February 2006 Archives

Detlev Johnson of Position Tech moderates this session that gives attendees a chance to hear from representatives who operate major blog and feed (RSS/Atom) search engines and about how they operate. Speakers include: Adam Hertz of Technorati, Mark Fletcher of Bloglines/Ask Jeeves, Chris Redlitz of Feedster, Chris Tolles Topix.net and Jeremy Zawodny of Yahoo! and Vinod Marur from Google.

Walked in on the Technorati Demo being presented by Adam Hertz. Unfortunately, I did not catch Mark Fletcher of Bloglines. Perhaps he'll do a short interview with me later?

Adam Hertz showed new tools available at Technorati.

Filter by authority - Search for a common phrase, many results appear. Use the slider to sort by relevancy. Seems like a minimum of 200 inbounds are necessary to be "relevant".

Blog Finder - Tag based blog directory. Launched a few months ago. Blogs are broken down into categories. Allows you to search only the blogs in the blog finder database.

Favorites - Experiment in social search. When you look at someone's favorites, you see the most recent posts only from that person's favorites. You can also limit your search to that list of blogs. Personalizes the search experience and allows you to share interests. Coming soon, the ability to create and name sets.

Next up is Chris Tolles. Topix is not a blog searh engine, but they feed most blog search engines with data.

Blogs and feeds - the incremental web.

Incremental web - chronologically ordered, RSS feeds, discover relevance from freshness.

Why you should care about RSS?
- Topix used to get 5% of taffic from RSS, now 25% is from RSS.
- 27,000 new and blog sources
- 360,000 topics updated every 10 minutes.

Why includes blogs? Topix looked at the top million blogs. Blogs cover things other news properties don't. It's better to have "more" information.

People have an expectation of interaction. Topix started forums generating 4,000 new posts a day. People want to talk back to the news.

Is it real?
- Yahoo and Google investing in news/blogs
- Startups, inform.com, digg, newsvine

What are the challenges?
- Sorting through new voices - many services, not easy to fake relevance
- Create a system of participation - interaction is expected

Next up is Chris Redlitz of Feedster that specializes in feed search, not blog search. 18 months ago, Feedster indexed 865,000 feeds. Shows RocketBoom video talking about the new Feedster design and Feedster blog. Feedster should be at 30 million feeds in the next few months.

Now What?
Improved relevancy, fast indexing, content qualification and archival search.

Will be launching a new version of top blogs (Feedster 500) which will be using an algorithmic type of methodology in the next few months. Incidentally, both Search Engine Roundtable and Online Marketing Blog made the Feedster 500 lists last year.

Working hard to improve quality and reduce spam.
Filtering incoming spam, Reassess index, spam detection

Publisher Benefit of Feeds.
Increase distribution, reduce dependence on email, targeted audience.

Feedster Japan is launching soon as well as other international versions.

Next up is Vinod Marur from Google to present on Google Blog Search. Google launched blog search in September last year with similar experiences as other blog search engines in rate of growth. Google is finding that some blogs are topical, some are time based, some are social platforms. Recency alone is not the best measure of ranking blog posts.

Next up is Jeremy Zawodny from Yahoo.

In 1997 all the buzz was about eyeballs. That didn't last. What is the new potential for "eyeballs" and revenue? It's less about eyeballs and more about attention. Some of the changes are as a result of technology. Increasingly, people who used to visit many web sites are now subscribing to content using RSS feeds. A feed reader is an attention focusing tool.

The growth of RSS use is an indication of the growth of the web.

Definition of Attention: "Concentration of the mental powers upon an object or close careful observing or listening." Not much like traditional "surfing" and randomly finding content.

Another definition: "Your suggestion (message) has come to our attention." Isn't that what you want as a marketer?

Yahoo blog search is different than Technorati and Feedster. Yahoo decided that when people search Yahoo News, that would be the best place to incorporate blog results.

Meme Tracking on del.icio.us, memeorandum, TailRank, Digg, Reddit, etc. This is a new phenomena.

My Yahoo offers RSS support and feed search.

What to do? Check out the Publisher's Guide to RSS
Also:
http://rss.yahoo.com
http://publisher.yahoo.com

Audience: How to monetize a blog
Jeremy - You can add an advertisement to the feed. There's also a school of thought that considers the RSS feed an ad for the content on the blog.

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

Moderated by Rebecca Lieb – ClickZ

Christine Churchill - KeyRelevance
“How many people thin k that keyword research is the most exciting/sexy part of search marketing? (laughs) KW selection criteria: relevant to site. Keyword popularity. Stage in buying process (user intent). Competition. Feedback.

Will go more into detail about stages in the buying process, as well as some tool demos. Buying process…where are they? Problem recognition---information search---select alternatives—evaluation of alternatives---purchase decisions. (source: Phil Coulter’s book) Three types of behavior: 1. navigational search. (ie type in AA.com.) 2. Informational type searches—research…how to do something, or what kind of products available. 3. transactional--- the more interactive type…purchase, subscription, making a donation, etc…

Getting inside the mind of the searcher. Research vs. purchase. For example: “car reviews” vs. “low mileage ford mustang” vs. “fast auto financing.” Stage in buying process…what types of words to use when. Personal demographics such as age/gender, and using proper words. Psychological (FUD- Fear, uncertainty, and Doubt). To compete, you need to know just how competitive the word is. You need to evaluate how active the competitors are. Are they doing PPC? How much are the bids? How optimized are the sites? What’s their linkage situation? Anchor text check. If you choose a keyword that you see a bunch of .edu’s and .gov’s in the results pages, then you may chose a different one.

Shows a very long list of keyword research tools, including, WordTracker, Google, Yahoo, Nichebot, SEO Research labs reports, Keyword intelligence, etc and others. Starts with an example of the Overture tool. Starts with a very general keyword, such as camera, which brings up a list w./count. The neat thing is you can click on each result and find further keywords that are more focused. Keyword Discovery: a pretty easy to use tool. Trellian data showed 343,694 results for the term “Camera.” Also has the ability to do a breakdown by time of year. The SEOBook suggestion tool, an open source tool, which takes all the free tools out there and compiles the results.

Next…WordTracker…she calls this one “the granddaddy.” She doesn’t used the KEI analysis, but this is a decent tool as well. Nichebot gives a top level view of some of the factors regarding the top sites for that keyword. (***looks very cool). She thinks the Google traffic estimator is OK, but not completely accurate. Also speaks about the new kw tool available within the AdWords/AdSense login area. Also talk about Trellian’s competitor intelligence tools. Keyword intelligence by Hitwise uses some neat data about competitors too. AdGooroo competitive intelligence tool also provides solid data. Keyword Analyzer from KeyRelevance.

In summary…when selecting keywords, use multiple considerations including relevancy, competition, and user intent based on buyer’s cycle. Understand the “why behind the search and you can better target how to respond. Test keywords and make adjustments.,

Lori Weiman – Keyword Max
Her presentation will be focused on the paid side: diff methods to use to grow paid listings. Mining your referring URLs: organic and paid. Word Building with excel. Keyword research tools best features. Case study.

Mining your referring URLs, or the URL found in log files that show where it came from. When mining for these referrers, you should use a conversion tracking tool that will log them. Get a reporting tool that displays the conversion rate broken down by keyword. Try to get (for paid referral) the actual keyword AND the URL. Look at how to pull information out of organic listings. “Mine your P’s and Q’s.” shows a referral URL Google and MSN: look for a “q” and Yahoo look for a “p” in the string, which directly precedes the keyword used.

Mining URLs: look in log files, then find referrers that convert, then mine referring URL’s for the search query by using P’s and Q’s above. Mining paid search: Run analytics, find converting keywords, then find referring URL’s. This will help you find longer tail keywords.

How to use Excel to create long lists. Describes the process of “concatenating.” This is a system (which I use and love, btw) that combines columns in excel in order to help you grow your keyword list. (funny thing…there was a bunch of technical difficulties, and even my laptop froze up during the last part of her presentation – must be the spirit of Doug Heil at work here) From memory, Lori ended up with a nice short case study about a “Photo Marketing” firm, which is the term used in their industry, and the problems they had when they bid on that term. Ends up that they were very low in converting, mostly due to searches for “marketing photos” and “photos of marketing” (which she was surprised there was such a thing.

John Haney – Beyond ROI
Concentrates more on the theory than the tools in his presentation. “Not all keywords are created equal.” When dealing with discovery, study your site carefully (remember that you may think differently about your product than those searching for it), know your competition, and remember that existing keyword popularity tools are simply to be used as guides. Study your log files, visit your referring URLs (mine those pages for possible keywords), and look for patterns that aren’t obvious. Remember that current events can sometime skew results.

Discovery is really a “best guess.” Log tail works. The more keywords you have, the likelihood of your being found increases. If you use a short tail word only, you are missing out on many relevant clicks. Remember that a search is juts a fragment of a person’s complete thought. When building longer tail, remember that anyone can discover keywords…it is up to you how far you will take it, and many others will simply get tired looking for more. Recommends “embracing the path less traveled.” Using analytics: It is time to get down to the science. Ask others what they think your site is about. The technology you rely on should be smart enough to help identify patterns. Everything ideally should feed together- tracking analysis, and research should feed on each other.

