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Tuesday, June 26

Top 100 - The Dos and Don'ts of E-Commerce

There has been some very interesting discussion over at Webmaster World regarding the top 100 dos and don'ts in e-commerce. Started by Habtom the list has many interesting tips and common sense advice for any business operating an e-commerce website. While not all the points may apply to your business this list is an excellent 'checklist' for any website - guaranteed there's something we can all take away and use - so thanks to all the members at Webmaster World.


1. Never leave unanswered emails for more than 48 hours, or your customer is gone.
a. Ad to no. 100, answer your mail within 10 to 30 minutes, they will always reply like Thanks for Your Quick Answer and will always remember and talk about your great service.

2. Let the customer see the shipping charge without registering! Preferably on the basket or an easy-to-find 'shipping charges' page.

3. Make sure your forms use common names for fields so that they're recognized by toolbars that have an auto fill function.

4. Sites (mainly US!) that have address or phone fields that assume only a US citizen is going to purchase e.g. State fields that only allow a few characters entry.
If you're happy taking money from non-US purchasers, you MUST go to a tiny bit of effort to accept their address and telephone numbers painlessly! Got it? It's not rocket science!

5. If you've got a country drop-down box, please list it in alphabetical order, and don't put United States at the top! Of course, you can pre-select United States, but it's kinda annoying for people in the United Kingdom who expect to find their country as the next item in the list!

6. Don't just accept payment through Paypal. Many people have had bad experiences with PayPal and prefer to use alternative, simpler payment methods.
a. List the payment methods you accept somewhere noticeable. If you have a high rate of shopping cart abandonment, perhaps it is because the customer had to add something to their cart and go partway through the checkout process to find out what payment methods you accept. Then abandoned your site when they discovered it was not a payment method they wanted to use.

7. Make your site incredibly easy to buy from - no registration if possible, live chat, 800 # - make it friendly and easy to buy from.

8. Take a picture of your office and add it to your contact us page with your company FAX number on it.

9. Don't bury your products in several pages of clickthroughs, implement a working
search mechanism so the user can get to what they seek in two clicks, three maximum. Insure there are redundant methods of getting around and no point on your site is more than two clicks away . . . from ANYWHERE.

10. Keep your initial products pages light and clean, with links to product details if they actually want to read.

11. Build your site for the end user, not the search engines. This means leave off all the serp-y text on the initial products pages.

12. Give the user a sense of who you are. The web is a cold, anonymous place. Anything you can do to bring a sense of personality and assurance to your website will help.

13. If you use a site search, make sure it works better than expected. It should search more than product names. Make sure it can find products by SKU, Model Number, and even misspellings if possible.

14. Be sure to include links to your privacy, shipping, returns & exchange policies right out where the customer can easily find them. Tell them the truth.

15. Keep the customer informed about the status of their order before they ask

16. Re: Navigation - Use the same visual theme for every action required of the customer

17. Re: Product options - Make them clear and comprehensive. Answer every possible question on the product detail page

18. Make sure your site search can also search by size and color. If I'm considering a green skirt or blue towels, make it easy to find other items that would match.

19. Don't use those standard drop down country forms containing places like North Korea or Bouvet Island (an inhabited speck in the South Atlantic. For heavens sake, don't list known scam destinations as a ship-to

20. Don't start huge lists like this that requires people to read every previous post thoroughly :)

21. If you only ship to USA (or wherever) say that right off and several times.

22. Drives me crazy when the "About Us" section says nothing specific about the seller and just has some obviously canned verbiage.

23. Mission Statements: Yuck! Luckily, they seem to be dying out. No one gives a damn, anyway.

24. Goes without saying that spelling must be perfect. On slow days, have employees proof read old pages.

25. Bragging about yourself is ok if you have something to brag about. Better not to mention things like "Since 2005" or "here's a picture of our new puppy."

