Search Engine Tigers

This advanced operator has apparently been around in Google Experimental for over a year, but since I only came across it recently, it’s new to me, so maybe it is to you.

So what does view:map do? Basically, by adding it to the end of any regular query in Google, you’ll get a results page with a map, and on that map will be markers, and a list of listings that contains some form of geographic identifier. As you can see below posts of mine talk about trips I’ve taken and trips I’m about to take.

Now there are some false positives, I’ve never talked about Texas, but as my name appears on a popular blog near where someone else talks about working for a firm in Texas, it’s picked up, but on the whole it’s pretty good about showing the right results.

So how can this help you? Well, potentially it can enable you to see what locations your product is being talked about in conjunction with (note, not necessarily where the people that are talking about your product are). Sure only 10 listings doesn’t give you much, so go ahead and add &num=100 to the query string to get up to 100 results that mention geo-terms and see what happens. Below is the result for “Specialized Information Publishers Association”

As you can see there’s discussion about their conferences in DC, Chicago, their headquarters in McLean (hey, they’re just around the corner from me), talk about a sponsor in Hawaii, and about a board member from London. How can this help them? Well let’s say that there was a groundswell of SIPA members talking about how there really needs to be a conference in Lancaster, PA. The fact that that location would show up on this map would give them that information, and they could then investigate to see whether there really was any kind of demand for moving one of their conferences out to NYC strip mall shopping central Amish country.

All in all it’s an interesting tool, but there are some false positives that show up in the system that detract slightly from the results, which is probably why it’s still in Google Experimental. Anyway, go give it a play, and if you think of some great use for it, please share.

A friend of mine in the Real Estate business came to me a few months ago to ask for some advice on SEO. I went out to lunch and gave her some pointers, then got back to being busy and simply forgot to ask her how it was going. On Saturday she called me asking if I could help out with her desktop machine, as it had become badly virally infected. While working on that, I asked her how the her site was doing.

“Oh, I hired a company to do that for me” was the reply. Then she turned round and handed me a manila folder with some documents in it. “Here’s what they did for me”.

I pulled out the first document. It started off with screen-shots of submissions to the major search engines - Google, Yahoo, MSN & Alexa?… ok, not a great start, but I continued through this document… there were submissions to directories. Ok, let’s take a look at those… hmm, never heard of the majority of them, and quite a few aren’t even in English , this looks like a default directory submission from some tool…

Ok, next document. It’s the invoice for $1750, with “no refunds, no cancellations” typed on it. I ask if she has a contract, or even an email outlining their work, the reply was negative. From the sounds of it, she was cold called, and promised the earth, or #1 rankings in G, Y & M for local Real Estate terms, which amounts for the same thing. The salesperson obviously did a good job, because she gave them her credit card details and sat back. Well, she didn’t quite sit back, she kept calling them to see why she wasn’t #1 yet, and their response was “It’s organic, give it a little more time”.

The next document was a copy of the code on the website, but it looked a little strange, so I went to her site and looked at the code. They didn’t match. This was puzzling, had they only given her recommendations and not implemented them? Then I noticed the URL at the top of the page… it was for a different site.

Yes, a different site. So I asked her if she owned that domain? “No, they did that” was the reply. I reviewed the code. The title tag contained her name, and her name alone, none of the keywords that they were going to magically get her to the #1 spot for, just her name. The same was true of the H1 tag. (Note: this new site doesn’t even rank in the top 50 for her name).

Content on the site was terrible, with keywords stuffed, more strong tags than you could shake multiple sticks at, poor look & feel, all on an extremely long home page. The sub-pages were even worse. In order to save time, given that theirs is obviously a volume business, they had scraped content using the title of the page. Yes, this could potentially work for unique terms, but when you sell Real Estate in a place with a name like Sterling, you may want to check the results…

What else did I notice in the code? Well, the most interesting thing was a nice big ad on the page for USA SEO Pro’s, which wasn’t the name of the company that she had hired. Since I can’t imagine that they’d altruistically put a link and an ad on for a competitor, it must be the same company (in fact the testimonials on their website refer to the initials of the company that she hired, so they are the one and same company), but why didn’t they use their own name? A quick search for usaseopros reveals why…

Now, wherever they have a negative listing, such as on the Real Estate Blog, or on Ripoff Report, you can see that they’re actively going into those sites and responding to the criticism. Of course, the responses that show up are from ’satisfied customers’ and ‘proud employees’ both of which, based on my experiences with my friend’s site, are false.

So where does this leave my friend? She paid $1750 with no contract, and no defined deliverables. They ‘did some work’ and ‘delivered some documents’. The site they’ve ‘worked’ on doesn’t belong to her, they can take it down at will, there’s no guarantee that they’ll transfer the domain to her if she asks them to (which is what I’ve asked her to do, despite the fact that it shows not one incoming link, I guess those Lithuanian directories really take time to register). As for their #1 ranking promises, all verbal, nothing in writing. What can she do? Most likely not much, except warn others about her experience, and take this as lessons for the future.

