Legal Search Marketing Blog

Search Engine Marketing Definitions

Many lawyers I talk with are confused by the many different search engine terms and abreviations, most don't know what SEO or PPC mean and below are some of the more important definitions to know in search engine marketing.

search engine marketing (SEM): The process of building and marketing a site with the goal of improving its position in search engine results. SEM includes both search engine optimization (SEO) and search advertising, or paid search (PPC).

search engine optimization (SEO): The process of making a site and its content highly relevant for both search engines and searchers. SEO includes technical tasks to make it easier for search engines to find and index a site for the appropriate keywords, as well as marketing-focused tasks to make a site more appealing to users. Successful search marketing helps a site gain top positioning for relevant words and phrases.

search engine results pages (SERPs): The page searchers see after they've entered their query into the search box. This page lists several Web pages related to the searcher's query, sorted by relevance. Increasingly, search engines are returning blended search results, which include images, videos, and results from specialty databases on their SERPs.

Usually the results on the left side of the page are the organic results and the results on the right side of the page are usually paid or sponsored ads.

spider: A search engine spider is a program that crawls the Web, visiting Web pages to collect information to add to or update a search engine's index. The major search engines on the Web all have such a program, which is also known as a "crawler" or a "bot."

title tag: An HTML meta tag with text describing a specific Web page. The title tag should contain strategic keywords for the page, since many search engines pay special attention to the title text when indexing pages. The title tag should also make sense to humans, since it is usually the text link to the page displayed in search engine results.

The title tag is one of the most important elements to SEO and most law firm sites will not have unique title tags and instead will have no title tag or a one word title that doesnt even match the page.

click through rate (CTR): The rate (expressed in a percentage) at which users click on an ad. This is calculated by dividing the total number of clicks by the total number of ad impressions. CTR is an important metric for Internet marketers to measure the performance of an ad campaign.

cost per click (CPC): Also called Pay per Click (PPC). A performance-based advertising model where the advertiser pays a set fee for every click on an ad. The majority of text ads sold by search engines are billed under the CPC model.

cost per thousand (CPM): An ad model that charges advertisers every time an ad is displayed to a user, whether the user clicks on the ad or not. The fee is based on every 1,000 ad impressions (M is the Roman numeral for 1,000). Most display ads, such as banner ads, are sold by CPM.

geo-targeting: Delivery of ads specific to the geographic location of the searcher. Geo-targeting allows the advertiser to specify where ads will or won't be shown based on the searcher's location, enabling more localized and personalized results.

Most Keyword Searches Done Contain Two Words

The largest portion of searches contain two words finds Amsterdam-based research firm OneStat.

Internet users who type two words for on a search engine query account for 31.9 percent of searches worldwide. Three-word phrases are used for 27 percent of searches. A single word accounts for 15.2 percent of queries, and four words are used for 14.8 percent of searches.

"Search engines like Google, MSN, and Yahoo can drive a lot of traffic to a Web site," said Niels Brinkman, co-founder of OneStat. "It is important that a Webmaster or SEO expert knows what kind of search phrases they have to use."

Instances with five (6.5 percent); six (2.7 percent); seven (1.1 percent); eight (0.5 percent); nine (0.2 percent); and 10 (0.1 percent) words are used in fewer searches.

OneStat.com collects data through its Web analytics services. Numbers are averages. Research is based on a daily sample of two million Web visitors from 100 countries.

This is no real surprise, searchers are getting smarter and will use a variety of keywords to locate your site.  Thats why its important to optimize your legal web site for more then just general keywords like New York Lawyer or Chicago Attorney. If someone is looking for a real estate lawyer in New York City, they will probably type New York Real Estate Lawyer. Same thing if they are looking for a DUI lawyer in Riverside country California, they might type Riverside CA Dui lawyers.

Googles Updated Sitemap Features

Google has added a new feature in the Google sitemap program under webmaster tools, and it is a nifty link tool.  Google has always offered some kind of an idea of the # of links pointing to your site, but its always been a very low # and not a true indicator of the total # of links pointing to your site. 