The “Dragon Tail” is a spike caused by a current event or an annual happening, or some less obvious ones like an election year or the search behavior after a hurricane, for example. The re will be peaks and valleys in the tail…for example more searches for automotive type things on “race day.” Hot market items come and go…so be ready. For example, when the Steelers won the Superbowl, many related searches happened. He repeats: keyword research never stops. He thinks you should find at least one keyword a day to add or remove, or you “are taking too long of a lunch.”

Shaun Ryan – SLI Systems
Wants to talk briefly about internal site search. Finds that what people type into their own internal search boxes are often what they type into when searching in SE’s. Used the example of mining the data from Hollywood.com to find popular words. Not only should you be finding out what people are searching for, but also what they are clicking on at your site. Shows a great example of what is discovered when analyzing the entire realm of possibilities for a particular product. You can then categorize the keywords based on what they are clicking on, as well. You can also examine the seasonality of search term by analyzing your search box queries.

How to get the data? Instead of manually examining logs, use a developer to write a script. Of course search and analytics tools will also get you this info. Small case study about someone who tried this, and quickly got thousands of keyword possibilities. To repeat: mine your own search box queries and you will find some great keywords.

This is part of the Search Engine Roundtable Blog coverage of the New York Search Engine Strategies Conference and Expo 2006. For other SES topics covered, please visit the Roundtable SES NYC 2006 category archives.

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

Jeffrey Rohrs mods. Danny Sullivan, Tim Wu from Columbia, Sherwin Wiy from EPIC and Ramez Naam from MSN are the panelists.

Danny rambles on some search history and privacy in 3 minutes to introduce himself.

Sherwin discusses EPIC, which was founded to protect digital media. (1) What search history is crossed reference with and (2) the each of acquiring info from the engines on the Web.

Ramez is here to answer questions about what search engines store and to listen and learn.

Tim is a bit late and he will join us shortly.

Danny added a kudos to Ramez for coming since the other main engines all said no.

Where does the right to privacy stem from?
- Constitutional
- Statutory
- Practical

Sherwin expands... You are trying to prevent unreasonable search and seizure by the government. In the case of Google by DOJ, that was made in a civil case and the rights do not apply there. The EU has taken a sector by sector approach, video privacy protection law, but there is not a lot of law on the civil side for data protection but on the criminal side there is law. He then goes through some john versus doe cases.

What happens when we search?
- Information gathered on the searcher? Ramez said when a user issues a search, they know query search, scope of search (web, images), IP address, if you have searched before with that computer (cookie on computer) and that is the bulk of the data. The life span of the cookie is "fairly long." Danny adds that Google's cookie lasts until 2038, the likelihood is that your computer will not be around for more then 2 years, so your cookie will likely expire within two years. Sherwin commented on the IP address, that most often you use your computer back to your home or office and then you can track it back to the isp and then all it takes is a court order to get that data from them. Danny adds they can get all of your information, historically. Jeffrey asks, what is the common run of the mills where this data is getting asked for? Sherwin said often when someone posts negative comments on a forum and companies try to track the forum users with this and this is a major issue. Ramez said for MSN, this DOJ request is the first time they have ever been asked for user data. All that was asked for was a list of query terms over a period of time and some search result pages and it was not personally identifiable, no cookies, no ip and no time of day info sent over. Danny adds that most of the time, in a criminal case, a court will seize a computer and look at search data on a that computer - which is slightly different.

Tim just showed up and he is providing an intro to himself. He teaches law at Columbia law school. He worked at router industry. His interest in search privacy is the economic importance, it is usually framed as the issue of a civil liberties issue. For example, looking for new jobs or diseases they might have.

What happens when we personalize, personalized search...
- Considerations include; convenience, consolidation, content targeting and storage.

Ramez said the key thing here is the settings, what you track, stocks, news sources. (1) On your machine, in your cookie, you store this info and (2) you can login and server side we store this information.

Danny said now we can show people my search history and top searches, top sites. Now they have my profile. Yahoo has a similar thing where they can track you and serve ads later (Yahoo Fusion) also AlmondNet does this (I covered this session yesterday - "Targeting Search Ads By Demographics & Behavior"). You really do have a search profile that is identified as you, as much as you share with them about you.

Ramez said there is a concept of a value exchange. They want the convenience of the content. Look at Amazon, and they do a lot with your information. He is not talking about A9, but Amazon itself. Jeffery went to amazon and all these weird books on "play" music came up, which was hilarious.

Sherwin said you cant have a true exchange of value unless you have two informed parties. People must be educated on what they are giving up. You must know what info is being kept, how long and how private is that information. There will almost always be an out for legal disclosure.

What happens when we toolbar search, software on my PC.
Tim responds one interesting thing that the law becomes associated with this is European law. All these things are ways to collect data. What is interesting is that European has the most strictest laws on this. Often search companies may think the US law is settled but when they take it to Europe can cause legal issues for a company. The EU said the proportion of what you give versus what you get is out of match.

Sherwin adds that with Google Desktop across computer systems, that gets you to the 3rd party issues, where your data is stored somewhere else. You do not get much protections.

What happens when we do desktop search?
- Exposure of all files/data
- Saarch across computers
- Data indexed and held by the desktop search provider

Ramez said that if the user opted in to give MSN additional data, then they will send up additional data as to what pages searchers for. This is opt in only. MSN is trying to make privacy agreements easier to understand. Goals of MSN is complete transparency, making it easier for non techie people to understand, and providing the nitty gritty of what they are storing.

Danny adds that everything on your computer is at one point at Google. So that is a concern. But its Google, so many more people may use it. So its more of an issue. This does not happen automatically, you have to download the program, install it and so on.

Tim said its an increasingly problem. As much as you trust the US government, you have to worry about other governments on how to "control their citizens." Chinese gov't cares a lot about free speech. US about pornography issues.

Danny adds that people can be searching on private data, i.e. search for a disease on a person's name. But it was not personally identifiable. But they asked for so much information, a month's worth of search data. How you going to store all that data? It open the specter that they want to do data mining, but in this case they don't want to. But the fear down the line they might want to. That freaks people out. Aside from the govt issue is the corporate issues.

What happens when we map? (satellites, Google Earth, etc.)
- National security
- Professional security
- Personal Security
- Public Policy

Ramez doesn't have the detailed answers to the questions.

Jeff said there are black holes in Google Maps and who controls that? Does Google do that or does govt do it or can the end user do that. A9.com shows you "block view" and you can see individual people and faces, this is a major issue. World Privacy Forums worked with them to create an opt out for this.

Ramez just announced a street view feature with no opt out, but expect it soon. :)

Danny said this information was out there before Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask made it popular. With NASA, etc.

Is Anonymity Possible Online?
- Privacy Options
-- Education
-- Vigilance
-- Third Party Software
-- Legislation
-- Litigation
-- Go off the grid (aka unplug from the matrix)
- Advocacy Group
-- EPIC
-- EFF
-- Others

Danny added why did you make this software without adding password protection? At first it indexed encrypted Excel files, now it does not.

Tim is getting very abstract, since he is in academia, which is kinda cool, but I'm not typing his remarks now.

Sherwin stressed the option of going back. Once you disclose the information, can you take that back at a later day? If you don't have information to give away, then you won't have these issues, so shred the data.

Danny is talking now as "a common sense expert" and as he talks Tim Wu is shaking his head with disappointment and is ready to argue with Danny. Tim has yet to speak. But now Tim is nodding in approval, but Danny is on a different slightly topic. Danny wants to see the ability for people to say, hey, press this button to delete your search history.

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

Moderated by Danny Sullivan – Search Engine Watch and organizer of the conference. Moved into large room…filling up nicely. Introduces topic and first speaker.

Anne Kennedy – Beyond Ink. “Double Trouble - How to avoid duplicate content Penalties.” What it is, why it is a problem, how to spot it, and how to fix it. Will also focus on “:inadvertent” duplicate content.

What is dupe content: Multiple URL’s with same content…identical homepages w/same content. Why is it a problem? Because “they” say so. Recommends looking at the webmaster guidelines at G, Open Directory, and Yahoo. The real reason that this is a problem uis that you wind up confusing the SE robots.

Mirror sites: 1 website, 2 domains. Shows example of rsdfoundation.org. Somebody in the academic CPU center decided that “since SE’s like .edu domains,” they should put the content live on the University of Florida site. Confusing the Bot: 2 URLs. Links to multiple root domains from other sites, with inbound links pointing to different domains for the same site. Describes the real domain and “canonical” domain of a client of hers causing the whole site to not be listed.

Confusing the bot: dynamic URL’s. As robots find dynamic content, the site may be returning a different URL with the same content…this is also a problem. Use “repeat the search with omitted results included” feature to see this happening with some websites. Recommends using robtots.txt exclusion and 301 redirect. 301 redirects: “your hero” Server side redirects to a single canonical domain. Test the page to make sure it works, ensure you use 301’s instead of 3o02. Find code for this at beyongink.,com/301redirect. You can also contact Google and use the “reinclusion request” in the subject line to get help.

