Team Up With Your Competitors

Team Up With Your Competitors

by: Terence Tan

Pay per click search engines are a great way to get targeted traffic quickly. The only problem is that as the search terms get more popular, the price of each click through rises. It is very sad to watch your top ranking fall off the first page into obscurity as the cost per click rises out of your budget.

One way to get around this is to team up with a few of the กcompetitorsก you find bidding on the same term. The idea is that if 10 people agree to cooperate to create a new page listing their ten web sites prominently, sort of like another search results page (which you can call a directory of top 10 sites in your topic), you can pool your resources and pay to get this page listed as the top search result for your desired keyword.

This will price the top ranking spot out of the budget of other bidders for the keyword and ensure a top ranking for this page. Provided you make the description of the new page interesting, most surfers will definitely click on the top ranked listings in each search and see all ten of your links.

So while you have to share the top ranking with 9 other webmasters, you are assured that you won’t be squeezed of the top search results page by the thousands of other people trying to bid for the same keyword.

Cooperate with some competitors for an unfair advantage over the rest.

About The Author

Terence Tan is the founder of HugeAffiliates.com, a website dedicated towards the development of Multi Level Affiliate Programs as an alternative system of business. Visit http://hugeaffiliates.com to learn how MLAPs can multiply your affiliate referral commissions.

(Please feel free to to freely reproduce and distribute this article, so long as it is reproduced in full, including the hyperlinks, and no modification is made).

[email protected]

This article was posted on October 12, 2003

by Terence Tan

How To Appear In Googleกs Local Search Results

How To Appear In Googleกs Local Search Results

by: Lea de Groot

Google doesn’t only exist at http://google.com/ Google also has local versions, such as http://google.ca/, http://google.com.au/ and http://google.co.uk/. Each of these has a selection below the query entry field that allows the user to select either กsearch the webก or กsearch pages from ก. If the visitor selects กsearch pages from ก they will only see results which Google judges as being local to the country in question.

Many webmasters are unaware of what is required to be listed as being กfromก their own country. This article discusses what you need to know to have your site appear in a Google Local search results page.

When Google tries to determine whether your site is appropriate for each of these countryspecific search results, it will firstly examine the TLD of your domain name. For example if you have a site called mysite.co.in, then you will appear when a searcher queries at google.co.in for Indian results.

If you don’t pass this test, Google will give you a second chance and look at the physical location of where your site is hosted. For example, a site hosted in Canada will appear to be a Canadian site to Google and will appear in the results set for a query on google.ca for Canadian pages. (Its actually a little more complicated than that; it depends on the location of the company that owns the IP address used for hosting your site. But 90% of the time the location matches the ownership, so the above description is an adequate approximation.)

So, when I am asked the question กwhy doesn’t my site appear in the google results for my country?ก I answer by first asking if the domain name has a local TLD and then if they are hosted in their country.

If the answer to both is กnoก then I explain they need to either buy a local domain name or move their hosting and then (after a delay while Google กnoticesก) they will appear in the desired result set.

Note that the major exception to this is the US while Google has the .us domain name, it diverts to the general google.com site, so there is no way for US residents to use Google to find local sites.

Getting your website to appear in the local search results as well as the general Google results isn’t hard, but you do have to know what you are doing.

About The Author

Copyright Lea de Groot

Lea de Groot is CEO of Elysian Systems (http://elysiansystems.com/), a leading Australian Search Engine Optimisation & Web Development company based in Brisbane.

A shorter form of this article originally appeared in กWebTalk: Putting Businesses on the Internetก, a newsletter for companies who wish to use their website more effectively (http://elysiansystems.com/newsletter/).

This article was posted on March 16

by Lea de Groot

Alert Marketing Get Google Search Results By Em

Alert Marketing Get Google Search Results By Email

by: Jakob Jelling

Sometimes our jobs as marketers means we need to look beyond the obvious. Google, for example, offers their Google Alerts service. At first glance, this may seem most useful to companies who want to track certain searches within their industry, or to hobbyists who want to stay on top of changes in their topics of interest.

But Internet marketers can also use Google Alerts to help keep track of whatกs going on around the net, and even to keep tabs on their direct competition for that matter. Google Alerts, which are email notifications, can be created based on the top 10 Google news stories, but more helpful to marketers is the possibility of creating alerts for the top 20 Google web search results.