This new tool offers a much better indication of how many other sites are linking to your site, the different pages that are being linked to and also the internal links from within your own site.  This is a very valuable free tool and can provide a lot of great insight into who is linking to your website.

Your lawfirm should make sure that its website is included in the Google sitemap program. It can offer a lot of very valuable information and is a good way to make sure that Google indexes all of the pages within your site.

Google, Yahoo, & MSN Update Search Results

It appears that all the major search engines have been reported to be updating their indexes in some way. Yahoo has been reported to have updated its algorithm or index, although there is no official word from Yahoo on this as of yet. And MSN Search has confirmed that an update has occurred to their index recently. While Google's update may not be represented in the index, Yahoo and MSN's updates have reports that the search results have indeed changed. For the better or worse - that is in the eyes of the beholder.

SOURCE: Search Engine Watch

Media Metrix Search Engine Ratings

Below is information on which search engines get the most traffic from Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Watch.

The comScore Media Metrix qSearch service measures search-specific traffic on the internet. qSearch data is gathered by monitoring the web activities of 1.5 million English-speakers worldwide (1 million in the United States) via proxy metering.

Share Of Searches: March 2006

The pie chart below shows the percentage of searches done by US web surfers at home, work and at universities in March 2006 that were performed at a particular web site or a network of web sites:

The qSearch figures are search-specific but not necessarily web-search specific. For example, a search performed at Yahoo Sports would count toward Yahoo's overall total. Also note that some companies own more than one web site. This means searches at different sites may be combined into one overall figure for the company's entire network. Here's a rundown with more details about this:

• Google: Shows searches at any Google-owned web site such as Google.com or Google Image Search.
   
• Yahoo: Shows searches at any Yahoo-owned web site including those of AltaVista, AllTheWeb and Overture. May show searches at some Google partners that show Google's domain in the URLs of their search results, as happens with Go.com.
   
• MSN: Shows searches at any MSN-operated web site such as MSN Search.
   
• AOL: Shows searches at any Time Warner-owned web site, including AOL Search and Netscape Search.
   
• Ask: Shows searches at Ask and any site within the Ask-owned Excite Network, including Excite, iWon, MyWay.com and My Web Search.
   
• Other: Shows searches that occur at other search sites.

Share Of Searches Trend

The chart below shows how the share of searches has changed over the past year.

SOURCE : Search Engine Watch

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.

Searches Up 55 Percent, Google Accounts for Half

Article from MarketingVox....

The total number of U.S.-based searches conducted across approximately 60 search engines in December reached nearly 5.1 billion - or an increase of 55 percent from the 3.3 billion searches conducted in Dec. 2004

Yahoo accounted for 21.4 percent of searches in December, and MSN Search was third with 10.9 percent.

Blackmailers Target Million Dollar Homepage

I blogged recently about the great marketing idea of the Million Dollar Homepage and today I read how the sites owner was blackmailed and his site was hijacked and down for a week.

Alex Tew, 21, hit the headlines at the start of the year when he revealed his Million Dollar Homepage had made him a million dollars in four months.

But the publicity brought the unwanted attention of extortionists who knocked the site over with a massive denial-of-service attack.

Following a week of downtime, the website is now back online.

Source : BBC News

Poll Finds Americans Dependent on High-Tech Gadgets

Good article from Law.com Legal Technology news about how Americans are hooked on high tech gadgets, including high speed Internet access.

The intense loyalty to high-speed Internet is a sign that people are getting hooked on newer technology. Almost four in 10 people with high-speed Internet say they consider it essential. About two in 10 feel that way about their DVD players, digital cable and CD players.

Most Popular Internet Search Terms of 2005 Revealed

Press release from Infospace about the top search terms of 2005. These results are from Dogpile, a metasearch site that pulls results from all the top search engines including Google, Yahoo, Msn and Askjeeves.

A recent study found that only 1.1 percent of the first page results are the same across all four engines, making metasearch sites like Dogpile.com a more efficient way to find the best results across multiple search engines.

