Yahoo Rolling Out “Accordion” Search & Other Features

Yahoo is launching a number of search enhancements this evening that start to deliver on the UI innovation that the company has been promising since the Microsoft search deal was announced. It’s part of Yahoo’s bid to remain relevant in search by spicing up the user experience and trying to bring more utility to page one.

Many of these new features were previewed at the recent “Runway” event last month. The two biggest changes or enhancements that users will immediately notice involve image search and a new “accordion” module at the top of search results (though it doesn’t always appear).

Do a search for “Toy Story 3″ or “Lady Gaga,” for example, and you’ll see this:

Users can flip through panes that contain different types of information. In the case of Toy Story 3 there are “overview,” “video” and “Twitter” tabs. The content types and number of tabs will vary and be relevant to the query. In the case of Lady Gaga there are additional “events” tabs and “album” tabs. The events tab contains a link to buy tickets. There are also horizontal tabs with related content on top.

Search SVP Shashi Seth told me that there will be more such transactional elements in search results going forward. It doesn’t currently exist but one could easily imagine an embedded OpenTable link tied to a specific restaurant query. And there are other scenarios in which this accordion module could enable actions or transactions. Travel is another category that quickly comes to mind.

I spoke to Seth about the potential appearance of display and rich media advertising in this area of the page. (Earlier today I moderated the SMX East panel on search and display, so it’s on my brain.)  He said that isn’t the case at launch but Yahoo has thoughts along those lines in certain commercial contexts.

This module also enables “discovery” of information in a way that traditional search results do not. There’s a mixture of push and pull going on here, which is very interesting. Accordingly it goes beyond the “smart box”/”one box” universal search approach favored in the past couple of years.

Consistent with the notion of making page one more “actionable,” Yahoo is integrating what it calls “quick apps” into search farther down the page. The first of these is a Netflix app that will open a window and enable “Netflix members to add movies to their Queue right from the Search results page.”  You could also watch trailers and theoretically stream entire movies in this window.

The philosophy behind all these moves involves taking search “from finding to doing.”

As mentioned, image search is being revamped. Image pages get a new more visually engaging and “immersive” environment. Yahoo is putting more slideshows (from Flickr and other Yahoo sites) in image search results that then lead to pages that look like this:

Beyond this, Yahoo image search will allow people to “view personally meaningful public Facebook albums from friends when they sign-in and connect their Yahoo! accounts to Facebook.”

Finally Yahoo says that iPhone and Android users will see faster and “more sophisticated” search results built on HTML5. The new Yahoo Finance app is an example of this.

This collection of new features and tools rolls out immediately in the US and then globally next year.

Yahoo has been promising UI/UX innovation for many months and these new capabilities represent something of a down payment. However the company says it will continue to do more and go further over the coming months. This “is just the beginning.”

 

Source : Searchengineland

 

Google Revises Algorithm to Show More Results from a Domain

Gooogle announced today that it has made a change to its algorithm that is supposed to make it easier to find multiple pages from a single site.

“For queries that indicate a strong user interest in a particular domain, like [exhibitions at amnh], we’ll now show more results from the relevant site,” says Google software engineer Samarth Keshava. “Prior to today’s change, only two results from www.amnh.org would have appeared for this query. Now, we determine that the user is likely interested in the Museum of Natural History’s website, so seven results from the amnh.org domain appear. Since the user is looking for exhibitions at the museum, it’s far more likely that they’ll find what they’re looking for, faster. The last few results for this query are from other sites, preserving some diversity in the results.”

“We’re always reassessing our ranking and user interface, making hundreds of changes each year,” adds Keshava. “We expect today’s improvement will help users find deeper results from a single site, while still providing diversity on the results page.”

This change may prove to be helpful for a lot of searches, but they could still do more in this area if you ask me. For exmaple, they could rank tag pages (commonly used on news sites and blogs) as top results for appropriate searches.

For instance, if I search for “WebProNews SEO articles” or “SEO articles on WebProNews”, it couldn’t get any more relvant than the WebProNews SEO tag page. That points to every SEO article we have. Yet, this result is nowhere to be found for either query, and it’s certainly not unique to us (ironically, another article in which I made a similar complaint ranks at the top). These pages aren’t often linked to, so they don’t get the PageRank, but does that make them less relevant for queries like this?

Source : Webpronews

 

Keeping an Eye on Your Competitors with SEJ Tools

I shared once a tip on how to track (and compare) competitors’ rankings with SEJ Tools. Today I am looking further at the feature that allows to watch your competitors grow to timely learn what they are doing.

