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ANNOUNCEMENTS

  • The JWTSC-SEO site is almost done! In the coming weeks we'll be sending an email to commemorate the launch of the new site.
  • While our name accurately suggests our expertise in SEO, it's not all we do. We're also knowledgeable in Blogs and RSS. Look for our latest article on Blogging in an upcoming issue of the IHRIM Journal. Email Us for more information on how we can help you setup a Blog or RSS feed for your business.

GOOGLE OFFERS SITEMAP SUBMISSIONS FOR WEBMASTERS

Alun Williams, PC Pro UK

Google has announced Google Sitemaps, a free service for webmasters to automatically submit the pages of their site to the pre-eminent Internet search engine.

The gain for Google is that the Sitemaps service is meant to provide it with more information about available online content, with the end result of improving search results for users.

The gain for Webmasters is the potential traffic boost from having their pages referred to in Google results. With the increasing importance of search engines in determining the traffic of a website, the black art of 'search engine optimisation' can be crucial for a webmaster.

The automated procedure - currently still in Beta form, like most Google initiatives - will help re-assure site builders that their work has been recognised. Previously, sites had to wait to be 'crawled' periodically by the GoogleBot spider, or use an 'Add URL' page and hope Google found all the pages linked from it.

In addition to having all new content indexed faster, the service will allow webmasters to prioritise the pages they want crawled first.

Note however that submitting sitemaps will not guarantee that a site is included in Google indexes or necessarily effect how sites are ranked on the Google Search results pages.

More information can be found at www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps. The process involves submitting an XML-formatted site list, which can also be used with the free open-source Sitemap Generator tool for generating an XML sitemap.

The new service does not replace the existing content-logging technologies - the GoogleBots will continue to crawl through deepest cyberspace.

Sitemap 0.84 is offered under the terms of the Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons License.

A NEW F-WORD FOR GOOGLE SEARCH RESULTS

Chris Sherman, Search Engine Watch

A new study has added tangible evidence to the widely held view that top-ranking search results get the most attention from users, and that lower-ranking results are all but invisible to most people.

The joint study conducted by search marketing firms Enquiro and Did-it and eye tracking firm Eyetools examined the eye movements of users viewing Google search result pages.

The study found that most viewers looked at results in an "F" shaped scan pattern, with the eye traveling vertically along the far left side of the results looking for visual cues (relevant words, brands, etc) and then scanning to the right, as if something caught the participant's attention.

The researchers called this pattern a "golden triangle" at the top of result pages. The triangle extends across the top natural search result, then angles back to the left of the page down to the bottom-most "above the fold" result, typically in the third or fourth position on the page.

This area was viewed by 100% of the 50 participants in the study.

With both organic and sponsored search results, higher ranking results were viewed more often. Here are results for organic results (percentages represent the number of study participants viewing the listing):

Organic Search Results Viewed:

  • Rank 1 - 100%
  • Rank 2 - 100%
  • Rank 3 - 100%
  • Rank 4 - 85%
  • Rank 5 - 60%
  • Rank 6 - 50%
  • Rank 7 - 50%
  • Rank 8 - 30%
  • Rank 9 - 30%
  • Rank 10 - 20%

A similar, though smaller triangle effect was also observed for the sponsored listings on the right side of Google search result pages. In aggregate, fewer people looked at the sponsored listings; the exception to this was then sponsored ads were served at the top of a search result page as well as on the right side of the page. Ads at the top of the page were viewed by 100% of study participants.

Sponsored Listings Viewed (right side):

  • Sponsored listing 1 - 50%
  • Sponsored listing 2 - 40%
  • Sponsored listing 3 - 30%
  • Sponsored listing 4 - 20%
  • Sponsored listing 5 - 10%
  • Sponsored listing 6 - 10%
  • Sponsored listing 7 - 10%
  • Sponsored listing 8 - 10%

Here's a screen shot of the triangle.

These results are preliminary; a full analysis of the results will be available soon.
Organic Search Still Rules

The findings of this eye tracking study lend further credibility to the notion that organic search engine optimization is still critical to the overall success of a search marketing campaign. Last December, Jupiter Research released a report stating that algorithmic listings in search indexes generate an estimated six of seven commercially natured search referrals.

The eye tracking study offers a major reason why: People continue to favor organic listings over paid search listings, unless the paid search listing is at the top of the page.

And yet many search engine marketers are ignoring search engine optimization, opting instead to go the "easier" route of buying sponsored listings. The increasing body of research is very clearly saying that it's a mistake to rely solely on paid listings to drive visitors to a web site. A well-balanced search marketing campaign should incorporate both well-crafted search engine optimization efforts as well as paid listings to capture the full range of searcher behavior.

RSS LURES VENTURE CAPITAL DOLLARS

Elinor Mills, CNET News.com

A group of investors has created a venture capital fund to raise $100 million to fund start-ups and others developing technology based on the RSS Web publishing format.

RSS Investors, based in Cambridge, Mass., was formed last week to target the relatively new but fast-growing technology, with particular areas of interest being news aggregation, blogs, new classes of search engines and data aggregation in the financial and medical industries.

RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, allows people to subscribe to news alerts, blog posts and other online information that is then automatically forwarded to their computers, phones and handheld devices.