Dogpile.com, the metasearch engine that returns the top results from all the leading search engines, today announced its most popular Internet search terms of 2005, including "music lyrics" at No. 1. With an estimated 63% of the U.S. online population conducting at least one Internet search each day*, searches are revealing more insight into the nation's collective interests.

Killer Convicted Based On Google Search History

Interesting article from EWEEK about a man convicted for murdering his wife and how police and prosecutors now are routinely making a supsect's search terms a witness for the prosecution. 

Robert James Petrick, 51, didn't exactly point a Web browser to the Internet search engine Google and type in "how do you kill your wife?"

But he came pretty close, say prosecutors in Durham County, North Carolina.

Petrick used Google to search the Internet for references to "body decomposition," "rigor mortis," "neck" and "break" in the days before and after he murdered his wife, Janine Sutphen, then dumped her body in a lake, said Durham County assistant prosecutor Mitchell Garrell.

By "Googling" his wife's murder, Petrick was inadvertently supporting the prosecutor's time line of events.

"If search terms aren't part of the routine now for everybody in law enforcement, they soon will be," said Kevin Bankston, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which provides commentary on technology-related law.

"That raises questions about privacy and how far police can go. What you Google for defines you. Your search logs are the closest thing to a printout of your brain that we have."

Garrell defended his use of search terms as evidence; volunteering several times during a recent interview that his office and the law enforcers it works with always pay the utmost attention to privacy rights.

Further reading: Petrick Convicted in Wife's Slaying.

Internet Ad Growth Pressures TV To Change

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Internet advertisers and marketing professionals have a message for television networks: get ready to change the way you work.

As Internet advertising grabs a bigger share of marketing budgets and ad agencies tailor spots to a new medium where attention spans can be measured in split seconds, television networks will have to adjust, executives told the Reuters Media and Advertising Summit this week.

"We believe the Web site will ultimately replace the 30-second commercial as the central expression of the brand ... The TV commercial over time will become more of a way to simply send people to your Web site," said Brian McAndrews, chief executive of Internet marketing company aQuantive Inc..

Source : Yahoo News

Complaints Over Wikipedia Accountability With Bios

Daniel Brandt's been upset over the accuracy and presence of a page about him at Wikipedia, and now John Seigenthaler, the former assistant to US Attorney General Robert Kennedy, is upset as well over his Wikipedia biography, venting his frustration in a USA Today article.

A false Wikipedia 'biography' has Seigenthaler sounding out his complaint, the 78 year old declaring that only one sentence in his bio was true. He managed to get Wikipedia to remove the material he objected to removed, though with Wikipedia's community editing system, I don't see anything that prevents that from coming back.

Source : SEW Blog

Search Marketing Conference in Las Vegas

I am currently in Las Vegas attending the Webmaster World search engine marketing conference. Its been a very good conference with many top name search engine experts speaking about natural search engine optimization, pay per click advertising, link building campaigns, legal issues involving domain names and much more.

Its amazing just how far Internet Marketing has become, you have people here from all over the world and people in every kind of business. When I first started going to these conferences back in 1998, nobody was there and nobody really seemed to think it was that important. Now everyone knows how important Internet Marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) is. 

Its still surprises me just how few law firms are actually doing any kind of SEO work. Its just a matter of time though before more lawyers get on-board because yellow page advertising isn't as effective as it used to be and most people just simply turn to the Internet when they are looking for something.

Top 10 Web Moments

The Webby Awards has a list of the top 10 web moments that changed the world.

Verizon SuperPages.com Adds Features

From the Search Engine Watch Blog...

Verizon announced today that SuperPages.com now includes user reviews that lets searchers rate the more than 18 million local businesses, a new comparison shopping tool, and access to coupons and circulars from a particular local area.

Lance Armstrong wins cybersquatting case

Yahoo News reports about Lance Armstrong winning a cybersquatting case.