There’s one nifty feature inside SEJ Tools called Competitor Manager. It allows to easily compare your site with your competitors and offers a few other handy options.

The tool can be found when you hover over DASHBOARD menu tab:

The first thing to do is to add your competitors to the list which is very easy: just click “Add Competitor” link and copy paste the domains of all your competitors (one per line).

You can also allow SERPs tracking for all of those you add in bulk. This means that after you add your competitors, you can track his rankings at SERPs tracker:

After you add your competitors, give the tool some time to collect the data. After it’s done, you will see the following SEO-relevant info in the table (that will allow you to compare all the domains against yours at a glance to see how well you are doing):

• The quality score of each domain (based on the Quality Analyzer);
• The Google PageRank of the home page;
• The pages in Google and Yahoo indices (based on Google’s and Yahoo’s public SITE: operator);
• The backlinks to the the home page (based on Google’s and Yahoo’s public LINK: operator).

From there, the competitors can be easily added or removed from the SERP Tracker. Additionally, clicking on the Research link for any competitor will take you to a domain result in the Research Assistant.

You can also export your competitors to a CSV file or remove them from the table:

Clicking on a competitor will take you to its related website record in the Website Directory:

Competitors can be tagged to better organize and filter them (to tag your competitor, click tiny tag link next to its domain in the table).

Source : http://www.searchenginejournal.com/how-to-keep-an-eye-on-your-competitors-with-sej-tools/20336/

 

SEO and Branding: Which Is More Important?

It’s not often you’ll hear SEO experts admit that search engine optimisation is of less than central importance to a site. Partly this comes from the tendency for businesses to completely ignore their SEO. Partly it comes from the intense focus the SEO industry has. It is true, however, that SEO shouldn’t be the first and last thing you consider for your site.

In truth, search engine optimisation can both be assisted by and assist other aspects of your site’s marketing. If done well, search engine optimisation should have a positive effect on your site well beyond the search engines. To have this affect, though, optimisation has to look beyond the basic optimisation techniques. A good SEO company won’t just stick keywords all over your pages and consider the job done. Good SEO involves tactics that improve the site overall. You can talk to us about this at SEO Consult. One of the things that should be considered is your business branding.

The origins of brands

Branding has been the traditional realm of the marketer, and the move online hasn’t changed anything. Businesses still go to their marketing departments for their brand ideas, and approach SEO experts only when the marketing side has been sorted out. Some separation between SEO and regular marketing is only natural, but SEO shouldn’t be left out of the loop entirely. The choices you make for your brand have a big affect on your SEO and, more importantly, your SEO could have a big effect on your brand.

Find the balance

Just as your site and SEO cannot operate in isolation from each other, it’s not wise for your brand and your SEO to be completely separate. It’s a mistake to allow your brand to be the central guiding factor of your SEO, but it’s a mistake to go in the opposite extreme as well. If incorporated properly, your SEO and your existing brand presence can work together to promote each other. In areas where your brand is already known, tying it to your SEO can boost site rankings. In areas where off-page SEO is being used to promote inbound links, your brand can also be mentioned.

Brands in the future

Branding may well take on greater importance in coming years. In late 2008, Google CEO Eric Schmidt warned the publishing industry that without proper efforts in branding at that stage, their news services could take dive-bomb in future rankings. The reason, Schmidt said, was that the internet is increasingly starting to resemble a ‘cesspit’ of information. Branding may well be the only way to identify reliable information in the future, if only because it automatically attributes a source for the information which can be tracked down.

Brands already play an important part in modern culture. Market studies have consistently shown that people will pay more for a brand, and in the case of information, will pay for a brand when they can get the generic version for free. Basically, a well-established brand can sell itself. Allow your SEO to help your brand.

Source : seoconsult.co.uk

 

Interesting Facts About Google

 

Tips To Increase Traffic On DIGG

Digg is a great social bookmarking site and can drive truck loads of traffic to your site and of course on everyone’s mind is the big ten million dollar question. ‘How do we get more traffic from Digg?’. Here are a few ways in which you can give your traffic ratings a boost and also by getting on to Digg in the first place you get greater search engine rankings.

1. Register on Digg and download the Digg toolbar onto your browser as this helps the Digging process and saves you a lot of precious time.

2. Always choose eye catching titles for your articles or blog posts as this will increase your chances of becoming more popular on Digg. A good title with at least one good keyword will do more for you than what you could ever imagine.

3. Write good content as this is the back bone and basis for any successful endeavor with a social bookmarking site, especially with a site of great caliber like Digg.