By setting up alerts for your competitorกs company, web site, brand, or product name, you can monitor search results for changes. Some results may indicate a new product launch, or perhaps a publicity campaign, and you will be able to make appropriate adjustments in your own business.

If you want to market an affiliate product through SEO, you can monitor the top 20 results for a search on that product. You will know if and when your site breaks into the top 20 results, and can watch it as it hopefully continues climbing to that first position.

There are other uses as well. SEO firms can monitor clientsก results. Niche marketers can easily monitor both industry news and niche search results. You can even monitor search results for your best keywords and your own high ranking pages.

Google Alerts, though free, can provide valuable marketing intelligence to online entrepreneurs who take advantage of it.

By Jakob Jelling

http://www.sitetube.com

About The Author

Jakob Jelling is the founder of http://www.sitetube.com. Visit his website for the latest on planning, building, promoting and maintaining websites.

This article was posted on November 08, 2004

by Jakob Jelling

Local Search on Cell Phones will Derail Yellow Pag

Local Search on Cell Phones will Derail Yellow Page Directory Usage

by: Dr. Lynella Grant

Local Businesses have Been Slow to Capitalize on Search Engine Notice

Yellow Page directory usage has been falling for years. But most merchants whoกve always relied on their directory listing for new business have not taken the necessary steps to promote themselves online as well.

Local Search by search engines makes the Internet a vital component of more and more retail sales. Buyers can find convenient sources of products or services (the timehonored role of the Yellow Pages) with queries that include a geographic element.

They narrow their search by adding a specific city, zip code, region (Pikeกs Peak), county, etc. Only nearby businesses appear in the results. Suddenly, even the smallest business (without a website) has a chance of being easily found online.

The Publicกs Buying Habits Have Changed

Over 25% of all searchengine queries are for Local Search results; and that percentage is growing quickly. Last year, both Google and Yahoo committed to expanding the value of Local Search results they deliver. People want them and are driving the trend. Small businesses that don’t get aboard risk being left behind (and unfound).

Increasingly, customers go online first to find product information and sourceseven if they intend to spend their money locally. Instead of opening the fat Yellow Page directory (which is months out of date, since itกs only updated once a year), they ขlet their fingers do the walkingข online.

That could be Internet Yellow Pages (IYP), a search engine query such as Google or Yahoo, or visiting a specialized online directory. There are many demographic reasons why people no longer make the Yellow Pages the first step in their buying process. They still want to research their options, but are often looking for different information than Yellow Page ads provide.

Get Local Search Results on your Cell Phone

Add convenience to the search, since Google brought out Local Mobile Search in March. Google Local lets callers find everything from restaurants to retail outlets using their mobile phone. This option is available in most American cities. People can access the mobile web browser on any mobile phone or device that supports XHTML (WAP 2.0).

Visualize yourself driving down the street, and you decide youกd like sushi. You park and enter ขyour townข plus ขsushiข into a Google search on your cell phone. Within seconds you know your choices. You can even get driving directions, maps and ขclick to call,ข if you have a question.

Now, thatกs miles ahead of finding a payphone and digging through the directory, assuming there is one.

Conduct a Local Search from your Cell Phone

Type http://mobile.google.com/local

Enter your local search query in the กWhatก box

Enter your location in the กWhereก box

Select and hit the กGoogle Searchก button

Scroll through your search results

Locate a businessกs exact location

Get driving directions to your desired location

Place a call directly to a listed business

Callers can also get Local Search results by going to the Google home page on the phoneกs web browser

Business Owners Must get Listed so theyกll Appear in Search Results

Given the widespread use of cell phones, Googleกs new feature will create an immediate impact. People on the go (and who isn’t, anymore?) will have less reason than ever to look in the printed Yellow Page directory.

What to do? YellowPageSage.com provides stepbystep howto, so your business gets found when suitable buyers are looking. Make life easier for yourself and customers relying on their cell phones to decide where they should spend their money.

Itกs time to develop your marketing strategy beyond what the Yellow Pages can deliver. Be sure your operation is easy for people to find, whether they use a print directory or the Internet. Get your share of the free exposure that Mobile Local Search will be able to send your way.

