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SearchWrite SearchNews
Caching Better Results in Search Marketing
Vol I, Issue 028 08.11.05
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CACHING THE LATEST RESULTS IN SEARCH MARKETING....


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Yahoo! Debuts Site Explorer
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http://sitexplorer.search.yahoo.com/ 

Yahoo!'s "Mayor of Search," Tim Mayer, made heads turn at SES by introducing a  a new product named Site Explorer. Using Site Explorer,  you can see which pages Yahoo indexed and let Yahoo know about URLs  it  has not found as of yet (via submit URL or URLs).  Note: The above URL may be temporarily offline due to overwhelming popular demand, but returning soon)

Type in a URL and hit explore URl.  Explorer will reveal the number of pages found in the Yahoo Index and also show you the number of inlinks. You can also sort pages by "depth," how deep pages are and can submit URLs. 

In other Yahoo news, the company has announced it is buying 40% of Chinese Internet Start-up Alibaba for $1 billion in cash. (The $5 billion value that investors have slapped on newly public Baidu.com looks to have awakened Yahoo to the need to get serious about China.)  Alibaba owns two of the largest business-to-business marketplaces in the world; has a joint-venture partnership with Softbank in Taobao, a popular Chinese online auction business; and owns a Chinese online payment system called AliPay.

The Yahooligans also announced they are now indexing over 20 billion documents - web pages, images, etc. Google reports about half that amount. 


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Rumors Run Amok: Google and Apple iTunes Together?
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The rumor mill was in full churn at the SES show. To wit:

Google may soon be offering Apple iTunes through the Google site. Are we seeing the first of many uses of Google’s micropayment system? Combining music search and music downloads would place Google way ahead of Yahoo - its main competitor in the music search arena.

Google could, for example, incorporate iTunes into any search regarding musical/artist terms. Any search for related to a particular artist, lyrics, or title of a song would bring up informational links and links to various iTunes songs available for purchase. The concept seems like an ideal way to provide Google users with relevant info and a way for Google to increase its media offerings.

Next up, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp has announced that it will soon be acquiring a large, "wonderful," "insignificantly priced" and as yet unnamed search engine. Stay tuned.

Lastly, Technorati is purportedly about to be bought by a large search entity, with the early bets leaning toward Yahoo.


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Better Online Karma Needs SERMA
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Without question, but not without query, Google has become the most used "front door" to the corporate world of Websites. However, this stellar entranceway to the vast majority of corporate sites is increasingly becoming lined with protesters, picketers, claim jumpers, and, worse,  agitating adversaries hurling red hot flame balls at your company, your products or your people.  Consider:

[Starbucks] returns www.Starbucks.com in a  #1 Google position, but
www.IHateStarbucks.com is the Google #3 position and 
www.StarbucksGossip.com is the Google #5 position

[Splenda] returns www.splenda.com in  a Google #1 position, but in #2 is
the "Splenda and Sucralose Toxicity Information Center" sponsored by the Sugar industry.

[Mcdonalds] locates the Golden Arches restaurant at #1 on Google right above the description of a "Hunger Strike against McDonalds in Canada" in position #3, only five lines below.

How do you keep the snarling wolves at bay and off of your Google doorstep? 
Say hello to the rapidly intensifying field of SERMA, short for "Search Engine Reputation Management."

Here are three of the mainstay SERMA strategies and tactics to keep top-of-mind:

a.) Push negative sites "off the cliff" by occupying more of your "SERP" (Search Engine Results Page) real estate with other branded URLs, international domains,  and/or Partners' URLs
b.) Litigation may be an option but try Triage first.  Educating your adversary to defuse key issues may get them to call off their growling dogs.
c.) Define your position in search results. If you don't define yourself, others will define you first.

In Shopping and Local sites, Merchant Reputation is equally important, but for altogether different reasons...read on.


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Two Thumbs Up:  Get Hands On With Local Merchant & Shopping User Reviews
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User reviews are looming large over the consumer shopping landscape,  while they are also becoming a legitimate ranking mechanism for merchants in Local Search directories (most notably Yahoo! Local) and including such community professionals as doctors, lawyers, chiropractors  and dentists.