Shari Thurow – Grandtastic Designs
Will speak about the way some SE’s filter out dupe content. Some ways include but not limited to : content properties, linkage properties. Content evolution, etc…see below.
Content properties: SE looks for unique content by removing “boilerplates” such as navigation areas, etc. and analyzing the “good stuff.”

Dupe content filters: linkage properties. Looking at inbound and outbound links to determine if it is dupe content spam? The way that they can determine it isn’t is by seeing that the linkage properties is different for each site. Content evalution: in general 65% of websites will not change info on a daily basis. .8% of web content will change compeletelty on a weekly basis, such as a news site. Host name resolution.. Domain anem, IP address, and a host name are 3 different things. Used example of the host name origin.bmw.com. talks about one method of attempting to spam that is able to be caught because they all resolve to the same host name. Lastly: Shingle comparison: Every document has unique fingerprint. They break this down into a set of word patterns to determine if the content is duplicate. Recommends reading anything by Andre Broder (sp?) about Shingles. With sample site, each word set on a page is similar with 3 pages with unique URLs that have the same word sets on each page. This is not dupe content spam, though. (sorry missed the reason for this)

If you are sharing content across a network/multiple publications is to use the robots exclusion protocol on dupe pages from the “main page.” PDF’s are another type of duplicate content. Use the robots txt file to exclude on of them. Some dupe content is considered spam because the SE’s only allow 2 pages per site per SERP. Thus additional content will end up in the supplemental results. If you know your network is going to deliver dupe content, don’t let the SE’s decide what will be presented in the SERPs – instead, use 301’s and robots.txt.

Jake Baille – True Local
“Dr. Phil on Duplicate Content.” Why does it happen? Top 6 dupe content mistakes: circular navigation. Print-friendly pages. Inconsistent linking. Product only pages. Transparent serving. Bad cloaking.

Circular navigation: cause multiple paths though a website. Fix: define in a consistent way method of addressing a page of content. Ie: brand to category to content or brand to content to category, etc. This is irrespective of navigation path. If you are bread crumbing, track paths through cookies.

Print friendly pages: all print friendly pages are diff designed with the same content. Fix: block se’s from print friendly pages

Link not working for you any more: calling directory index pages by different paths such as /directory, /directory/, and /directory/index.asp. fix: make sure you ref pages consistently. To avoid probs with external links, pick a canonical form and 301 redirect all others to the chosen version. Takes six months to “get back” from this.

Product pages with nothing differentiating them form other pages: bad, bad, bad…add new content.

Not good to be transparent: badly impleemted rewrite code, DNS errors with multiple domains. Poorly implemented cloaking/session ID remnoval code. Fixes: domains should be redirected to the main site, not DNS aliased. Picka canonical form to access content and saty with it. Has seen many “incomple” mod rewrites, that allow for the contued reference of the old page.

If the suit doesn’t fit, don’t wear it. Poorly implemented cloaking scripts serve the same doorway page over and over again. Fixes: Don’t use cloaking scripts you didn’t write. Make sure your cloaking script is retuning separate content for each URL being cloaked. (Lots of laughs during this part between him and Matt Cutts) The same content should never be accessible from different URL’s…ever!

Rajat Mukherjee – Yahoo. Informal remarks. Glad to be here. A few comments: in general, try not to make same content available through multiple URL’s. He says SE’s are not vindictive folks, matt does snoop around and take pictures every one in a while (laughs). Rather than looking for ways to demote content, we are trying to find the right content to promote. Whenever possible, try to avoid it. You may want to create a new version of a site…be extra certain that robots don’t crawl both versions. Remember that independent of the size of the index, there will always be capacity constraints.

Matt Cutts – Google Not prepared, but informal remarks. High order nits: what do people worry about? He often finds that honest webmasters worry about dupe content when they don’t need to. G tries to always return the “best” version of a page. Some people are less conscious. The person claimed he was having problems with dupe content and not appearing in both G and Y. Turns out he had 2500 domains. A lot of people ask about articles split into parts and then printable versions. Do not worry about G penalizing for this. Different top level domains: if you own a .com and a.fr, for example, don’t worry about dupe content in this case. General rule of thumb: think of SE’s as a sort of a hyperactive 4 year old kid that is smart in some ways and not so in others: use KISS rule and keep it simple. Pick a preferred host and stick with it…such as domain.com or www.domain.com.

Make sure you are consistent in your linking, because this will cause problems for robots. Use absolute links since they don’t usually get re-written by scarpers. Speaking of…make sure you have a copyright notice at the bottom of each page. Thinks you should use this a a blogger too. They have been trying to produce better ways to figure these kinds of things, and some of this “picking the right host” framework is in the new Bid Daddy center. Also recommend using the sitemaps tool to help diagnose and debug content. Sitempas has a tool where you can take robots.txt “out for a test drive.” How would the Googlebot really respond to this? Will tell you specific things that will be disallowed.

Q&A

First Danny…going back to feeding content. How \can you ensure your page will be the original page and thus the displayed one. Rajat: we are trying hard to determine what the original page is, by using shingling techniques and other techniques to determine if the content is altered. Matt: has heard more people are concerned about this. Asks how many have had content stolen: lot of hands. 3 methods of copying someone else’s content: 1. Steal from search engine (copying directly from results). 2. Outright webpage copy stolen. Usually the lifetime of that is relatively long. 3rd type is RSS scraping…this is more difficult, since it can copied so quickly. This is difficult to catch because it can happen so much quicker than scarping from a webpage might happen. If it is always you that is getting ripped off, he says, that is actually point in your favor. They can try to see who wrote stuff historically…how much you have been copied from, and how much of people’s stuff you copy.

Someone asks about having a hundred directory types of sites, and using the same instructions for adding content, will this trigger duplicate content? Make sure that there is “real content” on each site. He would recommend using one domain to host the directions. Say “we are part of this network so go here for instructions.” Matt adds that diversity is very useful.

Using a hidden DIV…what is the policy on hidden links and JavaScript? Matt: in general hidden links are a bad thing. The content should be of use to a visitor, and thus so should the link be visible. Re: JavaScript use also can be misused to try and cheat, so be careful. SE’s are getting smarter about JS, a lot of times simple heuristics can do the work. Rajat adds: make sure that you know that intent is clear, and finishes with “so cloaking is bad.” (Lots of laughs) Jake ads that if you have an Ajax application that each gets different content, serve a cloaked page to the SE’;s and the Ajax to the users. Hide the Ajax interface from the SE’s, and keep the content on the page (styling it out if needed). Matt says “NO…we will care, and it can get you banned if you are cloaking. He recommends if you have a weird site menu and “all sorts of Ajax,” use the sitemap to serve the content!

Didn’t really get the whole question, but Matt answers “there is nothing wrong with creating a template, but if you aren’t adding useful content it’s going to end up in the ghetto/bad neighborhood with lots of other ‘useless’ sites.” Rajat makes what he says is a philosophical content: SE’s are still in infancy, and while certain limitations re: Ajax etc may exist today, the SE’s will be improving here.

If I have five paragraphs on a page, and two are available on other sites, is this dupe? Rule of thumb: ask someone who has no association with you to look at he two pages and say what they feel. Kind of like the “grandma test.” Someone says would you have your grandma look at your herbal Viagra site?” (laughs…this is from a comment made earlier about herbal Viagra) If lots of content is copied, then it looks more like a less value site.

As great as this session is…catch the next conference and you’ll get the rest of the Q&A.

This is part of the Search Engine Roundtable Blog coverage of the New York Search Engine Strategies Conference and Expo 2006. For other SES topics covered, please visit the Roundtable SES NYC 2006 category archives.

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

They moved this session from the big room upstairs the the small room. Duplicate Content session is the one to be at, and I am not there, but the rest of the conference is. I am glad Ben will be covering it.

Jeffery Rohrs moderator, David Adler, Peter Raymond and Deborah Wilcox are the speakers.

David Adler has his own practice, he focuses on working with smaller SEMs, Web design firms and so on, getting them through basic contracts and IP issues. He has been doing this for about 8 years now, and taught a class on it at Columbia.

Deborah Wilcox, Partner of Baker & Hostetler LLP. She focuses on trademark and copyright areas of law. She is always surprised of how things develop in the SEM world and the law is so far behind.

Peter Raymond, Partner at Reed Smith. He specialized in IP, copyright, trademark, and he is a litigator. There is not black and white line in what you can and cannot do.

Jeffery adds that the law is very slow. The legal process requires letters being sent back and forth, but can get as far as litigation.

Situation #1: Trademarks and PPC Ads
- Competitors (and others) using your trademark as the keyword trigger for their PPC ads
- Competitors and others using your TM in their PPC copy
- He uses the pontiac ad example, with mazda advertising on the TM of pontiac

Peter said comparative ads is legal as long as the claims are truthful. The bigger issue is of trademark infringement. And this can be construed as a TM issue.

