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Hello, I am Serge Thibodeau and I am a search engine optimization expert. My company is Rank for $ales and this is my personal search engine blog. This is where I give my personal comments, some general observations I make about the search industry as a whole, interesting SEO articles and topics that will interest anybody that owns a website and wants it to rank higher in the major search engines. This blog is updated daily and is said to be addictive. Welcome to Serge Thibodeau, Live. |
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Read the latest search engine news ............................ Search the Web
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Blog archives for December 2003 028 - December 16, 2003 - 11.05 AM EST Business Users Prefer Organic Search Results to Paid Listings EXCLUSIVE: This just in from Loren Baker (thanks Loren) of the Search Engine Journal: WebAdvantage.net is releasing the results of a study of how those in the business community use search engines and their awareness of sponsored link advertising. "When asked about the relevancy of search engine sponsored links and advertisements, business searchers responded that even when clicked on, paid links do not yield the best results. Seventy-eight percent of all respondents feel that they find the information that they are looking for less than 40 percent of the time through sponsored links, and the search engine business searches go to first is Google, which 66 percent of the respondents say they use most." You can read this survey here. As always, Serge Thibodeau, Live is your Number One blog to get the freshest and most complete news in the fast-changing search engine industry. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 027 - December 16, 2003 - 10.15 AM EST Search on Google by voice with a simple telephone call You have to give credit to Google for innovation. You can now search Google by phone... The system is set up as a loop: You say a query, it sends you the results, you say another query, and so on. When you're done with the demo, all you need to do is hang up the telephone. The system is trained for normal, connected speech. It works best if you don't insert extra pauses between words, don't put any unnatural stress or emphasis on what you are saying, etc. The system automatically detects when you start speaking, and when you have finished saying your query. All you have to do is say your query, and then be quiet while the system is working. The number is (650) 318-0165 (its a California number) and you can read more about it here. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 026 - December 16, 2003 - 9.46 AM EST Google's Florida Update: One Month Later I just read Gord Hotchkiss's article on Search Engine Guide.com and I agree on many of his points. His views are similar to mine, with respect to Google's Florida update. Almost a month has gone yet since this major event and, as Gord said, I also think Google's results will constantly be "tweaked", almost on a daily basis. It is possible that the old days of the monthly 'dance' could be replaced by these daily, small adjustments to Google's search algorithm. The next few weeks will be important to analyse for us. I personally think Google has completed the largest initial changes to their algo and I think the next month should bring stability in the search results. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 025 - December 15, 2003 - 12.11 PM EST Atlas DMT acquires GO TOAST Integration of the Atlas Suite and GO TOAST's tools is already underway. Currently, more than a half dozen leading advertisers are participating in a trial utilizing the combined technologies to manage search engine keyword and bid management strategies. An update of the overall integration, along with financial information about the transaction, will be provided during aQuantive's fourth quarter earnings conference call scheduled for late January 2004. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 024 - December 15, 2003 - 10.14 AM EST Canadians to spend average of $575 each this Christmas on gifts According to Leger Marketing, Canadians will spend an average $575 each this holiday season. Not surprisingly, Leger finds that Canadians from higher income households will spend more -- $758 each -- on gifts this holiday season. Léger Marketing surveyed 1,509 French- and English-speaking Canadians, ages 18 and older, between 18 and 23 November. The research firm also found that 44% of respondents say they will give between one and 10 gifts this holiday season, while 26% say they will give between 11 and 20 gifts. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 023 - December 15, 2003 - 12.08 AM EST The Internet proves itself superior one more time One more time, the Internet has proven it's a lot faster and more reliable when a major news event has happened. Americans logged onto the Internet to learn about the successful capture of Saddam Hussein because the news broke after most of the nation's newspapers had "gone to bed." Saddam's capture was announced early Sunday morning--just hours past the print publishing deadline for the Sunday edition of major newspapers. The front-page of The Washington Post's print edition carried no news of the capture. But the paper's Internet edition had a staff-written news story and video detailing Saddam's capture in a hole near an Iraqi farm house. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 022 - December 15, 2003 - 12.05 AM EST Search numbers with Google Google Launches New Search By Number Options, Direct Links to Access Airport Delay Information. I was starting to wonder when Google would announce something new. Well, here it is. You can now enter several types of numbers into the Google search box (with some you must also use a specific word to trigger) and be given a direct link to a specialized database preconfigured for your search string. Google has also started to offer a airport delay info feature for U.S. airports. By entering an airport code (e.g. SFO for San Francisco) into the search box, you'll then given a direct link to the FAA airport delay database. Useful and cool? You bet! The concept of offering direct links to specialized databases is nothing new. Other web search companies have been also working in this arena. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 020 - December 12, 2003 - 8.12 AM EST Google plans a R&D center in Bangalore India Internet search king Google plans to open an engineering research and development center in Bangalore, India, in March, its first such center abroad, a Google executive said in an interview published Friday in The Wall Street Journal. "We just want more really great engineers," Google vice president of engineering Wayne Rosing told the WSJ. "It's clear there are a significant number of really talented computer scientists in India." Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 019 - December 11, 2003 - 3.05 PM EST Search Engine Strategies Chicago - Outsourcing SEM Chris Sherman moderated the "Outsourcing SEM" session which was designed to assist business owners in making the decision to hire a search engine marketing company or not. Nate Elliott, Associate Analyst for Jupiter Research had some of the most fascinating statistics of the conference. Andy Beal shares with us: $6.3 billion was spent on online marketing in 2003, with $1.6 billion of that going to search engine marketing. Search engine marketing has grown by 50%, as a share of spend, during the last year alone. By 2008, total online marketing spend will reach $14.5 billion with more than a third going to SEM. So that's the growth of SEM taking care of, lets take a look at PPC buying. 24% of companies, spending more than $1m per year on online marketing, buy more than 1,000 keywords thru PPC engines. Of those, 50% have trouble managing their keywords and 48% outsource the management (2% must be in PPC limbo). Between 68% and 84% (depending on size of company) track the click-thru rates of their PPC campaigns. How many companies outsource their SEO/SEM marfketing? According to Elliot, 39% of those who outsource are "very satisfied" with their choice, yet 16% do not use any third party SEM company. Get it all here. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 018 - December 11, 2003 - 9.34 AM EST Search Engine Strategies Chicago, Thursday Over at SES Chicago, Andy Beal of Search Engine Lowdown says there really weren’t that much happening at yesterday's seminars, since most of the topics were carried from the San Jose event held in August. Andy reports that Google representatives were scarce, and those manning the booth were somewhat reluctant to talk about the recent update fiasco, despite the constant requests from attendees. Google really was keeping a low profile at the event, not wanting to send their normal engineers to speak... (!) As one of Andy's co-workers put it: "Google simply sent the sacrificial lambs". We will both keep you posted as the show unfolds. Stay tuned. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 017 - December 10, 2003 - 1.16 PM EST Auditing Paid Listings Report At SES Chicago, Kevin Lee (Did-It.com) suggested that the more tech savvy the industry you operate in, the more likely you could become the victim of excessive clicking by a competitor. Lee also suggested that those PPC users who feel they have been the victim of click fraud, should use a reverse look-up tool to determine the IP address of the fake visitor. Lee also went on to discuss tactics that competitors take to fool PPC management companies into deactivating bids. With some PPC managers automatically cancelling bids for terms that have low conversion rates, Lee said that competitors plan attacks that click on a listing multiple times, obviously not making a purchase and hence causing a low conversion rate. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 016 - December 10, 2003 - 9.06 AM EST Ask Jeeves plans to go on an acquisition spree Ask Jeeves plans to go on an acquisition spree in continental Europe next year, as well as build its R&D and sales and marketing teams, according to new Ask Jeeves UK director of strategy Myles Runham. Runham, who assumed the role of director of strategy in the UK in August, said Ask Jeeves was planning to develop a more international presence and is looking to Europe either for acquisitions or partnerships - or a combination of both, while a recruitment drive will focus on R&D and sales and marketing to develop and market new search products for the UK and Europe. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 015 - December 9, 2003 - 8.33 AM EST Search Engine Strategies Chicago is Sold Out Andy Beal of Search Engine Lowdown reports that Search Engine Strategies Chicago (SES) has officially sold out, according to event organizers. Andy says: "There is definitely a buzz at this event and it looks set to be a great success. With speakers from Google, Yahoo and Ask lined up, we should get some interesting info. I spoke with the Yahoo rep setting-up their booth and she is very well prepared for all questions regarding the switch over to Inktomi results. I believe her rehersed response starts, "At Yahoo, we are always looking at ways to improve the user experience..." I bet Google's is the same". I will try to provide regular postings on my blog of the SES conference as Andy Beal reports from it live. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 014 - December 9, 2003 - 8.16 AM EST Congress finally OKs antispam legislation The U.S. Congress on Monday gave final approval to the first federal law regulating spam, which President Bush has indicated he will sign before the end of the year. The unanimous approval by the House of Representatives ends a tumultuous process that stretched over more than six years and was marked by more than a dozen competing bills, all of which took different approaches to the ever-growing problem of unsolicited commercial e-mail. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 013 - December 8, 2003 - 10.31 AM EST Theories and speculation continue to abound on a 'Google conspiracy' There have been thousands of posts about the November update on various forums where webmasters trade information. When the exclusion trick was discovered on the evening of November 21, I assumed that we had only the two-day weekend to discover more about this filter. A similar trick using a hyphen between two keywords worked briefly for about three days prior to November 21, at which point it stopped working. It was this previous trick, discovered by someone else, that made me aware of the filter in the first place. Read this post here. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 012 - December 5, 2003 - 7.53 AM EST Latest update on the Over Optimization Penalty or OOP On December 2nd, somebody came to me and handed me his website that a previous SEO, a competitor of mine seemed to have ‘overly optimized’ on certain important keywords of his. Although this article is certainly NOT meant to spam the search engines in any way, the following are techniques that can be used as a last recourse, if you feel some of the pages in your site have been affected in such a way. As most people have noticed by now, the last Google monthly update done in November, dubbed “Florida” has generated a lot of uproar amongst the business community and the Internet economy. This latest update is a clear example of the power of Google and what it can mean to a large number of commercial websites that depend on their rankings for the success of their business model and their viability. As I have written in previous articles on this and as I was interviewed and quoted by the New York Post on November 27, I still believe that if your site has had little or almost no OOP penalties, in that case I would stay put and not do anything for the time being. There are many old and well-established commercial websites that have lost considerable rankings and that suffered a staggering loss of traffic in the process. To the best of my knowledge, this is the largest and the most important algorithm change in the 5-year history of Google. Since November 15, Google has started to impose what some call the Over Optimization Penalty, or OOP. It’s still a bit too early to speculate what effect the OOP will have on some sites, but it might suggest to me that it may indeed be a form of static penalty, meaning whatever modifications you make now will probably not get your site back into the top results, at least not until the next Samba! Read everything on the new Over Optimization Penalty that Google implemented in the Florida update by clicking here. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 011 - December 4, 2003 - 12.06 PM EST Espotting lands pan-European distribution deal Espotting, the European search marketing network, has landed a pan-European distribution deal with Lastminute.com to provide the online travel firm with paid listings across five countries. Under the agreement, Lastminute will include Espotting's listings on the exit pages of its four channels: 'hotels, 'flights', 'holidays' and the new 'flight+hotel' dynamic packaging functionality. The deal covers all four channels in the UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy, but is already live on the UK hotels pages. My comments Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 010 - December 4, 2003 - 11.31 AM EST Symantec issues patch to correct security problems Internet security software vendor Symantec Corp. has issued a patch to correct problems some users had with an antipiracy activation feature they encountered when trying to install Norton AntiVirus 2004 and other Norton products. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 009 - December 4, 2003 - 8.27 AM EST More on the Google Deskbar The Google Deskbar is just that - it sits at the bottom of your Windows screen, a little box to type in whatever comes to mind and then use Google's search engine to throw up whatever information is out there on the Net. Learn more on the many things you can do with the Google deskbar. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 008 - December 3, 2003 - 4.41 PM EST Internet purchases jumped 25% last week Amid all the gloom and doom about update Florida, there is finally some good news with this report. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 007 - December 3, 2003 - 1.43 PM EST Blogging survey results If you're still among people that believe blogging is just a fad that might die away soon, well, the BSE Blogging Survey results have finally been calculated and here is a preview of the results. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 006 - December 3, 2003 - 1.06 PM EST Google paying more for traffic Google is paying more for traffic these days, according to SoundView Technology. It's good news for companies that deliver Web surfers to the search engine, like Ask Jeeves, since the additional dollars drop to the bottom line. Ask Jeeves looked reasonably priced Tuesday morning after SoundView analyst Jordan Rohan upped his estimate for the search company's fourth-quarter revenue and profit. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 005 - December 3, 2003 - 9.20 AM EST A Google representative speaks about update Florida Wayne Rosing, vice president of engineering at Google, said the change is part of the Silicon Valley-based company's efforts to provide high-quality search results. Some business owners who depend on Google driving Internet users to their Web sites are angry over a change to the top search engine's ranking system, which they say threatens to dent their revenue during the holiday shopping season. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 004 - December 2, 2003 - 12.56 PM EST Sex sites increasing search engines' profits Drugs are out and sex is in, at least when it comes to advertising on Internet search engines. Yahoo and, most recently, Google have moved to restrict advertisements from unlicensed pharmacies in an attempt to address public concerns about illegal sales of drugs online. Read it here. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 003 - December 2, 2003 - 9.19 AM EST Overture inks deal with Red Moon Interactive Overture has inked an exclusive deal with Red Moon Interactive that will see its paid placement search results displayed on free public internet access terminals in key locations across the UK. Under the terms of the agreement, Overture's sponsored links will be returned whenever a user conducts a search via the front screen on any INFO-NET terminal. In addition, users can select 'hot buttons' or categories from the terminal homepage, such as cars, property or travel, which will generate between five and seven of Overture's sponsored search results. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 002 - December 1st, 2003 - 10.08 AM EST New Google update using Bayesian filters For quite a long time now, Google’s search results have been under attack by search-engine spammers that continuously attempt to mask search results, in the end, cluttering the search engines with irrelevant information in their databases. With the ever-growing popularity of Google and as it tries to handle more and more searching all over the Web, the temptation to foul the search results has become attractive to certain spammers, leading to substantial degradation in the quality and relevancy of Google’s search results. Amid all the fury the November update (dubbed Florida) has generated, read how Google is testing its new Bayesian spam filters, in an effort to reduce spam in its engine, and what the future might hold for this new kind of spam filter, while it is still in its infancy. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 001 -December 1st, 2003 - 9.46 AM EST Google Limiting Drug Ads Google, the popular search engine, will stop accepting advertising from unlicensed pharmacies that have used the Internet to sell millions of doses of narcotics and prescription drugs without medical supervision, company officials said. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 
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