1. If something sounds too good to be true… it is
2. Get everything in writing
3. If you know someone with experience in that particular industry, drop them a quick note to get their opinion, and find out what questions you need to ask.

I’ve told her that I’ll give her a hand when I can, and that in the meantime she should read and learn from real SEOs who have experience in the Real Estate market, not scammers.

Unfortunately, due to my late arrival time at the conference, I was only able to take in one other session, beyond the one I spoke at, at the Kelsey ILM conference last week. However, it was an interesting presentation titled: “Maps: They’re not just for driving”

Aaron Kahlow was the Moderator, and he actually began the session with a presentation of his own, which basically asked questions of the presenters. Firstly he asked them how maps fit in to the marketing puzzle, and how they should be prioritized. Then he reminded people that while new, disruptive technologies are fun to play with, people shouldn’t just get excited for the sake of getting excited, they need to answer the big question: What are the business applications and what’s the ROII?

The first speaker up to attempt to answer the questions was Joe Abraham. He spoke on the topic of making sure that you get your data into the various mapping systems. The first step that you should take is to make sure that you have your data correctly listed, then go to the Google Local Business Center, Yahoo Local, Live Local, and InfoUSA to upload your data. In Google you can add multiple locations and coupons. One way to get your business ad listed quickly in Google Maps is to create a local business ad through Adwords.

Benu Aggerwal continued the conversation, reminding people that by getting their business in the mapping systems, Google maps in particular, they run a much better chance of dominating their SERPs and pushing any ‘bad’ listings ‘below the fold’. She recommended checking the data aggregators such as Acxiom and Amacai to verify that they have your listings entered correctly. Ensure that your website is fully optimized, and if using CSS use it to stick your address as high up in the html as you can, regardless of where it actually appears on the page. Use the map APIs to enhance your website i.e. showing local atractions / restaurants for a hotel.

• Get listings on 2nd tier local directories
• Get listings in vertical directories
• Get references from other local sites
• Get Reviews on social networking sites
• Use Geotargeted PPC

Up next was Danny Moon of the appropriately named company upNext. He spoke on the natural evolution of mapping systems from 2d to 3d. His belief is that the map will eventually not be the endng point of a search, but will instead become the starting point. This will be possible as users become more sophisticated, and is supported by hardware improvements over recent years that have improved rendering capabilities.

The last presenter was Andy White. He spoke on difference between a ‘free’ mapping solution and a paid solution. While the initial price may be better, the price of development will at some point push the cost of the ‘free’ solution above that of the paid solution. You really need to look at how critical the mapping features are to your core business.

During the Q&A phase, the panel reiterate their belief that mobile will be a big driver in the growth of maps for local. One question that was asked that doesn’t have a great solution at the moment was how to handle mapping for service based businesses. The response from the panel? It’s a challenge.

Google announced yesterday that Google Transit has moved from Google Labs and is not integrated in with Google Maps. This is great news for those of us that want to travel into a city using public transportation (there’s no way I’m driving into DC and fiddling around finding a parking space when I have a decent metro system available). Unfortunately, they don’t have every public transit system in the application yet, but they will be rolling out over time. So if you live in / travel to the Bay Area or Orange County in California, Tampa in Florida, or Hampton Roads in Virginia (among others shown here), you can play with it now. For me and trips to DC, I’ll just have to wait…

Li Evans put out the latest installment of her Women of Internet Marketing Series today, one of her questions to Carrie Hill was

Simon Heseltine, Bill Slawski or Scott Orth?

which generated a response of

Hmm - Bill Slawski I think - I love his patent application stuff. I’m way to short-attention-spanned to do that myself so I love that he breaks it down for us. I have enjoyed Simon Heseltine’s recent foray into geo-targeting. It’s great for travel.

So in case anyone has popped over to this blog, looking for that ‘foray’, it’s actually over on RBDRodeo - ‘Local Targeting for your PPC Campaigns’, although I do have some older posts here on geotargeting (yeah, it needs updating), and I am going to be speaking at SES-Local in November on ‘Best Practices for Using PPC for Local Targeting‘.

A letter from Google regarding changes with Google Base and support for submitting business locations…

Hello, 

At this time, we're transferring support of Business Locations
bulk uploads from your Google Base account to your Google Local
Business Center account. If you are currently submitting Business
Locations bulk uploads for inclusion in Google Maps via Google
Base, please begin submitting your updated Business Locations bulk
uploads via the Google Local Business Center found here: 

http://www.google.com/local/add/uploadFeed 

If you've encountered problems submitting your Business Locations
bulk upload to your Google Base account over the last few weeks,
we recommend that you resubmit your Business Locations bulk upload
using the Google Local Business Center. Google Base will no longer
support the "Business Locations" item type. Instead, please begin
to access and manage your information through your Google Local
Business Center account. You'll be able to access this account
using the same email login and password you used for Google Base. 

