Search Engine Tigers

Last night a new search engine launched – Cuil, pronounced Cool. Normally this wouldn’t make too much of a splash, but it’s backed by $33 million of VC money, and was founded by former Googlers. They claim to have built a better mousetrap, with more pages in their index than Google. So how does it stack up?

First things first, the home page is cleaner than that of Google’s (no specialized searches listed), and they seem to be going for the anti-Google label, with the background being black, while Google’s is white.  But what about the searches?  Naturally the first one that I did is a vanity search.  Time for it to run – 8 seconds the first time, 3 seconds the next.  Ok, so it’s not as fast as Google, but what about the results?

Rather than 10 results in a column surrounded by paid listings, Cuill has gone for 3 columns containing 11 results (4 each in the first 2 columns, and 3 in the last).  Each listing has a nice chunk of text associated with it, and an image where one can be found (not always that most contextually relevant image, but an image nonetheless).

Result quality?  Hmm, not so good.  For a search engine that claims to index more pages than Google, none of the blogs that I write on, on a regular basis are there (weekly or more frequently).  However, seosfightfat, a blog I was writing for a month earlier this year shows up in 11th, 15th, 17th, 18th, 21st, etc.  Not something that you’d see on Google, with no more than 2 results displaying for the same domain.

I’d seen some people tweet that spam was a big problem on Cuil, so I thought I’d do some further searches to check that out, to see exactly what the extent of that problem was… unfortunately Cuil is no longer working, due to the number of people hitting their service to try it out today, which in itself is not cool.

So, is Cuil the fabled Google killer?  Probably not.  It’s going to take a lot of cash and luck to get any sizable chunk of the search engine business, just ask ASK, and MSN, both of which have tried throwing money at that very same issue, to not succeed.

For more thoughts and opinion, check out the various discussions on the topic linked to by the Search Engine Roundtable article on Cuill.

Yes, it’s been a full 3 months since the last meetup, so it’s time for another.  Based on the feedback on the group polls, we’re holding this on a week night, rather than a weekend, and we’re going to be doing more of a formal presentation style for the meeting.  There’ll be presentations from Debra Mastaler and myself covering topics from Link Building to Reputation Management.

If you’d like to attend, you can find out more about the meetup over on the VA SEM group meetup pages, but the basics are that it’s going to be held at the Serengeti Communications offices in McLean, VA (1493 Chain Bridge Road, Suite 303) on August 1st, with doors opening at 6pm, and the presentations scheduled to start at 6.30pm.  If you have interest in presenting, drop me a note to simon at searchenginetigers.com and we’ll see what we can do.

Hope to see any that can make it out here next Friday.

Thanks to all those that attended on Saturday, especially those that drove in from Richmond & Williamsburg.  We had some great discussions, and the largest attendance to date, which unfortunately meant that we didn’t all get to talk to everyone, but I think we tried to talk to as many people as possible.  We did do some round table discussions about various topics, and got to meet some new people.

So thanks again to those that attended, and we’ll hope to see you there the next time we have a meeting.

Semantic Search Engine Hakia announced today that they’ve added Credibility as a determinant factor in their search engine for all health related searches. They list Credibility, Freshness and Relevancy as the main 3 factors.

What do they mean by credibility? How does a site become credible? Well, the way they’ve done it is to take the Medical Library Association’s list of quality health web sites, and say that any site on that list is credible as far as they’re concerned (link builders, head over there and get your medical clients listed). Any results that are from one of these credible sites are then shown above the regular listings, and are displayed in red.

So does credibility make a difference to the user experience? Well, the first issue is that there’s no key for the user to understand why these listings are in red, and others not. Not all searches produces ‘credible’ results, i.e. a search for treating a strained calf muscle produced 0 credible results. Credible sites get to double dip – if a credible result is in the organic results it will display in both the credible and non-credible results, which can reduce the feeling of freshness. Also, I would assume that the hope is that a credible resource should also be a relevant resource, that’s not always the case. For example, in the search that I did below for “recurring knee pain” the first result is not from a medical site, but from Al Jazeera talking about an A.C. Milan player with that problem.

Now, Hakia is still a beta product, so it isn’t fair to judge them on a non finished product, and they are at least trying out different things, but as to whether this will be something that can catapult them to the forefront, or even into the pack behind the leading pack remains to be seen.

Despite fears of a recession, with anticipated cutbacks in marketing expenditure (as well as layoffs, which have already happened at Yahoo, and are expected to happen at ASK shortly), things are actually looking rosy for the Search industry, especially in Europe.

According to GroupM, by the end of this year the Internet will be the dominating medium in Sweden, with the UK and Denmark following behind rather quickly. Looking at the figures from the UK, this assumes a growth rate of ~31% for internet based advertising for this year, which will take the internet to just a hair under 25% of advertising expenditure, with TV (the current champion) sitting on 26% of market share.