26. If you're new to ecommerce NEVER mention that. Invitation to scammers to hit you.

27. Get a real 800# (or 888), not an 866 or such.

28. Get the most web un-savvy person you know to test your site

29. Customize product descriptions. Eschew text provided by suppliers that everyone else uses.

30. Listen to customers, invite their comments and criticism and act on what you learn

31. Answer emails in 8 hours max (certainly not 48)

32. Give street address but never "we're in Puppyland Center, between Tony's Pizza and the Shoe repair shop."

33. Show good sharp graphics. Learn to use basic photo editing software.

34. Worth saying again, and again. Make everything fast and simple. Do you really need a wish list or tell-a-friend or even customer registration? Don't just add to your site. Sometimes remove clutter.

35. Remove all non-essential navigation elements from the checkout process. Have a single page checkout if possible.
36. Calling your customer to thank them and confirm their order instills immediate trust.

37. Make entering credit card numbers easy.
  • When the customer is looking at their card and alternately typing on their keyboard, they don't like to look up and realize that they have only entered the first four numbers in field one.
  • Customers don't have time to read explanations about how you would like them to format the date. Make it easy and obvious.
  • If the customer has entered some incorrect information, please let them know this without them having to type in all their details again.

    38. Install a really good stats system to track where your visitors bailed out of the purchasing process.

    39. Pay good money for a proper interactive graphic designer (not a coder, web 'developer', or print designer doing a bit of moonlighting). If your web site looks professional, people will trust it and buy stuff.

    40. Accessibility and usability - those 5% of 'non-standard' user groups all add up.
  • They may only be 5% of your customer base, but Mac users also have spending power. Often proportionately more than your Windows customers.
  • Therefore, it may be worth having your site tested with this in mind.
    Another 5-10% may be blind or partially sited. Having an accessible web site and checkout process is good for business.

    41. Add your 800# to every step of the checkout process with something to the tune of "questions or problems completing your order, call 800#)

    42. Have a "best sellers" or "most popular" listing. The boost from this has been noticeable.

    43. If your site ranks best in your niche, and If you sell something that is sold on many other websites (something drop shipped for you, for example), very slightly change the name -- Tarenta to Tarento, Classica to Classico, for example. This helps deter people price shopping for the 'product name' elsewhere and in the shopping engines.

    44. List your prices for every item clearly and upfront. There's no space for a 'price on application' model online, none at all.

    45. When using thumbnails to link to larger images give your customers larger images.

    46. Pick the right product to sell. Something people actually want to buy. Preferably something lots of people want to buy.

    47. If your target audience is concentrated in one country, host your website on a server and IP located in that country. It not only helps to load it fast for most of your audience, it also enhances Google rankings in that country specific Google, and prevents your site from being filtered out when people use the search filter for sites only from that country.

    48. Promotional Offers: I believe offers are v imp. Now they need to be planned for first timers, repeat buyers and special offers for top customers.

    49. Referral Program: Refer 2 friends and get x% additional/ discount always helps.

    50. Actually have contact info - many sites hide their identity and location. Try to put the contact number somewhere on every page, it instills confidence.

    51. Keep the 3 P's above the fold on a product page. Product name, Price and Purchase link should all be visible without having to scroll.

    52. Drop the "Create account" language. People don't come to our sites to create accounts; they come there to buy things. I try to make the account creation process appear like the normal checkout process. If they enter an email that is already in the system, THEN I ask them to request their password to login.

    53. Know your visitors - if significantly more people are first time buyers, don't hit them with a login screen with a small link to register to the site - reverse the process.

    54. Keep your cart on your domain - if for nothing else, it keeps your reporting homogenous.

    55. Don't use the "simple" methods of gateway processing where the visitor is redirected to the gateway site. It seems that on almost every implementation of these setups, the webmaster fails to bring the most current site layout over to the gateway site and the visitor gets a completely new layout for cc errors.

    56. Never tell the visitor to "Hit your 'back' button to correct". I haven't found a valid reason to do this yet - any issue should be able to be handled within the system.

    57. Have a "Help" link very prominently displayed so they have somewhere to go if there is an issue.

    58. For telephone purposes use a short and easy to spell domain name like … dot tld depending on locations or products use more than one, which redirect to a product or location page.

    59. Get the credit card number first and ask questions later! It is better to deny a suspected fraudulent order in post processing, rather than have the computer automatically deny honest customers due to AVS or CVV issues.