This change will allow you to submit new locations individually
and in the feed format, all from one centralized account. There
will be no need to access your Google Base account for business
locations purposes going forward. 

Please know this was a recent change and we apologize for any
inconvenience this change may cause you. Google Base is a beta
product, which means it is constantly changing and developing. We
are confident this will provide you with a more comprehensive user
experience. 

Sincerely,

The Google Team

A couple of weeks ago I, and every other columnist for Search Engine Land was asked to write a local or mobile article for their special series of ‘Local Search Week‘ and ‘Mobile Search Week‘. I had an idea as to what to write, and did the initial investigation, but just didn’t have the time to write anything up, so instead of it being over there, it’s now over here.I decided to take a look at the various mapping systems out there, and see if they really were all created equally. I did a number of direction requests, and compared the results. For most of the searches the directions were fairly similar, with the ‘Whitehouse to Disneyland’ trip providing the biggest differences, with Yahoo taking a northerly route to start, while MSN & Google headed South. However, at the end of the trip, Yahoo & Google went the same way, while MSN went their own route. (The order in the image below is Yahoo, Google, MSN).

So what about timing? Obviously the title of this post gives you an idea of how those results came out. For virtually every trip that I put into all Yahoo, Google, MSN & Mapquest, Yahoo came back with the fastest time to the destination. The only divergence from that pattern was the Whitehouse to Disneyland trip, where MSN beat Yahoo into second place. N.B. MSN could not find a route from Anchorage, AK to Miami, FL.

So, if you’re going to travel from Anchorage to Miami, Yahoo will save you 4 hours over mapquest (while traveling only 67 fewer miles), even traveling from Scotland to the South of England will save you 2 hours over Google maps, despite traveling 2 more miles…

Just in case you’re interested, my first article on Search Engine Guide went live yesterday. The topic was Lead Generation Services for Small Businesses.

Yes, there’s now a mobile phone application to allow you to find the nearest, cleanest toilet to your current location.  I don’t think that there’s really anything more I can say about this, except that I hope that you don’t hurt your eyes by rolling them like I did when I read about this.  

Marchex has announced that today it will be launching over 100,000 new websites, totaling over 1 billion pages of content. These websites are both targeted at local searches (i.e. denverautorepair.com, 90210.com, etc), as well as specific verticals (locksmiths.com). Rather than aiming for a central portal on one domain, similar to an IYP site such as SuperPages, Marchex is hoping that these thousands of sites will each be relevant enough to pull searchers in as they’re discovered through the SERPs. However, one thing that you will notice if you go to these individual sites is that they have a very similar look and feel (which you would expect with 100,000 pages being launched at once), and that they all link, in some way, to myzip.com, which can show the exact same information as the individual pages.

Looking at their robots.txt, you can see that they are basically shutting the crawlers out of everything on myzip.com

User-agent: *

Disallow: /-/home/

Disallow: /-/results/

Disallow: /-/detail/

Disallow: /-/about/

Disallow: /-/terms/

Disallow: /-/privacy/

Disallow: /-/guidelines/

In fact, the only page that I found on myzip.com that could be crawled was the portal page (http://www.myzip.com/-/portal/?p=Portal&). So maybe this is because they’re only having those 100,000 individual sites crawled? After all, they’d get some benefit from the urls right? Well, here’s the robots.txt for denverautorepair.com

User-agent: *

Disallow: /-/results/

Disallow: /-/detail/

Disallow: /-/about/

Disallow: /-/terms/

Disallow: /-/privacy/

Disallow: /-/guidelines/

Aha! A difference! They’re not blocking the /-/home directory on this site. So what is there? All of the unique content? Well… not quite, it’s the same content on each page in that directory, but the sponsored listings are different…

Marchex is looking to distinguish itself in scale and quality from the so-called “domain parking” industry that often prey on accidental visitors to their sites by serving up low-quality advertising links on random pages
From the Reuters article

…such as serving up ads for buying homes in Florida on a page about Denver car repair???

Now while it’s true that this is a relevance quirk on Yahoo’s side, (I reached this page by clicking on the “See sponsored links for: Florida” crawlable link on the site, which is populated by Yahoo), the fact still remains that Marchex is allowing these pages to be indexed . Of course houses in Florida on a Denver page isn’t the most fun example, so how about this crawlable page on locksmiths.com stuffed full of Carmen Electra ads, because when you need a locksmith, you obviously need something to take your mind off being locked out of your house / car…

Admittedly, this is a small sample that I’ve looked at, but it does look a little strange if they’re trying to distance themselves from the domain parking sites, yet the only pages they’re having crawled are those with different ad sets, especially when those ad sets may not be related to the content of the page. It could be that they’ve not yet ‘launched’ these sites fully, and the robots.txt files may be changing, so I’ll check back tomorrow and see if they’re still the same or not, but still…

**update - 2 days later - Looking at the robots.txt  files for denverautorepair.com and locksmiths.com, I don’t see any change, so it looks like this is how they intend it to be.