On a designated Yahoo! Local "Locator Page,"  alongside a location map, the number and star-quality of user reviews (measured by up to 5 stars) is a key metric  in ranking one local business above another.  Surprisingly, most local merchants are wholly unaware of this opportunity and have not yet begun to participate.  The field is ripe for you to secure your five-star competitive advantage ASAP by encouraging, and even incentivizing, customers to review your services on Yahoo! Search and elsewhere.  Of course, if you're a local business merchant of any type,  you should also sign up for your free Local Business Profile on Google, Yahoo, Acxiom, and InfoUsa, to name but a few.

http://databyacxiom.com

http://www.superpages.com/about/new_chg_listing.html

http://www.switchboard.com/contactFAQs.asp#wpAdd

http://www.infousa.com/

http://yp.aol.com/

http://www.localsearchguide.org/html/resources.html

Shopping sites like PriceGrabber, Shopping.com, and Shopzilla also offer consumers a chance to read User Reviews before they buy and write them after they buy.  At PriceGrabber, users may only write reviews on merchants with whom they have had a transaction, and there is a limit of one review per merchant per 30 days.  Merchant “X” may not be referenced in a review for Merchant “Y”, and the reviewer must provide a valid invoice number. 

For the industry insider story on Shopping Site comparisons, check out my dinner partner Brian Smith's excellent blog: http://www.comparisonengines.com/


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Cool SEO Tool:  Poodle Predictor
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http://www.gritechnologies.com/tools/spider.go

Poodle Predictor is a tool that attempts to give you an idea of how your site will show up in the search-engine results, especially Google, before it's too late, and has been cached.

Poodle predictor comprises several different components:

    * Poodle predictor's Spider view
    * Poodle predictor's Diagnostics view
    * Poodle predictor's Source-code view

In the Spider view, you can enter the URL to your site.
The first result resembles what you would see in a search-engine if you searched for your site by URL. You will see a link to the Diagnostics and Source-code view under it, and a link to toggle the visibility of the Header and Meta-tag section. Underneath this you see a list of all crawlable links the spider found on the site. The first 10 links have been crawled to give you a simulated search-engine result. Clicking on any of these links will crawl that site, not go to it.

If you click the Diagnostics view link under the first result, you will see a color-coded representation of what the search spider sees at that URL.
Colors are used to show various elements that are important to search-engines.

If you click the Source-code view link under the first result, you will see a color-coded representation of the HTML source-code of that URL.


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SEO Fun-damentals:  Easy Does It!
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Several SE shortcuts can make your searching more fun, and productive.

Yahoo Shortcuts
http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/tips/tips-01.html

AskJeeves Binoculars Site Preview
(Previews the Websites in your Search Results simply by mousing over the binoculars icon.)
http://sp.ask.com/docs/about/aj/sitefeatures.htm


AOL Snapshots
http://bluecoat.search.aol.com/bluecoat/source/html/featurespage


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SEO Tip of the Week:  301 Redirects
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Scenario: You are upgrading your web site and as part of the upgrade, it means moving and renaming particular files.

Danger: Search engines have indexed your entire site and many pages rank well. By moving and renaming these files, you run the risk of losing a lot of traffic and leaving visitors to your site who follow a search engine link with the dreaded "Error 404 - File not found"

Strategy 1 - Custom Error Page

You could create a custom error page. The problem with this solution is that:

a) You will lose rankings on the next search engine update as the file will appear to be non-existent. It could be some time before the page in it's new location or with a new name reappears.

b) Your web site visitors may be frustrated by the fact that they then have to dig through your site to find the desired information.

Strategy 2 - Meta Refresh

A meta refresh can be implemented in the <head> statement of your source code in blank page with the old file name, which then automatically redirects visitors to the new page. Example:

<HEAD> 
<META HTTP-EQUIV="refresh" content="0;URL=http://www.new.com/new.htm"> 
<TITLE>Page has moved</TITLE> 
</HEAD> 

Strategy 3 - 301 Redirect

A 301 redirect is the most efficient and spider/visitor friendly strategy around for web sites that are hosted on servers running Apache (check with your hosting service if you aren't sure). Not hard to implement,  it should preserve your search engine rankings for that particular page. If you *have* to change file names or move pages around, it's definitely the safest option.

The code "301" is interpreted as "moved permanently". After the code, the URL of the missing or renamed page is noted, followed by a space, then followed by the new location or file name

You'll need to download the .htaccess file in the root directory of where all your web pages are stored. If there is no .htaccess file there, you can create one with Notepad or a similar application. Make sure when you name the file that you remember to put the "." at the beginning of the file name. This file has no tail extension.

If there is a .htaccess file already in existence with lines of code present, be very careful not to change any existing line unless you are familiar with the functions of the file. 

Scroll down past all the existing code, leave a line space, then create a new line that follows this example:

redirect 301 /old/old.htm http://www.you.com/new.htm 

It's as easy as that. Save the file, upload it back into your web and test it out by typing in the old address to the page you've changed. You should be instantly and seamlessly transported to the new location.

Notes: Be sure not to add "http://www" to the first part of the statement - just put the path from the top level of your site to the page. Also ensure that you leave a single space between these elements:


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