Half of all visitors to WMCCM use their own unique search term.

Writing about web page http://www.wmccm.co.uk

The last 30,000 visitors to www.wmccm.co.uk referred by search engines used just over 20,000 different search terms.

The most popular search terms are used by hundreds of visitors resulting in over 15,000 terms being used uniquely by only one visitor.
These visitors may have used other more popular terms but half of our visitors came up with their own search term.

This diversity of terms is generated by the permutations of relatively few key words. One architectural balustrade company recorded over 2000 search terms and 66% of those contained the stem variants of balustrade, balustrading, etc or hand rail, handrail etc.

The diversity is created by refinement, copying phrases, sorting into alaphabetical order by meta search engines, etc. These visitors were brought to these pages by the search engines because they addressed the human audience and used natural, varied, english. This “long tail” of unique search terms cannot be addressed by mechanical key term stuffing.

Robert McGonigle : 09 Jan 2007 12:35 |  Tags: Search Engines Search Terms Server Log Data Web Statistics Wmccm |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

The Staff Christmas Party Quiz and Technology

Writing about web page http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/insite/newsandevents/intnews2/staffxmasparty06/

The WMCCM team with guests Sharon and Ian Tuersley entered the Staff Christmas Party Quiz at the Students Union last night. The quiz was fun but more challenging than last years and our team, Dilbert’s less charasmatic friends, did reasonably well. Thanks to the organisers and *Re:Offenders *for keeping us entertained. (We were never likely to last long enough to review the DJ.)

At our table of six, we had four phones that were capable of connecting to the internet using WiFi. At the recent group welcome events the quiz master made four attempts to hand over the prizes only for all of them to decline because they had cheated. (Too well?)

I know that many more phones and PDAs can connect to the internet using 3G or GPRS through their mobile network. Where I to run a quiz at Routes, the SU or anywhere else with a Hotspot then I would try to get the hotspot turned off during the quiz. Yes, they can still cheat with the phone but at least it would not be completely free.

Robert McGonigle : 15 Dec 2006 14:04 |  Tags: 3G Cheating Christmas Christmas Party Gprs Internet Quiz Staff Party Union Wi-Fi |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Yahoo!'s Siteexplorer gives controllable Inbound Link results.

Writing about web page http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/

I have found the most accurate Inbound Link tool is the Yahoo! Site Explorer. It also gives a clear indication of the pages from a site that are cached on Yahoo!’s databases.

Inbound link numbers are not as critical these days with quality and relevance being more important than quantity. All the search engines need to find a link or be notiified to be able to discover your page.

The site explorer allows you to select “except from this domain” to reject links from your own site and links to the whole domain or to a subdomain.

Robert McGonigle : 11 Dec 2006 16:13 |  Tags: Internet Search Search Seo Yahoo Yahoo Site Explorer |  Comments (6) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

WMCCM is on Google Local

Writing about web page http://www.google.com/local/add

I have just finished the process of registering WMCCM on Google Local.
(Follow the link to do likewise.)

You need to have a login, register your company or organisations details and then they send you a letter with a PIN number as the verification step.

I was pleasantly surprised to find 52 of WMCCM’s profiled companies has already got entries.
Join – Get Profiled here.
http://www.wmccm.co.uk/WMCCM/DesktopDefault.aspx?tabindex=3&tabid=798

Some of the entries leave few or zero clues about what the company did. Always put keywords into titles including with your company name to create an effective online brand.

When Google has nothing else to differentiate these local entries it places them in order of the distance from the centre of the location. So check out all possible locations and the competition. In Brierley Hill a presswork company can be found in searches for Walsall and even Wolverhampton but would have no chance under Birmingham.

Yahoo! Local uses the classified entries from the BT phonebook. Again think about the title used in these entries.

Robert McGonigle : 08 Dec 2006 14:42 |  Tags: Google Local Google Maps Regional Portal Smes Wmccm |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

To research the use of Google Adwords as a market intelligence gathering tool

Writing about web page https://adwords.google.com/select/Login

Pay-per-click, search targeted, advertising such as Google Adwords has become an effective, responsive and controllable route to market.

