wikipedia sites - 55,157,000 uniques
9. Ask Network - 51,636,000 uniques
10. New York Times Digital - 47,997,000 uniques

And for the rest of the list you'll just have to read their press release ont he topic (there's lots of other interesting figures in there as well) at http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=1974.

You can view their other press releases at http://www.comscore.com/press/pr.asp.

Labels: ask, comscore, google, microsoft, time warner, yahoo

ComScore released it's numbers for October and, oh my goodness, Google is up. In a rare turn of events the folks at Google appear to have won over some users, increasing their marketshare by 1.5%. The number now break down as follows:

• Google showed a 1.5% gain from 57% markshare in September to 58.5%
• Yahoo! realized a 0.8% loss going from 23.7% to 22.9%
• Microsoft took losses (surprise surprise) going from 10.3% to 9.7%
• Ask (YEAH !!!) held steady at 4.7%
• The Time Warner Network lost 0.1% marketshare ending at 4.2%
  

Now, that said - it's not as bad as it looks for the non-Google site. Let's look at the number of searches conducted on each engine in the month of October which, overall, were up by 11.8%:

• Google was up 14.8% with 6.151 billion searches in October over 5.356 billion searches in September
• Yahoo! realized an 8% gain in total searches ending with 2.405 billion searches (up from 2.227 billion in September)
• Microsoft showed gains in search number though more modest with a 5.6% increase in October going from 969 million searches to 1.023 billion
• Like Google, Ask's gains were in the double digits (and since I have a soft spot in my heart for Ask I'm happy to see this) jumping from 444 million searches in September to 491 million with a 10.7% gain in October
• And the Time Warner Network gained 9.4% in search numbers going from 405 million to 443 million

You can read more on the ComScore site at http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=1908.

Labels: ask, comscore, google, market share, microsoft, msn, time warner, yahoo

As if the folks over in Microsoft's search division didn't have enough woes in their lives lately (and by "lately" I mean for all the years after people started using search engines) the data released by ComScore yesterday paints a bleak picture. Until yesterday they were at least able to call themselves one of the big three. It appears that they can no longer claim even that. And who is the engine that overtook them? Could Ask finally be making some moves forward? No, the "newcomer" is likely an engine most of you may not have heard of if you're from North America. The engine is Baidu.com and it's the primary search engine in China (did you think that might have been Google.cn after all the hoopla over their expansion into there and the debates over their censoring search results?)

The current marketshare for August 2007 breaks down as follows:

Search Property Searches
Worldwide 61,033,000,000
Google Sites 37,094,000,000
Yahoo! Sites 8,549,000,000
Baidu.com Inc 3,253,000,000
Microsoft Sites 2,166,000,000
NHN Corporation 2,044,000,000
eBay 1,319,000,000
Time Warner Network 1,212,000,000
Ask Network 743,000,000
Fox Interactive Media 683,000,000
Lycos, Inc. 441,000,000

Another interesting fact is that this does not include access from cyber cafes or cell phones and PDA's. The Asian market is lightyears ahead of us in their us of their portable devices as full-scale Internet devices which could further influence the results in favor of engines such as Baidu.com if they were counted.

Another good question you might want to ask is, who the heck is NHN Corporation? They're a Korean engine and they're right on the heels of Microsoft as well.

Does this reflect a dramatic shift in the engines? In my opinion, not really. We're all used to hearing the data relative to North American or US-based numbers. This is the first comprehensive study of worldwide search behavior that we have been exposed to (that I've heard of at least) and it appears that the Asian market is far more active that many of us may have assumed. In retrospect, if we had really though of it, would we have been surprised? I for one am not shocked by the data but it has reminded me that there are important markets outside of North America and Europe and it's high time we started paying closer attention to them.

To read the full take on the ComScore data you can read the ComScore press release from yesterday here.

Labels: china, comscore, google, market share, microsoft, msn, yahoo

Earlier today Jessica Bowman, of Business.com announced on her blog that she will be leaving her position with Business.com to become Yahoo!'s Sr. Technical Marketing Manager.