- Deborah said that Yahoo! in the past always allowed comparative advertising, but last week they announced you can no longer buy the TM name for comparative advertising. Google's policy said it will sell the keyword to anyone for comparative reasons. In the case of pontiac, they are using the TM pontiac in the title of the Google ad and that is against Google's policy. So pontiac can call Google and have them change the title.

Situation #2: RSS & Scraping
- Situation
-- Splogs or other unauthorized sites use RSS and or scraping the copy to generate the page content that can be monetized via contextual ad networks
-- He shows an example of a splog with Google AdSense ads
- Questions
-- How do you discover this type of unauthorized use?
-- Is this actionable?
-- http://fightsplog.blogpsot.com/

David said this is about fair use. There is no fine line with this. You must look at every specific case, how much is used, where it is used, is it being used for a commercial purpose and so on. From a preventative standpoint, they draft a comprehensive terms of use that is in a sense a contract. You can also password protect your content (hmmm). The technology is advancing much more quickly then the law. the argument is that these people are getting the data out there quicker, broader and so on (people laughed).

Jeffery shows an example and asks David if its actionable. I am not going to get into the details but most of it is common sense (no need to go to court right away).

Debra said you get a little bonus if you register your work within 3 months. Copyright certification is $30 or so, and its a two page form, its very easy.

How should a blogger do this? David said, File copyright registrations as often as possible. Debra said its often not possible so focus on your most important content.

Situation #3: PR Modification
- Situation
-- Online PR distribution
-- 3rd Party site strips your PR links in favor off InelliTXT ad links to competitor sites
- Questions
-- Is there actionable copyright infringement?
-- What course(s) of action can you take?
-- Who do you approach first - the PR network, the 3rd party site or the IntelliTEXT owner (Vibrant Media)

Great session but its all mostly Q&A and Q&A bores me, sorry for short coverage on this.

Situation #4: Site Content
- Situation
-- Well-ranking elder law site
-- Competitor copies page content verbatim
- Questions
-- How do you discover this type of copying?
-- What's your first course of action?
-- Would the DMCA offer some assistance?

David: The first thing you do is print off the copies of the Web site. Gather evidence and worry about what would be excluded at trial, at trail. Because the web page can be changed instantly. Under the DMCA there is a notice and take down provision, it exempts Web hosts from contributory infringement for hosting the content. There are some formalities involved and if you follow them, it should be easy. But you do not need a lawyer to do this often.

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

Amanda Walington starts the session with a question about how many bloggers are in the room right now. A good majority raises their hands. She starts with the Book of Blog Truths (or untruths). The truths are a blog must be a simple web page that has frequent updates, each having its own URL. Not necessarily, she says. The updates, posts, are arranged in reverse chronological order. Not everyone does that. It can allow reader to commend and join a conversation with the writer and other readers. Not always the case. Her point is that those truths of what we used to think blogs were are no longer hold to true.

She next moves to RSS Myths. RSS is just for promoting blogs. No. Another myth is that RSS really hasn’t caught on quite yet. Nope, not that either. RSS does not really need SEO-type optimization. HTML can be very easy. Amanda next goes into looking a simple RSS feed and details all the various parts such as header, channel data, and then the items in the feed. Blogs are extending and changing the tasks and role of the search marketer to include: Brand and reputation monitoring and management. Content strategy and development. Link development and so on.

Blog Optimization

Start by optimizing the blog itself. Build and use a keyword list when writing posts. Don’t use graphics where plain HTML will work. Use keywords whenever possible to identify resources and blogroll. Write powerful keyword-rich, worthwhile copy often. Give every post a theme – stay on message. Don't start throwing everything including the kitchen sink in the post. Make multiple posts to extend your message. Pay attention to titles and make them keyword rich. Use keywords in anchor text with links. If your post links to a valuable resource such as a publication, link the citation because chances are it’s an authority on the topic. See mentions Search Engine Roundtable. :-)

Next socialize your blog. Inbound links are valuable so garner them. Cross link your website and blog. Notify other bloggers about your blog via comments and email. Join the conversation by writing posts that reference other blogs. Become a link hub, an authority site, by making your blog a real resource. You can also ramp up your traffic. Submit your feeds, either by hand or using tools like RSS submit. Make sure pinking is turned on. Claim your feed at Technorati and subscribe to your own feeds. Use My Yahoo and My MSN accounts to submit to these search engines. Track which engines you are listed in.

Make subscription easy. Use chiclets (or chicklets) such as images so people can subscribe to your blog. Also include bookmarking sites such as del.icio.us.

Optimize your RSS feed. Use keyword ins the feed title, less than 100 characters. Write your description as if for a directory, less than 500 characters. Use full paths on links and unique urls for each item. Each feed should have a keyword theme. Include images for branding. What are some ways that your can get your RSS beyond the blog. Well, you can use it for affiliate commissions, syndicating your content on other sites. New product announcements, security alerts, product uses tops, and so on. Amanda next goes into a lot of questions to ask about feed implementation. Measuring the results of your feeds is also a good idea. Stats can come from many sources and it's going to get easier over time to do a lot of this.

Sessions stops for a second, there is a whiny high pitched sound in the background, someone lets them know up front. Been several interruptions this session. Moving on....

Stephan Spencer is up next and he starts by going into the various types of blog search. His suggestions is that your don’t need to optimize for each engine. He says that full text is important, and not summaries. By default try to keep 20 or more items (not just 10) posts per feed. Make your brand name is in the item title. Be sure to have a compelling description.

Optimizing your blog, his take. Be sure to redo your internal hierarchical linking structure. Tag clouds and tag pages (ultimatetagwarrior plug-in) can be useful. Related posts as also good. List top 10 pots and the next and previous listing. He goes on to talk about tag clouds and so on. You can take many different approaches to listing your tag cloud in different locations. Sometimes these tag clouds can be beneficial on all pages, or just keeping it on the homepage.

Stephan recommends that when optimizing your blog, be sure to add the blog name at the end of the title, not at the beginning. The tag name should do in the title on a tag page. Customize with additional keywords for display only on your home page. The urls can be rewrite to contain keywords, hyphens not underscores. 301 redirects from yourblog.com to www.yourblog.com. Also be sure to make the posts title a link to the permalink page. Use Neat-O-Tool from webuildpages to look for opportunities. Couple other things, be sure to use emphasis tags with posts such as bolds and emphasis. Check.

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

This session covers what's new in the world of paid listings and other search advertising programs with moderation duties handled by Dana Todd of SiteLab. Dana and the panel give this session a "fashion" theme since it was fashion week recently here in New York, hence the photo above. Speakers include: Misty Locke of Range Online Media, Brian Mark of Toolbarn.com, Michael Sack of Inceptor and Joshua Stylman of Reprise Media.

This session is very different in that it is a forum, with no PowerPoint presentations. Dana Todd starts out with "news" including, click prices are up, Ask is sexier, Looksmart says they're better, MSN draggin out launch, pay per call is getting some attention and no more trademark ads on Yahoo.

A SEMPO survey reported that only 33% of respondents were happy with their SEM agencies for PPC, down from 62% last year. 25% were unhappy and 42% report mixed results.

What's keeping Dana up at night?
- Erosion of the search bubble, margins and SEM workforce
- 2nd tier engines are losing the trust battle
- Where is vertical search going?
- Small businesses are underserved. Their budgets are too low for most agencies to be able to justify taking on.
- A very large % of companies reported in the SEMPO survey want to take SEM in-house. Are SEM's better off being absorbed into agencies, companies?
- Are SEM firms going to become the service bureau's of the future?

Dana now walks the audience.

What kind of ratings would you give search engines for their input?

Misty: Room for a lot of improvement. Overall, rates them a 6.
Brian - a 6 is generous. We're not seeing a lot of service as an end buyer. No rep, no service.
Dana - is no rep better than a bad rep?
Michael - who's creating the strategy? Laments search engine ad reps, wet behind the ears, mis-advising clients. Gives an example involving Google. -1
Josh - Agrees that some "fresh off the boat" people at search engines are advising clients. Yahoo seems genuinely interested in SEMs buying their product. MSN is making an effort towards better customer service, their service "has been outstanding".
Misty - AOL is actually making an effort. What is the "next level" of service we need?
Michael - You should be getting your research from 3rd pary entities, not from search engines that have an interest in competitors bidding on the same terms.

Dana - What about the technical availability. Horror stories about systems being down, little lead time for system maintenance. Asks panel:
Misty - How many of you use APIs as a way to upload mass updates. Yahoo has done well to communicate technical issues. Google gets negative points. They are still in the habit of making changes and not telling anyone. "Oops it didn't work". MSN gets five stars.
Josh - Agree on Yahoo/Google communication. That said, Google's system is a more stable platform.
Misty - When APIs go down, has anyone noticed that you can't update your bids for 3-4 days?

Audience: You mention Ask's API. The question about ASk is distribution. That's a difficult call because some ads will go out to tier one partners some to tier two. Ideally we would segment.
Josh - Wonders wheather Ask will go the route of Google and allow advertisers to build their own ad network and cherry pick sites. "Ask is the RC cola of search."

