Will Bing Powering Yahoo Make SEO Easier?
There is an interesting discussion going on in our WebProWorld forum about search engine optimization post Microsoft-Yahoo deal. For those unfamiliar with the topic, Microsoft and Yahoo recently gained regulatory approval on a search and advertising deal announced last year, which will see Yahoo using Bing’s algorithm in its search results. The discussion is about whether or not this means businesses and webmasters will only have to worry about optimizing for 2 search engines (Google/Bing) rather than 3 (Google, Yahoo, and Bing).
Will you focus your efforts more heavily on Bing? Discuss.
What Bing Coming to Yahoo Means
It’s important to note that Microsoft and Yahoo still have plenty of details to work out before anyone knows just how the product of this deal will function. We know that Bing will be used in the back-end of searches on Yahoo, but we don’t know what other elements Yahoo will still be incorporating into the search experience. For example, Yahoo said last week that the companies will still be discussing how SearchMonkey and BOSS figure into the mix.
Optimizing for Yahoo is not going to be limited to showing up in Bing’s results. That’s not to say that showing up in Bing’s results won’t have its advantages for Yahoo search, but there is a lot more going on at Yahoo than that. The company has been stressing that it is still very much focused on search, and under the deal with Microsoft, Yahoo will still be controlling the user experience at Yahoo.com.
Right now, Yahoo.com has plenty of elements to consider, from news and trending topics, to a whole slew of “applications” that users can customize on their Yahoo homepage. Among these are Facebook and Flickr. If you want to get in front of Yahoo users, it’s not limited to Yahoo search results. That said, Yahoo search results also have their own thing going on. Keep an eye on the box that appears under the search box after you enter a query. It contains related queries, and “related concepts”. This is one area that could conceivably be independent from Bing (although that remains to be seen at this point). Yahoo is not shy about putting brands in these “related concepts” either. You can find WebProNews in there for a query like “ebusiness news”.
The point is, Yahoo has made it clear that it will continue to control the user experience, and that means there should be plenty of areas within Yahoo that are out of Bing’s control. This leads me to presume that Yahoo will not be something you’ll want to ignore, just because Bing is integrated into it. Remember that at this point, Yahoo controls a much greater percentage of the search market than Bing.
All of that said, you may want to pay closer attention to your Bing rankings if you haven’t done so in the past, because while Yahoo will still be Yahoo to its users, the deal also means there will be significantly more eyeballs on what Bing determines to be the most relevant results to searches.
Why Stop at Google, Yahoo, and Bing?
These may be the biggest three search engines in terms of market share in the United States, but there are still plenty of people using others. For one thing, YouTube is number 2. Not Yahoo or Bing. If you are concerned about simply being found where people are searching, you should have a YouTube presence. That of course means having a video strategy, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to have a huge video budget.
There are still people using Ask as well. In search industry coverage, it often gets overshadowed by the others, but there are still a lot of people using it. In fact, the Ask Network’s market share grew by 6% from December to January. Ask.com’s market share grew by 1%. A lot of people search with AOL. AOL’s search is powered by Google, but it doesn’t always return the same results as Google.
Facebook’s search market share grew by 13% in that same period of time. You may not think about Facebook for search as much, but people are spending more and more time on Facebook, and it stands to reason that they’ll be conducting more and more searches from Facebook. Granted, Facebook’s web search feature is powered by Bing, but that’s only a piece of the Facebook Search puzzle. If you don’t have a Facebook strategy, you may be missing out on a lot more searches. By the way, did you know that Facebook recently passed Yahoo as the 2nd most visited site (just under Google)?
These are just a few examples. People are searching from a lot more places. Rather than just optimizing for Google, Yahoo, and Bing, perhaps you should think about all of the places where your site/business would make sense when a user searches (consider niche sites as well).
Does the Yahoo/Bing deal make optimization easier? Weigh in with your thoughts.
Google Testing a Revamp of the Search Results Page
Update: Danny Sullivan reports that “slight variations” of this design are “live in the wild,” and “still being shown to a randomly selected group of people,” and that Google doesn’t have an expected launch date for a complete roll-out.
Original Article (11/19): Google is testing a new user interface for its search options feature. If you are unfamiliar with the search options feature, it is the link on your search results page that says “show options” and brings up a menu on the left-hand side of the screen providing a number of ways to filter your results.
According to Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land, a “small number” of Google users will see the new interface starting today. The aim of the new interface is to provide users with a cleaner display. Sullivan says that if the testing goes well, Google may roll it out after the New Year. He quotes Google’s Marissa Mayer as saying, “We’re basically looking at a new look and feel for Google. It’s an overall cleaning up of the search engine results page.”