About The Author

Dr. Lynella Grant Author, Yellow Page Smarts: Make more money from your directory ad in tandem with your website http://www.yellowpagesage.com Smarter ways to attract more YP customers. Local Search resources Off the Page Press (719) 3959450

[email protected]

This article was posted on April 22

by Dr. Lynella Grant

Why Google So Behaved..!

Why Google So Behaved..!

by: Partha Bhattacharya

The monthold brouhaha over Googleกs กchanged algorithmก, the กFlorida Updateก, hasn’t yet ebbed. With the dawn of new year, the spectre of many ‘renownedก websites loosing business looms large. Indeed, for many, Google was the lifeline. And now that comfort is gone. In the ensuing melee, many opinions are emerging. Sane advice like กnot clubbing all apples in one basketก are pouring in thick and fast.

The moot point however remains. As to why Google needed to change. In this article weกll attempt some answers.

Google, the blockbuster

There isn’t a dispute here. Founded by two Stanford techies, Sergey Brin and Larry Page some five years back, Google has travelled a long distance in a short time. Maintaining a scorching climb, unmatched in search engine industry, Google is now the de facto king among all its brethrens. That, it would be so, was pointed out by Danny Sullivan of SearchEngineWatch.Com over 5 months back (refer Dannyกs articles here [http://searchenginewatch.com/reports/article.php/2156431] and here [http://searchenginewatch.com/reports/article.php/2156441]). Echoing similar view, Dr.Ralph Wilson in this article [http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt9/se_dominance.htm] notes that ก…Google is the US search engine to focus on.ก.

Loosing relevance

Viewers expect ‘relevantก results in searches. Of late though, Google has been failing. Why so? Because, optimization experts with bits of tweaking here and there could achieve top search results, ‘relevant contentก be damned. In this article [http://www.ezypost.com/website_design_articles/seo_usability.htm], Scottie Clairborne of RightClickWebs.Com speaks about frustration of not getting relevant search results. And in this article [http://www.highrankings.com/issue077.htm#seo], Jill Whalen of HighRankings.Com almost pleads with Google to recognize relevancy of sites.

Googleกs advantage

Ever wondered why Google mentions time it took to bring you search results! A subtle reminder that your time is important. Google takes pride in dare I say กflauntingก its speediness. And why not! The fact is Googleกs infrastructure is spread far and wide all over globe. So, no matter where you search from, you get almost instant result.

Googleกs other advantage is its database. Crawling millions of webpages every single day, Googlebot has helped build a mammoth storage of data. Others charged for กprizedก entry into their databases, but couldn’t make headway. Google didn’t charge and is now the king.

The dilemma

With so much going for Google, why would it bother! Make no mistake, Googleกs earnings hasn’t affected. It earns handsomely from paid advertisements, popularly known as AdWords. The question then, why Google would bother!

It would, for it knows competition is sharpening knives to strike back. Moreover, an IPO for an estimated $15 billion reportedly on anvil (Ref: Article *How good is Google?*, The Economist, Nov 1, 2003), Google needs more than ever to clean up its stable [Bloomberg.com in its Jan 5 dispatch confirms that Google has appointed Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs to manage its IPO]. Bringing relevance in search results is therefore a priority. For, who else, but Google knows well that for a vast majority of about 200 million searches a day on its search engine, top search results are what that matter.

The picture ahead

Relevance of website content and that with incoming links (oh yes, กgoodก incoming links assume significance like never before) will decide ranking in Googleกs results. Looking farther, perhaps the day is not far when niche search engines dealing exclusively in particular topics will gain prominence.

Readers may like to read related articles by Atul Gupta of SEORank.Com here [http://www.seorank.com/googlefloridaupdate.htm] and here [http://www.seorank.com/analysisofhilltopalgorithm.htm].

About The Author

Copyright © 2004, Partha Bhattacharya.

Partha Bhattacharya is the author of the ebook, Sure Web Success with 1001+ Top Web Promote Links [http://www.ezypost.com/eb/top_web_promote_links.htm], that bridges gap between possibility and certainty of your web success. Parthaกs website, EzyPost [http://www.ezypost.com/web_templates/website_templates_1plus/1plus_1.htm], also offers nicelydesigned ready templates for websites.

[email protected]

This article was posted on January 08, 2004

by Partha Bhattacharya

Do the Search Engines Know Your Website?