The Lance Armstrong Foundation, a Texas-based charity set up by the American cycling champion to raise funds for cancer research, on Tuesday won the right to evict cybersquatters from websites selling LIVESTRONG bracelets.

Search Engine Ranking Factors

Great article from seomoz.org about the factors that can influence a web document's rank at the major search engines.

Some of the most important factors include:

• Title Tag
• Keyword Use in Document Text
• Related Term Use in Document Text
• External Links in Document
• Links to Document from Site-Internal Pages
• Uniqueness of Document Text
• Age of Document

Study Finds Strong Bias Towards Selecting Top Search Link

Study Finds Strong Bias Towards Selecting Top Search Link

Good article about a study that shows most users will click on the top search listing.

Professor Thorsten Joachims and colleagues at Cornell University conducted a study of search engines. Among other things, their study examined the links users followed on the SERP (search engine results page). They found that 42% of users clicked the top search hit, and 8% of users clicked the second hit. So far, no news. Many previous studies, including my own, have shown that the top few entries in search listings get the preponderance of clicks and that the number one hit gets vastly more clicks than anything else.

Hitwise: Google Searchers Male, Ladies Love Ask Jeeves

GOOGLE USERS ARE PREDOMINANTLY MALE, but Yahoo! has a higher proportion of searchers between the ages of 18 and 34 than Google, MSN, or Ask Jeeves, according to a new Hitwise study, "The Online Search Report," released Wednesday.

When looking at the demographics of visitors to four search engines--Google, Yahoo! Search, MSN Search, and Ask Jeeves--Hitwise found that Google users were 53.6 percent male, while Ask Jeeves users were 58.7 percent female, for the four weeks ending July 16. Yahoo! and MSN searchers were predominantly women, who accounted for 50.2 percent of Yahoo! Search users and 53.7 percent of MSN Search users.

OTHER STATS:

AskJeeves: 58.7% female.
MSN: 53.7 percent female.
Yahoo: 50.2% female.
Google: 46.4% female.

MSN had highest proportion of users over 55.
Google appealed most to households with income over $100K.

87% of Searches at Google, MSN and Yahoo! use 2 or fewer keywords.
69% of AskJeeves searches use 2 or fewer keywords.

Business and finance sites also saw traffic from the search engines, with Ask Jeeves sending the largest proportion of searchers--8.55 percent--to business-related sites, followed by MSN Search (8.10 percent), Yahoo! Search (7.10 percent), and Google (6.54 percent).

SOURCES : Media Post - SEL

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

New Study Sizes Up the Web

Danny Sullivan has details of a new study that tries to estimate the size of the web and what percentage the search engines have indexed so far. Google is per usual the leader of the pack.

The paper, from Antonio Gulli of Università di Pisa (who is also director of advanced products for Ask Jeeves) and Alessio Signorinialso of the University of Iowa, estimates what percentage of the Web is covered by each search engine:

Search Engine	Self-Reported Size (Billions)	EstimatedSize (Billions)	Coverage of Indexed Web (%)	Coverage of Total Web (%)
Google	8.1	8.0	76.2	69.6
Yahoo!	4.2 (est.)	6.6	69.3	57.4
Ask	2.5	5.3	57.6	46.1
MSN (beta)	5.0	5.1	61.9	44.3
Indexed Web	N/A	9.4	N/A	N/A
Total Web	N/A	11.5	N/A	N/A
Note: "Indexed Web" refers to the part of the Web considered to have been indexed by search engines.

The first thing you wonder is whether any of the search engines are lying about their size. Google claims to have the biggest search index, 8.1 billion pages. The estimate shows Google's claim is pretty much on target. The same holds true for MSN and Ask Jeeves.

Organic Listings At Search Engines Are Better Then Paid Listings

SOLVING THE PAY PER CLICK PROBLEM BY GETTING INTO THE ORGANIC LISTINGS

I blogged last month about the legal client who setup his own Google adwords account and made the mistake of bidding to high and wound up paying $39 for one click for the keyphrase of "chicago estate planning lawyer".