Audience: Can you address the fee structure for clients?
Misty: It varies, but flexible. It needs to be enough to cover of the assigned ad team. Usually % of media. Hybrid of % and flat fee. Hybrid of $, flat fee and CPA.
Josh - We're a public service, we do this for the love of the craft - audience laughs.

Dana - We're in the communication industry. Are the search engines good communicators?
Black box - when you're bidding in the Google system you don't get 100% disclosure of all data related to that ad and how the ad is served and when.
Michael - When I think of paid search advertising, I think of it in terms of a calculated risk. When Google doesn't communicate how they are going to rank or serve your ads, you leave the realm of calculated risk and move into just risk.
Josh - Google has made some controls available - separating contextual from search. It's the auction process that's the issue. The fact is, no one knows how Google works. It's a matter of time before Yahoo implementing it's own complex marketplace.
Misty - Describes how when you upload terms to Yahoo, behind the scences, Yahoo relates some of your phrases behind the scenes to other phrases. Example: "travel" to "budget travel". For other media, you "know" where your ads are going to be placed. With search, you do not have those kinds of controls. Scores search engines negative 25.
Michael - Being able to test all the intermediary variables that affect conversion is part of good marketing. Doing so is part of the value that SEM agencies bring to clients. Scores search engines a zero.
Brian - Describes how he cannot control the ad placement is frustrating, particularly with Google.

Audience - I find it hard to believe that the companies and agencies don't tell the search engines about their disatisfaction and issues with "black box" ad serving.
Misty - They do have advisory boards and councils. They are also running a business. There have been improvements.

Audience - I sit on one of those boards so this is good to know.
Michael - Can you imaging what would happen to have a sit-in and pause your ad campaigns? They might listen when that happens.

Audience - I'm one of those advertisers that wants to bring SEM in-house. If your compaign cannot be executed according to the strategy, why would I outsource?
Dana - MarketingSherpa did a study on agencies vs in-house. Agencies do it better because it's all they do. The other part is maximizing the campaing, the linguistic part of it. Those are not typically the skills of an in-house marketer.
Josh - A lot of that heavy lifting happens through technology. Agenciesy can focus on analysis and getting strategic value out of the data. In house marketers do not always have access to that technology and do not get to spend the time on the strategy.

Audience - It seems last quarter Google's revenues were up over 100% and therefore your revenues are up over 100%, yet there is some disatisfaction in what you're saying.
Josh - I don't think this is a concern about revenue slowdown. Our businesses are growing as fast as any sector. You're sensing frustration of the changing nature of the industy. Understand, PPC used to be about 5% of pages and now with contextual it's about 100%. Soon print and radio will come into the mix.
Misty - Service has to set you apart. The fact that over 50% are not happy with SEMs, there's confustion about hwo you can trust.

Money Makeover - How do you think the search engines are doing handling your money, the advertisers' money?
Who do you think is the best money manager?
Panel- MSN

Click Fraud
SEMPO just released info that the number of advertisers concerned with click fraud has increased substantially.
Michael - Surveys audience 20-40% citing click fraud
Josh - Yahoo and Goolgle do a tremendous job at detecting click fraud. We've seen an amazing response to detection and getting credited. Tier twos are not as responsive. Marketers need to account for a pecentage of their ad spend to click fraud.
Michael - I have a friend that owns a sweatshop that has employees click on his clients' competitors ads. Search engines should get together as a consortium and share data anonymously and find the fraud.

Is it Google, Yahoo or MSN?
Showed screen shots of anonymous search results pages - they seem very similar.

Dana - Is anything creative happening?
Michael - MSN AdCenter people are saying AdCenter is "just like Google". It is exactly like Google. Where's the creativity?
Josh - Brings up trends towards offline integration such as dMarc and Google print.
Misty - Looking forward to enhancements such as display of the ads.

Audience: What about second tier search engines. Enhance, MIVA? Are they worth considering?
Michael - There's a reason you don't hear talk about tier 2 engines.
Josh - You can get value from tier 2 engines but be careful.
Michael - Shopping search engines are a different category than tier 2 engines like Kanoodle, Miva, etc.
Misty - Second tier engine campaigns are up/down up/down.
Josh - To use the financial metapor, tier two engines are the "over the counter" stocks.

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

The moderator begins by introducing the people on the panel. It is a wide group of people that expertly represent those that are doing something about or with paid search and click fraud issues. He also talks about the things that have gone on since the last time they conducted this session. There is a lawsuit that is going on against Google (CLRB Hanson Industries vs. Google). The S&P have downgraded Google in part due to click fraud issues. There is rumblings of click fraud on the “SEC radar” and is looking into click fraud. The firms Fair Issac & Alchemist Media announce “most rigourous study ever of click fraud”. Greg from WebGuerilla clickbots his clients in the name of science. Click Forensics launches the Click Fraud Network.

They go into various types of click fraud. The type of fraud for Financial Gain such as contextual ad affiliates clicking for dollars. The competitive advantage such as clicks to drain competitors PPC advertising budget. Revenge is also a type of click fraud. Blackmail or exploitation of a network is possible and finally Anarchy is a type of click fraud. Any type of malicious activity under click fraud should be under consideration. One of the speakers mentions that sometimes the search engines get it wrong that there are cases where real clicks are counted as fraudulent. Greg Boser next goes into competitive sabotage and the example of Mesothelioma on area that has been exposed to random sabotage. He says the clickbots are running rampant in Google’s domain parking system. I wonder if the same thing is happening with Yahoo? He goes onto explain an example of someone going to a domain by typing in url, doing a search, and then click on an advertisers ad 200 times, and the search engine giving credit for those clicks as real.

So is there too much paranoia with click fraud? Not necessarily some of the speakers say. It’s a big threat to Google’s business model and it’s a serious issue. However it can be difficult to look at a lot of data and Yahoo mentions they want to partner with firms to compare data. In the last 2-3 years there has been a big rise into the click fraud sanitation industry, there are more options and more companies offering click detection techniques.

There are several click fraud detection methods.

• Manual clicks (from individuals or “armies”) – this is not an efficient method however as its easier to catch as dozens of IP’s are needed and lots of people.


• Fake or masked IP (core of using proxies)


• Non-successive clicks


• Destroyed referrers


• Click bots

They next go into talking about proxies. Greg mentions that the highest risk click fraud is those potential malicious people that use a system of spyware in combination with a clickbot. The spyware or virus installs and infects thousands of machines and then uses a clickbot to click on ads all day. The person who got infected has no idea what is going on. He said its very difficult to track, and is not sure what the search engines will do about it.

There are some tactics that search engines are using into combat click fraud. They are:

• Dedicated fraud departments


• Click filters


• Pattern recognition software


• ROI analysis


• Human intervention


• Review of advertiser documentation

Yahoo mentions that they evaluate clicks along 20 to 50 data points. Some of the data points include: IP address, user session information, user cookie information, looking at the network an IP belongs, user’s browser information, search term requested, time of click, rank of the advertisers listing, bid of the advertisiers listing, time of the search, time of the click. Both Yahoo and Googe do offer advertisers a process by which they can submit questionable clicks for review and verification. I will insert here that I have used these systems and they are very disappointing. It can be rather painful in order to get refunded for potential click fraud as various processes in order to contact Google/Yahoo are inane and tedious. One of the best ways to avoid the long process of trying to get money refunded for click fraud is to establish an effective click fraud detection tool from the start. Some of the search engine reps go into refunds that happen automatically for click fraud that can occur. I have discuess with some clients that even though they may get refunds, they don’t seem logically enough, a $20 dollar refund for a $60K a month spend is less than satisfactory. However there are many that do get probably funded and the search engines are becoming better on working with advertisers.

There are some ways that advertisers can track and document click fraud on there on. Some of those methods include:

• Referring IP address


• Successive clicks


• Click volume variance


• Odd traffic referrers


• Geography of clicks


• Seasonality


• Bills


• Credit notices

One of the speakers mentions a change to the terms of service Google did last Q2 in 2004. That before they said “Google states we detect most invalid clicks” to “Our goal is to detect most invalid clicks”. What!? She says that is rather broad, and they could be trying to cure world hunger for all they knew. There was criticism thrown at Google for this aspect, and if they would be more forthcoming then they probably wouldn’t be facing litigation and criticism. The Google rep responds with rebuttal to that. He says he does not know what the FAQ said that year, but that their network of advertisers has expanded a lot and the various policies of their advertisers are different.

Some possible solutions for combating click fraud:

• Greater Data Disclosure such as network/advertiser sharing, PPC network provided tools, and great advertiser control over contextual distribution.


• Industry Intermediary such as independent, cross-ppc networls


• Cost Per Acquistion (CPA) models

Greg next goes into to talk about some litigation issues and some of the stuff I mentioned below with low refunds for click fraud. He said he mentions a case where a lawyer from here in New York spent 2 million dollars and got a total of $325 refund. He says that is very insulting and unacceptable.

The Google rep counters to the argument that the reason for litigation against the search engines is that they have not been more forthcoming and gave disclosure. He disagrees with the responses from the other speakers. Yahoo counters that they have been tracking click fraud since the turn of the century. He is pretty fired up and defensive in his position.

