Misc SEO News

The History of SEO

Fri, 14 Oct 2005 10:13:30 GMT

SEO Book points to a post by Jim Boykin, who has composed an excellent timeline summarazing the changing tactics of search engine optimization over the years.

UK Search Engine Trends for Year 2005

Fri, 14 Oct 2005 09:19:09 GMT

Hitwise have released their annual UK Search Insight Report, among the (mostly unsurprising) findings they note:

The top four search engines (Google, Yahoo Search, MSN Search, and Ask) power 94% of all UK searches
The collective number of searches from UK and .com properties of the top 4 search engines have increased 70% over last year
Google UK and Google.com collectively power 70% of searches in the UK
Google UK powers 63% of searches in the UK
MSN is Google's closest competitor in the UK powering 8% of UK searches

NetImpertive has more on the trends, access to the full report requires application.

Most Popular Industries According to Yellow Pages

Tue, 11 Oct 2005 14:08:23 GMT

'Inbound' at WebmasterWorld shares what will likely be useful data for some SEM/SEOs:

I just completed some research based on a variety of industry data, here are my rough figures for overall offline YP category use. It should not be a shock to many of you but I thought it might help some people in search of general data. Take your pick on the number of lookups, 15 Billion seems a nice round figure for the year. % - Category

15.6 - Health
14.2 - Food
13.8 - Automobiles
10.2 - Shopping (Consumer)
7.1 - Construction
4.2 - Supplies (Business)
3.6 - Finance & Insurance
[...]

See the YP Category Usage Percentages thread for the entire list.

Via SERoundtable.

Scraper Sites Increase at Astonishing Rate

Tue, 11 Oct 2005 12:08:12 GMT

RandFish at SEOMoz looks into the worrying trend in the high number of scraper pages per genuine ones:

For an example, note this linkdomain search, showing 15,000+ links (you can actually browse to page 99 and see that there really are that many). Since, in the last 6 months, the site (a client of ours) has only gotten referral traffic from about 2,000 URLs, I can assume that at least 7,500 (half), if not many more, are simply scrapers. That's a very, very high percentage of links that are "bad neighborhoods". I have to wonder how effectively this can be combatted...

Verisign Rumoured to have Bought Weblogs.com for $5M

Thu, 06 Oct 2005 23:50:16 GMT

Weblogs.com -- one of the oldest ping services, and not to be confused with Weblogsinc.com -- has been purchased by Versign for $5 million according to recent rumour.

New HitWise Blog

Thu, 06 Oct 2005 23:37:41 GMT

Hitwise who offer some excellent data on search engine usage and patterns have opened a blog. Given their exclusive data on search engines and their usage, they're in a position to offer some real insights.

Are Google, Yahoo, MSN Search Asleep at The Wheel?

Sat, 01 Oct 2005 11:02:01 GMT

Search Engine Blog observes an excellent post by Dave Winer, who among other questions asks why Google, and the other top players still don't take advantage of the wealth of content available via RSS:

I don't understand why Google's search engine doesn't understand RSS. Shouldn't they take care of that before they worry about space travel, if that's what they're doing? And why don't their competitors' search engines take advantage of the billions of feeds out there? Come on MSN, Yahoo, Jeeves, let's go, there's some butt to kick here. And they say this industry is driven by innovation. Feh. It's driven by press releases

New Open Source Search Engine

Thu, 29 Sep 2005 07:31:53 GMT

ThreadWatch points out Sentensa, a previously commercial search engine developed by Virtual Genetics Laboratory AB, now open sourced.

Sentensa, has used 20 years experience in search technology to create the next generation search motor. Users have the ability to use totally new ways of searching amongst very large text databases. The name Sentensa was chosen in order to describe how that it takes into account search text’s underlying significance to find the most relevant search results. Searches become much faster and effective, which make Sentensa applicable in many different markets, from the pharmaceutical industry to media and general document handling. Users can, with help from Sentensa, create advanced applications for searching in all kinds of text, which can be used by many users at the same time

The code is released under the GPL license, which means the source code of anything built up on the engine must be made publically available. Though they do offer an alternative commercial license at a price, for any companies who wish to keep their product(s) close sourced.

Also worth noting, the engine is programmed in Java, giving the advantage of being portable across many environments. But, with speed considered a integral part of making usable search engine applicaions, Java's reputation of being slow (in comparison to the likes of C, and C++, favoured among the Google and other big players) may actually turn off some potenial enterprise users.

Why Being #1 is Important

Tue, 27 Sep 2005 03:14:19 GMT

Jakob Nielson has an interesting piece on a recent study [PDF] by Professor Thorsten at Cornell University, on search engines.

The main point of interest is the studies findings on the click through rates of the the competing top positions. The study found that 42% of users clicked the top result, and only 8% clicked the second result. They also found that if the researches secretly switched the top two listing, the top listing (which was formerly in second place) still had a relatively high 34% CTR, with the second result still only slightly higher than previously at 12%.

The study, and Nielson essentially conclude this behaviour to be mostly reflection of users' implicit trust in the search engine to serve the best result first, and plain laziness on the part of the user.

FirstGov Switch to Vivisimo and MSN Search

Mon, 26 Sep 2005 04:12:27 GMT

FirstGov -- the U.S. government's official information and service portal -- previously powered by Norway's FAST, has switched to MSN Search combined with Vivisimo technology to power the site's search facility needs. According to SearchEngineWatch they reportedly made the switch because the new deal offerered more value for money than the previous one.