Legal Search Marketing Blog

Google Search Engine to Join S&P 500 Index

From Bloomberg.com

Google Inc. shares gained 9.7 percent on the announcement that the world's most-used Internet search engine will be added to the Standard & Poor's 500 Index.

Google replaces Burlington Resources Inc., an oil company being acquired by ConocoPhillips, after the close of trading on March 31. Google, with a fourfold increase in its shares since its initial stock sale, was valued at $101.6 billion yesterday, more than all but 18 members of the index.

Google Doesn't Need To Hand Over Search Logs To Justice Department

Good post from Search engine watch about the Google and Department of Justice ongoing battle.

Let's recap:

• Last year, the DOJ demanded that Google handover two month's worth of query data, from June 1 through July 31, 2005. That would have been billions of queries in total. Just put them in an "electronic file," Google was told. Then find a terabyte USB key big enough to hold this monstrous text file, so that I guess the DOJ could open it up in WordPad on the special computer used to process Bill Gates's taxes. Maybe that has enough memory to load the file :)
   
• The DOJ backed off the original request, saying it wanted only on week's worth of data. "Only a week" still would have put the number of queries in the billion plus range.
   
• In court last week, the DOJ declared that it now only needed 5,000 random queries in total. Got it? Originally it needed billions of queries and went to court to force Google's hand, then it decides only 5,000 were necessary.

The judge decided against giving the DOJ any search data at all. Why? From my reading of the ruling (PDF format), the judge found that the possible concerns over privacy outweighed the concerns that the DOJ needed to have Google's data in addition to data it already obtained from other search engines or could obtain through other options.

Facelift For Yahoo's Home Page

Internet News reports that Yahoo is redesigning the front page of the site.

Yahoo is quietly testing a redesigned front page that makes its search features more prominent and puts all its various services front and center for users.

The design, which began appearing to select users today, brings the search function much higher on the page and offers larger icons of the portal's popular features beyond search, such as mail and messenger, as well as localized features such as weather, movies and search.

I have seen some updates today that look pretty good and it seems a little better organized and I like how they have certain things more front and center.

Free Instant Valuations & Data Real Estate Tool

ZILLOW REAL ESTATE TOOL

I found a very useful tool the other day that anyone would find useful but especially real estate legal professionals. Its called Zillow and is located at http://www.zillow.com/ and it allows you to type in any address and find all kinds of key information on that location.

You can plug in your zip code and it gives you a satellite map of your neighborhood, as you zoom in, it will show you property lines and estimated values of the homes. Click on a property and a ballon pops up with estimated price (they call it "Zestimated price") address and home details like number of bedrooms and bathrooms and square footage.

I would think most real estate lawyers would find this site very useful, it has an amazing amount of information and its in Beta, so it will get better over time.

Bigger Lawfirms Seem To Ignore SEO

BIG LAW FIRMS IGNORE SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

Ive noticed many bigger or well known law firms that just totally ignore search engine optimization.   I saw an article today at Law.com about the Houston-based Lanier Law Firm, famous for winning a $253 million Vioxx-related jury verdict against pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co. in August 2005.

The article talks about how the firm has launched a new Web site and hopes the site is going to generate new business and that it will be used as a marketing tool. Yet I don't see any kind of search engine optimization on the site. Some comments from the article....

The firm's management hopes the much larger site will take advantage of firm founder W. Mark Lanier's notoriety and bring in business.

"The real purpose of the redesigned site, with the name recognition that Mark has, and the new office in New York, was to have a site that spoke more clearly to visitors -- from media to the community to clients," said Kevin Roberts, the firm's executive director, who coordinated the project. "But it's still a marketing tool. Hopefully, new business will come in."

But will the site be successful as a marketing tool?

Not as successful as it could be! As of right now the site doesn't have any meta tags or more importantly keyword rich unique titles on each page of the site. So the bottom line is that its not going to get as much traffic from the search engines as it could be getting if the site was optimized for keywords related to the firms practice. They are not alone, It seems like most bigger firms ignore any kind of search engine optimization.

Go Back In Time With The Wayback Machine

Did you ever wonder what your law firms website looked like back in 1999? Well if the firm had a site back then, odds are you can see what it looked like if you visit the very cool Wayback Machine website.

All you have to do is enter your firms website address and the wayback machine will then show you a page in chronological order of all the different versions of that web site.

So for example the law firm of Sonnenschein, Nath & Rosenthal has the first entry as of 5/25/98 and this shows you exactly what the site looked like back then, its funny because they have a logo for the "Year 2000 Computer Problem".  Then on the next version they have a ticker with a countodown to the year 2000.

Then you can continue to look at each year and every time the site was updated, they have a * next to the date. Its not perfect because sometimes the page isnt available and sometimes the graphics dont appear, but for the most part it can show you the chronological growth of a firms website and is a good online research tool.

New! AdWords site demographics

New! AdWords site demographics.
Google now has a way to target specific groups of people to focus your legal adwords campaigns on.  I will test it out and blog about the best ways a law firm can take advantage of this new feature.

From Google Adwords....

Want to reach 18-24 year-olds, or women with children? Site tool demographics match your ad with your audience. Available now for campaigns targeting the United States.

What is demographic site selection?

Demographic site selection is a way to find and run your ads on sites with the right audience for your AdWords campaigns.

A demographic group is an audience that shares a particular trait or characteristic. This trait might be age, gender, income, or some other factor. If your product appeals to young women, for instance, you might want to target sites popular with the female demographic, the 18-24 age demographic, or both.

With the AdWords site tool, you can pick your preferences in up to three different demographic categories. The system will analyze your preferences and create a list of available Google Network sites that are popular with that audience. If you select multiple demographics, the AdWords system will look for sites that match all of your preferences. For instance, you might ask the site tool to look for sites popular with users who have children, or for sites popular with men earning a high income. The site tool will then return a list of sites whose audience tends to match those demographic descriptions.