Do the Search Engines Know Your Website?

by: Chet Childers

Are you considering a search engine promotion campaign to improve your websiteกs search engine visibility? To aid in your decision, have you checked your website to determine its search engine awareness?

Perhaps you may be thinking why do I need to check my website? Do you remember going to the doctor for an illness? Hopefully, your doctor performed some tests to diagnose your illness before prescribing your medication. If not, you may have gotten some very undesirable results.

In the case of your website, you need to diagnose the patient and determine the extent of your websiteกs search engine visibility. Based on your findings, you can decide to focus on standard search results or paid search results.

Your checks should be done in the Google and Yahoo search engines since they are the major search engines in todayกs marketplace. As an option, you should consider MSN since they have recently released their search engine. It is only a matter of time before they are considered a player, if not already.

Your first check determines if your website is indexed in Google or Yahoo. Think about the card catalog in your library. Each book has a card in the card catalog signifying the indexing of the book in the library. In this exercise youกll check if your website has a กcardก in the Google or Yahoo card catalog.

The first exercise is opening your web browser to the Google www.google.com, Yahoo www.yahoo.com or MSN www.msn.com website. Enter your websiteกs URL, www.yourdomainname.com, in the search box and review the search results. Your websiteกs domain name or URL should appear in the search results if your site is indexed.

If just the domain name or URL is listed, the website has been indexed but not crawled by the search engine spider. A domain name and several lines of descriptive text indicate the website has been crawled by the search engine spider to determine the websiteกs content. Also, look for the link กCached Pageก or a similar phrase. This is another indication the website has been crawled for content by the search engine.

Now, you should know if your website is indexed and has a กcardก in the search engine card catalog. Your second check evaluates the extent of your websiteกs indexing by determining which website pages are indexed by the respective search engine.

The second exercise is opening your web browser to the Google, Yahoo or MSN website. Enter the กsiteก command and your websiteกs URL in the search box in the format กsite:www.yourdomainname.comก (quotation marks not required) and review the search results. All of your websiteกs pages indexed by the queried search engine should be listed. At the top of the search results screen look for ‘results X Y of about Z from www.yourdomainname.comก or a similar phrase. The value for Z indicates the total number of pages indexed by the queried search engine for your website.

In addition, you might see the comment ‘repeat the search with the omitted results includedก in the results listing. Since the search engine does not always show the entire listing, you can click the link and view the complete list of your websiteกs indexed pages.

Your third check determines the number of inbound links from other websites to your website. The number of inbound links is very important in the ranking algorithms of many of the search engines. The commands for this exercise are slightly different between the search engines. Weกll review the commands for the three major search engines. The other search engines have similar commands.

Google & MSN

Open your web browser to the Google or MSN website. Enter the กlinkก command and your websiteกs URL in the search box in the format กlink: www.yourdomainname.comก (quotation marks not required) and review the search results.

All the external website pages linked to your website and indexed by the queried search engine should be listed. At the top of the search results screen look for ‘results X Y of Z linking to www.yourdomainname.comก or a similar phrase. The value for Z indicates the total number of externally linked pages to your website.

Yahoo

Open your web browser and go to the Yahoo website. Enter the กlinkdomainก and กsiteก command and your websiteกs URL in the search box in the format กlinkdomain:www.yourdomainname.com site:www.yourdomainname.comก (quotation marks not required). The กsiteก command is used exclude the internally linked website pages from the results.

Review the search results. All the external website pages linked to your website and indexed by Yahoo should be listed. At the top right of the search results screen look for ‘results X Y of Z linking to www.yourdomainname.com.ก The value for Z indicates the total number of externally linked pages to your website.

Do not be alarmed if the displayed results from Yahoo and MSN are significantly different from Google. Recently, Google began displaying limited or no results from the กlinkก command. The general conclusion from the search engine optimization community was that Google felt disclosing the link information might possibly share too much information regarding their ranking algorithm and its impact on a specific website.

From these three simple checks you should have determined if the search engines know the existence of your website and be prepared to select the proper search engine promotion campaign. A payperclick search engine campaign would be a good choice if your websiteกs search engine visibility is limited and the time deadline to achieve your desired search engine rankings is short. If the time to achieve the desired search engine rankings is not critical to your websiteกs marketing plans, then a search engine optimization campaign to improve the standard search results could be a logical decision.