The session was very good, and a lot of discussion going on. Some heated replies and overall you could feel some of the frustration of regular advertisers and search marketing firms in dealing with click fraud. The search reps seems to be rather defensive as well insistent that adsense returns good ROI and so on. This session was more about click fraud then auditing paid listings.

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

Moderated by Detlev Johnson – Position Technologies. Very small room for this topic…full already 5 minutes before the start. (added- when I left the session a little early, there were literally 50 people standing outside the room by the door in order to hear this topic) Welcome everybody, we are going to introduce the idea of what an algorithm is. Basically, it uses a computer to rank sites in an order of some “pseudo-relevancy.”

Rand Fishkin – SEOMoz.org

“Understanding Search Engine Algorithms Requires Serious Research.” This is an advanced track session, so he hopes people have a basic understanding. Why study search algos? Where to find research? What has the SEO community learned from algo analsyis?

Why study search algos? To gain an understanding of how SE’s work. Potential clients, managers, and your staff and team will thank you. A strong understanding eases identification of keywords difficulty (how hard is it to optimize). Where is research published? (see: seomoz.org/blogdetails.php?ID=850) Some places: Patents/apps. University research, books, IR and SEO blogs, conferences and sites- use the IR sites if you want to talk about the “super complicated issues.”

What have we learned from algo analysis? Google’s classic algo: PageRank. A map of the web can be constructed, etc… After PR, JohnKleinberg at IBM used “HITS” algo…what do links say about a site, hubs and authorities, addition of “CLEVER” allows for further research. (note: please search for both of these to find out more about them) More recent integrations of algo analysis include TrustRank. SE’s want to be able to put trust into certain sites and take away from others. They don’t want paid links to influence. Feels that Reciprocal links, “spam islands” and other FFA link “schemes” may be targeted. Guest book & blog comment links may not always be the best sources for relevance. Tells a story about an interview he had, and then the writer of the article spoke to Matt Cutts about the site that Ran mentioned that was buying links for the site from Harvard Crimson, which was (emphasize “was) a good .edu site to buy links from. Suddenly the ranks dropped. (my thought: d’oh! That must be why Jim Boykin says to never tell Matt Cutts your URL’s)

Google applied for patent: “Information Retrieval based on Historical Data.” Identifies areas that can be targeted including links, site registration data, user data (clicks, time on site, ectc…). The source and speed of links gains may be a “flag.”

The future: social and personalized search. Refining & addition of info sources. Greater individual attention to links and sites. Improved detection of “manipulable” areas. What do experts think is most important: seomox.org/articles/search-ranking-factors.php lists these in order of their importance.

Bill Slawski – Seo by the Sea, Inc.
Talks about “vertical creep into search results session from yesterday and the question from the audience about “how did they get there?” (the vertical listings) The answer is obviously algos. Goals: learning how search works. Build sites that rank well. Find good questions. Understand limitations of SE’s. Anticipate the future of search.

Things to use when researching: Primary sources: SE guidelines, patents and patent apps, papers form SE employees, official and unofficial blog posts (googleresearch.blogspot.com, for example). Secondary sources: academic papers, trusted commentators. Other sources: forums, articles, newsletters, experimentation.

Evaluating trustworthiness: From Stanford Pervasive Technologies Laboratory. There is a bunch of good guidelines on their site regarding how to make your site look “credible.” For example: place your address on a site, and do not place it within an image. When evaluating a patent, ask: what problem does it claim to address? Who are authors? Cites to other sources? Related solutions? Other search engine approaches? (are they even doing anything in regards to the stated problem?) Opportunities to experiment? Need to ask these when looking at patent apps…he grins and says: “does G release a patent app simply because they want Y and MSN to spend resources on trying to emulate?” (laughs)

One recent patent app discussed assigning geographic locations to pages. US Patent app 20050182770. This patent app discusses the ability to favor websites from specific locations instead of directories that list the sites. Would this be something the SE’s want? Of course they do…they want relevancy immediately useful to the SE user instead of having to take steps through a directory. The writers of this patent app are two brothers from Australia that work at Google in DC. They have also released some other patent apps…many dealing with Google Maps. Their former company, Where 2 Technologies, was acquired by Google.

Quick note to SE’s: “Denzell Washington” and “Kentucky Fried Chicken” ARE NOT geographic locations. (laughs)

Jon Glick – Become.com
Introduced by Detlev as having been with AltaVista through lots of changes, and now has helped to start become.com. Algos: what is the stuff that will actually impact rankings? Some are done to confuse competitors or to make them do unneeded research (as Bill said.) Remember that they do not have to use all the features that are mentioned in a patent, and conversely they don’t have to place everything that they will use in the patent. So you need to ask what will be used, and what wont?

“New” ranking tools possibly being/going to be used: CTR (click-through-rate) being used as an organic ranking factor. None of the SE’s could use this because it would be really easy to spam. The first uses of CTR by the SE’s will more likely be used for demotion only.

Time spent on a site? This is used to flag sites where users hit the back button almost immediately. The site may be 404, the site is clearly off topic. Boosting ranking for final destination sites? Actually SE’s “prefer” (ask Jon for a better explanation on this) sites that do cause an eventual visit back to the SE results. For example Brittany Spears searches usually cause the visitor to go to a site, check out some pictures (or song lyrics if you are me – in case my wife is reading this), and usually go back to the listings to see another site?

SE’s do keep a history of sites, so updated content is good. Tricks of changing the timestamp, etc…just to get a quicker re-crawl: this won’t work. Duplicate detection technologies used to find meaningful changes to a site.

Most SE’s limit how quickly a site can gain connectivity (sandboxing, link aging topics) A sudden jump in links can draw scrutiny from the SPAM cops…if they are legit, you’ll be OK.

“Tagging” unlikely to be used: easy to keyword stuff. Inound anchor text offers the same benefits with a better source validation. None of the major SE’s use the META keywords tags anymore. However, tagging is still very useful for multimedia rankings (video search and podcast search, for example.)

Evaluation of out-links: SE’s are starting to look at outlinks. G and Y use it for spam detections. Couple of notes: ad units don’t count. Some SE’s may increase rank slightly if you link to authoritative sites. Be careful who you trade links with.

Use of personal data: Information sources for SE’s include: user registration, search history, Yahoo groups and the like can indicate interests, etc. However…what can they do with all this data? How can it be applied to an algo? Also…multiple users of the same machine may cause problems. There is serious concern about both privacy and perception. Zip codes/IP may be used to improve local results, as Bill and Rand mentioned. This is called “entity extraction” process. So once again, make sure you place your address in the footer.

Q&A
Re: local search…does adding info beef up local and in turn remove some nationwide results? Jon says not really, it will mostly just boost your local ranks probably. You can also get results by placing your phone number on the page (not just the “800” number) in order for the SE’s to be able to geo-identify you.

If you have many reciprocal or paid links that are “fair,” should you be worried? Rand: almost feels that you should stay away from active link building. Do active PR, do active marketing, do promote, but DON’T go pay for links, go to directories, unless you are “out of new site penalty period.” Jon: make sure the links you get have good targeted kw anchor text (hey guys how about leaving something for us in “Linking Strategies tomorrow? :p) Detlev adds: it’s all about context.

Ways to test? A good idea is to use a throw-away domain if you are really worried, since SE’s will usually only give one warning before banning. Detlev ads that you should read the site content out loud and make sure it makes sense. Don’t ruin your brand with a message that is horrid just due to SEO.

An attendee worried about transferring hosting of a site with great UK rankings to a US host? The speakers seem to all agree this won’t be a problem, because when they see the site they will notice the content has remained the same. The fact that IP has changed will probably not hurt you. If you switch the registration of the site, you may lose some UK rankings.

This is part of the Search Engine Roundtable Blog coverage of the New York Search Engine Strategies Conference and Expo 2006. For other SES topics covered, please visit the Roundtable SES NYC 2006 category archives.

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

Rebecca Lieb from ClickZ is the moderator.

Rob Key from Converseon is up first.

Search impact on brand repuation:
- 92% of journalists use search engines to research stories
- missed other points...

