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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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Blog archives for March 2004 179 - March 31, 2004 - 10.05 AM EST 27% of busy women say they won't give up search on the Web A report from Nielsen//NetRatings and Washingtonpost.com indicates that 60% of working women using the Internet at work feel there is not enough time in the day for personal activities and issues, compared to just 48% of their male counterparts. Nonetheless, these women are voracious media consumers, especially when it comes to the Internet, as 48% have increased their Internet usage over the past year. Of the women surveyed, 27% say they are “not at all likely” to give up the Web in order to save time. It is therefore no surprise that 63% of these women told Nielsen and Washingtonpost.com they would “definitely” include the Internet in a marketing campaign targeted to their demographic segment. Thanks to escalate.ca for the tip. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 178 - March 30, 2004 - 7.34 AM EST Google tests personalized search & alters look Google changed its home page to add a link to Froogle, while at the same time it tests personalized search. The search results page has been changed, with Google's paid listings now separated from its algorithmic results by a thin blue line. Previously, paid search results were contained in colored boxes. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 177 - March 29, 2004 - 3.40 PM EST Overture launches mobile travel directory Overture Services has launched a mobile travel directory in the UK provided by location-based mobile marketing firm Mobile Commerce. Overture and Mobile Commerce will start distribution through Vodafone UK and Orange; other participating operators will be announced shortly. Users browsing the travel section of a network operator's Wap portal -- such as Vodafone Live! and Orange World -- will see links to a menu allowing them to select the travel service they are interested in. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 176 - March 29, 2004 - 11.21 AM EST Google adds three new features Google Personalized Web Search and Google Web Alerts, both debuting on Google Labs, enable searchers to specify what interests them and to receive customized results based on those interests. Google Inc. today released three new innovative search features that demonstrate the company's ongoing commitment to improving the search experience for users. The new offerings include a revolutionary search engine that uses user preferences to match search results to their interests, a service that delivers search results via email, and an enhanced interface for Google web sites worldwide. Thanks to Andy Beal of Search Engine Lowdown for the tip. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 175 - March 29, 2004 - 9.24 AM EST Finding new ways to better index the Internet Users who consider Google exhaustive are only fooling themselves, experts say. Today's search engines may be capturing as little as 1 percent of the Web, largely because of how they find and index online resources. "It's very frustrating," said Hetherington, who runs a Haskell, N.J. company. "It's like going to a library and only pulling one book off the shelf." Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 174 - March 27, 2004 - 9.49 AM EST Microsoft to build a blogging search engine Microsoft said MSN Blogbot will debut in the first half of the year, along with MSN Newsbot, a search site devoted to news. Microsoft became the first big Internet company Friday to say that it would create a special search Web site just for Weblogs. The service will not index all blogs, just the ones that MSN determines provide the most useful information, a company official said. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 173 - March 26, 2004 - 10.53 AM EST Yahoo buys Kelkoo Kelkoo, which has been profitable for more than a year, has long been tipped by European bankers as a potential candidate for an initial public offering or a sale to a company such as Yahoo or Google. Yahoo Inc. said on Friday it agreed to buy European price comparison Web site Kelkoo SA for about 475 million euros ($575 million) in cash to expand its range of Internet commerce portals. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 172 - March 24, 2004 - 11.47 AM EST Just when you tought you read it all For those of you that think just about everything has already been invented in the field of search, there's more... Now Google has started developing new voice technology, for people that don't have computers, or, if your'e on the road trying to find an address, or a restaurant or whatever! Within a few years, Google could have a voice interface for everything from driving directions to help you finding the aisle for a particular food in your local supermarket. Google has grown from a small research project at Stanford University into a global company and a household name among Web users, but the next step in the company's evolution could even take it beyond the Internet. Google is not the obvious company to telephone when you are looking for directions to a restaurant or hotel, but the popular search engine's development team is hoping that its emerging voice search facility may over time completely change the concept of a search engine. Read it all here. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 171 - March 24, 2004 - 10.27 AM EST NewsJunkie to help Microsoft develop search app Microsoft's project, called NewsJunkie, could help it develop a search function in Windows to compete with Google. It's also planned as part of MSN's upcoming news page, called Newsbot. Eric Horvitz is an admitted news junkie. But like most Web surfers, he's been getting an overdose of the same information. Horvitz and Susan Dumais, both senior Microsoft researchers, are creating technology to make searching for news more effective. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 170 - March 24, 2004 - 00.46 AM EST Shopping.com files for an IPO Shopping.com plans to use its IPO proceeds for general corporate purposes, including possibly funding acquisitions of businesses, products or technologies, according to the filing. Shopping.com Ltd., which runs Web sites like epinions.com, filed with U.S. regulators on Tuesday for an initial public offering worth an estimated $75 million. Shopping.com did not provide a price or amount of shares for the IPO, but the details are expected in future Securities and Exchange Commission filings. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 169 - March 23, 2004 - 2.12 PM EST MSN to ready its search engine for July Microsoft said that a new engine for its MSN Search service will start up in July, another step in its plan to challenge Google Inc.'s pole position as the Web's top search destination. As part of that upcoming shift, MSN -- the Internet arm of the world's largest software maker -- said it will change the way that it displays text advertisements that are listed alongside search results. Paid listings, or advertisements that piggyback onto search results, have become a hugely profitable component of the search industry, estimated to be worth $2 billion in 2004. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 168 - March 22, 2004 - 1.31 PM EST 3.5 billion searches conducted in the US each month comScore Networks estimates 3.5 billion online searches are conducted in the United States each month, making it the second most pervasive online activity behind e-mail. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 167 - March 22, 2004 - 12.40 PM EST 2 new search toolbars from HotBot and Dogpile Just when you thought we had enough toolbars, here's 2 more for you! HotBot, best known as an Internet search engine, has upgraded its toolbar so that it can find files on your computer's hard drive. And not just any files. Microsoft Word documents, e-mail messages, pdf files, even old Web pages that you visited can be tracked down with the new DeskTop toolbar. Next we have the new Dogpile toolbar. Dogpile is a metasearch engine, meaning it pulls results from a combination of search engines, including Google, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, About, Teoma, FindWhat, LookSmart and others. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 166 - March 22, 2004 - 11.31 AM EST Use caution before posting on the Web Confidential information to be posted on the Web should always be carefully reviewed. Additionally, using the robots.txt exclusion protocol, this story and the problems it caused could have been entirely prevented. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 165 - March 19, 2004 - 7.46 AM EST eBay preparing stores for Search Engine Optimization Andy Beal of Search Engine Lowdown reports that eBay is offering its members news ways they can increase their visibility in the search engines. eBay Stores URLs will include dashes between the words so the individual words will be considered by search engines when determining the relevance of Stores for a given search. eBay is changing the default structure of its Stores URLs to make it easier for search engines to recognize keywords in Store names more easily and provide better indexing. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 164 - March 18, 2004 - 10.22 AM EST EU to revolutionise the way search engines work A European-funded project aims to revolutionise the way internet search engines work. Some of Europe's leading academic researchers will work to find a way of making search engines behave more like humans. It is hoped that eventually the project will develop search engines that can emulate the human ability to assess the context of information presented and sort out irrelevancies before delivering the results. Project SEKT (Semantic Knowledge Technologies) is made up of 12 partners from the world of commerce and academia. It includes BT's research wing BT Exact and the universities of Sheffield, Innsbruck and Barcelona. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 163 - March 18, 2004 - 7.52 AM EST Smith Barney upgrades Yahoo stock Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO) shares rose nearly 5 percent by midday on Wednesday -- the Web company's biggest daily gain since November -- after Smith Barney upgraded the stock to a "buy," citing strong cash flows from Yahoo-branded Web sites. Baker raised his investment rating on Yahoo to "buy" from "hold," and boosted his price target on the stock to $60 a share from $50. Yahoo shares were up $2.12, or 4.98 percent, at $44.69 on Nasdaq. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 162 - March 17, 2004 - 7.01 AM EST Google now offering local search Google just launched "Google Local" late on Tuesday, joining rival Yahoo in staking out local search as a new frontier for growth. Mountain View, California-based Google is expected to sell shares later this year in one of the U.S. technology industry's most anticipated initial public offerings since the Internet boom of the turn of the century. The new search feature, developed in Google Labs and recently integrated with Google.com, allows users to draw from various information sources -- from Yellow Pages and local business listings to Google's index of four billion Web pages. For example, users searching for a local bookstore would enter "bookstore" and their city or ZIP code. Google would then deliver a list of Web search results as well as a link to local search results which, when clicked, would list the addresses and phone numbers of nearby booksellers, and any related Web sites. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 161 - March 16, 2004 - 9.39 PM EST Google is finally updating PR! Maybe someone at Google read my previous post! About 20 minutes ago, Google has started updating its PR and recalculating the link popularity of the sites in its database. I am happy to report many sites that, after to the optimization we performed on them, most have moved from PR 4 to 5, and some from PR 5 to 6, while three of them moved from PR 6 to 7. I think this PR update will go on all night. It will be interesting to see the final results in the morning. I guess patience does have its virtues. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 160 - March 16, 2004 - 11.19 AM EST Just out from the rumour mill Reliable sources tell me that Google will now only update its PR (PageRank) only once every three months. I know many of our clients won't be happy with this, since in the month of February and March we made important link popularity campaings (read reciprocal link exchanges) and they are eager to see their Page Rank go up. I guess Google has good reasons for doing this, although I don't agree with them, since it will cause many unecessary delays in reflecting the real PR value, hence the rankings of any given website. Now, the next major PR update will only be in April, which is another month down the road. That means that if you put a brand new website online after the April update, don't expect any PR on it (you will be 'whited-out') until at least the month of July at the earliest. It also means you will probably get little visibility in Google until that time. If this is the new trend, here's a thumbs down to Google on that one. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 159 - March 16, 2004 - 10.31 AM EST Google continuing its popularity in Europe According to the research from net measurement firm Nielsen/NetRatings, Google is the search engine of choice for more than 55 million Europeans. Most search engines have only fleeting visits from surfers but Google is attracting users for more than 10 minutes per month. Top five search engines in Europe:
* Google: Audience of 55 million Source: Neilsen/NetRatings Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 158 - March 16, 2004 - 9.03 AM EST Kanoodle renewing its competition for contextual ads The executives from Sprinks Inc., which Google bought in October, are renewing their competition in the market for contextual ads now that they have joined smaller paid-search provider Kanoodle. The former executives of a company acquired last year by Google Inc. are reviving their approach for matching advertisers with the most relevant Web content. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 157 - March 15, 2004 - 4.46 PM EST "A research vacuum" While Google makes finding information on the Internet a breeze, a start-up called Onfolio Inc. plans to release on Monday a new form of personal information management software that makes it easier and quicker for people to use and share data discovered online. The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company's software acts as a research vacuum, simplifying the collection, annotation and republishing of information found on the Web or in one's own computer. It bridges the gap between a raw information search on Google (News - Websites) or Yahoo and the document filing system of Microsoft Windows. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 156 - March 15, 2004 - 9.06 AM EST A new Lebanese search engine Even the Lebanese are building search engines: Coneteq, which is to be launched at the end of this year, is going to be “an enormous success,” said a very confident Tom Holzel, founder of Velocity Associates, a US-based consulting company that has been employed to promote the search engine. What exactly does Coneteq have that the world’s undisputed search engine leader does not? The problem with Google is that it gives “very fast and nearly useless results,” said Holzel, who conducted a very simple test to prove this point. It involved a search for ‘sleeping bag’ using Google. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 155 - March 12, 2004 - 2.24 PM EST Now Yahoo drops Google at its Asian portals too The switch from Google to Yahoo in the Australian and New Zealand portals in favor of Yahoo´s own search technology rounds out most of the English speaking and searching world for the big Yahoo Search launch. Yahoo and its Asian-Pacific network of Yahoo Portals, Communities, and Search has followed the suit of the rest of their Yahoo sites and switched from Google search engine search results to the new Yahoo Search (see the key ad image to the left). In a statement with CNet, Cliff Rosenberg, Yahoo’s Australia & New Zealand managing director, said it was reasonable to expect similar announcements for the European and Asian markets. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 154 - March 12, 2004 - 11.57 AM EST Microsoft completes deal with LookSmart On Jan. 15, MSN officially eliminated LookSmart's directory layer of its search results, after terminating its agreement with the company to display its paid inclusion listings. LookSmart has signed a deal with Microsoft for MSN to display LookSmart search results at times. The recent agreement, which LookSmart announced yesterday, leaves it up to MSN to decide when to use the listings. "After the end of that relationship, MSN wanted to continue using LookSmart search results as they transition to their new search solution," said Dakota Sullivan, LookSmart's vice president of marketing. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 153 - March 11, 2004 - 10.31 AM EST Full-motion Web commercials getting more popular If your'e like me, you may not like those Web commercials that look they were made for TV, but are popping up more and more on certain large websites. I was surprised myself to look at the numbers which seem to increase all the time. An online survey of 1,700 Internet users who saw the full-motion commercials, which ran from late January until late February, showed that viewers found them less annoying than some marketers had expected. If you missed the commercials served up 80 million times recently in the Internet's biggest test of television-style video ads, stay tuned - or beware. Encouraged by the initial results, advertisers have begun a new round. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 152 - March 10, 2004 - 6.16 PM EST PPC: small businesses still hesitating Of the small companies who use pay-per-click, the average business allocates 23% of its advertising to PPC; 54% expect to expand their investment in pay-per-click over the next year and 56% believe that PPC will become an important part of their advertising. Pay-per-click online advertising may be hot among online retailers--but the heat seems limited only to the larger or more sophisticated marketers, according to a survey just out from researchers The Kelsey Group and ConStat Inc. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 151 - March 10, 2004 - 11.36 AM EST Google getting competition, this time from China Some of China's search engines are profitable and are starting to make money from sponsored links, where clients pay to have their Web address appear at the top of a results search. China's homegrown Internet search firms said on Wednesday they were upgrading technology in a bid to take on Google just weeks after the search giant's foray into a market seen worth some $100 million in 2004. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 150 - March 9, 2004 - 2.41 PM EST More than 11% of businesses in the US use PPC The Kelsey Group and ConStat find 11% of small- to medium-size enterprises (SMEs) in the US are currently using pay-per-click (PPC) online advertising -- 54% of whom plan to increase their PPC activity next year. Another 34% are interested in the technology. Of those people, 73% say they will use the online ad vehicle within the next year. Kelsey and ConStat surveyed 460 advertising decision-makers at SMEs and found that those who are participating in PPC advertising are allotting 23% of their ad budgets to the vehicle. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 149 - March 9, 2004 - 10.14 AM EST Yahoo's SmartView Technology As the number one destination for local information on the Web, Yahoo is in a position to innovate, improve and redefine the way people search for local content online. Yahoo today announced the launch of SmartView on Yahoo ® Maps (http://maps.yahoo.com). The new feature offers consumers an interactive and visual way to search for local content on the Web and is part of Yahoo! Search's ongoing efforts to offer the most relevant and comprehensive search experience to users. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 148 - March 8, 2004 - 1.51 PM EST Google's power deminishing Forrester Research writes that Google's search dominance appears to be decreasing, in light of the new Yahoo and other important recent developments in the industry. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 147 - March 8, 2004 - 10.15 AM EST Local search provided by Overture Geoff Stevens, general manager of local search at Overture, said at the Search Engine Strategies conference here March 4 that the system would match local advertisers to nearby customers. Overture Services plans to release a local search advertising program in the next few months that lets advertisers set a geographic radius for the display of their search listings and participate without operating a Web site. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 146 - March 5, 2004 - 8.32 AM EST Google: "Search Pets in the Future" At one of the conferences at this week's SES in New York, Craig Silverstein, director of technology at Google spoke of "Search Pets". Craig says: "Helping increase and enhance communication, search pets will understand the way the world works and the way humans interact. Search pets will be able to determine and untangle what searchers mean politically and socially". I don't know about you, but search pets to me sounds more like science fiction or something that could have come out of a Star Trek episode. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 145 - March 4, 2004 - 1.12 PM EST iWon and Excite.com sold to Ask Jeeves Online search engine Ask Jeeves Inc. is paying $343 million US for a family of popular websites that includes Excite.com and IWon.com, bulking up the company as it vies to wrest market share away from industry leaders Google Inc. and Yahoo! Inc. Under the deal announced Thursday, Emeryville, Calif.-based Ask Jeeves will double in size with the acquisition of Interactive Search Holdings, a privately held company in Irvington, N.Y., with about 200 employees and more than $100 million in annual revenue. The Interactive Search operations will remain in New York after the takeover closes in the second quarter, with most of the workers, including company co-founders Bill Daugherty and Jonas Steinman, expected to be retained. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 144 - March 4, 2004 - 7.38 AM EST Picture tells all 
Saw this on WebProNews's website and thought it was pretty good. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 143 - March 3, 2004 - 3.26 PM EST High-tech research goes high-tech Each year since 2000, when CHI began issuing monthly buy recommendations to institutional investors (subscription price: $15,000 a year), it has killed the market averages. In 2003, as the average tech-stock mutual fund returned 55.9%, CHI's picks returned 162%. It seems so far away. In March, 2002, tech investors were deep in a second straight winter of distress. The Nasdaq had been cut by two-thirds in just two years. Tech was positively cryogenic -- and an irresistible draw for anyone hungry for companies with fresh technology. But which companies? CHI uses a strictly quantitative method based on evaluating the strength of public companies' patent portfolios. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 142 - March 3, 2004 - 7.56 AM EST This is a surprise move "We're never going to mix church and state again" said a representative of Ask Jeeves. At a time when all search engines are trying to find out ways of creating new revenue, Ask Jeeves bucks the trend and puts an end to its paid inclusion program. Do you think they are going against the flow? Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 141 - March 2, 2004 - 7.44 AM EST Yahoo's Overture launches Site Match™ Wow: this sounds a bit costly: In move that is being perceived as 'expensive' to the average small business, Yahoo launches Site Match™, a paid-inclusion and PPC program at the same time. Yahoo is using its Overture brand to introduce its new paid inclusion service called Site Match™. The fee is US $ 49 per year for the first URL, and a per-click fee between 15 and 30 cents. A website that signs up would be included in Yahoo, AltaVista and AllTheWeb indexes. Suddenly, a paid inclusion in Global Business Listing sounds an even better bargain! Global Business Listing is a paid inclusion business search engine that costs $ 269 for a whole year, with NO PPC charges. All you pay is $ 269 and for that price, you also get a personalized custom page, complete with your corporate logo and description of your products and services. If you choose, you even get a 10% discount on your Web hosting fees, within certain conditions. Click here for all the details. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 140 - March 2, 2004 - 00.03 AM EST Quigo closes 5 Million round of funding Quigo announced yesterday it closed a $5 million round of venture funding as the New York search startup prepares to take on Google in the contextual advertising market. Highland Capital Partners led the funding, Quigo's first infusion of institutional capital. Lycos founder Bob Davis, now a partner at Highland Capital, will join Quigo's board of directors. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 139 - March 1st, 2004 - 2.00 PM EST SES NYC underway today As usual, you can count on Andy Beal of Search Engine Lowdown for a day-by-day progress report on the Search Engine Strategies (SES) conference starting today in New York city. With Andy's cooperation, this blog will keep you posted on these important developments. According to Andy, attendance has increased from the last SES conference, held in Chicago in December. With all the major changes implemented to Google's algorithms since November and the ones done in January, an increased attendance was expected. Come back later today and tomorrow morning for all the news, live from the Big Apple. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™ 138 - March 1st, 2004 - 11.16 AM EST Yahoo's new search engine index and how it compiles it If you want to know how Yahoo compiles its new search engine index, Tim Mayer's excellent post at Webmaster World will tell you all about it. Thanks to Andy Beal of Search Engine Lowdown for the tip. Permanent link to this news story | Posted on Businessblog™
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