About The Author

Chet Childers is a successful Internet marketer utilizing both payperclick marketing and search engine optimization to increase website visibility and profitability. Click http://www.ThePayPerClickMarketer.com and enroll in our ecourse, กDiscover Tips and Secrets for PayPerClick Marketing Success,ก or visit http://www.ChetChilders.com.

[email protected]

This article was posted on March 01

by Chet Childers

Your Own Personal Online Shopper

Your Own Personal Online Shopper

by: Jim Edwards

Imagine you find yourself in the market to buy a new digital camera and, before you part with your money, you want to comparison shop for the best price online.

If you do a search for กdigital cameraก on Google.com, the Webกs top search engine, youกll get back over 7 million page results.

Refine your search to a specific model, such as the HP Photosmart 935, and you get back 137,000 page results. Now do a search on BestBuy.com, CircuitCity.com, and Amazon.com and youกll only find it listed one time, and on that site it costs $60 more than I paid for it at Target.

Even though the web makes it easy to search out the products we want to buy, sometimes that mountain of information makes it almost impossible to find the best deal.

To solve this problem there are กpersonal online shoppersก which help you seek, find, and comparison shop multiple offers for just about any product you want to buy, online or offline.

An online personal shoppertype service enables you to log on to a single site, enter the product details you want to search, and then have the website give you back a list of prices and places where you can purchase the item.

The personal shopping assistant sites that rate the best don’t accept commissions for the sale of items through their services because getting paid based on what the customer buys would eliminate unbiased product comparisons.

The best services make their money by selling targeted advertising to merchants and only displaying products in their search results based on price and features.

~ MySimon.com ~

MySimon.com ranks as one of the oldest personal shopping assistants on the Internet.

Highlights of the service include an extensive homepage directory to help you choose the correct product category to search and a database of millions of products.

On the negative, MySimon.com does manipulate their merchant listings pages based on how much money the advertiser pays to show up in the results.

~ PriceScan.com ~

PriceScan.com does not accept money from advertisers to manipulate their search results, though they will show targeted advertising on the search results pages.

A very nice feature on this site involves the ability to enter features you want in a particular item (such as a computer) and then search all makes, models, and manufacturers matching those features.

Youกll find this especially valuable when comparing things like computers, which often carry many different variables and configurations.

~ Froogle.com ~

Operated by Internet giant, Google.com, Froogle.com allows you to search for specific items you want to buy and then sort them by price.

You can also specify a price range you’re willing to pay for the item and Froogle will only search for and display those items that fall within the range.

Froogle also clearly draws a line (literally) between unbiased search results on the left side of the page and advertisers on the right.

In the testing for this article, Froogle consistently returned the highest quantity and most relevant search results for specific product names entered.

About The Author

Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and the coauthor of an amazing new ebook that will teach you how to use fr^e articles to quickly drive thousands of targeted visitors to your website or affiliate links…

Need MORE TRAFFIC to your website or affiliate links? ‘turn Words Into Trafficก reveals the secrets for driving Thousands of NEW visitors to your website or affiliate links… without spending a dime on advertising! Click Here> http://www.turnwordsintotraffic.com

This article was posted on September 09, 2004

by Jim Edwards

Effective Web Search with Google’s ขMy Search Hist

Effective Web Search with Google’s ขMy Search Historyข Tool

by: Nowshade Kabir

You were looking for certain information on the web. After several attempts using different words and phrases with your favorite search engine, you finally have found the required information but, as it happens, forgot to bookmark the pages. In a few days when you needed to check out the same pages again, to your utter dismay, you realized that you couldn’t recall how you searched out those pages. Sounds familiar? If you are like me, you probably face this problem quite frequently! Finding the right page link you are seeking from the browser’s history feature, out of hundreds of pages that you have visited recently, is not easy either! More over, browser’s history page remembers where you have been as you browse the web for a limited time only. Things may be a little easier if you use Google Desktop search or similar tools from other search engines, but again if you don’t always use the same computer, even this might not be of much help.

