Do you know about Google’s personalized results feature? Basically, if you’re logged into your Google account and have the personalized results feature turned on, when performing a search on Google, the results will be “personalized” based on your previous searching behavior.

Previously, this feature was an “opt-in” feature where you had to manually go and set this feature up. Now, Google is turning it into an “opt-out” feature.

Why this is something to take note of?

1. It influences your perception of search engine rankings. When this feature is on, actual search engine rankings become distorted due to your search history and previous search behavior.
2. This being “opt-out” means, more than likely, more individuals will be using this feature (whether knowing about it or not). With Google serving personalized results, it’ll be even more important for your website to show up from the onset so that a user’s personalized results doesn’t shut your website out of their results just because they’ve clicked on your competitor’s websites.

It’ll be important to know whether this feature is turned on in your Google account settings so you can accurately depict unbiased search engine result pages.

Hot on the heels of the announcement that Microsoft’s Bing & Yahoo will be teaming up to take on Google, StatCounter reports that Bing gained another 1% of the search market last month and is slowly but surely growing their share. In a preview of what’s to come with a joint Bing/Yahoo effort, their combined market share comes in at a little over 20%. Granted – it isn’t Google’s near 80%, but the opportunity to reach 20% of the search market with a Bing/Yahoo combined effort is worth paying attention to.

We’ve already had several clients start inquiring about testing a PPC campaign with Bing and I’m sure we’ll see more as we move into Q4 and start looking at 2010 budgets. Let us know if you want to look into a PPC campaign with Bing or any of the rest. We’d also like to hear about any recent experiences you may have had with Bing.

Finally – maybe Google will get a run for it’s money. I love Google as much as the next guy, but it’s been tough to watch the rest of the “competition” get left so far behind in the dust.

As you can read in this article on Search Engine Watch “It’s Official: Microsoft and Yahoo! Finally Strike a Search Deal” – the deal basically says that:

1. Bing will power Yahoo’s organic search results

I think this is a great move. Bing has made some pretty terrific strides in creating a better search engine. Spending another 100 mil on advertising it is making a dent as well. Bing isn’t perfect, but Yahoo organic results haven’t been all that great either.

2. Yahoo will handle the paid search

Again – this is a great move. If you manage paid search campaigns – you know there’s two specific problems with Microsoft/Bing.

1. AdCenter sucks to use. It just does. That’s not to say that Yahoo’s platform is great, but it is better than AdCenter and now they can focus on making it more usable.

2. Low search volume: WIth the exception of some verticals, the search volume is rarely there for clients to justify the time, energy & budget required to build & manage an additional campaign with Bing

So ideally, as a part of this deal we’ll just be able to opt-in or out of displaying ads on Bing with a simple check box. Just like you check a box to add the Google search partner network today.

This move will still be tricky and they’re both a long way from pulling it off. But hopefully by allowing each to focus on what they do best – maybe they’ll be able to actually compete and we’ll also have to start thinking about results from more than one search engine!

Greetings humans!  My name is Robots Dot Text.  You can call me robots.txt (ah hah!  Clever, eh?).  As you can see, I am mainly part text document (hence my bland-looking figure; apologies for not being part Word document or Photoshop image), part “dot” (it is hard finding suits that fit a dot-like figure) and part robot.  I am quite a character!

Think of me as a liaison between your website and a search engine robot/spider.  I am like your website’s personal butler: I greet web robots at the door and give them directions as to where they may proceed within your site.

Usually, when you humans have guests over, you do not necessarily like others to go into your human bedroom (unless you are into that thing… not that there is anything wrong with that!). In the same way – you can instruct me as to where you want me to keep the web robots from visiting on your site.  You do not want them to see a page for some reason?  I can make sure that happens.

First and foremost, you may be asking yourself, “Why do I need a personal butler for my website?”  Well, then I may offer a retort of: “Why do aquatic vertebrate animals need water?”  Hah hah hah hah!  Best practice-wise, every site owner needs a personal butler to greet web robots at the door and tell them to not spider specific pages.  Pages that you should typically tell me to not let robots access are your privacy policy, terms of use and contact form fillout pages.  I would think having your “money” pages show in search results would be much better than your boring privacy policy, yes?

These web robot guests are quite the fickle bunch.  They only seem to respond to a particular greeting.  Think of it as a secret “bro-shake” that we do before they know they should comply with my requests.  It goes like this:

User-agent: *

That is my universal greeting to all web robots.  I can also greet individual web robots if you would like me to.  Here is my personal greeting to my ‘brother-from-a-search-engine-mother’ Googlebot:

User-agent: Googlebot

If I were to say this, only my web robot friend Googlebot would respond to the directions that follow.

