 The Search Innovation Continues
SF Gate
So Cuil blew its big coming-out party, and Powerset's fanfare faded, despite being picked up by Microsoft. That hasn't stopped hungry developers and the VC firms that back them from continuing to craft the next "Google-killer," leading the charge of search innovation along the way. Case in point, Cooliris and BooRah, a pair of search startups chosen by Deborah Gage for their commentary on the search evolution race.
Cooliris lets searchers preview Web links, images and video results without having to click on them, while BooRah deals strictly with reviews (restaurant reviews at the moment, but the company plans to expand to hotels). Both offer new ways to search as well as new ways of processing the vast amount of info on the Web. But both companies' top brass also acknowledge that the entire search industry still faces many challenges.
"Guessing what a search query means is still an art," according to Cooliris' Chief Revenue Officer Shashi Seth. And he thinks mainstream engines only guess right about 40% of the time. Meanwhile, the processing power required by search--even for a subset of data like restaurant reviews--is a major obstacle, according to Nagaraju Bandaru, BooRah's CTO. - Read the whole story... SES San Jose Spotlight: 5 Things You Didn't Know About SEM
Top Rank
Panelists at this SES San Jose session aimed to debunk 5 SEM myths--including the idea that the long tail continues (and will continue) to grow, that search continues to be opaque, and that everyone should do SEM. (Yes, that's only three, but head over to Dana Larson's post for the full rundown).
First up is the myth of the long tail. According to Chris Zaharias, the long tail phenomenon has started to reverse itself. "Searchers now go in and look up the names of websites they want to go to or the actual brand ad style of shoe they want to buy rather than performing multiple searches on different keyword phrases to ultimately find something worth buying," Zaharias said.
Terry Whalen said that search is transparent because the Internet is transparent. "If you are a smaller company just starting out with SEO or PPC, there is a lot of competitive data out there that is relatively easy to find," he said. "Within a few minutes, a small business can look at competitor PPC ads and find out what keywords the competitors are buying, what their ad messaging strategy is and review their landing pages for relevance and messaging." And lastly, not everyone needs to jump into the paid search pool. "Dave Rodnitzky came up and stated flat out that SEM may not be a good tactic for certain products, such as those with latent demand," Larson says. - Read the whole story... AdCenter Tweaks Keyword Research
AdCenter Community
Microsoft continues to improve its adCenter interface, announcing a number of changes this week, including more streamlined billing features and better keyword research tools. While the billing upgrades are nice and necessary--users can elect to pay their bill in full now, and delete inactive credit cards from their account--the keyword improvements are what Carolyn Miller's post is about.
"First of all, after you search for keywords on the Research tab, you now have the option of seeing the click-through rate (CTR) and average cost-per-click (CPC) for your list of suggested keywords," she says. You can also view the data in table format and export it to Excel. Microsoft has also made it much easier to add a chosen keyword collection to a new ad group. - Read the whole story... Customize Your 404 Pages
Official Google Webmaster Central Blog
Now Webmasters can customize the 404 messages site visitors receive when they arrive via a broken link, as Google has bundled a new 404 page widget into Webmaster Tools. Site owners can tweak the look and feel of the widget, and creating it is as simple as cutting and pasting the supplied JavaScript into the existing 404 page's source code.
The custom 404 widget will suggest a working URL that's most similar to the one the user had tried to access (i.e. fixing something simple like a forgotten backslash, or missing end parameters), as well as site search query suggestions and a search box, if applicable. Other options include a link to the parent subdirectory or a link to the sitemap.
The Webmaster Central team cautions that not all features will be available to all Webmasters from the onset, however. "This feature is currently experimental," says Sahala Swenson. "We might not provide corrections and suggestions for your site but we'll be working to improve the coverage." - Read the whole story... Optimizing For Local Search On Google & Yahoo
Search Engine Land
Making the most of the Google OneBox and Yahoo Shortcut listings is a must for local advertisers, as these enhanced results provide local searchers with enough at-a-glance info to help them make quick decisions about local businesses. Steve Espinosa offers tips for site and page optimization to help ensure that your company (or client) gets an effective OneBox or Shortcut listing.
Of course, you'll want to make sure that you include the business address and telephone number, preferably in hCard format (an HTML markup that directs the engines to specific snippets of info). And don't forget to optimize the title tags with your local listing in mind.
"This is equally, if not more important when it comes to the landing page URL of your local listing," Espinosa says. "This page will no doubt become a web reference for your local listing. What has become obvious in my research through thousands of local listings is that the title tag of the web reference plays a factor in how much weight or authority is placed in the reference." - Read the whole story... Searching For Error Codes With ErrorKey
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