If you counted on Microsoft’s “Live Search” search engine to drive online conversions to your website, you’re in for a rude awakening.

Why?  Microsoft launched Bing, their new search engine a little over a week ago - they’re actually calling it a decision engine, as Aaron covered recently.

The decision factor is certainly something that Microsoft thinks will give them a leg up on Google and Yahoo (more so Google).  Some of the usability features in the new Bing search engine which help the user make a decision are:

• Related keyword search results, along w/ (only) the Top 5 results of the user’s original query.  This doesn’t happen for every query used, but Bing does attempt to “guess” what you’re searching for and expands on the search w/ 3 search results for approx. 5 related queries.
• Bing utilizes AJAX scripting to show a “preview” pane for most search results.

The Bing interface utilizes AJAX scripting to showcase the website previews and was discussed by Scott Grizzle of NeXplore Corporation, a developer of web tools and interactive advertising products:

“Bing is purported to have some pretty interesting features that make search more efficient such as a website preview pane, video preview, and helpful groupings of search-results by category,” said Scott Grizzle, chief marketing officer for NeXplore Corporation. Continue reading in AJAX World Magazine (6/1/09)

Sample screenshot of Bing preview pane (click image to view larger size):

Sample preview pane in Bing search results

Ok, so Bing likes to provide a variety of useful results and a preview… How does that affect you?

Read more »

There’s been some controversy in SEO land this week. Matt Cutts, Google’s mouthpiece for linking policies, stated publicly that websites heavily involved with paid links are considered high risk. Many of the SEO pros in the blogosphere took offense to this and feel that Google is profiling search engine optimized websites unfairly.

The issue of contention revolves around paid links – buying or selling links for money. Google often discredits these links because it does not see them as valuable or quality based. Anyone that has the money can buy links to their site, in the hopes that it will boost their rankings in Google searches. Google doesn’t want this, however, because this type of linking is not based on quality and occasionally pushes the envelope of black hat.

The paid linking penalty would probably be somewhat less offensive to SEO professionals if Google itself didn’t use paid linking strategies. Google does indeed use money and giveaways, such as free Android phones to bloggers, in an attempt to gather links and positive publicity.

They both have a point. Most of the paid link sites out there are shady in some way – their sites do not boast the highest content quality available. On the other side of the coin, Google is being hypocritical by punishing quality websites for using free product giveaways and surveys to get links when they do the same thing.

Google could probably do well to revisit how exactly it determines paid links. If a site is doing a free product giveaway and collecting reviews in the form of links or comments, that isn’t black hat SEO, that’s just traditional marketing. Relaxing the barriers slightly could help.

My solution to the problem is to stay classy. Unlike some of my more excitable blogging counterparts, I do not believe that Google is saying that any and all SEO efforts will be penalized. SEO in itself is not a dishonest activity. SEO is a way of improving your website to be more relevant and consumer friendly. As long as SEO companies stay focused on the client and stay away from questionable activities such as buying links from link farms, I don’t see why there should be a problem. Links collected to or from your website should be from credible sources, regardless of what Google is saying or doing.

-Rachel

Yahoo is currently working on a new application that may automate SEO for the search engine. A patent was filed in January explaining the new system for automated SEO. This system would analyze search terms queried by users and whittle searches down to popular keyword sets that are long-tailed and more specific. The search engine would then automatically update the Meta titles, tags and headings of a webpage to reflect a more user-relevant keyword set. 

What does this mean for SEO companies and website managers? Basically, the keyword focus could shift to optimizing for a set of highly specific keywords that would be searched for on a second or third query if the more general attempts were unsuccessful. So, instead of optimizing for “new shoes”, websites will be more successful optimizing for “new blue basketball shoes”.  

This new search engine technology will allow the engines to recognize the actual content of a webpage and compare it to user browsing habits. Hopefully, this will improve search results, benefiting both the users and the websites/SEO companies trying to get their sites to rank for the relevant terms. 