Some recent examples have seen Google Adwords where there was no product to sell. That is to guaranteed a loss on the exercise but the loss can be limited and can test ideas for a lot less than traditional market research methods.

You can test market a product that does not exist yet. If it existed would anyone be interested? Here a white paper can be presented with the solution. How many people click, download, and get in touch?

You can test different title ideas for a book. This is very analogous to the act of browsing a bookstore. Does the Adwords headline attract a click, would the reader look at the flysheet?

One idea you can test for a real business, Vintage Paints, would be test the demand for thirties to fifties cracked or marbled paint finishes. This company is developing these traditional materials but inproved to comply with 21st century environmental and safety standards.

The questions, above, are taken from one of my WMG MSc projects and will be tackled by Szu-Ting Tseng, a student from Taiwan.

The WMCCM students will all have access to project spaces on our portal, http://www.wmccm.co.uk/WMCCM/DesktopDefault.aspx?tabindex=5&tabid=21 and this can be an opportunity for them to network with fellow students following related projects.

Robert McGonigle : 20 Nov 2006 15:03 |  Tags: Adwords Marketing Pay-Per-Click Wmccm |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Who sets the user's search policy?

There are many ways to use the search engines. All of the list, below, have been observed in recent years. Some are more efficient that others but all can habitual.

• Search Site = Home Page – to search again use the Back Button
• Bookmark the Search Site – to search again Back Button
• Use the search panel – Searching again is easy but takes the most screen space.
• Type into IE Address Bar – Search Again = Yes – Defaults to MSN or toolbar – Smallest footprint.
• Start Bar ‘search internet’ – Search again Yes as Search panel – 3 clicks to start!
• Search Toolbar – Search Again Yes – Small footprint.
• Deskbar search – Search again Yes – Precurser to OS desktop.
• Search on OS Desktop – Search again = Yes.
• Select text & right mouse button – Search from anywhere – choice of local computer or internet.
• Site specific search. e.g. eBay and Amazon.
• Specialist search e.g. Google Scholar, Yahoo Images, Blogfinder.
• Non-search finding e.g. History, Down arrow on Address Bar

The growing choice are the search toolbars, where Google and Yahoo! are dominant with 95% share. IE7 and Vista could change all this by putting Microsoft search as default in the desktop, (with the option to change to other preloaded search engines). Toolbars account for only 12% of all searches however, comScore (2006).

From my visits to SMEs in the midlands the evidence of policies on the computers reveals the following options.
• Company policy. All computers with standard builds, mostly networked.
(This is conscious and planned.)
• Installer & maintainer policy. Often the default search engine lines up with the market leader at the time when the computer was installed. (Conscious but ad hoc.)
• User policy. Adding toolbars, default search providers etc. Google wins here.
(Conscious and ad hoc.)
• Software updates policy. These are agreed, once, for virus scanners, acrobat readers, etc. These can introduce ‘enhancements’, Adobe’s Acrobat update pre-checks ‘Download Yahoo Toolbar’ on the left when the user needs to click on the right to continue. (Unconscious and ad-hoc.)

A lot of toolbars were installed on the computers of inexpert users in the unconscious and ad-hoc way. So are these ‘software policy’ driven installations the next market share battleground for the search engines?
There is a battle for these installations using the likes of Acrobat (Yahoo), Java (Google) and the browser/OS (MS) but the real goal has to be to educate the users to habitually use them.

My observations have revealed a lot of unused toolbars. The conscoius users of the latest tools and methods are likely to be the ones who are driving the growth of searching. These users are finding that these ever-present tools can solve most of their information finding needs with one simple mental model.

Robert McGonigle : 24 Oct 2006 23:22 |  Tags: Internet Search Search Usability |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Canadian Rockies Gallery

Writing about web page http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/robmcgonigle/gallery/canadian_rockies_2006/

This Blog needed breaking up with an image. I have been adding some of the photos from our Canadian trip to allow our distant family to see them. The BlogBuilder here on Warwick Blogs displays galleries very well so they got added to a Blog all about Search Engines.