    60. If you show a picture of the product and next to it, a link that says 'enlarge' actually ENLARGE the photo rather than have it open in a new window exactly the same size as on the main page! Amazon does this a lot and it drives me mad.

    61. Ship fast. Preferably, the same day and you are sure to get mails for appreciation. I hold my widgets in stock and try to ship same day. The customer almost always comes back for more. I get many WOW mails. This is a sure TIP. ;-)

    62. Have points of re-assurance near the buy/add to cart button (bbb, bizrate, other ratings)

    63. use a proper SSL certificate

    64. If using paid advertising, don't send them to your home page; send them to the relevant product page (or custom landing page) that is tied to the keyword you advertised!

    65. If you sell software, allow immediate access to the full version and allow unlimited upgrades

    66. Have a list of "recommended products" and "other customers also bought" with each item. This can be simply done in your database where you just connect products together and base it on what customers have actually bought.

    67. Have a newsletter sign up and send out newsletters.

    68. Don't make the customer fill in the CC billing & shipping address fields when they're the same, drives me nuts!

    69. Vat number & Company Registration Number should be visible on the site in the UK to comply with UK Companies Act (updated Jan 2007).

    70. If the product ships via a carrier, send an email to the customer with the tracking number, with a link to the carrier to check status.

    71. Use an XML Sitemap generator to create a sitemap to get a "big picture" of your site. Submit it to Google et al. and they'll help you find dead pages, etc.

    72. On category pages don't just list product names, but include some unique content about the category for indexing.

    73. Use a product rating feed or create your own system (if you have a sizable user base). A place for user-generated comments can be great, but it can also be a hassle (monitoring, lots of fake entries, etc).

    74. If you sell the same object in different colours, offer them pictures of each colour.
    Telling a customer that you "also do this in blue" isn't very helpful because there are about fifty billion shades of blue.

    75. Use a larger font (14+) for titles and product names to make them stand out and possibly increase conversions

    76. Stay away from dynamic URLs when possible

    77. Sign up for Hackersafe, VeriSign and your related trade associations and display their logos to improve credibility
    a. Privacy: TRUSTe Web Privacy Seal
    Security: VeriSign Secured Seal
    Return Policy: Return Policy Agreement Seal
    Reliability: BBBOnline Reliability seal

    78. Have a person answer the phone, not a recording.

    79. If you cannot exceed the expectations created by your site-rewrite your copy. Under promise and over-deliver.

    80. Hang in there with the difficult customers-they become the most loyal.

    81. Know when a customer needs to be given to your competition.

    82. Consistency. Everyone has a different flavor, color, even brand. Key is to be consistent --- have 1 text size and color for descriptions, one for links, one for category headers, perhaps another for main category links. At least there's a tone or vibe that your site is a statement vs. a hodgepodge of stuff made by someone in their basement Be serious about what you are doing, and people will be serious about considering buying from you

    83. If you use sessions, store them in a database, don't append them to the URL, as people like the look of clean URL's and often snip them to mail to friends to refer them to a particular product to purchase.

    84. On checkout gather a name and phone number as the first 2 fields, store them before proceeding and ring all the customers that drop out before completing the checkout. (This alone turned a $1M business into a $5M business)

    85. Make the font on your product copy readable. 12pt at least. NO funky fonts.

    86. Make sure your buy button pops off the page and is big enough to be seen and clicked on.

    87. Make sure the title tag on each product page is unique and reflects what is on the page. (It never ceases to amaze me how many companies in this day and age still have just the company name in the title tag of product pages). Oh, a product name first in the title tag. Not your company name.

    88. I was waiting for people to put in something. No one (keeping in mind it will be point #13). Rule # 13 = Superstition does not work well with Business
    What you may feel unlucky may be lucky for customers ranging from keeping Price Tag, Products, Colors, Day / Time of Shipping etc.

    89. Offer a strong guarantee. Don't just say this widget is guaranteed x days. Try for something like this: Try this widget risk-free for 30 days -- if you don't see an improvement in widget results -- if this is not the best widget you have ever owned -- return it to us for a full refund. Sure, you'll get a few returns, but it will be nothing compared to the increase in sales you will get from a strong guarantee.
    a. Only offer a really strong guarantee like that on really strong products. I have one company that it works excellent with (less than 1/10 of a percent returns) and another company that it did not work well with (5-10% returns). The difference was that the first company's products could not be misjudged or misused. The second company's products were much more subjective. A lot of user error - which we took the blame for.

