Search Engine News - PPC & SEO Blog

Europeans made 24.6 billion searches in March alone, a new report has revealed.

Research published by comScore has shown that in that one month, 221.2 million people in Europe made an average of 111 searches each.

Here in the UK, 32.4 million unique people made an average 124 searches each, with only Germany’s 36 million individual users beating our figure.

Interestingly enough, the information showed that - while Google was by far and away the most used search portal if them all - in Eastern European countries a number of local engines are being more commonly used.

However, despite the increased popularity of websites like Russia’s Yandex, Google was still the engine of choice for eight in ten queries, the report showed.

While it is interesting to watch the battle of the search engines, there is one consistent fact illustrated by reports like this. Search engines are a vital way for consumers to navigate the web and their importance is unlikely to diminish any time soon.

It sometimes surprises me how little people consider how search engines choose which websites should rank highly.

Britain is a well-informed country – people select a newspaper which suits their opinions and watch different news programmes depending on whether they want to hear about Madonna or Mandela – yet very few seem to consider the power search portals hold over the information they receive.

I think that as an SEO professional, I sometimes forget that not everyone understands or has even considered the control the big search providers could exert over the internet if they chose to.

Now and again, a newspaper will illustrate that the majority of people do not understand the way search engines work by publishing a lengthy explanation of website optimisation, like this recent one in the Sunday Times (which described SEO as “part crystal-ball watching, part trial and error”).

It is unlikely that any search engine would ever threaten its commercial position - in the UK at least - by exercising an unhealthy level of editorial control or imposing a political slant on the information its users could easily access.

However, the general lack of awareness about the search portals we use everyday makes me glad there are so many companies and SEO professionals whose job it is to watch and analyse changes to the algorithms they use. There are thousands of sector workers who rapidly discover and discuss changes in the generation of search results through their blogs and various marketing forums. It can only be healthy.

An excellent post from Rand Fishkin today about the reliance on domain authority for spam in Google highlighted a great tip to find the most important domains within a TLD.

To find a list of what is possibly the top 100 authoritative .co.uk domains in Google just perform the following query:
www site:.co.uk

This obviously isn’t entirely accurate, for example amywinehouse.co.uk and thequeenmovie.co.uk have reasonably low link reputations and are listed above sites like barclays.co.uk and ebay.co.uk, but it does give a nice indication of the strength of domains in Google and their ability to rank.

It happens all the time - an employee spends considerable time researching the benefits of search engine optimisation (SEO) and other online marketing endeavours only to discover their boss fails to share or even understand their enthusiasm.

There are so many businesses out there which are not exploiting the potential of the web - sometimes because the boss’s son built a homepage for his IT GCSE and that is considered sufficient.

Often an employee can have just a few minute of their busy employer’s time to persuade them that they need to invest in online marketing and, as there is often a lack of understanding, there can be a lack of interest.

Fortunately for you frazzled folk, here for your convenience is a list of reasons and research to persuade even the most miserly boss to cough up cash for online marketing.

Reason Number One: The consumers are online

According to the Office for National Statistics, in 2007 15.23 million British homes had web access, which is more than six in ten. Furthermore, above 50 per cent of those used broadband to access the internet at speed. It just makes sense to promote a business through a platform consumers regularly see and - since the vast majority of firms cannot afford the television - the internet is a cost-effective and targeted alternative.

Reason Number Two: Your competitors are online

Employees should explain to their bosses that everyone else is doing it! The world is using the web to shop, bank and socialise and a company is potentially losing a large amount of potential business to their competitors if they are not online. Recent research published by the Internet Advertising Bureau revealed that last year £2.8 billion was spent advertising online. That is a hell of an advantage everyone else has over an offline firm.

Reason Number Three: Consumers are spending online

A boss might now point out that the take-up in broadband does not necessarily mean that people are actually shopping online - they could just be emailing and accessing Freecycle. Now is a good time to show them statistics published by the Interactive Media in Retail Group which revealed that during February - despite the doom, gloom and predictions that negative equity was going to kill us all - online spending reached a record high. An astonishing £4.2 billion was spent through the web - equivalent to £69 for every UK resident.

Reason Number Four: Search engines drive the traffic

Information published by watchdog Ofcom has shown that the “vast majority” of online experiences begin with the user accessing a search engine. Furthermore, Hitwise recently published research which revealed that more than one third of British web traffic is directed through just one search engine - Google. Businesses cannot afford to miss out on such vast levels of traffic - they should fail or succeed depending on the strength of their product, not because no one knows who they are.