- How you are being defined is often in the hands of 3rd parties
- He shows a search on splenda (which reminds me I covered this session before)
- High Rankings Does Not Necessarily Equal Greater Credibility
- There is about 16,000 "detractor sites" that are anti product or services information.
- He shows several examples of searches on brand names with "detractor sites" in the SERPs.
- The Reputation Conversation; you have "enterprise generated content", "mainstream media" and "Consumer generated content"
- EGM, MSM, Social Media, Blogs, Reputation Aggregators, Constituencies
- He shows an example of a "reputation attack" in action. Where four of the top 10 results were negative listings
- So they changed their name but then a blog blogged it and it didn't help. :)
- A brand is an "experience that creates an impression"
- Brand and product reputation is clearly a discussion that creates a perception

So what do you do?
- Litigation
- They recommend Search Engine Reputation Management
- You need to understand your most aggressive detractors are and who can help you.
- Then you should create a "SERP Visibility Map" bucket the top 10 listings in buckets of good and bad
- Then you need to map the conversation (competitors/detractors, early adopters/envangelists, and the core).
- Develop a Five Point Strategy from Findings
-- Minimize detractors
-- Engage via optimized EGC
-- Mobilize programs to generate CGM
-- Continue to mind the conversation

- Manage your shelf space; dont think about optimizing your site, but optimizing your communication
- Become a content company; be authentic, take points of view on important industry events, lead the conversation, consider podcasts and videos, and so on.
- Help inspire positive consumer generated media (like Apple)
- He then shows the pontiac search

Robert Garner from Agency.com
- Why should you be concerned?
-- Search engine shenanigans (content theft, typo abuse)
-- There is a bounty on your brand terms (engines and affiliate programs provide this incentive)

SEO Techniques:
- Content Theft
- Site Scraping
- Typo Jacking

Resolution:
- File a spam report with the engines
- Contact the site owner and ask to remove content
- Review options with a legal consultation

- Cast Study - Federal Trademark Infringement Case

Domain Registrations
- Domain aggregators; some have stockpiled 100,000s of domains
- Aggregators partner with search engines
- Engines run search network ads on domain networks
- Engines and domain aggregators split text ad fee revenues
- Some estimate Yahoo brings in 15% of its YSM income from domain based search ads
- Trademark issues with this, since many advertisers are unknowingly placed on competitors trademarks
- Relevancy issues; some publishers have control of which ads appear on landing pages and they don't always choose the most appropriate ads

Best Defense:
- Research all variations of your brand terms
- Compare terms against .com domain names in whois
- Acquire domain names, register them if not taken, buy from registrant, catch a drop (snapnames), cease and desist, arbitration (uniform dispute resolution policy)

Nan Dawkins from Red Boots Consulting who will be focusing on blogs.
- Blogs are huge
- 30% of all internet users are visiting blogs
- 77% think blogs are good way to get info
- 33% of journalists say they use blogs to uncover breaking news

Blogs and CGM
- 44% of internet users create content but blogs are 14% of that pie, forums are 83%
- If they aren't the biggest source, then why worry about it?
- Blogs are highly visible across multiple search scandals
- Blogs dominate the SERPs on "brand + [negative keywords]"
- Blogs are the voice of long term consistent voices
- Blogs can develop a following very quickly
- Bloggers create CGM across multiple channels
- Journalists follow blogs
-- 51% said they use blogs regularly
-- The main stream media is using blogger terms
- Step 1: Listen and Monitor what bloggers are saying about you
-- There are tools to help you with this, discussed in a different session "Blogs, CGM and Buzz" yesterday
-- Monitoring what is visible in search engines
--- Bloggers can gain influence quickly
--- Pay attention to comments
--- Spam can skew results
- Step 2: Engage
-- 50% of bloggers write about companies once per week
-- Only 21% report regular contact from companies
-- Only 2% say they dont want contact
-- Personalized emails work best
-- Develop a trust based relationship with bloggers
-- Enage bloggers for feedback (my personal thoughts - Yahoo is great with this, from personal experience)

Andy Beal from Fortune Interactive
- He said he had a horrible experience with American Airlines flying to JFK and in about a month, search on it. people laughed...
- Blog Tracking Tips:
-- Feedster.com
-- Technorati.com
-- IceRocket.com
-- Google.com/blogsearch
-- BlogPulse.com
-- RSS Readers (newsgator, bloglines and pluck), create customized RSS searches in these readers
- What to Track
-- Company names
-- Employee names
-- Names use by your competitors (all variations, key executives and product/service names)
-- Monitor RTSS of industry related sites and news feeds
- News and Web alerts
-- Google Alerts and Yahoo Alerts
-- Same deal as RSS but via email
-- Watch for competition's press releases
-- Look for plagiarized content (Google news shows you also web pages and not just news)
- Tracking the Un-trackable
-- Copernic has a tool
-- aignes.com and watchthatpage.com
-- He shows screen captures
- Where to use this?
-- Every page of your competitors site or important pages
-- BBB
-- Alexa
-- Forums
-- RipOffReport.com
-- Any industry news site that doesn't have email alerts or RSS
- Laying Forum Foundation
-- Identify the most pipular forums for your industry forumfind.com and boardtracker.com
-- Task someone to join and participate in forums, its best to do this now then later on
-- Consider sponsoring most influential forums and with blogs
-- Build alliances and partnerships with the most vocal members in the forums (mods, most posts, reputation levels, etc.)
- Responding to Criticism
-- Monitor your RSS feeds and email alerts hourly and act asap
-- Identify the author of the blog, owner of the forum, editor of the site, use whois, or read the profile of the author
-- Read author's pervious work
-- Understand the threat level (how well respected, audience reach, etc.)
- Tactics for Blogs
-- If a entry is factually incorrect, send the blogger evidence, ask for removal or retraction of the entry, offer to keep them informed of future news, and only if no action by blog author add a comment
-- If true but negative, send your side of the story and add a comment to the post and try your best to take it offline
- Will it Accomplish Anything?
-- 94% will remove, editor add information
- Tactics for Forums
-- Investigate facts internally before deciding action
-- Offer to resolve any complaints personally
-- Be honest
-- Take conversation offline
-- Rally friends and peers online
- Balancing Negative CGM

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

Danny Sullivan is the moderator on this panel, and looking by the list of speakers, this one should be funny - high expectations guys. So 6 minutes late, we begin... (danny???) He said we need to stop persecuting people with "man bags." He said we have a strict no blogging policy here, everyone laughed. We have Zia Daniell Wigder from Jupiter Research is our analysts panel person. Now the bloggers; Robert Scoble from Microsoft, Jeremy Zawodny from Yahoo, John Battelle was suppose to be here but he couldn't make it so Matt Cutts came on in his place from Google, and finally David Vise who wrote the Google Story.

The topic is completely open and you can ask anything you like. I personally will try to write as fast as possible. No questions about how do I rank well for XYZ. Here we go...

Q: What will be the impact of search and search market share, when Microsoft introduces a new browser with search embedded in the browser.
A: Scoble said he put Google back in his toolbar. He added that Windows Vista embedded search in the whole process. IE7 enables you to add other search engines.
David Vise said he is actually Bill Gates, he looks like him, for real (its crazy). People come over to him and he asks them how their system is operating.... He said he will answer as Bill Gates, the answer is, "we are going to do everything in our power to destroy Google. That means everything, consistent with DOJ, our relationship with the EU. Search will be embedded not only in the next version of what you see, but in everything you do. We are not giving away free dishes like banks do, but we are really out to destroy Google. Immediately after this session, we will destroy Matt Cutts after this session.
Matt Cutts said that he noticed in IE7 and there was information on how to add most search engines outside of Google to the search bar.
Jeremy said they are completely behind the Microsoft plan to destroy Google.
Danny said search has been built into Microsoft for years and despite that Google and Yahoo still succeed.

Q: What are your future predictions of vertical search engines and its impact on major search engines.
A: David Vise said think of the major search engines as the main TV networks and vertical engines as the cable stations. Because we are in such an early period, there will be tremendous growth in both.
Jeremy said a vertical engine requires a special need, and I don't use it often. But if I am looking for a car or house, I will use a vertical search engine. I may you a search engine to locate a vertical search engine. He said he doesn't believe that the verticals will take from the major engines.
Zia said she has seen the numbers increase for both well.
Matt said he thinks it fantastic having these verticals. If you are a major search engine it is a lot easier to write a vertical search. For example, he wrote a porn filter and for fun he changed it to a "code search engine" because the filter applied right across.
Scoble said that he points out Technorati and how that engine is a successful search test. It may be the best blog search engine out there, he said.

Q: How is Google making money on these print ads and pay per call and radio?
A: Matt Cutts said AdSense rose out of a search quality thing they did. Once they have done algorithms and products, they are able to apply them to other areas. So from Web search, to content, to print, to pay per call to radio. They are looking for new ways to expand that.
Scoble said there is a company that is experimenting with buying phone numbers to track these pay per calls and offline ads.
David Vise, Google has Madison Ave very worried. Because they are serving up print ads as an experiment, they bought deMarc (radio), to make it easy for small companies to run print and radio ads, something they have never done before. People like to talk about old media and new media, and how the money is moving from old to new. Google is enabling the channeling of these funds to traditional media.

Q: Rand said he started using delicious as a search engine to figure out what is the hottest thing on the net. Do you guys do that? Will the engines use that?
A: Jeremy said that search ranking is not a democracy, you need to have the skills to build a web page. Tagging services lowers that barrier. Jeremy looks at tags or digg to find hot topics. This is an other time of real time search.
Q: Will it ever be a tab?
A: Jeremy said he doesn't like tabs. He doesn't decide what becomes a tab at Yahoo. Is this ready for the mainstream? No, not yet. But it is incredibly useful.
Matt agrees, how ready is tagging for mainstream? Google allows bookmarks with tags, but he isn't sure how it will play out. He is just considered about spam.