    90. Add "District of Columbia -DC" to the list of drop down states, you be surprised how many sites are missing it...

    91. In addition, don't forget PR, GU, VI and all the other US commonwealth and protectorates that the Postal Service can ship to, at cheap postal rates.

    92. Don't forget US Servicemen/women abroad. Include APO/FPO state codes.
    a. You can use this only if you ship via the Postal Service. Otherwise, it would expensive.
    b. Combining these two into 9A) Include the U.S. Postal Service (if you are a U.S.-based company) in your shipping options. FedEx/UPS/etc. cannot deliver to APO/FPO addresses. It's not just U.S. servicemen/women, but also their families, government workers, and military contractors. It represents a HUGE market, and it (almost always) costs the exact same amount to mail a package overseas to an APO/FPO address as it does to mail the same package across town.

    93. Add a 360-degree product view before the rest of the pack.

    94. Play with the wording of your add-to-cart buttons. "Add to cart" is a nice non-threatening way to encourage adding items as some feel "order" or "buy" is too much of a commitment.

    95. Be careful making a coupon field too prominent in checkout, especially in markets that are based on commodity goods such as electronics. Seeing the field may convince a shopper that was ready to purchase to exit and spend more time hunting for coupons. Consider re-labeling as promotion code or something less descriptive (unless you are linking to a promo page with coupon codes to encourage larger sales).

    96. Mine referral data of orders for search engine keyword queries encoded in the URLs and further optimize for these terms for organic search or consider adding to your PPC campaigns.

    97. Encourage impulse buys says a tip I read somewhere on the net, people don't mind being asked, "Do you want fries with that?"

    98. If you're going to ask customers to sign up for your newsletter during checkout, do it AFTER the payment is processed. Before the payment is taken, the customer is far more interested in ordering your product - but once you've taken their payment and they're looking at your "Thank you for your order" screen it's the ideal moment to get them to sign up...

    99. Under promise and over-deliver. Amazon do this a lot with free shipping (in the UK anyway) which is why I love to buy from them (of course their prices are often great as well). Yesterday I ordered some books, clicked the free shipping tab and it said the shipping date was 15th June. But today, the 13th the postman delivered! This happens a lot of the time and really reinforces that Amazon are one hell of an online company to do business with. Never seem to get the same feeling from any of the others I order from especially Dell.

    100. Test. Everything. A lot.

    101. Don't assume the main goal of every commerce site is to make a profit. Publicly owned sites are often more concerned with selling stock and hitting Wall Street's quarterly sales goals. That was true in the '90s and somewhat true even now.

    102. Amid all the costly free shipping gimmicks, 365-day guarantees, free return pickups, insanely low prices...don't forget to turn a profit. In this regard, understand that some of your competitors really will be idiots with zero understanding of retailing. Some still buy into the discredited '90s notion that losing money for a few years will earn a lifetime of loyalty.

    To check out the original list, and maybe add an e-commerce tip not mentioned in the above list, head over to Webmaster World and join the discussion!

    Posted by Lara Appelhans at 8:17 AM GMT | View Post | 0 Comments

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    • blinkx and RealPlayer Take On YouTube

    Video search engine blinkx, has teamed up with RealNetworks to use its RealPlayer media player online. The deal will see RealPlayer installed with a video search box, powered by Blinkx, enabling users to search around 12 million hours of online video.

    This new deal is sure to provide Google owned YouTube with some fierce competition. Blinkx currently manages around 4 million search queries per day and their arrangement with RealPlayer is sure to see this figure rise, with RealPlayer downloaded approximately 1.5 million times a day!

    Says Jeff Chasen, vice president of RealPlayer for RealNetworks,

    "The new RealPlayer will give people the ability to easily download non-DRM protected videos from thousands of sites, so giving our users access to a best-in-class video search experience is critical. By teaming up with blinkx, we now deliver their powerful video search engine directly to our users."
    The union of blinkx and RealPlayer will provide users with an advanced video search tool, and comes at a time when video is a burgeoning search market.