My Search History – a new Google feature

However, thanks to new ขMy Search Historyข feature from Google, now you are able to overcome this difficulty. The service, which is still at beta stage and released just recently, provides complete search history of all the past searches made through Google once you install it. The search histories are stored on Google’s servers, this enables you to access search histories from any computer. From your search history page you are able to make a query on the search history itself. On the history page at the right side you can see the search words or phrases used for making a query, time of the query made, pages visited related to the query and the page link. At the left side, there is a calendar to check out the search made by you on an earlier date. It also shows how many searches you have done on a certain day and how intense your search activity was on each day. A neat feature, which will help you get rid of the problem mentioned in the beginning of the article, will show you relevant search results from your ขMy History Pagesข along with the new search results while you make a query. ขThis feature of Google Web search enables you to find information you thought you lostก, Google claims on its site.

How to install?

In order to add this feature go to the กMy Search Historyก link on your Google home page and search results pages, by clicking the My Search History link on Google Labs, or by going directly to http://www.google.com/searchhistory. If you ever registered with any of Google’s services, i.e. Gmail, Newsgroups, Froogle, etc. you may use same user name and password to install this feature. If you don’t have account with Google as yet, don’t worry unlike Gmail account you can go to the following page https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount and create a new account. Once you created an account, you can turn on ขMy Search Historyข, which will add the link to your Google home page and search results pages.

Is this feature something new?

This is actually not a new feature on the Internet. This service of Google has striking similarity to the one already existed on Meta Search tool www.a9.com. Other search engines like www.askjeeves.com and little know www.findory.com also have some thing similar incorporated to their systems. A9 also has a feature called ขDiscoverข, which along with your search results recommends sites relevant to the query. The My Yahoo Search test released in October also enables users to save, share and post notes on their own search results.

Privacy issues

There is always a reason to be concerned when your Internet activities are tracked and kept by any company. However, Google has taken several steps so that a user can have total control on how he exploits this service. First, you have to log on in order to use this feature. Your log in status is visible all the time on the Google home page. If you can see your account name on top right side of the page, this means you are signed in. If you don’t want certain searches to be tracked by Google, you have two choices. Either you can suspend the service for a while by clicking on the ขpauseข button or just log off from the service. You can also erase search results from history page by clicking on ขRemoveข link. Combination of all these mechanisms will allow you to keep your searches private and protected. However, if you are overly concerned about privacy, you better refrain from using this feature.

Benefits

Most of Google’s features carry great values for users. The personalization of search processes using ขMy Search Historyข allows you to get a better search experience. It’s a significant leap towards creating an ideal search system. The benefits of this feature for Google are also enormous! Almost all of Google’s revenue comes from search ads. Naturally, Google’s ability to provide more refined search results to users will allow vendors better targeting their market niche. They would spend substantially more if they could show ads to users based on their past search history. But, Google claims that at this moment it is not planning to post any ads on your history pages.

No doubt, this is an interface that many of us have been waiting for quite a while. However, its impact on the future of search engines remains to be seen!

About The Author

Nowshade Kabir, is the founder, primary developer and present CEO of Rusbiz.com – a Global B2B Exchange with solutions to create ecatalog, Web store, business process management and other features to run a business online. You can read various articles written by Nowshade Kabir at http://ezine.rusbiz.com.

This article was posted on April 26

by Nowshade Kabir

A Way for Search Engines to Improve

A Way for Search Engines to Improve

by: Richard Zwicky

Wouldn’t it be nice if the search engines could comprehend our impressions of search results and adjust their databases accordingly? Properly optimized web pages would show up well in contextual searches and be rewarded with favorable reviews and listings. Pages which were spam or which had content that did not properly match the query would get negative responses and be pushed down in the search results.

Well, this reality is much closer than you might think.

To date, most webmasters and search engine marketers have ignored or overlooked the importance of traffic as part of a search engine algorithm, and thus, not taken it into consideration as part of their search engine optimization strategy. However, that might soon change as search engines explore new methods to improve their search result offerings. Teoma and Alexa already employ traffic as a factor in the presentation of their search results. Teoma incorporated the technology used by Direct Hit, the first engine to use click through tracking and stickiness measurement as part of their ranking algorithm. More about Alexa below.

How can Traffic be a Factor?

Click popularity sorting algorithms track how many users click on a link and stickiness measurement calculates how long they stay at a website. Properly used and combined, this data can make it possible for users, via passive feedback, to help search engines organize and present relevant search results.

