Legal Search Marketing Blog

Yahoo search update gets mixed reviews

Yahoo made updates to its search index this week that are supposed to improve the quality of the search results, but many people are unhappy, probably the ones that lost search rankings.  CNET has an article:

The search engine updates are aimed specifically at growing the list of relevant Web sites in Yahoo's search index, said Tim Mayer, director of product management for Yahoo Search. The company is also in the midst of tweaking its search algorithm, which determines the ranking of search results, he said.

The update, which began Wednesday, is a work in progress that won't be complete for another week or two, Mayer said. He urged Webmasters to be patient until the process is complete.

"We need to ensure quality results for our users," Mayer said. "If we feel that this is a much better experience for our users, we feel it's the right thing to do."

New Breast Implant Law Blog

BREAST IMPLANT LEGAL BLOG:

We have assisted The Law Offices of Stephen Frailich in starting a new Breast Implant Litigation Blog that will bring the latest news and information on the Dow Corning breast implant class action.

Stephen M. Frailich, owner of the Law Offices of Stephen M. Frailich, A Professional Law Corporation, has been a practicing attorney for the past 23 years. Mr. Frailich has specialized in Personal Injury Litigation and Breast Implant Class Action claims, and has obtained more then $68,000,000 in settlements on behalf of his clients.

We have created a few different web sites for the firm and they are already dominating the organic search engine results for all breast implant law keyphrases, but having a blog is not only a way to supplement your search engine traffic and rankings but it can also establish you as an expert in your legal practice area. 

Google Releases Q2 2005 Earnings

Google has just published its Q2 2005 earnings, as covered in this press release "Google had another solid performance," says Google CEO Eric Schmidt.  What a surprise!

Titans Battle for China: Google Countersues Microsoft

Google yesterday asked a California Superior Court judge in Santa Clara County to invalidate what it said was an "overreaching and unlawful" noncompete agreement - central to Microsoft's lawsuit against former vice-president Kai-Fu Lee, who was hired by Google to head its new research center and operations in China - reports ZDNet (Reuters).

Google contends that the clause violates California laws giving workers the right to change jobs, writes Business Week (AP), quoting Nicole Wong, Google's associate general counsel, as saying that Microsoft's restriction is "clearly an illegal restraint of trade...Google is trying to create an environment for innovators. Microsoft is focused on litigation and intimidation."

Search giant Google is a growing competitor of software giant Microsoft - which is threatening to threaten Google in the search arena.

Source: Marketingvox

AOL & Ask Show Growth In Searches But Big Players Still Big

GOOGLE STILL DOMINATING SEARCHES:

New quarterly statistics out from Nielsen-Netrating show that AOL and Ask Jeeves had double-digit growth in the number of searches they handled, though the total number of searches handled by the major players left these other services far behind.

What surprises me here is that MSN actually lost ground and AOL gained 15%. I still see a lot of traffic coming from MSN but overall these stats just show that Google remains the king of the search engine world.

Source: Search Engine Watch Blog

Washingtonpost.com RSS Feeds Carry Ads

Article from Marketing Vox about how the Washingtonpost.com is integrating ads into its RSS feeds. All lawyers should start to know what RSS is now. 

Washingtonpost.com is the first major news site to begin integrating advertising into its RSS feeds, in what is a sign of more direct competition between mainstream news organizations and search engines (and blogs) for new media dollars, AdAge reports (via MediaBuyerPlanner). MSNBC TV's The Situation with Tucker Carlson is the Post's first RSS advertiser.

RSS advertisements began as text ads and to a large extent remain so, but HTML ads are now also being used. Yahoo and Google offer ad-supported RSS feeds, and Pheedo has created RSS advertising networks that companies such as American Express, Continental Airlines and Verizon use.

Google PageRank Update Analysis

Article from the Search Engine Journal about google updating its pagerank in the google toolbar.

For those of you not yet aware, Google is currently updating the PageRank they are displaying in their toolbar. Each update causes a stir among the SEO community and webmasters trying to get their websites to the top of the Google Rankings.

What Is PageRank? Without getting into too much detail, PageRank is essentially a score out of ten as to the “value” of your site in comparison to other websites on the Internet. It is based on two primary factors; the number of links you have pointing to your website and the value of the links pointing to your website.

I personally think pagerank is way overrated and it doesn't really seem to have that big of an influence on the actual rankings. Ive seen a lot of sites that have a page rank of 3 come up much higher for pertinent key phrases then sites with higher page ranks.  Pagerank alone will not guarantee success and I wouldn't worry much about it fluctuating.

Getting Good Organic Search Engine Listings

Getting Good Organic Listings For Your Legal Website

We have helped many lawyers and legal professionals achieve top rankings at the search engines, which have brought more potential clients to the legal web sites and have resulted in new clients and business.

Good organic search engine rankings don't happen over night though and one of the key ingredients is time, especially at Google.  The longer your site has been around, the better. Good content, good writing, links, open directory listings and good titles also will help.

I find many law firm sites just don't bother to do these things though and thus many of the biggest firms aren't coming up in the search engine results.

A good example of this and how David can beat Goliath is on one of my clients whose site is at www.bloodlaw.com and he is a solo appellate lawyer from Colinsville, Illinois, a small town outside Chicago.    YET if you goto Google and type in chicago appellate lawyer, chicago appellate law, illinois appellate attorneys, illinois appellate law or a number of other appellate terms, his site comes up #1 or at least in the top 5.

Meaning hes coming up before any of the top law firms from Chicago that handle appellate law.   This shows you that its not enough to just build a web site and sometimes a really fancy web site with all the bells and whistles can be the reason the site never comes up in the top 10 at Google. 

Contact us if you would like help with your legal web site.

Chicago Crime.Org

Chicago Crime.org is a pretty cool web site that has a freely browsable database of crimes reported in Chicago. It breaks it down by date, by address, by type of crime.   You can view by street and for example, you can see how many crimes were commited in each block of lake shore drive.

Daniel Sieberg, CNN technology reporter, did a video piece on chicagocrime.org this week. Watch the video.

Can Yahoo or MSN Ever Top Google? Doubtful

BusinessWeek has an article asking whether Google's 52% market share is too much of a lead for the other search engines to catch.

Google's share of U.S. searches hit 52% in June, up from 45% a year ago, according to Web analytics firm WebSideStory Inc. By contrast, Yahoo's and MSN's share slipped to 25% and 10% respectively.

Google's search lead, moreover, looks pretty unassailable, at least for now. Despite many studies indicating the near-parity of rival search technologies, changing searchers' habits is more difficult today than in the Web's early days, when surfers hopped from Yahoo to Excite to AltaVista and back.

One familiar yet persistent reason for this loyalty is Google's spartan home page, which includes just 13 links or so -- less than a tenth of the number at MSN and Yahoo.

I would agree that Google is here to stay and its going to be very hard for anyone to overtake them, mainly because they have such a strong name and they just have better results then anyone else.