    It comes as no great surprise that blinkx has just launched a contextual ad platform for their online video search! blinkx claim their new program, AdHoc, is "the first contextually relevant video advertising platform" offering advertising that is matched to relevant content. Suranga Chandratillake, founder and CEO, states the advantages of the AdHoc program:

  • Creative. More options are available for display ads, including pre-, post- and mid-roll placement, as well as dynamically-selected banners, in-video mini-banners and a unique, post-roll catalog view. Advertisements in the program are now running to both the right and bottom of the published video content.
  • Ad database leverage. Partners can select their own ad database, the blinkx AdHoc platform, or even external ad systems, such as Google's AdWords.
  • Open participation. The AdHoc program is an opt-in progam available to all advertisers, media companies and other partners today. By contrast, YouTube, currently the most trafficked online video search engine, restricts its own ad leverage program to professional partners and a small group of highly popular "preferred" partners.

    "The AdHoc platform is revolutionary because it was built from the ground up to address rich media, resulting in higher monetization for media companies, more effective marketing for advertisers and, most importantly, a useful, non-disruptive experience for users."

    blinkx are waving the red flag at Google with these bold developments into video search. There is no doubt that Google will fight back - they stand to make a great loss if their investment in YouTube bears no fruit!

    Posted by Lara Appelhans at 5:28 AM GMT | View Post | 0 Comments

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    • eBay Restarts AdWords Campaign with Reduced Spend

    Last week I reported on a potential war brewing between eBay and Google regarding their competing checkout solutions, Google Checkout and Paypal. The conflict left Google in the dark when eBay decided to pull their AdWords listings from Google search results.

    eBay called the move an 'experiment' claiming they wanted to test how the change in advertising would effect traffic to the site. The results are now out. Hitwise published data to show how the experiment affected eBay's traffic from Google, and the sites traffic overall.

    The following graph represents how much traffic eBay receives from Google on a daily basis. eBay removed Google advertising on the 12th June.



    As the graph shows, the removal of Google advertising lead to a significant drop in the amount of traffic eBay received from Google. However this did not seem to have a dramatic effect on the overall traffic sent to eBay.com as shown in the following graph:



    Hani Durzy, a spokesperson for eBay said they would resume buying their AdWords advertising again, but at a reduced level. eBay had been spending as much as $25 million a quarter on Google advertising.
    "I will tell you it will be in a much more limited way than it was before," Durzy told Reuters. "What we found is that we were not as dependent on AdWords as some people thought."
    According to Reuters, eBay now plans to spend more on competing advertising from Yahoo!, MSN, AOL and Ask.com. On a personal note, I'm glad to not be seeing an eBay ad for every search query, after all, what relevance does eBay have on searches such as "used brain" or "baby"!

    Posted by Matthew Elshaw at 4:57 AM GMT | View Post | 1 Comments

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    Yahoo! to Acquire MySpace for 25% Stake

    According to the Silicon Valley rumor mill, Fox Interactive, a division of News Corp., has dangled social network icon MySpace in front of the Yahoo! board to tempt them into selling a 25% share of the company. While MySpace carries a significant amount of traffic, the jury's out whether it's worth the price tag.

    The first question that comes to mind is "WHY?"

    Why has Fox Interactive, or audacious owner Rupert Murdoch, decided to leverage the social network he bought in 2005 for a mere $580 million to secure a stake in Yahoo!? MySpace now carries more traffic than Yahoo!, and is estimated to be worth approximately US$10 billion by market analysts.

    Considering Yahoo!'s poor performance and shareholder unrest, this is the best chance Murdoch has to make such an offer. With Yahoo! stock prices at record lows and the newly appointed Yahoo! leadership team (Jerry Yang and Sue Decker) looking to reverse the trend, now more than ever, they might consider such a deal.

    The one key fact working against the rumored deal is the perception that MySpace is a social network that has reached its peak, and with increasing competition from the likes of Facebook and vertical driven social communities, its future forecasts aren't as attractive.

    So who wins should the deal go ahead? In reality, Fox Interactive would be the real winners, as diversifying their interests would help mitigate the diminishing returns from MySpace.