Click popularity is calculated by measuring the number of clicks each web site receives from a search engineกs results page. The theory is that the more often the search result is clicked, the more popular the web site must be. For many engines the click through calculation ends there. But for the search engines that have enabled toolbars, the possibilities are enormous.

Stickiness measurement is a really great idea in theory, the premise being that a user will click the first result, and either spend time reading a relevant web page, or will click on the back button, and look at the next result. The longer a user spends on each page, the more relevant it must be. This measurement does go a long way to fixing the problem with กspoofingก click popularity results. A great example of a search engine that uses this type of data in their algorithms is Alexa.

Alexaกs algorithm is different from the other search engines. Their click popularity algorithm collects traffic pattern data from their own site, partner sites, and also from their own toolbar. Alexa combines three distinct concepts: link popularity, click popularity and click depth. Its directory ranks related links based on popularity, so if your web site is popular, your site will be well placed in Alexa.

The Alexa toolbar doesn’t just allow searches, it also reports on peopleกs Internet navigation patterns. It records where people who use the Alexa toolbar go. For example, their technology is able to build a profile of which web sites are popular in the context of which search topic, and display the results sorted according to overall popularity on the Internet.

For example a user clicks a link to a กfinancial plannerก, but the web site content is an กonline casinoก. They curse for a moment, sigh, and click back to get back to the search results, and look at the next result; the web site gets a low score. The next result is on topic, and they read 4 or 5 pages of content. This pattern is clearly identifiable and used by Alexa to help them sort results by popularity. The theory is that the more page views a web page has, the more useful a resource it must be. For example, follow this link today

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?q=&url=http://www.metamend.com/

look at the traffic details chart, and then click the กGo to site nowก button. Repeat the procedure again tomorrow and you should see a spike in user traffic. This shows how Alexa ranks a web site for a single day.

What Can I Do To Score Higher With Click Popularity Algorithms?

Since the scores that generate search engine rankings are based on numerous factors, thereกs no magic formula to improve your siteกs placement. Itกs a combination of things. Optimizing your content, structure and meta tags, and increasing keyword density won’t directly change how your site performs in clicktracking systems, but optimizing them will help your web siteกs stickiness measurement by ensuring that the content is relevant to the search query. This relevance will help it move up the rankings and thus improve its click popularity score.

Search Engines Can Use the Click Through Strategy to Improve Results

Search engines need to keep an eye to new technologies and innovative techniques to improve the quality of their search results. Their business model is based on providing highly relevant results to a query quickly and efficiently. If they deliver inaccurate results too often, searchers will go elsewhere to find a more reliable information resource. The proper and carefully balanced application of usage data, such as that collected by Alexa, combined with a comprehensive ranking algorithm could be employed to improve the quality of search results for web searchers.

Such a ranking formula would certainly cause some waves within the search engine community and with good reason. It would turn existing search engine results on their head by demonstrating that search results need not be passive. Public feedback to previous search results could be factored into improving future search results.

Is any search engine employing such a ranking formula? The answer is yes. Exactseek recently announced it had implemented such a system, making it the first search engine to integrate direct customer feedback into its results. Exactseek still places an emphasis on content and quality of optimization, so a well optimized web site, which meets their guidelines will perform well. What this customer feedback system will do is validate the entire process, automatically letting the search engine know how well received a search result is. Popular results will get extended views, whereas unpopular results will be pushed down in ranking.

Exactseek has recently entered into a variety of technology alliances, including the creation of an Exactseek Meta Tag awarded solely to web sites that meet their quality of optimization standards. Cumulatively, their alliances combine to dramatically improve their search results.

ExactSeekกs innovative approach to ranking search results could be the beginning of a trend among search engines to incorporate traffic data into their ranking algorithms. The searching public will likely have the last word, but webmasters and search engine marketers should take notice that the winds of change are once again blowing on the search engine playing field.

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About The Author

Richard Zwicky is a founder and the CEO of Metamend Software, a Victoria, B.C. based firm whose cutting edge Search Engine Optimization software has been recognized around the world as a leader in its field. Employing a staff of 10, the firmกs business comes from around the world, with clients from every continent. Most recently the company was recognized for their geolocational, or GIS technology, which correlates online businesses with their physical locations, as well as their cutting edge advances in contextual search algorithms.

[email protected]

This article was posted on November 04, 2003

by Richard Zwicky