If you were to say, “Hey Robots Dot Text, I do not want any web robot guests visiting (and consequently indexing) my bedroom,” or a single-page on your site, I would then instruct the “User-agent: *” this way:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /upstairs/bedroom.html

Web robots are totally cool with me telling them where they can visit in your website and where they can not.  They are quite proper, like me, and will not look down on you if you only want them to see a section of your site.

Let us say, for example, that you do not wish for your web robot guests to see your bedroom… but thinking about it, you do not want them to visit the entire upstairs which includes your “man-cave” (hey, that is what you call it, not me!) and guest bathroom.  This is acceptable as well; I can tell your web robot guests not to visit (and subsequently index) upstairs, or an entire sub-directory of your site, I would then instruct the “User-agent: *” this way:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /upstairs/

If I tell your web robot guests this, they know that visiting upstairs (i.e. your ‘upstairs’ sub-directory) is most definitely not allowed!

I can also promptly tell all web robot guests who come over to turn away and come back at a better time.  This is best when you are performing any maintenance at your place (like a redesign).  Do not feel bad about turning away your web robot guests during this time; it is best for them to see your place when you have everything organized and looking sharp!  If you would like me to tell your web robot guests not to visit (and subsequently not index) all of your pages of your site, I would instruct the “User-agent: *” this way:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

Those are the basics of my butlerly-duty.  I am hoping that the word I created in the previous sentence makes sense for you since it is not a real word in the English language.  Entschuldigung! Hah hah hah hah!

Well, I am off to greet some more web robots.  I tell you: some of these guests come back almost daily!  It is tough work being me.  But it is quite rewarding!

Hitwise recently published a study on search query length that showed that longer search queries are getting more & more popular. In layman’s terms – search engine users are typing more words into the search box than they used to.

The major takeaway from the study is that people still primarily use two-word queries in search engines, but searches that contain four or more words are getting a lot more popular.

Impact on the SEO Process?

A colleague at one of our partners actually forwarded me the article and asked me how it would effect our approach to search term research. I replied:

We were actually talking about longer search query length at lunch today… yeah, our days are pretty exciting around here! We do our research real time – so [longer searches are] basically accounted for. By and large – this is good news. more sophisticated searchers = better site traffic and less frustration when trying to optimize & get ranked so we can focus on the really targeted stuff (the long tail of search)

Then, I turned to the team and said we needed to write a blog post on the subject! But rather than do it all myself, I thought it might also be interesting to get feedback from members of the Amplify Interactive team to see what their thoughts were on the article as well. Luckily, I don’t have to do all the thinking around here. Here’s what the team had to say – in all our poor-grammar and over-punctuated glory:

Search Query Length – Our Impressions

BEN

Personally – I think it’s obvious why people are typing in longer searches:
1. avoiding spam and off-topic results
2. auto-complete & search suggestions from search engines
3. higher degree of sophistication and level of experience using search engines (kind of the same as #1)

I also think that it’s extremely encouraging. It’s so much easier to target and get ranked for ‘long tail’ type search queries with SEO. if more people are searching this way, the search term research will support it as well.

CHRISTIAN

I think people are becoming more familiar with how to use search engines.  I think they’re starting to learn that specific search queries bring specific search results which are generally more favorable than any super-general searches.  For example, if I have a problem with my Mac, instead of typing in something like, “Mac startup problem,” I’ll simply copy and paste the exact error notification sentence into the search box and I’ll find specifics about that exact problem that other users have encountered.

The predictive search box tool that Google debuted the middle of last year has certainly helped searches “type-in” relevant long-tail searches easier.  I’m fairly certain this has contributed to the percentage increase of longer search queries.

SPENCER

My initial response to these data is that of “well duh”. I know that when I am search for something and I use 4+, I know what I am looking for, and the results will be targeted to my query.

Consumers get smarter and smarter every year, as they adapt to new and changing technology. They are becoming more and more comfortable with it and the rapid pace in which it develops. I believe the more comfortable they get, the more savvy and sophisticated their search queries will become. These data reflect at least the second part of my statement. Great stuff and good news for intelligent, strategic minded people in the industry, as poor guidance will inevitably lead to poor results quickly.

Moving forward, data like these should prompt Google to fix the “other unique queries” as it will help their advertiser create better ads and more relevant landing pages which leads to more sales, more competition for phrases, and most likely more revenue for Google. Marketers should take heed of findings like these and really dig into keyword and phrase research. So they can develop their landing pages and target their consumers more effectively during the entire buying cycle.

BLU

Users are becoming more savvy and are entering in longer tailed searches to find what they are looking for but I also think a huge reason why long tail searches are growing so rapidly is because of “search assist” features being used by the major search engines.

So – that’s what our impressions from the study were. What are yours?