    I would be surprised if the new Yahoo! executive team takes up such a deal so early on in their tenure - even if it means they squeeze Google out of their $1 billion deal with Myspace. One major acquisition isn't going to solve all their problems.

    Posted by Rene LeMerle at 12:49 AM GMT | View Post | 0 Comments

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    Monday, June 25

    Google Extends Lead in Search - comScore qSearch Analysis May 2007

    The latest search share report (qSearch analysis) by ComScore presented no major surprises, with search engine giant Google forging further ahead, and would-be competitors falling further behind. Overall, search continued its remarkable growth, increasing over 11 percent from May 2006.

    ComScore, a global internet information provider, recorded over 7.6 billion US searches in May 07, which is a 4 per cent increase on April 2007, showing that search is further entrenching itself in the daily lives of more people - worldwide.

    Google bucked the trend of the other top 4 search engines by increasing its share to 50.7%, which is 1 percentage point higher than April. That's an amazing 3.9 billion US searches conducted through the Google search box.

    Yahoo!'s new senior executives have their work cut out, with Yahoo! search share dropping again to 26.4%. While it's only down 0.4 of a percentage point, it's a trend that they need to address if they want to appease weary shareholders.

    Rounding out the top 3 is Microsoft sites, which held its share at 10.3%. Considering the others experienced drops (except Google), Microsoft should be relatively satisfied with the result.

    The Ask Network (Ask.com) at 5.0% and Time Warner Network (AOL) at 4.6% finish off the top 5 search sites. Considering the massive ad campaign by Ask.com, it'll be interesting to see whether we see any growth by the former butler driven search service in the June results.

    While the qSearch analysis report is starting to sound like a broken record, with Google growing and the others declining every month, when search overall continues to grow its good for all of us.

    Posted by Rene LeMerle at 1:24 PM GMT | View Post | 0 Comments

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    Tuesday, June 19

    The Importance of Reviews for Local Search!

    Local search engines such as Google Local and Yahoo! Local rely on many sources of to gather information on a business and enhance their local search Listing. One of the main sources used for enhancing business listings are review sites - where users post appraisals and evaluations of businesses and products they've used.

    More than just enhancing the information in a local listing, reviews can also help persuade searchers to select a business, as other people's opinions help users differentiate between the many listings that result from a local business search.

    Below is an example of some reviews that were picked up by Google Local for a Hotel in Orlando.


    In this case the reviews were positive and came from four sources including Mobile Travel Guide, Citysearch, Gayot and Tripadvisor.

    Businesses should urge their customers to leave reviews on these sites as if they get picked up they can help build your business listing and in turn help with your ranking in the local search engines.

    Labels: Google Local reviews, Local Search Reviews


    Posted by George Gavalas at 5:00 AM GMT | View Post | 1 Comments

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    Google Vs. eBay - It's War!

    Internet auction site eBay has decided to pull all their US search ads from Google, a shocking move by one of the company's largest AdWords clients. The move is a response to Google's planned disruption of 'eBay Live' an annual event for eBay sellers.

    The partnership between Google and eBay has been on the rocks since the launch of Google Checkout, an online payment system that directly competes with eBay's PayPal. Tensions reached boiling point early last week when Google planned a "Let Freedom Ring" party on the same day as eBay Live, the premier annual event for eBay sellers. Reporters are calling the Google party a 'guerilla marketing tactic' aimed at building support to encourage eBay to make Google Checkout available.

    However, the unusual move by Google backfired when eBay decided to pull all their search ads from Google's US search engine. eBay is one of Google's largest AdWords clients bidding on thousands of words such as 'ipod', 'shoes' 'dvd' and more. The timing of the move has left many wondering if this is the end for the Google eBay partnership, but eBay spokesperson Catherine England says this is simply not the case,
    "The reality is, this is something we do all the time. We always experiment with our marketing mix on eBay. We turned off our advertising through AdWords to see how it affects that."
    Google apologized by canceling the event last Wednesday, from the Google checkout blog:
    "After speaking with officials at eBay, we at Google agreed that it was better for us not to feature this event during the eBay Live conference."
    While Google's aggressive marketing may have ruffled a few feathers at eBay, I expect the auction giant to resume ads on Google shortly. After all, it's a mutually beneficial relationship for both companies. Google gets the money while eBay gets a lot of traffic.