We wound up getting the cost down to $1.30 per click BUT the best solution to that problem is getting listed in Googles organic or free listings or what I call "the gift that keeps on giving". It takes time and effort to get listed in the top 10 at Google but we have achieved this and the client is now #7 for chicago estate planning lawyer, as well as #3&4 for chicago wills, #3 for chicago estate planning, among many others.

Its a good idea to still maintain the pay per click listings though because it gives the law firm more overall exposure at Google, but its not as important now and can be cut back on.   

The best way for a law firm to get good rankings in the Google organic listings is by having good content, content that changes, listings at the key directories and links from other high rankings legal sites.    If your law firm wants to achieve long term results in the search engines, contact me.

Search Users Don't Recognize Organic vs. Paid Ads

DMNews has a study about how a big number of Internet users don't know the difference between Organic and Paid listings. This doesn't surprise me because most people I talk with about search marketing have heard about paid listings but don't know exactly where they are located.

Fifty-six percent of Internet users don't know the difference between natural and paid search, according to a study released yesterday.

However, the "How America Searches Study" that Harris Interactive conducted for search analytics firm iCrossing, Scottsdale, AZ, noted that more users of Google than other search engines know the difference between the two types of searches. Fifty-four percent of frequent Google users report knowing the difference between paid and natural listings. The next-closest group is Yahoo users at 42 percent.

Search Advertising to Reach $5.6 Billion in 2005

Both Google and Yahoo saw a healthy rise in stock price today as a new report suggested huge growth in the search advertising industry.

Investors moved into both Google and Yahoo shares, making technology stocks one of the overall market's main drivers. Google shares rose $5.69, or 2 percent, to $285.25 in afternoon trading on the Nasdaq, while shares of Yahoo jumped 81 cents, or 2.2 percent, to $37.44.

A report from Merrill Lynch & Co. projects search advertising will generate about $5.6 billion this year — then more than double to $12.3 billion by 2009.

As more people switch to broadband, Merrill Lynch predicts they will become savvier web users.

"We continue to believe that broadband growth is driving Internet traffic growth," said Merrill Lynch analyst Lauren Rich Fine. "Especially with recent discounts by broadband providers, we believe this will drive more users online or to simply switch from dial-up connections to high bandwidth connections."

This makes perfect sense to me because there are a lot of people that still don't even realize what search engine advertising is, and I'm always surprised at the number of people that are still on dial up connections.

Search Engines Still Failing to Disclose Paid Ads

ClickZ has details of a report release by Consumer Reports WebWatch which claims search engines are still not doing enough to identify sponsored search results.

Of the top search engines, AOL Search, Google, and Yahoo! Search Marketing were given good marks for disclosure, but showed minimal change over the year before. Ask Jeeves and Yahoo! Search were downgraded for making headings less visible, and removing hyperlinks to disclosure statements. MSN Search was the only major search engine to show improvement, largely because MSN discontinued its paid inclusion and content promotion programs, giving them less to disclose.

I think that most of the search engines do a good job in identifying the difference between the paid and organic listings but I know a lot of people are still confused as to the difference.

Follow Up On Wordtracker Keyword Accuracy

A follow up to my post last week about the Wordtracker keyword tool bringing back inaccurate and misleading results for the search phrase of "chicago lawyers".

So what I did was setup a campaign with Google adwords for the 10 keyphrases and bid low just so I could see the stat results from Google which shows how many times these keywords were searched over the last week at Google.

Now wordtracker had reported that Chicago wrongful death lawyers had a high count in its database and that it would produce more traffic then the more general "chicago lawyers". Now at Google after a week, they are showing that chicago attorney got 304 searches, chicago lawyer 129 and chicago wrongful death lawyers only 13 searches (See Table).