Jessica has earned here right to stand among the major players with insightful analysis of both SEO/SEM and how to work successfully as an in-house SEO. I've had the opportunity to chat with Jessica on a number of occasions at SES events and have been repeatedly impressed by both her charm and her intelligence.

We at Beanstalk would like to extend our sincere congratulations to Yahoo! for this acquisition.

Labels: jessica bowman, yahoo

Well it's finally happened, the fine folks over at Redmond seem to be making at least some minor gains against Google and Yahoo! After literally years of losing search market share (due in large part to an under appreciation for what search would mean in the early days) MSN is finally making gains against the search giants.

The latest ComScore results are out and they show the following for the major engines:

• Google sites dropped from 50.7% market share in May 2007 to 49.5% in June showing a drop of 1.2%
• Yahoo! sites dropped from 26.4% market share in may to 25.1% in June with an overal drop of 1.3%
• Microsoft sites rose from 10.3% to 13.2% from May to June with an overall gain of 2.9%
• The Ask network held steady at 5.0% market share
• The Time Warner Network dropped from 4.6% to 4.2% between May and June of 2007
  

Some other points from their stats:

• Americans conducted 8.0 billion searches online in June, up 6 percent versus May and up 26 percent versus June 2006.
• Google Sites led the pack with 4.0 billion search queries performed, followed by Yahoo Sites (2.0 billion), Microsoft Sites (1.1 billion), Ask Network (403 million), and Time Warner Network (341 million). Despite declining in search market share in June, both Google Sites and Yahoo! Sites enjoyed increases in search query volume.
• Microsoft Sites experienced a significant increase in search query volume (up 36 percent) and search market share (up 2.9 share points) in June, due in large part to Live Search Club, a program launched by Microsoft in late May to engage and reward users of Live Search.

We of course would once again like to extend our sincere thanks to ComScore for making this information available.

Please note that the variables used to power our free keyword activity tool have been updated to reflect the new marketshare numbers.

Labels: ask, comscore, free seo tools, google, keyword activity tool, market share, msn, time warner, yahoo

Yahoo! has recently launched the robots-nocontent tag. What this tag allows webmasters to do is specify portions of their pages that are not relevant to the content on that specific page. The biggest effect will likely be in the area of paid links and advertising. At least, I'm guessing that's what Yahoo! is hoping.

In their blog post on the subject they note many possible uses for the robots-nocontent tag including using it for universal navigation that may contain terms and links unrelated to the topic of the page, headers (for similar reasons), legal disclaimers, and - of course - advertising.

As with their launch of the noodp tag I find myself wanting to pat Yahoo! on the back for another good tag developed. This tag allows webmasters to further control how content is read by the search engine without penalizing them for the need to tailor to the human visitor (universal navigation for example). It also allows for webmasters to remove advertising from the calculations thus further increasing the control we have over what types on content are calculated in our onsite factors.

A note however, Yahoo! has noted that links contained within these sectors that don't have the rel="nofollow" tag on them will still be counted so this isn't a ticket to slap up some poker link ads on your site thinking Yahoo! won't see them. They will and unless you have a gaming site of your own, it's not going to end well.

Down the road I'm betting we'll see this go further with links within these areas that aren't pointing to other resources within the same site being devalued. They're not related to the page content remember?

Labels: nocontent tag, nofollow tag, paid links, yahoo

Good news came to Yahoo! and it's advertisers today in the form of a ComScore report. For those of you who read this blog regularly or, to be more accurate, any SEO blog regularly, you'll recall that back on February 5th Yahoo! launched it's new advertising system Panama. As one could expect, the changes have been monitored closely by Yahoo!

ComScore today released their finding on the changes in click through rates on Yahoo! ads. And they are:

• Week Ending 2/11/07 - 5% increase
• Week Ending 2/18/07 - 9% increase
  

Now, these number may not seem impressive, after all - they're only single digit increases however when we consider that we're dealing with over 60 million searches per day in the US alone and that this increase takes them from a 10.1% advertising click through rate to 11.1% this reflects an additional 600,000 advertiser clicks per day. this is 219,000,000 additional click per year which is going to easily translate into many MANY millions of dollars in revenue for Yahoo!

You can read ComScore's full release here.

Labels: comscore, panama, yahoo