    Labels: ebay, Google, Google AdSense


    Posted by Matthew Elshaw at 4:44 AM GMT | View Post | 1 Comments

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    Google Fights Negative Publicity with New Public Policy Blog

    After several months of privacy backlash, search engine and advertising giant Google has launched a new Public Policy blog in an effort to create a open discussion about the issues that not only impact their business, but the internet overall.

    Google hopes the new Public Policy blog will start the necessary conversations around issues including net neutrality, privacy, child online safety, copyright and trademark protection, content regulation, and so on.

    While Google have been writing posts about these issues internally for several months, they've only just decided to open it up to the public, which is why the new blog already has so much content. According to the release post:

    "We hope this blog will serve as a resource for policymakers around the world -- including legislators, ministers, governors, city council members, regulators, and the staffers who support them -- who are trying to enact sound government policies to foster free expression, promote economic growth, expand access to information, enable innovation, and protect consumers. We also hope (cliche alert) that this blog will promote real conversation, so we've enabled comments."

    While the premise of the blog is great in theory, it does smell of a PR exercise in light of Google's recent publicity issues. They suggest the blog is aimed at policy makers, but it will be interesting to see how they respond, should readers make recommendations on how Google handles its data. "Don’t be evil" - we'll see...

    Posted by Rene LeMerle at 4:31 AM GMT | View Post | 0 Comments

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    Do Pay Per Click Campaigns Influence Organic Search Results?

    There is a theory that has been circling for years that Sponsored Ads impact your SEO efforts. Some people believe that Google or Yahoo! pay-per-click help website owners achieve higher organic rankings.

    To go direct to the source, a Google user has asked whether or not this is the case by posting a question on Google groups, a help forum for users of Google. The response from Google was:
    "It is very important to note that there is absolutely no connection between being an AdWords advertiser, and having your site appear in the unpaid search results. One does not effect the other in any way. To put it another way, being an AdWords advertiser will neither help nor harm your chances of appearing on the 'organic' search engine"
    Well there you go straight from the horse's mouth, a definitive "NO". You would think that this kind of response would put an end to the discussion, well not a chance. In fact in today's world of web 2.0 with blogging, forums and an unlimited amount of places to share your opinions this creates even more of a discussion.

    Users of Google adwords have stated that they have noticed a drop in organic referrals when they pause their pay per click campaigns, is this just a coincidence? Well there are actually numerous accounts of people that have noticed drops in organic rankings when they pause their pay per click campaigns. Some then notice a return to "normal rankings" once the campaigns are reinstated.

    With Google telling us that there is no correlation and then some people actually witnessing drops in rankings who do we believe? I suggest that we be very vigilant in this area as if in fact there is a connection then you would not only be losing out on pay per click traffic when pausing your campaigns but maybe even your free organic traffic as well.

    Posted by Jamie Olsen at 4:29 AM GMT | View Post | 0 Comments

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    Yahoo! CEO Steps Down - Original Founder Takes the Reins

    Finally, after months of shareholder pressure and less than impressive Yahoo! performance, Terry Semel, now ex-CEO of Yahoo!, relinquished the reigns of the struggling search and advertising company. The move sparked a reshuffle at the top of the Yahoo! executive ladder.

    Original Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang has replaced Semel as Yahoo! CEO, with Sue Decker, former Executive Vice President and head of Yahoo!'s New Advertising and Publisher Group, being promoted to president.

    Terry Semel will remain at Yahoo! as a non executive chairman, providing on-going strategic advice to the senior management team. According to the press release, it appears that Semel no longer has the passion to lead Yahoo! through these turbulent times:

    "The Board and I have long talked about the importance of ensuring a smooth succession in Yahoo!'s senior leadership -- and more recently, about the need for a leadership team committed to carrying Yahoo! through its multi-year transformation. As we discussed my future goals and plans, I was clear in telling the Board of my desire to take a step back sooner rather than later. I believe Jerry and Sue, with their superb talents and intense dedication to Yahoo! and its people, are the perfect combination to carry us forward."

