The Big Ebook of Internet Marketing » Search Marketing

Is Cuil the next big threat to Google?

admin — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 03:39:40 +0000

Ex-Googlers launch rival search engine which hopes to offer a more comprehensive way to search the web. It is pronounced “cool” and expect to start accepting search requests today. They claim to have 120 billion pages in its index. If this is accurate it would put it at three times Google’s index. Content analysis is going to be more in depth than other leading search engines.

It will be a tough road ahead to try and unseat Google at the top of the search engine market. Many have tried before, but none have come even close to capturing the market share. Somehow I don’t think that Google will be losing any sleep over it.

Will Microsoft’s new BrowseRank be the new Pagerank?

admin — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 17:43:10 +0000

Microsoft researchers and academic collaborators detailed an idea this week it calls BrowseRank that seeks to bring more of a human touch to that assessment. The classic Google Pagerank uses the number of incoming links as votes. The more links your site has, then the more popular the site. Unfortunately this method is prone to linkfarms that try and game the system.

Browserank replaces this link counting with a count of user browsing activity. The more visits and longer a user stays on the page, then the more important the page is. Right now it is still in the expiremental stage with Microsoft only using volunteers. This begs the big question of what would happen if microsoft includes the Browserank tracking into a future version of internet explorer?

It would definitely be met with a lot of protest, but if it turns out to be a good indicator of website popularity, then Microsoft will have a huge advantage in the search engine results. Of course Google could release their own method and include it in the Google toolbar, but they still wouldn’t have as much reach as Microsoft and IE.

We will have to stay tuned to see where all of this is headed. Don’t worry though, the big search engines are always working on bringing you better search results.

Will a Yahoo Google deal cost you more in PPC?

admin — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 02:14:58 +0000

Yahoo’s search advertising agreement with Google could result in more than a 20 percent jump in keyword prices for advertisers, according to an independent report released Tuesday by SearchIgnite. This could make your search engine marketing budget skyrocket. The report claims the cost could go up as much as 22 percent. This would really cut into profits over time. On average, the cost per click for bidding on the same tail keywords on Google, compared with Yahoo, costs 12 percent more for the No. 1 position on a search result page, and as much as 28 percent more for the No. 5 spot.

An excerpt from the report:

“The price difference for bidding on tail terms on Google vs. Yahoo increases as the ad’s page rank decreases. Therefore, it would be economically advantageous for Yahoo to outsource a significant amount of their tail term inventory, paying closer attention to the outsourced inventory’s rank rather than the keyword terms themselves. Acting this way, Yahoo should be able to better monetize the majority of their tail terms with the Google partnership. ”

SEM folks should pay close attention to this deal. The same could be true if Microsoft buys Yahoo. Either way there will be one less major player in Tier 1 PPC.