Exactly how much of that expenditure is expected to be Search related? 65-70%. That means that in the UK alone, the estimated $ expenditure on search is expected to be over $4.2 billion. Not too shabby!

What about the US market? Well, internet advertising expenditure lags far behind in the US. According to TNS Media Intelligence, in the first quarter of 2007 while TV had a 44.6% share of ad spend, the internet came in at only 7.7%, putting it ahead of radio, but well behind newspapers and magazines. eMarketer predicts that by 2011 ad spend in the US will still heavily favor TV (~$86 billion), but that internet advertising will have, by then, moved into second place with an ad spend of $35 billion.

So we have interesting times ahead, with search projected to continue to grow by leaps and bounds. Of course, outside pressures can change these projections one way or another, but still it’s good to be in an industry that looks to have such a bright future ahead of it.

…or Spreading myself around like a spready thing.

Despite what Anthony has to say on the topic of writing posts on other people’s blogs, I’ve been busy doing just that, here’s a list of those that I’ve made on other blogs this week that you may not be aware of… (and the last one is what this teaser was all about).

Don’t Panic, Plan for Disaster (my last regular article on the In-House column)

Google Adwords: Geotargeting Options

Nonprofit Video Comparison

Facebook Ads for Nonprofits

The Motivation behind this Weight Loss Contest

While doing a quick Google search on the new name of my company – Serengeti Communications – I noticed that there’s now a listing in the top 5 from Merchant Circle, which talks about how you can:

Contact Serengeti Communications to request a deal, get a coupon or to do business.

Strange, I wasn’t aware that we were offering ‘deals’, or handing out coupons…

I’m also not keen on their little box at the top right of the page that indicates that you can ‘talk to’ Serengeti Communications through their site.  For a user that’s used to interactive sites, such as Carmax, this may lead them to believe that typing in this box will link them directly to a Serengeti Communications sales person.  Instead, it appears to post a comment to the Serengeti forum on their site, and from reading Matt McGee’s review of Merchant Circle from last year, Merchant Circle then contacts the business to let them know that there’s a message out there on the forum.

The information about the company has obviously been scraped from our website, so when I saw the blog section, I assumed that they’d also scraped our blog – EndlessPlain.com… nope, there’s apparently a Merchant Circle blog for Serengeti Communications… which had better remain blank, as we’re not writing it.

I’ve got to say, IYP sites and directories that list information about a company are absolutely fine by me, but when one purports to have a relationship with a company that it doesn’t have, either implicitly or explicitly, then that to me is a big red flag.

It’s been a while since I’ve let my natural pythonesque tendencies filter out onto this blog, so I thought that the time was nigh to put a knotted handkerchief on my head and hit myself in the face with a vase of flowers while talking about how watching Monty Python as a bairn prepared me for a career in search marketing…