    Jerry Yang has played a pivotal role at Yahoo! since he co-founded the company back in April 1995 with David Filo. During his 12 years with Yahoo!, he has been instrumental in building the company's corporate culture, recruitment of key talent, building key business relationships, as well as strategic input on product, technology and market direction.

    The new top executive team has their work cut out for them, if they are to bridge the divide that has emerged between Yahoo! and its primary competitor Google. Hopefully the visionaries at the helm will help Yahoo! regain direction and make in roads into the great future they have been promising shareholders for months.

    Posted by Rene LeMerle at 1:00 AM GMT | View Post | 0 Comments

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    Tuesday, June 12

    Ask 3D vs Google Universal - The Battle of Integrated Search

    Ask.com is snapping on the heels of Google Universal Search with Ask 3D, the integration of all its search verticals into one main results page. 'Nothing new' you say... well there are some fundamental and surprisingly great differences between Ask 3D and Google Universal!

    The '3D' given to the new Ask.com search service relates to the 3-pane view in the search results page, as shown below in a search for David Beckham!

    Unlike Google's search results that combine all its vertical searches into one main results, Ask presents the searcher with categorized results. Images appear under 'Images', relevant blog results under 'Blogs' and so on!

    Depending on the search query, Ask.com provides the searcher with a range of results. Local queries may return maps, temperatures, local business listings and the local time, whereas search for a celebrity and you get images, blogs, Wikipedia entries, News Images and even upcoming events, all on the one page!

    Admittedly, I've always been an avid Google user, but I'm drawn to Ask's new search offering! It appears that these two search engines have approached 'integrated' search from different angles. Google will continue to show the top 10 search results, if an image is deemed the 3rd most relevant result, then that is where it is displayed. Ask presumes that users want to see the most relevant search results grouped by category.

    There is no doubt that Ask 3D provides a great search experience that rivals Google Universal. It will be interesting if Google respond with more personalization, or yet another update, to combat the interest that Ask will receive from this release!

    Posted by Lara Appelhans at 4:31 AM GMT | View Post | 1 Comments

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    Yahoo! Search Update: Index and Ranking Changes

    The Yahoo! Search Blog announced they have completed an update to their algorithm last week. The update is set to effect how their algorithm ranks web pages and determines which sites are included in the search index.

    From the Yahoo! Search blog:
    "We rolled out some changes to our index and ranking algorithm last night. So, as you know, throughout this process you may see some changes in ranking as well as some shuffling of the pages included in the index. This update should be complete very soon."
    Index updates are important for major search engines in order to combat spam and reward webmasters who provide relevant content on their website. The update will also allow webmasters to track ranking improvements in search engine results pages (SERPs), as any optimization efforts will now be picked up by the Yahoo! search spider.

    Many webmasters have reported seeing fluctuating rank changes during the update, with results settling back to normal as the update completed. The last Yahoo! update was not long ago on May 22nd.

    If you're concerned about you current Yahoo! ranking or want to get your optimization sorted before the next Yahoo! update, why not try this great Yahoo! ranking bundle of Y-Boost and Optimizer Kit PLUS:

    Y-Boost: Helps to improve your Yahoo! ranking through building backlinks.
    Optimizer Kit PLUS: Optimizes your HTML code for better organic Yahoo! ranking.

    Labels: Yahoo


    Posted by Matthew Elshaw at 3:30 AM GMT | View Post | 1 Comments

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    Google Universal Search - Google Maps the Biggest Winner!

    Google released Google Universal Search in mid May 2007 which saw the integration of all its various search verticals including Google Maps, Google Images and Google Video into the main web results.

    Although Google Universal Search has only been around for under a month, early results from a recent study by Hitwise show the biggest winners from this enhancement were Google Maps with a 20.34 % boost in traffic and Youtube with an 8.26% increase in traffic.

    Percentage U.S. Visits to Custom Category of Top Google Properties


    I believe that traffic to Google Maps will continue its fantastic growth in the future as more enhancements like Google Street View are introduced and local search continues its growth.

    Labels: Google Maps, Google Universal Search, Youtube