Keyword	Clicks	Impressions	CTR	Avg. CPC	Cost	Avg. Pos
chicago attorney	1	304	0.3%	$0.14	$0.14	8.2
chicago lawyer	1	129	0.7%	$0.31	$0.31	10.2
chicago lawyers	1	56	1.7%	$0.30	$0.30	7.8
chicago attorneys	2	41	4.8%	$0.29	$0.57	6.3
chicago wrongful death lawyers	0	13	0.0%	-	-	6.4
chicago car accident lawyers	0	7	0.0%	-	-	3.8
chicago personal injury lawyers	0	4	0.0%	-	-	8.3
chicago accident lawyers	0	2	0.0%	-	-	8.0
chicago injury lawyers	0	2	0.0%	-	-	12.0
chicago brain injury lawyers	0	1	0.0%	-	-	5.0

So that proves my point that wordtrackers data was incorrect for those search phrases. I'm sort of surprised that the singular versions got so many more searches then the plural versions, and also that Chicago attorney got more searches then Chicago lawyer but this is only a short period of time. I will monitor the results and blog about it after a month and also see if wordtrackers data has gotten any more accurate.

Yahoo Dispute with FindWhat Ends in Hung Jury

FindWhat.com's patent infringement dispute with Overture Services, Inc. ended in a hung jury, according to CNN Money.

Search Engines Rate Highly Among Consumers

New data from Harris Interactive suggest that search engines are doing a good job in the eyes of consumers.

Every year for the past eight years, Harris Interactive has polled a cross-section of US adults to find out which industries are doing a good job or a bad job of serving their consumers.

79% of people polled thought that search engines were doing a good job serving consumers, while only 11% thought they were doing a bad job. Overall search engines came in 7th place.

Be Careful When Typing Google Domain Name

The Register has details of malicious web sites being set up to attack users who misspell Google's domain name.

If a user opens one of the malicious websites, such as googkle.com, his PC box may be hijacked with malware including Trojan downloaders, backdoors and spyware.

Websites Do Generate New Leads

Article from Emarketer about how Small businesses are embracing the web in a big way and how having a web site has led to more new leads.

*80% of respondents said that their Web site generated leads for their business.

* 77% said they believed that a Web site helped to make them more competitive.

I would concur with this and know for a fact that every legal site I have worked on, that has used some kind of search engine optimization or directory listings, has resulted in more people coming to the sites, which then leads to new contacts and ultimately new business.    

Yet just having a web site isn't enough. It will make you more competitive, but the site isn't going to generate leads on its own. You must have it optimized for the search engines or at least listed on the pay per click ads in order to get anyone to the site. Getting listed in the search and legal directories is also a good idea,  as is starting a weblog or BLOG.

Gold Mine Found in Web Searches

Lisa Baertlein looks at the different wrinkles of paid search and its continued growth. Interesting stats including...

Global search advertising revenue, which was $369 million in 2001, is expected to hit $7.9 billion this year, according to research from Piper Jaffray & Co.

According to Piper Jaffray, the cost to acquire a customer is about $8.50 for search, $20 for Yellow Pages, $50 for online display ads, $60 for e-mail and $70 for direct mail.

Google & Yahoo in talks with TIVO

News from ZDNET about Google and Yahoo being in talks with TIVO over a deal that might bring search to TV.

TiVo is in talks with Internet search giants Google and Yahoo over a possible deal aimed at bridging television and the Web, CNET News.com has learned.

One scenario that's been discussed would see TiVo partner with Google or Yahoo on a new service that would let consumers search for videos on the Web and then watch them on their television sets, according to one person with knowledge of the talks, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Ask Jeeves Enhances MyJeeves

Ask Jeeves has just released an upgrade to their MyJeeves personalized search tool:

New for MyJeeves users are several enhancements including:

+ An option to add your own "tags" to any item. To do this, save an image or web page and then click the "modify" link next to the entry on your MyJeeves "Save Results" pages. You'll then find a box labeled "tags" to add your metadata.

+ My Jeeves integration into the Ask Jeeves Toolbar. In other words, save any web page without having first find it from an AJ web results page. Big improvement!

+ Save images into My Jeeves from any web page (right-click) or directly from an AJ Image Search results page.

+ Important your bookmarks from IE and Firefox into MyJeeves

+ Organize your saved material into hierarchical folders.

Mark Cuban Promotes IceRocket.com's Blog Search Engine

Mark Cuban is the owner of the Dallas Mavericks and is known for his like of, and investment in, IceRocket.com. In a recent blog post, Cuban lays down the gauntlet to Feedster and other blog search engines.

...we have just completely rewritten and reindexed our blog searching ability so that we now reach more than 10mm blogs. That right, with every portal now with their own blog hosting offering, we have passed the 10mm mark

Find a Wi-FI Hotspot Anywhere

If your like me and travel a lot, you depend on wireless Internet access. Dowza is the simplest way to find a Wi-Fi Hotspot and get online without wires.   

I have tried this and its a great utility to locate the nearest wifi spot to get high speed wireless Internet access. You can simply search by zipcode and it lists every location nearest with a description of the location and a link to a map, very slick.

Quality Links Over a Quanity of Links

Good article from Eric Ward of the Search Engine Guide about the value of links from niche directories and how its not about the number of overall links but the quality of the links.

Some comments from the article:

Most people will tell you that links from Yahoo and DMOZ to your site are vital, and to a certain extent I agree. Who wouldn't want to be listed with two of the most widely used directories in the world? It's what marketers do after they get the Yahoo and DMOZ links that can make or break them.

Niche and topical search engines and directories can bring your site highly targeted traffic. Maybe not a stampede of it, but a steady trickle of perfectly qualified users. And while some marketers are quick to claim nobody uses niche search engines because they've never heard of them, I can tell you from ten years of experience they're wrong.

I would agree here and its very key for legal web sites to get links from other legal related sites and especially ones that would related to the practice areas of the firm.  For example, a Chicago Construction law firm would benefit from getting a link from a construction law category at a legal directory. This would not only drive focused traffic to your site, but would be a more valuable link then many links from non legal sites.

Its key to get links to your site and the more you have, usually the better BUT I can show you many sites that are very well ranked at Google and don't have more then 25 links but they do have good links from Yahoo, the Open Directory and other key legal sites. 

Yahoo! Unveils Yahoo! Creative Commons Search Beta

Yahoo! unveiled its new Creative Commons Search Beta where you can find content you can "use for commercial purposes" or content that you can "modify, adapt, or build upon".

Why is this search different?

This Yahoo! Search service finds content across the Web that has a Creative Commons license. While most stuff you find on the web has a full copyright, this search helps you find content published by authors that want you to share or reuse it, under certain conditions. Learn more...

Why Quality Content is Key For Search Engines

Article from Search engine watch about how important content is to getting higher search engine rankings. This is VERY true and sites that have no content, really have no chance of getting good listings. 

One of the most obvious, yet surprisingly overlooked, components of a search strategy is the creation of quality content.

In our search engine marketing practice, the number of companies we encounter that expect high rankings in search engines for Web pages containing pictures, but no text, amazes us.

Attaining a top ranking in search on a particular keyword requires that the targeted keyword appear somewhere in the text of the page, and often it requires that the page contain some amount of text (read: content) far in excess of what the design folks think looks pretty.

Make no mistake, this law of search engine marketing is clear: less content, lower rankings. Read full story.

Barry Diller on Ask Jeeves

Barry Diller's talks about what they plan to do with Ask Jeeves, after buying the search engine.

Diller addressed the search-engine sector: “It’s the very beginning of its growth. … This is going to be a world, just like the media world, where there will be many players, many people providing service.”

Diller plans to grow Ask Jeeves by placing a search bar on Web pages of IAC’s other sites such as the online travel agency Expedia, Home Shopping Network, Ticketmaster, CitySearch, and Match.com. Diller said IAC sites attract 44 million unique visitors, and expects many of them to use the Ask Jeeves search bar instead of going to another site to conduct a search, such as Google.

Not many people use Ask Jeeves but I think its a pretty solid search engine and will be a player for years to come.

InterActiveCorp buys Ask Jeeves for $1.85 billion

Report today from ZDNet news that Ask Jeeves was bought for $1.85 billion. This shows how much the Internet advertising market has grown of late.

InterActiveCorp announced Monday that it has agreed to a $1.85 billion buyout of Ask Jeeves, a search engine that has long been overshadowed by Google and Yahoo. 

The New York-based Internet conglomerate, headed by Barry Diller, said that it is hoping to move aggressively into the Web search market through the deal, and pointed to growth in the online advertising market as another major incentive in making the acquisition. Founded in 1996, Ask Jeeves claims to process approximately 42 million unique queries generated by American Web surfers each month.

LexisNexis Launches Privacy Facts Website

LexisNexis has created a Web site with helpful information regarding data privacy at http://privacyfacts.lexisnexis.com.

Searches Golden Triangle - Users prefer organic to paid listings

Search engine watch has a report on a new study that has added tangible evidence to the widely held view that top-ranking search results get the most attention from users, and that lower-ranking results are all but invisible to most people.

The joint study conducted by search marketing firms Enquiro and Did-it and eye tracking firm Eyetools examined the eye movements of users viewing Google search result pages.

The study found that most viewers looked at results in an "F" shaped scan pattern, with the eye traveling vertically along the far left side of the results looking for visual cues (relevant words, brands, etc) and then scanning to the right, as if something caught the participant's attention.

The researchers called this pattern a "golden triangle" at the top of result pages. The triangle extends across the top natural search result, then angles back to the left of the page down to the bottom-most "above the fold" result, typically in the third or fourth position on the page.

Organic Search Still Rules

The findings of this eye tracking study lend further credibility to the notion that organic search engine optimization is still critical to the overall success of a search marketing campaign. Last December, Jupiter Research released a report stating that algorithmic listings in search indexes generate an estimated six of seven commercially natured search referrals.

Protecting your personal information on Google Desktop Search

Good post from Google Tutor blog about what measures to take if you want to prevent others from viewing your Google Desktop activities.

This is a great tool to use but its important that you protect your personal information from being searched and there are a few simple things you can do.

Lycos dumps Inkomi and will use Ask Jeeves

Lycos Inc. selected Ask Jeeves Inc.'s search technology for use on its Lycos.com search engine, according to Reuters. The companies said on Wednesday, sending Ask Jeeves shares up more than 2 percent.

Ask Jeeves also syndicates its search technologies and advertising products to other Web sites, including, InfoSpace, BellSouth, Mamma.com and CNET Networks.

Brits Smarter Searchers than Americans?

Netimperative has details of a survey conducted by Agence Virtuelle that claims British search engine users are smarter than Americans.

Nine out of ten (93%) Web users in the UK know the difference between sponsored and organic search engine results compared to just 38% of Americans, according to new research.

The problem? The company that conducted the UK survey, did not conduct the US survey.   So I highly doubt that the questions would be the same. I do know that many people here in the US wouldn't know the difference, so that 38% figure seems right, but the 93% figure seems off

Google and Yahoo receive downgrade

News.com - Fearing a slowdown in online advertising, an analyst downgraded the stocks of search giants Google and Yahoo on Thursday.

Shares of both companies fell roughly 5 percent each in late morning trading, pushing Yahoo to $30.49 a share and Google to $185.25. The broader markets, however, were up during morning trading.

I dont know about the stocks of Google and Yahoo but I do know that search engine marketing is bigger then ever and all reports Ive seen, points to it getting even bigger in the near future. So I guess that means buy Yahoo and Google now.

New York Times purchases About.com

The bidding is over and the winner has been named. Word is that The New York Times will become the new owner of About.com. The NY Times will pay Primedia $410 million in cash. About.com was purchased by Primedia in 2000 for $610 million in stock.

Story from Search Engine Watch

WebSideStory Acquires Atomz

WebSideStory Acquires Atomz
According to ClickZ, web analytics provider WebSideStory has acquired site search and web content management provider Atomz for $39 million in cash and stock.