Reason Number Five: Move now or miss mobile search

Search marketing is not the next big thing - it is not something new and a little quirky. It is a staple part of many marketers’ day to day activities. The next big thing is ensuring a website is optimised for mobile search as, according to Juniper Research, more than 30 per cent of mobile users will be accessing local search by 2013. By failing to optimise a website, a company is seriously hamstringing itself for future marketing endeavours. No one wants to be playing catch-up.

I know that Kevin has touched on the marketing implications of the change in Google’s trademark protection laws but I just wanted to flag up some interesting figures I came across today.

From May 5th, Google is to allow all companies and marketers to bid in order to place their paid search advertising alongside search results for any term. Specifically, firm X can now place its adverts alongside the organic results for its main competitor Y.

Importantly, research and analysis firm Hitwise has published a report which shows that currently in the UK, 91.8 per cent of people who search for a particular brand end up on the website of the appropriate company.

However, in the US - where Google has never exercised such trademark control - that figure is just 84.2 per cent. That is a potentially massive drop in traffic for brands and, even worse than failing to gain visitors in the first place, means businesses regularly shed clients to their competitors.

The report from Hitwise concluded that brand owners are going to market themselves more aggressively in response to the move.

Interestingly enough, though, Tesco has now waded into the fray. Word on the web is that the supermarket giant has stated it will not bid on competitors’ trademarks and hopes that others will follow suit in order to keep the price down.

Google is staffed with clever people, it must have questioned whether British industry could behave in such a friendly way in order to mutually benefit. Furthermore, it must have concluded that businesses could not, or that only a few sectors would do so. It will be extremely interesting to see how this develops – particularly within the search marketing sector!

Update: This post has been removed because we have been politely asked to delete references to any examples being displayed.

Yahoo! has launched a preview of its new SearchMonkey tool and is requesting developers go and have a play.

The ideas behind SearchMonkey were first shared with the online community back in February, but now website owners and developers are being encouraged to sign up for the SearchMonkey, check out the demo and even attend the launch party. Yahoo! is doing the thing in style.

I like SearchMonkey. It will give websites the chance to build enhanced search results, meaning they can annotate the information supplied alongside their Yahoo! search listing. The search engine hopes this will enhance the usefulness of such results to the user.

Furthermore, Yahoo! believes that by allowing websites to annotate their results, developers will be able to drive increased amounts of quality traffic to their sites.

Moves to enhance the usefulness of search results are always welcome. Not every consumer will understand or appreciate the level to which the portals refine their results but all web users will notice when their engine of choice offers them more useful and relevant information.

Has anyone signed up for a go yet?

Thanks to the value of the inbound link, the internet has become a massive information resource. Industry figures are actually competing to share their opinion, to offer up their expertise for free as they claw their way to higher rankings.

Because of this, valuable knowledge has become free – a fantastic situation for a new SEO professional or a marketer keen to grasp the basics.

Of course, those new to the sector have to be careful – there are hundreds of thousands of blogs and sites filled with nothing more than regurgitated information from other pages which is sometimes years out of date.

However, for the discerning reader - or someone using a tool such as Digg or Sphinn - the web is awash with fresh advice and information from experienced and dedicated professionals.

If you look to the right of our blog, you can see the top ten most popular articles. Although they cover a wide range of subjects and skill sets, there is a common theme. They are pieces of relevant information which has not yet dated, which are still relevant. Ten ways to achieve X, How to do Y, The Real Secret to Z.

A major part of the sector’s voracious blogging community is enthusiastically sharing interesting news and sector gossip with other professionals. They are debating and discussing the latest events and building on relationships developed at conferences and online. However, it is vital to remember that a massive amount of the online audience is simply silently searching for information and advice.

Microsoft has proudly announced the addition of something that looks very similar to Google sitelinks to their search results.

In fact if I was Google I would be digging out the patent they have that shows how these results are generated and thinking hard about whether to challenge how Microsoft is doing this.

One commenter put it quite well after the announcement:

A couple of weeks ago I reported that Yahoo! Site Explorer UK & Ireland launched in beta, today I noticed that they have also rolled out a country specific Yahoo! Site Explorer for a wider range of countries.

So far I’ve noticed this for Germany, Australia, Spain, France and Italy. Looking at the results returned for inbound links these are returning different counts and appear to be heavily weighted towards inbound links from each specific country.

Following on from my original example which looked at links for www.bbc.co.uk, here are the results for the same search on Yahoo! Site Explorer Germany:

Yahoo!7 Site Explorer Australia shows a different set of results, many of which are from .au domains as opposed to .de from the German search or .it from the Italian results etc…

These results can certainly be useful if you are looking to find country specific links which may be influencing competitor rankings in google.com.au for example.