For more information on the new Yahoo automated SEO technology, check out some of these other blogs:

• SEO by the Sea
• SEOtops
• SearchEngineWatch.com

2008 was a great year for SEO! More and more businesses showed an interest in search engine optimization and sought out specialists to help them fulfill their online marketing goals. Social linking, blogging, and other forms of SEO garnered more publicity and respect as legitimate ways to grow internet business.

Business owners in every industry worried as the economy declined and moved into a recession. I know my company, MorePro Marketing Inc., was concerned about the effect that the recession would have on our ability to land new clients interested in our SEO services. Yet despite the slowing economy, MorePro grew and expanded in 2008 and business was still going strong at the end of the year.

Smart businesses, when threatened, increase marketing and publicity expenditures and know how to adapt to a shifting market. Many of our clients did just that and turned to search engine optimization and PPC as ways to increase website traffic and boost online sales. These companies saw success even when many other businesses were going under.

Here’s hoping that 2009 brings SEO companies like us, our clients and everyone else continued success and prosperity! Hopefully the buzz around internet marketing and online business will continue to evolve into a new tech-savvy market all its own.

Happy New Year!

-Rachel

There is currently a fierce competition underway between Google, Facebook and Myspace for the best full-service social networking hub. Google, as always, is striving to dominate user services from email, chatting, blogging and now social networking. Facebook and Myspace have also been competing to become the point of origin for all user activities.

What this means is that Google, Myspace and Facebook all want to be the point of origin from which you visit and view other sites. Facebook has recently upped the competition by announcing a new and improved Facebook Connect application. Facebook tried to release Facebook Connect about a year ago, but there were problems with maintaining security and user privacy.

Facebook Connect will partner with sites including, but not limited to, Twitter, Hulu and Digg. Once users log on to Facebook, they will be able to coordinate many of their favorite sites in one location. This will keep people logged onto Facebook for hours at a time and allows Facebook to collect valuable information about user browsing habits. This information will allow for more targeted ads, marketing and future services that will be better received by the user.

Google and Myspace are still in the running, however, with Google’s newly released Friend Connect program. It functions much in the same way as Facebook Connect (notice a similarity?), and although Facebook was first to come out with the idea, Google’s gargantuan web presence may give it an upper hand in the competition.

My money is on Facebook. Facebook has experienced steadily increasing user numbers for years and is better known as a social networking platform. Also, with Facebook’s third-party applications that users can now add to their profiles, they have already become a much more convenient way to stay current on sites such as Digg, Twitter or blog feeds like PostSecret. Third-party applications were an instant success and now almost every respectable website has a Facebook application that allows Facebook users to receive updates in their newsfeed. Facebook Connect is just one more step in the right direction.

–Rachel

Everyone knows that texting while driving is dangerous. New from Google Labs is a way to essentially type without taking your eyes off the road. Expected to roll out later today, this app, originally for the iPhone could eventually expand to other phones or mobile devices.This is not Google’s first crack at voice recognition software and appears to be a more refined version of Google 411 (GOOG-411). However, instead of providing only local results for specific businesses in your area, you can use the voice recognition software to search for everything from sports scores to the gallons of water that flow over Niagara Falls every day.

The software will translate your voice into a data file which is then sent to the Google servers. Depending on the strength of your signal, your search result can be returned in a matter of seconds. For anyone who has ever sent a text message or performed a search on your mobile phone, you can understand the laborious process of typing on the small keys, pushing the wrong button, backspacing, etc. Although not perfect, Google’s new voice search will significantly reduce the time needed to perform a search while providing a safer medium for obtaining results while behind the wheel.