4. Start Digging other people’s sites and posts and try to make friends with other Diggers who share the same interests as you and who have similar sites to yours. If you have a political blog for example try to find others who also have blogs on the same subject as this will induce them to come and visit your site more often too.

5. Send regular shouts to friends on Digg and offer to Digg their posts in return as reciprocal Digging helps to boost your Digg profile and gets the numbers up.

6. Make sure you put plenty of good information and a couple of nice pictures on your Digg profile as it is nice for others to get to know you a little bit and helps break the ice in general. This also makes you more approachable and you may see that others also will want to be your reciprocal friends on Digg.

7. Set a time each day for digging tasks and try to stick to it as much as possible as this will gradually increase your standing on Digg and eventually will also boost your traffic and Search Engine Rankings which in turn will lead to even more traffic coming to your site. It is a win situation for all.

Source : tipsofseo.blogspot.com

 

SEO Survive In Future Or Not ??????

Article By : Jeremy Schoemaker

I did a interview last night and was asked some really really good questions. One of which was what is the future of SEO? My honest answer is there is no future in SEO. From my experiences I am seeing Google SERPS results strongly influenced by Google Toolbar data, Google User history, and Google Analytics data. Googles combination of SEO and social voting via toolbar/history/analytics will continue to sway more in the realm of social voting. I feel this technology will only get better. I don’t think anyone can argue that core SEO has gotten less valuable over the years and I see that trend continuing. After all if you read the spam as defined by Matt Cutts (Google Lead Spam Engineer) he says:

“Web spam is when somebody tries to cheat or take shortcuts

so that their Web site shows up higher

[in search results rankings] than it deserves to show up,” – Matt Cutts

That is most SEO at its core. Sure you add title tags and meta descriptions but then you have to incentivize people to link to it. You are now seeing lots sites rank for stuff that have the goofiest URL structure, unoptimized title tags, and bad description tags. Some of the best examples of how the Google algorithm is more favoring social voting (via above methods) are seen with the Google Sitelinks. I have had things show up on sitelinks that were completely noindex/nofollow and had no meta description or even on page content yet were the first item listed in my sitelinks… coincidently they were also the most trafficked item on my site. So in my opinion there just is no future in current SEO for Google anyway. Its not going to happen overnight but it is happening. Please keep in mind I am not a professional SEO and have never claimed to be. My opinions above are purely based on my experiences.

Article Source

 

ADWords Keyword Bidding Simplified With Google’s Bid Simulator Tool !!!!

PPC (pay-per-click) search advertisers often speculate about what would happen when they increase their CPC (cost per click) bids. How many more impressions, clicks and sales or leads would they get when they increase the keyword bid price? With the new Google Bid Simulator feature, advertisers will now be able to get a prediction of the number of times an ad would appear in the search results, the position the ad would have been shown in for a particular bid price and the number of clicks the ad would have received at that position.

Bid Simulator Benefits

The Google Bid Simulator tool is aimed to show “missed opportunity”, adds a level of transparency to the Google Adwords auction-based PPC system, provides advertisers with a better picture of the trade-off between cost and click-through volume, simplifies the bidding process by eliminated trail and error and gives advertisers insight so that they can make more informed bidding decisions.

How Bid Simulator Works

When Google Adwords advertisers access their Adwords account, they’ll see a blue Bid Simulator icon next to keywords’ Maximum CPC Bids label. Clicking on that icon will bring up the bid simulations for that particular keyword. The Bid Simulator uses data from the previous 7 days from a particular keyword and based on that information, it will show up a couple of different “simulations” for that keyword. For keywords that receive a low number of impressions the Bid Simulator shows an approximate number of impressions, estimates the number of clicks, the click cost and the average position for a bid that keyword may have generated based on a higher or lower maximum CPC (cost-per-click) bid. If a keyword receives a minimum number of impressions below a certain threshold the Bid Simulator icon may not appear.

Within the Bid Simulator advertisers can select any of the bid prices that are presented and change the bid within the tool. While this may be increasing the transparency of a “black box” auction-based bidding system, this is hardly going back to the days of knowing what you had to bid to get a certain position. Google stresses though that this is just a projection; and that advertisers won’t necessarily get exactly those results. The Google Adwords blog cautions that “past performance does not guarantee future results.” There are so many factors that go into keyword bidding that there’s no way to predict future campaign performance.