RSS is quickly becoming a mainstream technology that enables anyone to become a global online publisher and is changing the way people get information off the Web, said Jim Moore, a founding partner at RSS Investors.

RSS Investors has already raised $20 million through an alliance with partners at Ritchie Capital Management, Tom Crowley and Steve Smith. In addition to Moore, other partners in RSS Investors are John Palfrey of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School and venture capitalist Richard Fishman.

"There is a shift in the paradigm on the Web, and it's a shift to scripting solutions based on very high-performance Web services that are public or semipublic, that essentially become public network services," Moore said.

RSS got a huge boost when Microsoft announced late last month that its next-generation Windows platform, code-named Longhorn, will include support for RSS technology.

Also, Google, Yahoo and others have said they will be working with advertisers to market on RSS streams.

"There is a new wave or level of innovation" with RSS, Moore said. "New online companies will be born out of this, as well as existing ones will be transformed."

Moore said he could not comment on specific companies the group is interested in or talking to. However, he said he is personally impressed with UpToDate, a medical network for doctors to share information, and OhMyNews, a Korean Web site that distributes news written by citizens and professional journalists.

"That is an example of taking these technologies that allow you to build low-cost platforms for shared work and shared communication and putting together new kinds of media companies that are hybrids of professional journalists and citizen journalists," he said.

Bloggers had varied reactions to the venture.

"This reminds me of years ago when Kleiner Perkins launched a $100 million Java fund in 1996," Tom Foremski wrote in his SiliconValleyWatcher blog. "It is a milestone for RSS and its use."

In response to Foremski's point on the Java fund, Paul Kedrosky wrote on his "Infectious Greed" blog: "Precisely, and that fund was a flop. While there are oodles of Web 2.0 opportunities, they are predicated on solving real problems, not on transport protocols."

Moore suggested that RSS is a broader technology than Java and said the funding will target companies that not only advance RSS but also make money doing it.

"What we want to do is more like what Softbank did in the early 1990s in (funding) Internet technologies," he said. "We have a very broad and inclusive mission."

THE FUTURE OF SEARCH LOOKS BRIGHT

Jane Wakefield, BBC News UK

Google's dominant position in the land of search remains unchallenged despite innovations from competitors such as MSN, Yahoo and AskJeeves.

How the players will evolve as search becomes the top priority for surfers was top of the agenda at this week's Search Engine Strategies conference in London.

Search has become a hot topic as people spend more time online and become more demanding in their desire to find accurate information quickly.

The battle is set to intensify as search becomes more relevant, more personal and more localised, representatives from Google, MSN and Yahoo told delegates at the conference.

There has been a flurry of announcements in recent months as the major players release personalised web services, desktop search facilities and interactive maps.

Sweden lags behind

Search, alongside broadband, is a booming market at the moment.

The number of people using search engines is growing faster than the number of people coming online, according to net measurement firm Nielsen/NetRatings.

Search in Europe has grown by 11%, from 79m users in 2004 to 88m in 2005.

By comparison, the number of new net users has grown by just 4%, up from 110m to 115m over the same time period.

France tops the polls when it comes to searching, with 81% of its online population using a search engine. Britain comes second with 80% and Sweden, at 64%, comes a surprising last out of the eight countries surveyed by Nielsen/NetRatings.

In France the second most popular search engine was Voila and local language services did well in all the non-English speaking nations.

Not clever

In the UK, according to net measurement firm Hitwise, Google is by far the most used search engine, with 69% of the market. It is followed by MSN and AskJeeves, both on 8.4%, with Yahoo tailing behind with 8%.

These figures did not tally with those of either Nielsen/NetRatings or MSN, both of which gave MSN around 20% of the market.

Hitwise has noticed that different search engines are attracting slightly different audiences. While Google is the preferred engine for students and professionals, Ask Jeeves is more popular with families.

While users of MSN are most likely to search on just one word, the AskJeeves audience is more likely to use more than two words.

This could reflect the latter's focus on its ability to answer real questions.

All the representatives at the conference agreed that search had to get smarter as more information comes online and people become more sophisticated in their use of the net.

"Search engines are not yet clever enough to understand what the user is looking for," admitted David Graham, MSN's Search Business manager.

Plenty of information

MSN's own research found 50% of complex queries go unanswered, while even more simple searches take an average of 11 minutes.

Despite this it found that there was real hunger for web-based answers. Three-quarters of people would rather use the web to answer their questions than their own family members.

Jeff Levick, Vertical Markets Director of Google Europe pointed out that only a fraction of the world's information was currently online.

According to estimates by scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, there is around five million terabytes of information in the world, of which just 170 terabytes is available online.

Google is determined to "organise the world's information", said Mr Levick, but audience members at the conference were more concerned about over-commercialisation.

Asked whether he thought that the trend towards sponsored links would mean the market was taken over by those firms that could pay to get pole position in search rankings, Mr Levick was adamant that would not happen.

"Relevance will always prevail. Just because someone has more money to spend doesn't mean they will be number one," he said.

HOW POPULAR IS SEARCH?

France - 81% of net users use search engine
UK - 80%
US - 79%
Spain - 77%
Italy - 74%
Germany - 74%
Switzerland - 73%
Sweden - 64%

Source - Nielsen/NetRatings