searchnewz: Blog RSS Feed

FeedBurner Customization

FeedBurner, an RSS management utility that was purchased by Google a few years ago, has long offered an RSS-to-email service.

One of its major drawbacks, however, was that as an RSS publisher you could only set one subject line. So every email from your feed (generated and sent daily) had the same subject line.

The lowly likes of us regular bloggers complaining in the support forums didnt have much of an effect. The only solution offered until now was logging in every day and manually changing the subject line to match your post"not fun.

But after Darren Rowses open letter to FeedBurner two weeks ago on ProBlogger, things are finally changing. Today, the Google AdSense for Feeds blogs announces that Happiness is more subject in your subject line. And its true!

Now the interface under Publicize > Email Subscriptions > Email Branding offers this hot tip:

Note the checkbox at the bottom: if you regularly have more than one post a day, the checkbox opens another menu with even more customization:

This subject line is only used if you have more than one item in your feed that day; otherwise, it reverts to the primary custom subject line.

What do you think? How fast will you be logging in to customize your subject line?

via

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Should SEO's Care About Real Time Search?

The hype and the reality: One of the more popular buzz words in search over the last while is real time search. For starters, thats a bit of a misnomer; there...

...are NO actual real time engines thats simply not possible (even Twitter search updates in intervals not entirely real time). Regardless, people keep getting worked up about this particular area to the point of wondering how it will affect SEO efforts.

Last week the folks at Media Post contacted me for some quotable quips for a piece on real-time search and (One Riots) PulseRank. They wanted to know if SEOs were considering this the wave of the future or something new to the lexicon.

For their part, One Riot has said, "We believe PulseRank will replace PageRank over time for the real-time Web. The reasons are clear. PageRank is based on the number of links to a page or a specific URL builds over time, as people link to pages. It provides the searcher with the "authoritative answer -- These are some bold statements and yet another in a long line of self professed Google Killers " but is there credence? Were going to look at the world of real time search and see if there really is anything to be looking at (as SEOs) care to come along?

What is real time search?

Ok, for starters I often see the commonly known real time search engines are simply seeking out social mentions not really crawling the web and indexing it. This, to me, is the first part of the problem are they really search engines? Or simply buzz monitoring tools?

Real-time search is one of the more difficult areas for search engineers to deal with. Much of the problem lies in establishing the most authoritative answers without being bogged down by spam. Dealing with web spam requires a great many signals that are hard to come by in 'real time'. At the end of the day if 'real time' search was an effective approach Google and others would (likely) be doing it already.

There are more than a few problems associated with real time search including;

Spam " this would be the most problematic area for any search engine. It would be nearly impossible to combat web spam in a large scale environment. This is why most of the major engines havent moved beyond almost real time (such as Googles query deserves freshness approach.

Ranking " as with the QDF, there needs to be some type of evaluation of quality and authority to make ranking of documents effective. Some of the above engines use domain and (social) user authority, but this approach does kill some of the democratic nature of the web and the rich get richer. What about lesser known domains and new users/content?

Social dependencies " most of these real time engines are reliant on social signals which really does limit the actual abilities as a search engine. They are NOT indexing pages that arent getting social luvin. And despite popular belief, not ALL content on the web is social worthy and this makes such search engines limited in scope.

If we consider the above, there is a lot of work to be done if such real time search approaches are to ever be of value. But

Rubber meets the road

In the testing we ran so far there is no real sense to the ranking mechanisms. In looking at some of the more general queries (in this case; PageRank) it seems that merely being the most recent citation is all that matters. Sadly, the post itself is devoid of any real content relating to PageRank and thus shouldnt really be ranking. But it did see the problem here?

One Riot - This is the application with the vaunted PulseRank which claims to be a superior method from Googles PageRank. Our early testing showed it to be generally inferior to Collecta, but in this test it did OK comparatively.

Test time; 49 Minutes - this was only AFTER it was Tweeted by someone that had my blog RSS hooked up to a Twitter account. What is interesting is this was the first one to list the actual blog post, not the Tweets
.

Scoopler - This one also tends to rely on Twitter, but it does pull out the most popular links which does list the actual blog post. This is a nice feature and of the social search engines, this one would be my fav.

Test time; 48 minutes; as with the above, this is obviously not REAL TIME and really only a social mention aggregator - though the actual post links are a nice touch.

Whos Talking - For the record, my man Joe has never claimed to be a real-time search engine or even a search engine for that matter. But considering many of these apps tend to be more buzz monitoring than search/indexing, I decided to include it into the mix.