While the Bid Simulator isn’t an exact blueprint for a bidding strategy, but what it can do is make projections so that advertisers don’t not have to. Advertisers could look back at their past results and use them to predict what effect bid changes will have on the keywords in their campaigns. However, for the keywords that get sufficient traffic, Google is doing that already with the Bid Simulator. And, because Google has access to information about the campaign quality score advertisers can be sure that their projections are going to be a lot more accurate than any they could have come up with on their own. Advertisers can use this information to their advantage when plotting out future budgets for their campaigns.

However, for the keywords that get sufficient traffic, Google is doing that for them with the Bid Simulator. Since Google has access to quality score information of all advertising accounts advertisers can be sure that their projections are going to be a lot more accurate than any they could come up with on their own. Advertisers can use this information to their advantage when plotting out budgets for their future advertising campaigns.

It’s interesting to note that Yahoo has a similar tool, which has been active ever since they launched the new Panama system three years ago. Yahoo refers to it as “bid forecasting” and it’s available by clicking on any keyword in a Yahoo Sponsored Search campaign. Once again, the projections are based on previous data, so the more traffic a keyword gets, the more information the program can use for the forecast. Yahoo offers up a few more metrics in their projections (average position, CTR) but the projections are thought to be less accurate. Again, the best way to use this tool is to make future projections, not necessarily take it at face value as a keyword bid recommendation.

The Bid Simulator is being touted as a great addition to the tools Google Adwords already has at its disposal. Once again they are overshadowing Yahoo, despite the fact that Yahoo already has it’s own version of the tool. The Bid Simulator tool is coming across as making the auction in Google Adwords more transparent, but advertisers should be cautious. Remember that there are other factors like ROI that dictate how advertisers should direct their bidding strategy. When used as a projection tool and as a measurement of missed opportunities, the Google Adwords Bid Simulator can be a powerful tool in the hand of a skilled Google Adwords advertiser.

Original Source At

Google’s Bid Simulator Tool Adds More Transparency to Adwords Keyword Bidding

 

Yahoo Exchanges Alibaba.com Stake For $150M

Yahoo should soon have about $150 million more to its name.  By selling 57.48 million shares, the Sunnyvale-based company is liquidating its stake in Chinese business-to-business site Alibaba.com and collecting a tidy profit.

Yahoo acquired its 1.14 percent stake in Alibaba.com during the company’s initial public offering in 2007.  Now, Reuters reports that Yahoo will sell the stake at a 4.0-6.4 percent discount on Alibaba’s most recent closing price.

That might indicate that Yahoo’s in a bit of a hurry; there’s a definite concern, at least, about how both Yahoo and Alibaba.com shareholders will interpret its move.  (A relevant note: Yahoo’s stock is already down 1.22 percent this morning).  But even after the discount, Yahoo should realize a profit of 47 percent or more, which makes its investment look like a good one.

Here’s another important detail: Yahoo is holding onto its 40 percent stake in Alibaba.com’s parent company, Alibaba Group, so it’s not getting out of China or anything of the sort.

John Spelich, a vice president at Alibaba Group, also stated, “We are pleased to learn of the Yahoo! decision because having broader ownership of Alibaba.com with increased liquidity and support among institutional investors is what Alibaba.com hoped to achieve when it released the cornerstone investors.”

Original Post At

Yahoo Exchanges Alibaba.com Stake For $150M

 

SearchWiki : Make Your Own Search

Have you ever wanted to mark up Google search results? Maybe you’re an avid hiker and the trail map site you always go to is in the 4th or 5th position and you want to move it to the top. Or perhaps it’s not there at all and you’d like to add it. Or maybe you’d like to add some notes about what you found on that site and why you thought it was useful. Starting today you can do all this and tailor Google search results to best meet your needs.

Today we’re launching SearchWiki, a way for you to customize search by re-ranking, deleting, adding, and commenting on search results. With just a single click you can move the results you like to the top or add a new site. You can also write notes attached to a particular site and remove results that you don’t feel belong. These modifications will be shown to you every time you do the same search in the future. SearchWiki is available to signed-in Google users. We store your changes in your Google Account. If you are wondering if you are signed in, you can always check by noting if your username appears in the upper right-hand side of the page.

The changes you make only affect your own searches. But SearchWiki also is a great way to share your insights with other searchers. You can see how the community has collectively edited the search results by clicking on the “See all notes for this SearchWiki” link.

This new feature is an example of how search is becoming increasingly dynamic, giving people tools that make search even more useful to them in their daily lives. We have been testing bits and pieces of SearchWiki for some time through live experiments, and we incorporated much of our learnings into this release. We are constantly striving to improve our users’ search experience, and this is yet another step along the way.

For Details