The end of November saw the introduction of Google’s new SearchWiki service. This is effectively an extension of their personalized search service and allows searchers to customize their results and add or view notes on the listings. It may herald the start of a new phase of adaptable search listings or it may simply be an early reaction to the competitive threat from Wikipedia’s planned search results tool.

If you have a Google account and are logged in when using Google’s search engine, the new SearchWiki service enables you to modify the Google search results to suit your preferences. You can change the order of the search listings, add or delete listings, and add commentary notes against individual results. The changes are stored in your Google account for future reference so it can be a useful time-saving tool if you search for certain topics repeatedly.

As the changes you make only affect your own searches, it isn’t possible to improve your website’s ranking by using this service. You can, for example, move a website into the #1 position for a query, but no one else will see it in that position. However, when you vote to increase a page’s ranking, or make a comment about a URL, the comment, your username and, in some cases, your search query will be shown to other logged-in users. There’s currently no option for private annotation which raises some privacy issues, as people will now be able to see another user’s searching habits and there’s also no opt-out feature for users logged into Google.

Google say that users do have the option not to use the feature (by not logging into their Google account) and that they will watch usage closely through “user-happiness metrics”. Initial reaction about the service has been mixed, including negative feedback which has prompted some users to create a script that would disable SearchWiki. There is already a third-party solution which uses a script for Firefox browser users to toggle SearchWiki on and off.

Google has stated that their goal in offering this new service is to “empower users” and enables searchers to remember answers to repeat queries. They say that “it lets you add your personal touch to our algorithms.” It is suspected though, that Google’s true motivation is to counter any perceived threat from Wikia Search, and potentially to take advantage of users’ feedback to adjust its overall ranking algorithms.

Google can now amass an even larger dataset of user behaviour, including how particular users rank certain results, what results they don’t find relevant, and even what results should be there that Google’s spider hasn’t yet discovered. If the service becomes used by large numbers of people it means that users would now be performing much of the crawling, indexing, and ranking functions which also makes the system open to abuses.

Google claims that the changes made in the SearchWiki interface will have no impact on the traditional ranking of web pages. However, it’s still a possibility that Google will use the SearchWiki data as a factor for determining organic search rankings in the future. Even Marissa Mayer, Google’s VP of search products and user experience, has said “some of these signals might be used to influence algorithms in the future”. The debate around this tool will therefore continue for some time to come but it may mark and important stage in the development of search technology for the future.

If you’d like to know more about Google’s SearchWiki and to see how this works, please contact us for more information.

As bandwidth limitations are becoming less restrictive, online video is increasingly becoming more popular, leading to a rapidly growing use of user-generated content sites such as YouTube. Google is also now including videos within their ‘universal’ search results, so that optimisation of videos to achieve high rankings and site visits is now vital. So how can your business take advantage of this potential new advertising channel?

SEO techniques for videos can help to ensure that a company’s video content attracts as much search traffic as possible, either from within sites like YouTube or as part of a general search that can drive traffic to a website or video. Of course, a business needs a compelling reason to produce and submit a video, such as for a product demonstration, a training guide or a graphic example of what the company can achieve, but this can increasingly be used as a good method of attracting web traffic and new enquiries.

The optimisation of video content can depend on the type of objectives required – such as using a ‘Monetised Video’, such as those used by professional video content publishers to directly generate revenue from a site, where the video itself needs to be protected and stored solely on your own site, or a Promotional Video, which is commonly used as a method of stimulating interest in a product or service and which can be placed in as many online locations as possible.

It is necessary to optimise for both first generation video search engines (older & similar to standard web search engines that rely entirely on metadata for indexing, such as AltaVista & Ask) and second generation ones (which not only spider textual metadata, but also extract meaning from the video itself, such as Blinx and Podzinger).  Therefore there are 3 different scenarios for video optimisation which need to cater for video search engines that crawl your site; for video sites that accept RSS or MRSS (Media RSS) feeds; or for video upload sites (such as YouTube).

Some of the main factors that should be considered for all these forms of video search optimisation are as follows:

• use appropriate keywords in the filename and URL
• optimise the title and description tags used in the video file, where possible, and on the page hosting the video file (such as when listing a video on YouTube)
• consider the surrounding text content and description on the page around the video
• link to the video from other web pages and locations with the appropriate keyword content in the text link.

In addition to these basic principles, the video should be submitted to the appropriate video hosting sites, directories and search engines – Google now offers a video sitemap option within their Webmaster Tools. In addition, the file should be provided in as many formats as possible to extend access. It is also recommended to offer a textual transcript of the audio and video content as well as publicising these multimedia files with appropriate RSS/MRSS feeds.

If you already have business videos available or want to consider using this medium to attract search traffic, please contact us now to find out more.

Microsoft have just announced a new incentive to try to encourage more users to conduct their online shopping through their Live Search engine. Cash incentives are being offered to shoppers through the new ‘Live Search Cashback’ scheme, so that listed products could offer users discounts of up to 10% of the sale price. (more…)

With the popularity of social networking websites – where people collaborate and exchange information online – it was only a matter of time before this power of human interaction is harnessed within search engines. This month has seen the launch of the alpha test version of the new Wikia Search tool, as well as reports that Yahoo! is testing the integration of del.icio.us bookmarking tags within their search listings.

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What do we predict will be some of the main trends this year? Here are our 5 thoughts for 2008.

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Since the content targeted network was first launched and provided advertisers with limited controls over what was happening with their adverts, Google has recently been developing and refining a much better range of tools and reports to control this option, which should make it a more appealing route for advertisers to test and develop.

A recent example is the renaming of AdWords Site Targeting, now called AdWords Site Placement, reflecting a couple of refinements to this service.

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Most webmasters will be aware of the great range of free tools made available by Google to help:

• increase website visibility,
• find and resolve issues that might stop search engines and traffic reaching sites, and
• monitor site performance in terms of traffic and popular content.

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Microsoft has just announced that it is changing the way that search results will be displayed on its Live Search engine. Satya Nadella, the corporate VP of the search and advertising platform group at Microsoft is quoted as saying about the new style of results: “We call it blended search…We’re giving you instant answers.”

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Just last week we saw the launch of a new search engine that claims to be the world’s first real-time search engine that can access the most current information and delve further into the ‘invisible web’ that most search engines fail to index. It’s being heralded as another new competitor to threaten Google’s dominance, but how good is it?

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Following growing concerns about privacy and data collection, both Microsoft and Yahoo! have recently announced that they will be keeping information on search usage for a shorter period of time. At the same time, Microsoft and Ask have proposed new voluntary standards to be developed by the search industry to protect consumer data.

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