Q: Where is this whole industry going, where should marketers be focusing on?
A: Scoble, local and mapping.
Matt said "buzz", authentic blogs and that what attracts links.
Zia said social search will come sooner then wireless search.
David answered as bill gates, really Microsoft will dominate everything with search and destroy Google and if you want to know when search will go, "where do you want to go today?" He picked up a hat with the Google logo and it will be a nice antique.
Jeremy said he doesn't know how he can follow that speech. Local search and maps, yes. He discusses GPS and how cool it is. He also brought up Yahoo! Answers. Every day people are becoming more involved in content.
David Vise as David Vise said the Teoma search technology that underlines the Ask search engine is very good. Barry Diller said yesterday that they are doing away with the butler, and turning it into Ask.com because they didn't want to make a place where people just asked questions. Now do you want a name Ask.com for a place where you don't want people to ask questions? He said, you will see the butler come back (he is kidding I think). Forget everything you heard yesterday. They will spend a lot of money on Ask.com and it will be like the new coke advertising campaign. You will see jeeves come back, like the traditional coke.
Matt said the butler is big brother and made a motion of taking pictures (See ask jeeves blog for matt spying on Ask).
Danny said you will notice a entourage around Matt as he leaves the room because people are so into ranking well in Google. But there are other ways to get into Google (vertical search, local, maps, news, etc.)

Q: What percentage is spam and how bad is spam compared to email spam?
A: Scoble said I get very little spam and my email is out there. He said he does not like getting email, he prefers RSS. There are approaches that are coming along to fight this.
Matt's Google take on what to expect on spam. Google will be targeting lots of other countries and languages. The big watch word is international Web spam. They always come up with new ways. English is getting better and is pretty good now. Other languages will get better in next several months. Google is open to new ways to look into scalable ways to improve this with algorithms, but if there are other ways to fight spam, they are into that as well (such as personalized search remove result).

Q: Relevant links versus a non relevant link...
A: Matt said scoring links is interesting, they have several ways to do interpret relevant links and non.
Scoble said same with MSN and Yahoo.
Jeremy said that everyone wants search to be relevant but the searchers are doing little to help make them relevant (just look at how people search, short words and there are lots of ways to interpret the answer).
Jeremy added that MyWeb is a good step towards this.
Danny shows off myweb and google remove result and then shows off Google Search History. He put how top sites and seroundtable.com is number 10 on his "top sites" list. Nice Danny.

Q: There was skepticism about Video Search...
A: Matt is a skeptic about having Video search because any time I want to watch a video it didn't work and its only now when its really working now. And it feels like there is more there, then it used to be.
Jeremy, video is interesting because there are technical issues in the background when trying to improve it. Consumption will be radically different with video then it is with normal Web search and he is not sure how, just yet. A site like Flickr couldn't of been predicted earlier. When is video search going to hit the living room?
David said unlike Matt he has better things to do then watch four hours of personal video online. This whole conversation is in the wrong place. He feels video search will dominate in a totally different way. It will be people who want to download people who want to download and watch movies and Tv. There will be a pay per view model. Digital Right Management is being worked on now, to gain access to the video content they really want to see.

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

The B2B Tactics session explores the unique marketing needs for business to business marketers moderated by Detlet Johnson of Position Technologies.

First up is Chris from ClearGauge. Who asks, what's different about BtoB? Business to business online marketing is a more considered purchase than consumer marketing.

Differences from consumer marketing:

- Goals of BtoB marketing is to start or develop relationships.
- The emphasis is on different search engines. Focus on major search and business and vertical specific engines.
- Keywords - buying cycle and role based.
- Message -
- Landing pages - The difference in messaging and desired outcomes should be reflected in landing pages.
- Next "date" - Don't rush it. With BtoB you don't "kiss on the first date".
- Tracking ROI - Define measurable goals.

Internet is the first user driven medium. Traditionally, marketers pushed their information out. Search is a pull medium.

Often times you have to filter BtoB prospects from similar consumer or unrelated phrases.

Chris provides a range of PPC considerations for BtoB but I cannot see them and he's speaking very quickly.

Tip for blogging conference sessons: Sit in front of the screen where the Powerpoint slides are displayed. Do not sit on the other side of the podium! I know this, but came in late.

Key pillars of paid search.
1. Find: Keyword research. Find phrases based on the position in the buying cycle and also take into account purchasers and influencers.
2. Engage: Relevance of message to keyword is important as well as landing page relevancy.

Described considerations for effective A/B testing with Google.

Best practice for web site content and site architecture.

Web analytics and measurement are important to ensure you measure what matters.

Lead generation funnels according the type of campaign.

Takeaways:
- Focus on the buying cycle
- Remember it's about prospects not products
- Make sure you measure business objectives

Next up is Paul Slack of WebDex.

BtoB Sales Cylce
- Uncovering the need
Prospects research possible options to create a short list of vendors and from that make a selection.

Search Engine Buying Funnel - sweet spot for btob marketers is during the consideration phase.

Targeting your AUdience

Influencers.
Example: Had client write white paper on a certain topic. That very specific ranked well and sent visitors to a lead generation process and had a 16% conversion rate.

Developing an Internet marketing strategy - The challenge is that it's not ecommerce, it's getting influencers to opt-in to your buying process.

It's important to define goals and objectives, target audience, conversion activities, budget, measurement and tracking. Provides an example for defining cost per lead, cost per acquisition and the break even.

Remember: Begin with the end in mind.

Chris Grady from Merak is the last one up. Merak evolved from a single mail server product from a bedroom office to an total communications solution with customers world-widel. The marketing success was a result of search engine marketing.

Grady presents some guidelines from the perspective of an in-house marketer.

1. Turn hurdles into opportunities

Sales cycle

- Id a need
seek solutions
comopoile a lsiot
negotiate price
purchase

Merak Hurdle - late to market
Advantage - SEM enabled them to passively take away customers from competition for about 2 years

2. Identify engines and keywords used by potential btob customers

Review content generated by and used by target audience. Also created a custom keyword analysis tool.
Keyword reference guide. Analyze keyword performance data and put it into a reference guide. Distribute that guide to content developers.

3. Keyword targeting successes. From mining data, found that their largest clients found them from very long search queries.

4. Monitor what activies lead to buying. It appears the more interaction between prospects and Merak, the higher the conversion rate.

Going back in time, he would hire a search engine marketing firm. Can't afford it? You can't afford not to. You need to find a firm that is transparent to how they provide the service.

Q: We sell products to both consumers and busineses. Example: DSL. Advise on how to approach that?

A: Paul Slack. Implement a decision process at the landing page to filter the user to consumer/business info.

A: Chris from ClearGuage: Analyze web metrics to see what kinds of language business users tend to use and bid on those phrases.

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

Moderated by Rebecca Lieb, ClickZ Network. Smaller room…almost full. This session has 4 marketers from major agencies that will present case studies of campaigns related to search, but that search is by no means the whole or central component of the campaigns.

Tessa Weggert - Enlighten

“Blogs, viral marketing, and their effect on search.” Starts by talking about different types of popular blogs. Corporate Blogs: IE: GM’s “Fastlane,” Boing’s “Randy’s Journal.” Products blogs: Stoneyfield Farms, KongisKing.net. Product Blog Tours: Castrol’s blog gives the opportunity to Castrol users to ask abut particular product usage. Blog Book tours: “Readerville.”
Corporate blogs: Best known for establishing a dialogue between corporations and their consumers. Improves corporate image. Product Blogs: increase product awareness. Boost product and brand affinity. Product blog tours: initiate dialogue between companies and consumers. Book tours: allows interaction between writers and readers. Blog influences on search marketing: frequent updates and relevant content can help to boost rankings, and can result in ongoing search presence due to be updated often.

Stenyfield Farms Blog has frequent content updates, which lead to multiple search listings and the proximity effect. Many times Google will list company blogs very highly for brand related searches. This can help to lead to greater brand affinity and eventually sales.

Viral marketing: Key principles to success: 1. offer free service with some sort of value to Internet users. 2. Create unique applications or variation on popular themes. 3. Incorporate humor, if consistent with brand. 4. Remain timely, tap into existing cultural dialogues. Make it easy to spread around. Potential benefits: Increased awareness of a company. Showcase services and creativity, etc. Like blogs, viral marketing helps build links. Quotes Jennifer Laycock in saying that “the best way to build links is to stop requesting them and start earning them.” Gave a quick case study on how Enlightnen used a holiday card on a subdomain, which resulted in 50,000 unique visitors to card landing page from 12/7 to 12/31. They got coverage in Detroit Free Press, Ann Arbor News, and others news sources. They estimate it was a 5-7 times ROI (not sure what she meant by this). Resulted in over ten “serious” business leads. Was indexed within days on 16 SE’s…primarily they feel due to link popularity. Corporate site page views were up 300%. Corporate traffic showed high propensity towards highest value site pages.

Hollis Thomases – Web Ad.vantage

Where search starts, where advertising ends, and how it gets gray. The old days: no text ads in search, only display ads. GoTo which became Overture and was bought out by Yahoo, and of course Google, bought search advertising into mainstream. Can you use popular keywords effectively in display advertising? The answer Web Ad.vatange found was yes, th