Do you think Google’s results pages need a new look and feel? Tell us what you think.
Images of this new look and feel look strangely familiar – similar to that of a certain “decision engine.” Take a look:
Of course, the Google’s search options and Bing have been compared in the past (and other search engines utilize a similar design too for that matter), in terms of the general layout. Their functionalities differ on various levels. It’s important to note that this will just be how the search results pages will look, without having to click the search options link to get to it. There has been discussion in the past about how much users actually use Google’s search options, simply because the feature is easy to overlook. Such a change would put the options right in your face.
Besides being visually different, the options themselves are different in some areas. For example, a “see also” section has been added, which suggests related queries. There is also a section called “show search tools,” which now contains things like the Wonder Wheel, Timeline View, and “more shopping sites.”
Google may start messing around with the top navigation on search results pages next year, but the company has acknowledged that it works well right now. It will be interesting to see the change in use of this top navigation if the left-hand options go mainstream.
What do you think of this re-working of Google’s search results pages? Do you want to see it go mainstream, or do you like it better how it is right now? Share your thoughts.
Related Articles:
> Google Launches Search Options
> Google Presents New Image Search Options
> Google’s Search Options Increase
Google Buzz Draws New Content-Scraping Controversy
Update 2: A Google spokesperson says the full-text issue is not a Google-specific problem. “It is possible for Bloggers to prevent their full content from showing in Buzz just like in Reader –it depends on how they set up their feed. If a blog owner wants to not show their whole blog, they have to use whatever tools they are using to create their feed to set it to not syndicate the entire post.”
Update: So far, Google has referred me to the same response they gave Stay, but I’ve inquired further. We’ll keep you posted.
Original Article: If you were under the impression that the controversy surrounding Google Buzz was starting to die down, think again. So far, we’ve mostly heard about privacy issues, which Google has publicly addressed. They’ve also made changes based on user feedback. Now, we’re hearing about possible copyright issues. Google appears to be republishing full articles without permission, and stripping out any ads that may be in those articles.
One can easily see why any blogger or publisher wouldn’t be very pleased with this scenario. Not only are they serving up full articles that others have written without sending authors the traffic or even ad clicks, but if a user reads the article through Buzz within their Gmail account, they will likely see the ads Google itself serves.
Blogger Jesse Stay of Stay N’ Alive brings the subject up in a post, claiming that this is exactly what is happening to his content. However, Google did respond to him, saying they would “have the ad scraping issue fixed by next week.” That would solve one problem, but presumably, this doesn’t change the fact that they are showing full article text, which is an interesting choice on Google’s part, considering the controversy surrounding how Google News aggregates publishers’ content.
That is a different situation entirely, because Google News does not publish full articles (unless they come from one of their partners). They simply provide a title, small snippet, and link to the original source, hence driving traffic to that source. Based on Stay’s story, Google will not likely be driving much traffic by showing full articles in Buzz. We’ve contacted Google for comment on this (we’ll post when we receive it).
One might compare reading an article through Buzz to reading one through a feed reader, like Google Reader. Sometimes you can read a feed in its full text, but the author has the ability to prevent this. With Buzz, the full-text articles appear to be coming simply from people sharing the articles, which is out of the author’s control (we asked Google if their is a way authors can prevent this…again, we’ll post a response when we receive it).
Google Lets Users Find Results Based on Location
Google has added the ability to search by location to its list of search options. The option is called “nearby”.
“Location has become an important part of the way we search. If you’re a foodie looking for restaurant details, food blogs or the closest farmer’s market, location can be vital to helping you find the right information,” says Google Product Manager Jackie Bavaro.
“One of the really helpful things about this tool is that it works geographically — not just with keywords — so you don’t have to worry about adding ‘Minneapolis’ to your query and missing webpages that only say ‘St. Paul” or “Twin Cities,’” Bavaro adds.
Google has been using users’ locations to deliver search results for quite some time, but this marks the first time the search engine is actually letting users dictate when they want it to be used to retrieve results for specific queries. In local search, Google is generally pretty good at delivering nearby results anyway, but giving users this added little bit of control can’t hurt, and simply gives users another way to refine their results to match their preferences.
Users can view results by their default location, or set a custom location. The feature is currently only available on Google.com in English.
Is it Becoming Less Critical For Businesses to Have Websites?
I don’t think there’s any question that you need a web presence to survive in today’s business climate. But do you still need a traditional website, or has the web moved on in that regard?
Do you still need a website to be successful online? Share your thoughts.