Susan left a very kind comment and particularly liked this photo but had to leave it in a topic about Location Based Search! So I have added this entry to allow comments to be added about the Canadian Rockies Gallery. Follow the link above to view.

I like the slideshow feature to view pictures on Warwick Blogs but this does not always work dependant on your browser’s use of active controls. The best display is produced by double clicking on an image within the gallery view. You can then see ‘Next’ on the edge of the large view of the image, when you hover the mouse pointer over, to browse at your own pace.

Robert McGonigle : 02 Oct 2006 10:03 |  Tags: 2006 Canada Canadian Rockies Icefields Parkway Photos Rockies Slideshow |  Comments (3) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Problems with Location based Search Marketing in the UK

The strongest growth in search marketing in the US has been in location based advertising. All the main search relevance advertising channels, Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing (was Overture) and Microsoft Search Marketing offer this service.

If a business offers a service in a specific geographic area it makes sence for their Adverts to show only to searchers who are in the area.
The searcher sees only adverts that are relevant to their query and some will be local. If a plumber bids on local cities in the West Midlands and someone from Coventry sees thier advert the word Coventry will appear under the display url. So this combines the advantages of relevance advertising, displaying only when the user is searching on the subject, with the Yellow Pages.

When I search here at the University and find location triggered Adwords the location shows as Warwick. The University is actually on the edge of Coventry but this is understandable. When I do the same from my Coventry home from a fixed IP ADSL broadband link it shows up as London!

Why is this? It turns out to be a limitation of the BT wholesale ADSL network. Their backbone ATM network can only resolve an IP address location dowm to three central hubs nationwide. Since BT’s ADSL has the majority of the UK’s broadband connections this is bad news for fixed line location based search marketing.

The Cable competition, Telewest and NTL, now combined as one joint company, do provide the correct location information down to the City and Town. (I am an NTL customer with their Analog TV service but unfortunately they will probably never upgrade my area to digital and offer broadband cable modems.)

Google Local and competitors will allow promotion alongside their Maps.
This will still work and allows users to look up restaurants, etc., where they plan to travel to.

True location based marketing in the UK will probably be delivered using mobile devices such as PDAs and smartphones as these really do need to know your location at all times to connect calls.

Robert McGonigle : 27 Sep 2006 22:19 |  Tags: Adwords Internet Search Location Based Search Overture |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Location information on every page.

Writing about web page http://www.wmccm.co.uk/WMCCM/DesktopDefault.aspx?tabindex=9&tabid=2916

For the last three years I have been advising our SMEs that they should add their location information onto every page of their websites.

Often engineering customers, searching for a supplier to solve an immediate problem, will find many results from China, India, Eastern Europe and the US. If they are looking for a local company they will either use the ‘pages from the UK’ button if they have the option or add some location information.

The .co.uk, .org.uk & .me.uk high level domains have taught British searchers to add UK. They might also add Midlands, West Midlands, Birmingham, etc.

Recent changes to the WMCCM site made it clear that our own site failed the location information test. The best, long term, solution will be to add this to the Site Banner default style but this will take time. (The bottom of the page on www.wmccm.co.uk , and other ASP.NET sites can be a an indeterminate place.)

I have tried three approaches on the public tabs.

A single line at the top. This is my preferred approach being closer to the eventual solution. This is seen on the Case Studies Tab at http://www.wmccm.co.uk/WMCCM/DesktopDefault.aspx?tabindex=9&tabid=2916

Using a html panel on the left. See the Showcase Tab, http://www.wmccm.co.uk/WMCCM/DesktopDefault.aspx?tabindex=7&tabid=3142

In a larger panel in the centre pane as in the Directory Tab, http://www.wmccm.co.uk/WMCCM/DesktopDefault.aspx?tabindex=2&tabid=15

What do you think?