Test Time; 50 minutes " and once again, the Twitter feeds are what it has picked up.

Crowd Eye - This is a nothing more than a Twitter monitoring tool and unless you have content Tweeted, it wont show up. Thus, once more, this is not really a traditional search engine and is nothing more than a limited buzz monitoring tool. And really, its nothing more than a pretty Twitter search soooo. FAIL.

Test Time; 56 Minutes - and it was the Twitter account with my feed in it. Furthermore, it only picked up 1 of the 3 Tweets for the post.

Collecta - Test Time; 49 minutes - This is another one that seems to be dominated by Twitter results more than anything else, although there are some blog results as well (for the record they claim; We draw from the web at large - not just social networks.). While this may be true, it would seem much of the real time aspects relate to social mentions.

Google " Test Time; 3hrs 15 minutes - Of the big 3 only Google managed to actually get the post indexed. And while it wasnt as fast as the social engines, Id still say that 3hrs is pretty good considering that there are more involved ranking methods and better quality of results. Obviously more popular sites that are crawled more frequently would be even faster.

Google Blog Search " Test Time; 15hrs - Strangely, the blog search took considerably longer to index the page. Once more though, the sorting/ranking abilities make this a more usable search engine. I am going to do some testing with more popular blogs to see how short a time frame there can be with this one.

Yahoo " Test Time; 19hrs - Not only was Yahoo slower, but it never did get the right page and was picking up the title from my side bar links not the actual page. Have to give this one a FAIL

Bing " Test Time; 23hrs - Much like Yahoo, not only did they take a fair length of time to index, but it also got the wrong page by picking up side bar links. Also a FAIL

What is clearly obvious is that the current state of RT engines are wired for social. What that means is there is likely a great deal of content on the web that isn't getting a social mention that wouldn't get picked up by them (unlike a traditional engine such as Google). This is a serious problem and makes the case for a buzz tool over an actual search engine that crawls the web and makes decisions on levels of indexation for a given site/page. We also did some minor testing with pages on sites not getting social traction and as you may imagine, the RT engines failed miserably.

Nothing more than social regurgitation

What is really happening with the current stock of RT engines? For the most part these are nothing more than social mention regurgitation more than any type of formal crawling/indexation. That is certainly NOT what a search engine is or does

And that's what most of this so-called real time search is essentially. Not as much about real time indexation and ranking as they are about buzz monitoring or glorified Twitter search applications.

What ARE the big three doing?

They seem to be looking at social structures as sphere's of influence.
Google has a few patents on a system that has been dubbed 'FriendRank' and 'InfluencerRank' (though there is no wording as such in the patents) which could hint at a social structure and ranking system. Read more here - As is Microsoft with a related system (here)

Now, these approaches are primarily for Ad targeting and recommendation engines, but it does seem to show more of the direction that search engines may use in concert with traditional search approaches to develop some type of 'social search' aspect. This does seem a logical approach ultimately by integrating social signals into the existing approaches. Sure, it's more social search than real-time, but it does help solve some of the problems we outlined earlier.

The verdict

Real time search is still something that hasn't been effectively conquered from a technical and critical mass vantage point. As such, it shouldn't be a serious consideration for any SEO beyond the potential for buzz monitoring. In many ways these are barely what we would even call a search engine traditionally. If the big players are to ever broach this realm, much work would need to be done (especially with web spam).

Verdict? Should SEOs be concerned with real time search optimization? Not at this point It's a passing fancy and until a serious engine (that drives traffic) embarks on a real-time adventure, SEOs are best to watch from the wings. And to those that tout Twitter search as a RT search engine, I submit that is is nothing more than a site search... not really a search engine.

More reading;

Real time search off - TechCrunch

Twitters real-time spam problem - Search Engine Land

Race is on for best real-time search engine - Seattle PI

Who rules real time search? - Venture Beat

Bing Keeps Its Foot On The Gas, Adds Tweets To Results - TechCrunch

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Free Tools From Google

Don't look now, but Google has just released some more free tools. Every time you look up, something else is dribbling out of Google and...

...it's not that easy to make sense of it all. But we can try.

I know my recent contributions to the Biznology blog have been solely focused on Google and the great tools that Google has brought to market, but I have to say that they never stop impressing me. I'm impressed by the way I can look at their current products and trace their evolution back to their start. Take for instance (800) GOOG-411. On the surface, it's free directory assistance. That would be enough for any other company, but looking back, it seems like they were perfecting voice recognition for the new voice search, available on all Blackberrys and iPhones.

It also looks like Google's acquisitions of both Grand Central and Dodgeball are coming together as well. Grand Central has evolved into Google Voice. Though I personally don't have much use for this, (as I'm less a phone person and more of an e-mail person) the Google Voice interface is clean, intuitive and I'm sure will provide incredible value to sales people and business travelers. I'd bet that this is going to be wrapped in the next evolution of Android and targeted at the iPhone's message center.

Dodgeball has morphed into Latitude, which is available as part of the Google Mobile App, and is another indication that Google is driving hard towards social. What I find most interesting about this project is that it's starting to blend online social networking into the physical world. As in my previous post, I'm giving Google two more years before they completely dominate social.

Finally, I'm not certain why this hasn't made a bigger splash, but it looks like the rumored "GDrive" is here. Maybe it's not exactly what everyone was talking about and hoping for, but as part of any "Google Sites" site, you're given the option to create a File Cabinet. In it, you can house any and all files that you and others upload and share. It makes creating a company or group intranet very easy and accessible.

It seems like you can make a part-time job just following Google around and checking out all the free stuff. Anyone else have any favorites that I haven't mentioned?

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Bing Soon to Tweet

TechCrunch and others are saying that Microsofts Bing search engine is adding Tweets soon. Microsoft has finally figured out the strategy to...

...compete with Google. Cut Google where they are weak. Keep cutting. Bing!

This strategy is winning. Google is losing market share and hasnt yet figured out how to respond.

Hint to Google: your UI is stale. Your search results are, while getting faster (FriendFeed and Twitter posts are now getting into Google within a few minutes) still not real time and you havent shown any real time leadership.

But wheres Yahoo? Carol? Hello? Twitter is happening now and you need to get involved in this before Bing Tweets and gives you a headache.

Oh, its not on yet. I hate it when news leaks before the feature is ready to test.

UPDATE: My asterisk * is because it turns out that only popular Twitterers will get this feature turned on. That is totally lame and leaves a huge hole for Yahoo and Google to crawl through.

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Search Engine Optimization for Bing

Many of our customers are curious about SEO (search engine optimization) for the Bing "decision" engine. The short answer is that if you were found on...

...MSN Live Search, you are likely to have the same positions on Bing. This is because Bings search results are nearly identical to their previous incarnations on Live Search, but Bings interface and functionality have been upgraded to present people with more choices in the related search menu at the left of the page, and also shows you previous searches in the same area. The related search feature is the "decision engine" factor, but overall you still need to show up near the top of the list of results if you want to get found.

Over the past few weeks, one of the differences for our customers involved an increase in traffic compared to previous MSN Live Search data, which was noted once Google updated its Analytics to track Bing as a search engine. The traffic increase is likely due to the fact that Bing has quickly taken a bigger market share over Yahoo search, probably because Microsoft is spending a few hundred million dollars on advertisements. How long Bing keeps its share of the marketplace is anyones guess, but overall people seem to be having a positive search experience.

One of the problems with Bing and its predecessor Live Search has to do with the volatility seen in search results. Web.com Search Agency tracks results for several clients, and their competitors, and MSNs volatility has been noticeable for multiple sites, not all of which are even using SEO practices. Keywords will move several spaces up or down, even from week to week, with a churn rate that almost always exceeds Google or Yahoo search results. Combined with the fact that MSN was always the #3 search engine, there was little interest in optimizing MSN over Google, or even Yahoo for that matter. One of the differences between Bing and other engines is that its algorith is not necessarily as dependant on link popularity, so on page factors are more paramount.

For people who want to be found in Bing, several of the old MSN Search rules apply. First, you need to cached by Bing, which is done by submitting your site. MSNbot is still the crawler that will visit your website, so make sure you arent excluding it in your robots.txt file. MSN also has a Webmaster Center, which is not as famous as Googles, but still highly recommended if Bing is important to you or your clients.

Second, you want to make sure your site has fresh content. What is fresh content? Essentially, updates to pages, added functionality, and more information about products or services will give you a boost. One way to keep content fresh involves updating a blog regularly, or referencing new press releases from your homepage. You should also be doing periodic keyword research to see if there are any new phrases that are worth going after, and then build fresh content around those keywords. Many sources on the internet report that MSNs algorithm is more keyword oriented, but you should still keep in line with rules that Yahoo and Google use to prevent keyword stuffing.

Third, ensure that your metatags are descriptive and reference your major keywords, since the general SEO consensus is that Bing and its predecessor use these as part of their indexing. As always, try to avoid keyword stuffing and keep in mind that you dont want to go too deep into any gray areas, because Bing may also be spending more dollars on algorithm improvement in the future, which will help it to filter out lower quality sites. One potential advantage you may have with Bing is that you can look at the related search menu and see if you have any relevant topics that you can build into your own site. Assuming that people who search for general topics will follow this menu, you have a chance to sharpen your relevance in one or more of these fields. If Bing retains its position over Yahoo or takes a greater market share, you will have the opportunity to get in on the ground floor. Another topic of note is that Bing, like Google, has a certain preference for exact match domain names, but it also will list .tv and .cc domains among its results, which is less common for Google. Therefore, a truly competitive or low volume/high margin term from one of these extensions may be profitable.

As a rule, a site that is good for Google will fall into line with Yahoo and MSN, but new content appears to get a better boost, at least for awhile. New sites almost always show up first in MSN/Bing, which may create a credibility gap because there are a lot of new sites that arent good resources for their topic matter. For people who try out different search engines, the quickest correct answer is going to be the determining factor in market share longevity. Any improvement to the search experience is going to keep internet users coming back, which means that search engines are always going to be looking for the best possible resource related to the topic typed into the search box. Aside from all the talk about semantic matching, link-based algorithms, and domain trust, the main takeaway for anyone interested in optimizing for Bing (or any other engine) is that creating a useful, readable site is the first step to SEO success.

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Google YouTube Partners

You know how they say Timing is everything? Well, apparently so does Google. Less than a week after the head of Dow Jones whines about...

...Google sucking newspapers lifeblood like a vampire (no, seriously, he said that), Google helpfully instructs news publishers on how to share their videos with the search giant.

Thankfully, unlike many newspapers, most news video publishers seem to be a little more with it. Google is asking them to become YouTube Partners. In exchange for their original, professional content, Google says its partners gain (emphasis added):

Featured Premium Placement. YouTube news partners receive featured placement on the YouTube news page, youtube.com/news, where we feature news videos from partners related to the top news stories on Google News. In addition, if you allow your videos to be embedded, theyll be eligible to appear on Google News, which means additional exposure to all Google News users.
Cut Costs, Generate Revenue. YouTube offers free hosting for all of your video content and allows you to embed your videos anywhere on the web for free. And as an official YouTube partner, youre eligible to participate in an advertising revenue share program.
Viewership Analysis. Learn more about the people viewing and interacting with your videos. Use YouTubes Insight tool to easily discover troves of useful demographic information and understand what parts of your videos people liked or didnt like. Geographic information provided can help you focus your marketing efforts.
Wider Audience. YouTube and Google News have millions of visitors every day searching for the latest news and information. Raise awareness around your brand and reach new audiences by making your video content available on YouTube and Google News. As a YouTube partner, you can maintain your brands look-and-feel with your own customized YouTube channel, and you can also drive traffic back to your own website.
Community. At its core, YouTube is a rich social environment that includes thousands of micro-communities. Build one around your content by encouraging people to interact through comments and video responses. Take advantage of YouTube as a social platform.

Somehow, although I do think most video news sites are more with it, I dont know that theyre quite ready to give over that much control to Google. The benefits are pretty persuasive, but they might not be worth the loss of control.

However, Im sure that at least a few video publishers will complain about Google stealing their content, visitors and ad dollars (even though this is completely opt-in. But hey, so is participating in Google News or its index, so hey, why start applying logic now?). To those . . . forward thinkers, I reiterate Andys advice on dealing with the undead (ie Google):

Without Google sending millions of daily visitors to newspaper web sites"for FREE"the newspaper industry would have being snuggling up to the Dodo a long time ago. . . .
People want to read news online. They dont want to pay for it. They use Google. Google sends you the bulk of your daily web site visitors. Either figure out how to monetize those visitors"like the rest of the world"or block Google via your robots.txt file and shut up!

What do you think? Do the benefits of partnering with YouTube outweigh the costs? Or should news sites get while the gettins good?

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Careful What You Believe on Google or Firefox

Just wanting to put out a general head's up that there appears to be some massive fluctuations going on in the Google SERPs and from what I can see...

...at least some form of the algorithm is garbage producing, to say the least, entirely lackluster results.

As we all know - this happens from time-to-time and I can't blame them, they have so many updates that sometimes it's just not going to work out. So - before madly ransacking your results and tearing apart your site based on the current results (never a good idea anyways) just wait a couple days. We'll let you know here also when it appears to be stabilizing.

Also - don't download the new Firefox update just yet. A lot of the extensions aren't working on the new version yet. And sorry to Daryl here for having to be the guinea pig. :)

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Google Toolbar Language Translation

' Did you understand that? Well, if you had installed the new Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer, you would...

...have been able to automatically translate it to: Googles Toolbar Now Includes Automatic Language Translation.

The official announcement suggest some pretty handy features:

If you go to another page in the same language, you will continue to see translations rather than have to translate one page at a time. And if the page has dynamic content, like Google Reader, you will get translations in real-time. Finally, if you frequently translate pages in the same language, Toolbar will let you translate that language automatically without any extra clicks in the future.

Right now, translation is available for over 40 languages and a Firefox version is coming soon.

The big questions is: ' ?

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Yahoo Branding and What It Means

For a while now there has been a lot of talk of the new and improved Yahoo. Since Carol Bartz took over as CEO there has been a more...

...hopeful buzz around the company than back in the days of Jerry Yang.

One nagging question that keeps coming up is What is Yahoo these days?. Kara Swisher over at the WSJs All Things Digital has been keeping a watchful eye on this process. She has had some interesting conversations with Bartz and now tells of the latest addition to the team that will be leading the Yahoo of the future, Penny Baldwin.

Baldwin became an official Yahoo exec, as SVP of global integrated marketing and brand management.
Baldwin, said Yahoo (YHOO), will lead the companys global brand efforts, and is responsible for developing and executing Yahoo!s brand marketing approach including brand management, corporate messaging, integrated marketing and advertising.
Said Baldwin in a statement, signaling that Yahoo is poised for an important brand makeover: This is a seminal moment for the Yahoo! brand and for the business overall.

As with all things press release related, there is painting of a rosy picture and new opportunity on the horizon (Does anyone really pay attention to the fluff in press releases anymore? Its really kind of ridiculous. Just the facts please.). Baldwin, who has significant experience at the highest levels of marketing, will be reporting to CMO Elisa Steele. She is replacing Allen Olivo who left Yahoo recently after serving as SVP of global brand marketing and her style is not very Yahooesque in the traditional sense. What does that mean exactly?

. unlike past Yahoo marketing execs, Baldwin has been described to me by many people at the company as much more colorful and bold in her style, and that she has been advocating more aggressive ideas about reinvigorating the Yahoo brand.
Well, Penny is definitely not Yahoo, said one Yahoo source, joking about the companys quainter, yodel-focused and purple-toned image. Which is probably a good thing.

So we can expect some changes pretty quickly since the new Yahoo home page is slated for roll out in the fall time frame. There is plenty of work to be done to unify Yahoos image and put some shine back on a once high-flying brand that was a front runner and now is more of a reclamation project. As discussed in the past here, just trying to bring the many different Yahoo properties into a more cohesive social networking community is a substantial task from a logistical standpoint . As in many technology situations, its easy to outrun reality with marketing and hype so everyone would be better served to see how Yahoo works in reality rather than in the marketing hype that will likely trumpet its new and cohesive community feel.

According to Swisher, one motto that is being thrown about is your home on the web. There are more apparently. Lets hope so. If this is the new and dynamic road that Yahoo is embarking on then Ms. Baldwin certainly has her work cut out for her. I yawned halfway through that potential byline for the Yahoo brand. What else is out there, This is not your fathers Yahoo!?

Stay tuned. Yahoo is certainly at a critical juncture in its existence. There is so much potential that has been underutilized to this point, is there enough left in the tank to make Yahoo the Internet powerhouse it once was? How do you really view Yahoo? How do you use it? What services do you use in the Yahoo family? Do you even know what properties are owned by Yahoo?

Excuse me, however, I have to go check my Yahoo mail that I have had since forever. Maybe today Ill look around some more and then again, since there is so much more on the Internet to pay attention to, maybe I wont.

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Google's All-In-One Lawsuit

Googles not unused to being sued. Trademark infringements, AdWords, or simply being kicked out its natural search engine, Google has seen it all.

Now its seeing it all in one law suit"and theres an added twist!

Ascentive is claiming"among other things"that "Googles refusal to list Ascentives website in its natural search result listings violates the Lanham Act." I have no idea what that means, but fortunately Eric Goldman does:

The complaint doesnt explain this allegation thoroughly, but the theory seems to be that consumers expect to see the trademark owner in organic search results for the trademark and therefore consumers will be actionably confused if the trademark owner doesnt appear there.

Hows that for grasping at straws? It seems as though this complaint is a non-starter, but that may not stop some naive judge from agreeing with the plaintiff"at least in the lower courts.

What do you think? Has Google become so dominant that it has a legal obligation to index the web site of an official trademark holder?

Included links: Trademark Lawsuits, Trademark Infringement, Google Wins

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