1. In the land of the superheroes, there’s always a need for a bicycle repair man: Yes, the on page issues are generally easy to fix, and not as sexy as generating viral content, or coming up with a social media strategy, but there are still people out there that are blocking their entire site with their robots.txt, or duplicating content across multiple pages, etc, etc. To them, getting those basics fixed can make an absolutely fantastic difference.
2. (Miss) Anne Elk’s brontosaurus theory: Some people sound like they have a great story to tell, or some secret that you can only find by listening to them, then you hear it, and realize that it’s just common sense, or ridiculous, and was a complete waste of time listening to in the first place. Figure out where the real information comes from, and avoid the disinformation from those who just like to hear the sound of their own self-important voice.
3. It’s only a flesh wound: Know when it’s time to get out of a particular line of business or service. It’s all well and fine being told that a particular area of search marketing is lucrative, but when you determine that your business model doesn’t work, figure out why and either change or get out. Don’t keep throwing good money after bad, hoping that it’ll change, before long you’ll find out that you’ve sunk so much money into it, that you won’t have a leg to stand on…
4. Always look on the Bright Side of Life: This is such a fast changing, a still relatively new industry, so there are always opportunities opening up if you keep your eyes out for them. Don’t sit back and wait for them to come to you, go out there and market yourself.
5. If a Budgie is coughing up blood, it’s a good idea to flush it down the toilet: When, for whatever reason, you have a problem with a client, and the relationship goes completely sour, with no real hope of recovery, then you have to learn when to shake hands with them and part as amicably as possible.
6. Arthur “Two Sheds” Jackson: Personal Reputation Management is an issue that you need to think about, one innocuous comment, image, or video can follow you around for ever, regardless of what you do for the rest of your life.
7. The Cheese Shop Sketch: If someone comes into your site using a particular keyword, then your site had better have something to do with that keyword, and if you’re an e-commerce site, then you’d better have that product for sale, otherwise they’re not going to convert, no matter how many excuses you give them.
8. Even the Piranha brothers had a weakness: While Google is the undoubted king of search engines, who knows what will challenge their dominance in the future, although it probably won’t be a 12 foot tall hedgehog called Spiny Norman, maybe it’ll be one called Facebook?
9. Whizzo Crunchy Frog Chocolates: An unboned dead baby frog covered in lark’s vomit lovingly encased in the finest Belgian chocolate may fool people once, but it’s unlikely to do so a second time. The same goes for a website that you’re attempting to market. You can do a great job, sugarcoating the message, but if the site is abjectly horrible, either design, navigation, or functionality wise, then the visitors are not likely to come back.
10. But I didn’t eat the Salmon Mousse!: If your site is hosted on a shared server, take a look at who else is on there, and try to see if they’re likely to do things that can affect that entire C block. You don’t want your site to die by association when the Google Grim Reaper comes calling.
11. From Accountancy to Lion Taming: If you have a specialty, whether it be a particular vertical, or area of Search Marketing, and you decide that you want to do something in another area, make sure to research that area prior to leaping in. If you think you’re going to be taming an anteater, then you’re going to get one heck of a shock when you realize that you’re actually standing in a cage with the king of the beasts, with your only training being in the best use of pivot tables…
12. An African or European Swallow?: Know the right questions to ask. Prepare yourself before you have that first discovery meeting with a new client / vendor. Identify what it is that you don’t know, and that you will need to know in order to complete your SEM tasks.
13. Free Dead Dog with every jar of Coffee: In order for your marketing to function, you have to make sure that your offer is the right one to the target audience. If it’s not, you’re not going to see the conversion improvement that you’ve been paid to make happen, in fact you could see a decline if your offer is poorly thought out.
14. There is nothing quite as wonderful as money: The job of the Search Marketer is to improve the marketing of the site to increase conversions, and increase revenues, generating the best ROI possible. Of course, the reason you’re doing it is also to get some of that money flowing your way.

So there you have it, back in the late ’60’s and early ’70’s, despite there being no such thing as Search Marketing, the Internet, or even personal computers, that group of Cambridge and Oxford educated gentlemen that formed Monty Python were thinking ahead to a time such as this, where their advice could shape our lives… and now for something completely different…

Semi – Latin prefix meaning half.

Semi – Slang for a semi articulated truck.

The SEMMYS – The year’s best posts in Search Engine Marketing.

Today marks the official announcement of the first annual SEMMY awards. The 2008 SEMMYs list posts from 127 authors from 111 blogs / sites in 15 different categories such as SEO, PPC, Local Search, Analytics, and Rants… The list of nominees is sourced from the month end ‘Best of the month’ posts on Matt McGee’s SmallBusinessSEM blog, and the judges include such luminaries as Rand Fishkin, Debra Mastaler, Vanessa Fox, Andy Beal, Aaron Wall, and for some strange and bizarre reason yours truly was obviously accidently asked to be a judge (maybe Matt had been watching watching some American Idol previews, and decided that he had to have an English judge named Simon).

Not only am I a judge in the Social Media section (a section which has 37 nominees!), but a post from this blog has also been nominated in the Local Search section, so I’m doubly honored. So now it’s time for you to head over to the SEMMYs, take a look at the different nominees in the different sections, and comment on your favorites, don’t take too long though, as fairly soon Matt will be standing in his tux at his virtual podium opening the envelope and saying “The SEMMY goes to…”

Oh, and next year I fully expect to see nominations for 2 new sites that I heartily recommend – EndlessPlain.com, and OldSchoolSEO.com.

On the last Saturday of 2007 we held yet another meeting of the Virginia Search Marketing Meetup group at the Bertucci’s in Tyson’s corner. The day didn’t start off too great, with Bill Slawski calling in to let me know that due to car trouble he’d had to turn back to Delaware, but on the plu side he did make it back safely. Not that Bill would have won the award for furthest distance traveled to the meetup, that went to Tim McGuinness of Hakia, who came all the way down from NYC just for the meeting (well ok, he did mention something in passing about coming down to sell his house from when he used to live in the area, but I’m sure that was just something that he figured he could do while he was down for the meetup).

We had 7 people at the event, with backgrounds in agency SEM, in-house SEM, toolset development, link building specialists, and the aforementioned search engine rep. So you can imagine that we had some really good, interesting discussions over the 2 hours that we were there. One of those discussions was about certain work that one of the group had performed for one of the top 3 search engines in the recent past, he’s the one that’s not in the picture.

So thanks to Debra Mastaler, Dirk Johnson, Rachan Malhotra, Steve, Tim, and Jim for attending, and I hope that you all enjoyed the meetup.  For anyone that’s interested, we’ll be having another one probably some time in March, more details will follow on this blog as we firm things up.