Robert McGonigle : 15 Sep 2006 10:42 |  Tags: Internet Search Search Wmccm |  Comments (3) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Using Blogs and RSS feeds to Update Web Pages

Many small companies only change their website every two years or so. This is because they do not have the skills to change or to upload their sites using web tools and must use external web developers.

Most web developers do not want to make minor changes and have been developing techniques within their designs to allow the site’s owners to add content using database entries, etc.

This is a test of using the RSS feed link from a blog as a way to add text to a web page. The previous entries on this blog use html markup and these markup tags have been displayed in the web page.

This test panel has not used any markup.

Robert McGonigle : 07 Sep 2006 17:18 |  Tags: Blogs Change Webpages RSS Feeds |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Internet Search Growth and Market Share

Writing about web page http://www.wmccm.co.uk

There are two ways of measuring the growth of the search markets, survey panels and web-server log data. Both these have been revealing significant growth.

Neilson//NetRatings Survey Panels report 55% annual growth to Dec ’05 against a 3% growth of US searchers. Hitwise, from their ISP & 500,000 web-site logs data, report Google’s UK searches were up 77% in the year to Nov ’05. Most indicators show Google gaining share with all the competitors holding position as they grow.

The search ranking sites differ as to the absolute market share of Google.

ComScore Networks and Neilson//NetRatings have Google at 43% and 48% respectively in March ’06 using survey methods.

WebSideStory using webserver log data has Google up at 55% in the US and 75% in the UK, Feb ‘06. Hitwise supported the UK figure showing 75% in March ’06 also using webserver data.

Two main differences stand out.

1. That Google is stronger in the UK is clearly shown in WebSideStory’s comparative data.
“Even more so in the U.K. than in the U.S., when people think of search, they think of Google,” said WebSideStory, Chief Marketing Officer, Rand Schulman.

2. The web server log file data shows a stronger Google share than the panel based surveys.

There are two possible reasons for the difference between panels and web server logs. Some panel results show unique visitors per day/week/month and underreports search volume. This is not true of Neilsons/NetRatings who project total daily search volumes. The pure server log file results will underreport visits to sites that don’t employ SEO professionals such as news and TV sites. Hitwise also use Internet Service Provider data to fill in this gap.

John Battelle in his book The Search, characterised Yahoo! as taking the human, contemporary, approach to Google’s technical, academic approach. Yahoo! has focussed more on Big Brother and reality TV shows. This supports an underreporting of Yahoo! referrals in server logs.

This analysis confirms that UK engineering companies should concentrate on Google.

This is supported by search engine referrals to www.wmccm.co.uk

Robert McGonigle : 06 Sep 2006 14:26 |  Tags: Internet Search Search |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Users Search rather than Navigate

Writing about web page http://www.wmccm.co.uk

Jay McCarthy, VP of WebSideStory, first signalled a significant change in user behaviour last May at Search Engine Strategies 2005 Toronto announcing that Internet links and search referral have crossed over, no longer do people get to sites with links, but now they use search, its not a web anymore. This was confirmed by Neilson/NetRatings, 18th Jan 2006, from their November 2005 search results showing ebay, ebay.com, google, yahoo and yahoo.com in the top ten search terms for U.S. searchers. The reports claims that this indicates users now type into the search bar rather than use the address bar, bookmarks (Favorites folder) or directories. U.S. online searches grew 55% year on year to 5.1 billion searches in Dec 2005 according to Neilson/NetRatings, 9th Feb 2006. This was against an online population growth of only 3% showing a real change in user behaviour claims the same report.

Cahill of Hitwise confirmed the UK increase in searching was similar to the US pattern with March’s top 10 UK search terms being ebay, amazon, argos, bbc, easyjet, google earth, autotrader, ebay uk, cbbc, & bebo.

WMCCM, based at the University of Warwick here, has seen visitors grow 60% in the first quarter of 2006 with 87% of visitors referred by Google.

Robert McGonigle : 18 Jun 2006 17:10 |  Tags: Navigation Search Users Wmccm |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem