I had wanted to do an in-depth post on noting what you could do with Google Adword’s new ability to show actual search numbers, but All Things SEM did a fabulous job of the ideas that ran through my head when I heard about this news.

Instead I’ll just remark that there are two important types of people humans listen to: The Pessimist (seen here as Smackdown) vs. The Optimist (seen here as All Things SEM).

The Pessimist takes the news of Adwords showing search numbers by beginning in this way:

The problem is, however, that those numbers are meant for people doing research into PPC traffic. The numbers shown have very little to do with what people actually search on using Google.com.

Often times they will claim the mantle of “Realist” insisting that the Optimist is naive in the approach. Yet, the instinctual drive towards thumbing down new information limits the boundaries of what is possible.

The Optimist takes the news in this way:

More Accurate Data

Better Upfront Planning

Click Through Rates for SERPs

Title and Description Testing

Improved PPC and SEO Synergies

The Optimist takes down ideas and creatively comes up with new possibilities to test and use in order to create new opportunities and improve upon existing campaigns. Yes, sometimes that leads to wrong paths and errors, but without trying and testing, then you are left with a stagnant campaign.

I prefer to take the path of creativity and new ideas rather than shooting down new possibilities and thus why All Things SEM goes into my RSS feed. You want someone who sits down and thinks of all the possible ways to work with and use new data rather than throw it to the wind.

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The more and more I see Google gobble up new areas and jump into new verticals, the more I personally envision their own search results filled with just about only their own products. For someone who works on improving client search results for SEO, this will become an ever-increasing frustration as Google’s SERPs will be less and less beneficial for clients looking for direct impacts to their site. How so? Here’s a vision of how the search results could be in a few years (click to enlarge):

Of course, that entirely depends on whether Google is still around. Nonetheless, as frustrating as it can be to see these results, it makes me wonder how much Google is just shooting itself in the foot the more it continues to promote its own products over other results (manually or algorithimically). All one would need is a great advertising campaign to publically make fun of Google for having all its search results as Google.

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Baidu is quite well known in China as being the place to get free mp3s by just searching for songs at mp3.baidu.com and then downloading the song from the respective website. Now, this can be done still in Google with some advanced search commands (eg: filetype:mp3 aerosmith), but what could be done for Baidu specifically?

A search for “Linkin Park” (without quotes) elicits the following (click to expand):

However, if you know a few Chinese phrases–such as the word for song (歌), then the search suddenly changes. Change the phrase to “Linkin Park歌” (once again without quotes) and now you get the following (click to expand):

Click on “试听” and now you have the website showing up along with the ability to hear the song as well.

So much for trying to hide those songs to English speakers.

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A short article over at Inc.com about workers struggling with data overloading made me consider whether or not we really are overloaded with data. Personally I believe that there is certainly such a thing as data overload, but that this does not necessarily mean that important information is easier lost in the long-run for everyone.

Yes, there will be some people who will not be able to handle going through so much data or even trying to figure out some scientific method to the madness (think of some kind of SEO Science) and they will lose their competitive advantage over millions of others.

I’m more interested in those that can rise above the short-run problems of too much data and learn how to become better researchers in order to find that needle in a haystack at a faster rate. IE: Rather than just continuing in the normal search pattern as they always have (in order from first to last), but rather through some innovative algorithmic approach that uses some rather magnetic tools to find that special needle.

Sure, you have to be careful about what kind of data you could be losing or missing out on through some abrogated researching, but in the end, I personally believe the benefits outweigh the costs.

Bring on the data I say! Plop it down in front of me and let me work my wonders and find that interesting tidbit of useful information.

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Here’s my comment via the article at UK Times Online on Slashdot:

 You can follow three paths as a search engine (in simplistic terms):

1) Show everything–this implies crap sites (*coughs* boingboing), great sites (*coughs*

/.), malware sites (3221.com), search results sites, etc. thereupon your results are fully awful, but absolutely representative of what a search engine is “supposed” to show by previous comments, and thus get banned in China thereby showing nothing.

2) Do as you are told–obviously not as fun and cries of shenanigans and submissions are there, but then you get to show more results to people around the world who otherwise would just be filled with pure propaganda.

3) Do your own thing–”hitting the corner of the ping-pong table”, barely get by with regulations without getting punished.

Guess what? None of those are illegal to do under any international law at this point in time (although I recall some events within the US on trying to sue sites that just link to other pages, but nothing for the international arena) and certainly nothing illegal to show or not show within the US for political sites.

Remember, this is a corporation, not a government, so there is no “right” that you have for them to “display” your site in “their” index.

At least all algorithmically anyway.

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I have sat in a few conferences about the globalization of one thing or another and what never ceases to tick me off is the waste of time those sessions are by providing such generic explanations of what to do and what not to do. Thus, it is a nice breather to at least see a good start of an article over at Search Engine Land on localization outside of the US in the SEO/SEM markets:

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It is rather interesting to see Google following the acts of Baidu in China as if Google is the Yahoo/MSN within the US. Google cannot seem to get out there in front and actually do anything new without either changing Google’s MO, copying Sohu, or just being late to the market (eg: Google had no Chinese name in 2005).

So now Google has finally decided to take aim at Baidu:

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Search Engine Optimization is still in the early stages of turning hypotheses and theories into a form of science. SEO science in my opinion delve beyond just purely stating what has happened or taking guesses, but rather using complicated econometric formulas for regression analysis via panel data. Of course, the idea of running econometric analysis appeals to a very niche audience as correlations and marketing proofs are usually preferred (and in most cases is all that is needed).

Nonetheless, there are consistent thoughts and ideas inside the SEO world on what works for proper optimization and on what search engine itself. What interests me most is algorithmically figuring out what kind of factor affects search engines the most when you can hold other values constant and by what percent. It is within the analytical area of SEO that interests me and not just the marketing and strategy approach (which obviously are just as important).

Effective analysis of the science of SEO would have to take in a large amount of factors that could influence Google, not to mention the areas where Google manually changes its algorithm (a large error factor). Various blackhat and grayhat techniques in heavy traffic and niche markets could easily create a large statistical error, but even more importantly, the constant changes in search engine algorithms would make econometric analysis a limited benefit if not re-analyzed every algorithm update.

Fear not, however, as this has never prevented people from doing time-series analysis for the stock markets and successfully predicting, albeit briefly, where to put one’s money.

Still, there are search strategists and search marketing professionals and experts from Aaron Wall to Michael Martinez that do dig into what works within SEO (only to an extent due to confidentiality areas of course).

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Google issued want could be seen as a general warning to Microsoft over the hostile bid for all of Yahoo:

Google said Sunday that Microsoft’s proposed $44.6 billion takeover of Yahoo could pose a number of potential threats to competition that need to be examined by policymakers around the world.

Google said in a blog post on its Web site that given Microsoft’s anti-competitive conduct in the past and its continued dominance in the technology industry, the proposed transaction could pose threats to “innovation and openness” on the Internet. But Google’s broadly worded concerns lacked detailed claims about the anticompetitive effects of the deal, and the company did not ask federal regulators to take any specific actions at this time.

From a branding perspective, I can see why Google would respond to the bid publicly, but I personally see Google not having to worry with a takeover of Yahoo for the following reasons:

1. MSN and Live suck majorly as search engines.
2. Yahoo sucks as a search engine company.
3. MSN and Yahoo have such different cultures that will undoubtfully clash against each other.
4. Any merger/takeover will take precious time away from fighting Google in the next year or two that will only further secure Google’s position.
5. Risk of the worst of both worlds from the takeover–MSN’s poor search engine + Yahoo’s poor marketing abilities = Google monopoly.
6. Additional Yahoo layoffs leading to top search people fleeing to Google rather than to Microsoft (lesser of two evils perhaps?)

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You have a very well-known SEO person, Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land claiming that it’s the first birthday of the “Google Bomb Fix“. Now, you could call that bad/false advertising by Danny Sullivan or a post that should specifically note that Google fixed the “miserable failure bomb” manually, but nonetheless, I just wanted to point out how even a ‘well-respected’ person within the industry still makes anecdotal claims based purely upon… well, anything but actual facts.

The perfect example that disproves the ‘fix’ on Google Bombing is after the jump… (more…)

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