First off, let me be perfectly clear in that I’m not advising anybody not to have a website. That said, there are a lot of ways to have a web presence without actually having a site, and let’s face it – maintaining a site (let alone a successful one) takes time, money, and resources.
According to data from Compete, Facebook has become a bigger traffic source than Google for some sites, and for many others, it is right up there with Google as a major traffic source. If it can drive the traffic, then that means the people are already at Facebook. You can be on Facebook without having your own website. Businesses can build a Facebook Page, complete with analytics provided by Facebook itself, and they can spend time making that page a good one. Here are some tips on how to do that. Facebook pages are perfectly capable of being found in search engines. In fact, they are often right on the first results page.
You know what else is often right on the first page? A set of local search results from Google Maps, courtesy of Google’s Universal Search integration. Within those results (which are very often right at the top of the SERP) are links to individual businesses’ “Place Pages”. From here, users can find coupons, reviews, store hours, etc. There is a very good chance users will find this before they find your site anyway.
Google is actually going to great lengths to get people using these Place Pages. They are even sending out stickers with barcodes for stores to hang on their windows. When a user scans this barcode with their mobile phone, they will be taken to the business’ Place Page. Social media profiles can also appear on these pages (although so can website links of course).
I probably don’t have to tell you that the web is rapidly becoming more mobile. Smartphone usage and mobile broadband subscriptions continue to accelerate, and people are using a variety of devices, operating systems, browsers, and apps. Making sure you have a site that looks right across all of these is no easy task. This is not so much of a worry when it comes to Facebook pages, Google Place Pages, and other third-party entities.
In many cases, it seems that small business sites are becoming harder to find through organic search. If you look you can find them, but users want convenience, and they are probably not going to look too hard if they can find what they are looking for on the first search results page (or right within Facebook where they’re already spending their time).
Social profiles show in up in search, and often early. The very nature of social media is viral. If one Facebook user becomes a fan of your Facebook page, that user’s friends are going to see it. Then, maybe a couple of them also become fans. Then maybe a couple of their friends become fans, and that trend can continue on and on. The more people who become fans, and the more exposure that page gets, the more chance that page has of acquiring links, which of course can lead to better search engine rankings, not to mention a larger presence on Facebook itself, where a large percentage of Internet users are already spending a great deal of their time. Your reputation and following within the social networks themselves may do your profile well in the eyes of Google too.
If you sell things online, there are obviously many different options out there without having to sell from your own site. In fact, even Facebook and e-commerce are on the road to becoming more and more closely attached. People can buy/sell physical goods through Facebook.
A great deal of focus has been placed on Facebook in this article for the simple fact that it is the world’s most popular social network. That could all change in time. But that doesn’t mean the points would not sill apply to other services. Google is going to be placing a lot of emphasis on Google Buzz this year, and it’s going to become integrated with more and more Google products. Currently, Google profiles are kind of the central place for a Buzz presence. Users can include any links they wish right into that profile (Facebook page, Twitter account, blog, eBay/Amazon listings, etc.)There’s no telling how big Buzz can be, and there’s always the possibility that something else will come along and take the world by storm. And that is one of the reasons…
Why it Still Pays to Have a Site
Can you be successful without a site? I think so. However, having a site gives you a more stable foundation, and still creates more opportunities than if you didn’t have one. When you have a site, you have control. You don’t have to adhere to the policy guidelines of any third-party platform. If Facebook decides to shut its Pages down (as Yahoo did with GeoCities, for example), you still have your own site that they can’t touch. For that matter, having your own site certainly lends credibility to your brand.
Still, social networks continue to work on making data more freely able to flow among one another via a number of open standards like Activity Streams, AtomPub, OAuth, PubSubHubbub, Salmon and WebFinger. “The idea is that someday, any host on the web should be able to implement these open protocols and send messages back and forth in real time with users from any network, without any one company in the middle,” says Google software engineer DeWitt Clinton. “The web contains the social graph, the protocols are standard web protocols, the messages can contain whatever crazy stuff people think to put in them. Google Buzz will be just another node (a very good node, I hope) among many peers. Users of any two systems should be able to send updates back and forth, federate comments, share photos, send @replies, etc., without needing Google in the middle and without using a Google-specific protocol or format.”
Google itself, even has its own site dedicated to making user data for its various products exportable. That’s just Google, but the web in general appears to be moving more in this direction.
I’m not saying that you shouldn’t have a site, or even that you don’t need one, but I think it’s an interesting discussion. For now, I’m going to say having your own site is still in your best interest, but has a more social Internet with more portable data made a standalone site less critical? Is having a website going to be less important in the future? I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on the subject. Comment here.