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.

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.

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!

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?

Is Google Suggest something we, as search marketers, can use to the benefit of our clients?   Or is it a gimmick, purely for the lazy user searching the web?

While certainly not revolutionary or something that will definitely change a user’s searching habits, I think this new feature can be used by both search marketers and those searching the internet in a limited fashion to their benefit.

Now, first and foremost, don’t think this new Google Suggest feature is brand-new; Yahoo has had its Search Assist feature for quite some time.

Yahoo Search Assist (funny how three out of the five suggestions were how to turn it off!) functions just about the same as Google’s Suggest feature… except it doesn’t have the number of results for each keyword search.

In any case, how can this feature help the search marketer?

• I suppose it can be a nice launching point when beginning keyword research… though it shouldn’t at all be a replacement of the time-consuming, comprehensive & exhaustive process.
• Give you an indication of negative keywords to use on a keyword-by-keyword basis

Before we go on, this might be a good place to ask – who would actually use this?  My wife can attest to this – even though when I’m typing in an address in the URL bar, such as facebook.com or otherwise, even though I’ve typed “fac” and the history bar immediately below where I’m typing shows “http://www.facebook.com/”, I don’t ever seem to stop typing and click on the link.  Is this something I just do or do people stop and actually click on the history link?

Anyway, why might a regular internet user using Google or Yahoo to search for something use these features?  Well, I don’t see users typing in “Tropic Thunder” so they can see the Google Suggest options and click on what they were looking for – “Tropic Thunder reviews”.  I see them typing in “Tropic Thunder reviews” or “reviews for tropic thunder”.  However, if you’re looking up information on a vacation destination such as Croatia or otherwise, a user typing in “Croatia” and seeing what Google Suggests might be a valuable way to use the new feature.

So is Google Suggest or Yahoo Search Assist a revolutionary new feature and something that will change how users search from now and into the future?  No.  But it does have its upsides.. however limited they may be.

I like it – use your ‘g’ that’s already in your name & logo, very recognizable.

Went to login to Google Reader and get that favicon for that login screen as well… yet both services (Gmail & Google Reader), when logged in, keep their original favicons (Gmail has the red letter looking dealio & Google Reader has a custom Google RSS symbol).

Interesting… nothing like a new favicon from Google to get you perked up for a Friday morning!

We’ll be rolling out some changes to our crawling, indexing and ranking algorithms over the next few days, but expect the update will be completed soon. As you know, throughout this process you may see some ranking changes and page shuffling in the index.

If you see any changes in your Yahoo! rankings “over the next few days”, make a comment and let us know. Feel free to speculate – what do you think has changed & why? We’ll definitely be observing these changes as we make reports for our clients next week.

The big question of course is whether these changes will be given a prominent name like Google’s “Dewey”, and whether you might need to know this name when studying for the Yahoo! Ambassador Test.

Being the new guy here at Amplify, I have been slowly but surely working my way through the PPC certification process. Luckily, I’ve been gaining practical experience along the way. I was certified as a Google Qualified Professional in March and plunked down the $50 to take the Yahoo test last week. All went fine and I passed my certification – but I was surprised to see that I possibly got a question wrong about minimum bids! Here’s why:

Kristin received an update from Yahoo last month stating that sponsored search minimum bids are no longer fixed at $0.10, although content match minimum bids will stay at $0.10. Also stated was that higher ad quality may help advertisers receive lower minimum bids. From Yahoo:

“The amount set as your minimum bid on a keyword in Sponsored Search can vary depending on multiple factors, such as:
•The number of bidders and bid amounts in the particular keyword market
•The quality of your keywords, or their relevance to advertisers, as measured by the quality of the ads associated with them”

It would appear that Yahoo! will start using a metric like “Quality Score” that Google uses. Possibly/Probably this has to do with the fact they announced they will be running some of Google’s Adwords ads in their search results. My pure speculation is that this is the case. They have no choice but to use this metric if they want to run these ads in their searches, otherwise Google would be charging based on this metric for search but not returning based on this metric in Yahoo!.

Either way, when I took the Yahoo! Ambassador test later that week (aced it!), the information about this had not been updated as you can see in this screenshot. Somebody might want to tell them. Also, please refer to me as “The Ambassador” or “Ambassador Jules” if you see me out.

I’ve emailed the test administers about this, and when/if I hear back, I will make a follow-up post. Perhaps, I will get some bonus points and be a Super-Ambassador.

“More recently, we’ve seen evidence that Google has been implementing the ideas and concepts postulated in its patent application. That patent addresses “determining ad targeting information and/or ad creative information using past search queries.” Prior search behavior can often help tune the ads shown (and organic listings) more closely to user intent, particularly if the searcher has been using modifiers on a core concept. For search engine marketers, this really puts the nail in the coffin of predictable position. As personalization by geography spreads to the organic results and combines with prior search behavior, each SERP could end up being unique to the user: the Holy Grail of enhanced relevance.”

Right now, a search engine result page can look quite different for me typing in a query here in Portland, Oregon to someone typing in the same query in Loretto, Minnesota.  A geographical trigger in the query might have a map show up with vastly different results, some PPC advertisers could be using geo-targetting in their campaigns so different PPC results show… those are only a couple of specific differences that are quite noticable.  But as SERPS continue to be personalized, we’re not too far off on having wholly different result pages.