I have experimented with other voice recognition apps such as Jott which often take minutes to translate a block of text. Google’s claim that this can be done in seconds is something that I am intrigued by, and if they can actually pull it off, they would set themselves apart as the leader in the voice recognition industry. This service is expected to be free which can make you question what benefit it has to Google. I will tell you what it means. Google will now have a near monopoly on mobile search once this application expands to other phones and devices giving them a significant advantage at the onset of data collection for a new demographic of searchers.

This could be almost uncharted territory for Google, who started as a competitor to other search engines when it first began. Google now has first crack at this new market, and if they display any of the dominance with mobile search that they have with regular search, it will be very difficult to compete. As for the impact it might have on search engine optimization, users will be more likely to use longer tailed, more descriptive phrases now that they don’t have to type the whole thing out on their keyboards. I would look for a slight shift towards increased use of longer tail searches in mobile search, a market until now dominated by 1 or 2 keyword phrases.

Once I download the app, I will let you know how it works out!

When I heard that Google was coming out with their very own browser, I figured that as a search engine optimization specialist, I should take a look.  I don’t want to label myself an internet browser expert, but over the years I have had my ups and downs with everything from the standard IE to Firefox to even lesser used browsers like Opera and Safari. 

My Past Experiences With Browsers 

I am not here to advocate the use of one browser over another; I think that each browser has its own unique capabilities and unfortunately, limitations.  Firefox is pretty much an SEO’s dream considering all of the capabilities for add-ons and the way that the source code is displayed.  Internet Explorer has the advantage of the highest adoption in the US market and as a result, most web pages are guaranteed to display correctly in this browser, which is not the case for some of the others.  Safari had been, to date, the fastest browser I had used and the quick ability to inspect certain elements on a web page such as how long each picture took to load versus the text on the page was a big help when improving the design and conversion of a web page. 

What Does Chrome Bring to the Table? 

So where does Google’s “Chrome” fit into all of this?  Well to be blunt, it is an extremely basic web browser.  It doesn’t have the bells and whistles and add-ons that Firefox does - a major drawback to me as an SEO.  I really liked however, that all of the pictures and URL’s found in the source code were clickable.  Instead of guessing where a certain URL would take you or what a certain picture was of, all you had to do was click on the link and boom, you were there. 

The Speed Test 

The browser speed seemed to be on par with that of Safari, which as I mentioned before, was one of the fastest I had used to date.  It also appears that the security features in Chrome are among the best in the industry.  As you would expect, the default search engine with the browser is Google, but options for Yahoo! and MSN/Live search, among others, are available.  The sleekness and minimalistic style of the browser does not allow for a lot of menu options which basically keeps the focus on the web pages themselves. 

Google’s Reason for Creating a Browser 

The way I see it, right now Google is privy to all of the information that runs through their search engines, analytics and any other tracking items they have in place.  They cannot keep track of how people use the internet outside of any Google affiliated website.  With this new browser, they will be able to keep tabs on internet users’ tendencies.  This can be a good thing in some regards considering that they can vastly improve the relevancy of many of their search features.  However, it could just be one more step towards a Google monopoly. 

Final Thoughts 

Nevertheless, I was impressed with the new Chrome browser and its capabilities, although it’s still just in its beta version.  I don’t know if it will ever be able to replace the versatility and functionality of Firefox in my mind, but Chrome has its useful aspects.  At this point, it doesn’t have all of the useful aspects that I need to do my job efficiently and right now Chrome is not worth the hassle of switching browsers.

It’s really nice to see that Microsoft isn’t the only company out there getting slammed for security flaws in their software and the Internet Explorer browser.  With a rise in popularity and use, Firefox is starting to feel the heat as well.

Several security researchers have been finding bugs and posting them on the internet - and then sending them to Mozilla’s staff.  The process of publishing the results to the general public before disclosing them to Mozilla developers is troubling for the VP’s at Mozilla, but good for everyone else.  If the problems don’t get exposed, we’d likely never hear about them.

Here’s more on the Firefox security flaws

If only Apple’s computers could become more widely used, researchers could poke holes in their software too.