Natural Search

Here in the Natural Search department we use Excel. A lot. And frequently we are taking data from the web (such as from the rather good Open Site Explorer) and manhandling it in order to make more sense of it. As part of this process, it’s often helpful to be able to quickly pull out the domain portion of a URL. For example, let’s say you have a list of URLs like this:

• http://www.example.com/
• http://www.icrossing.co.uk/file1.html
• http://www.icrossing.co.uk/file2.html
• http://example.com/another_file.html
• http://www.acompletelydifferentdomain.com/

You might find yourself in a position where want to take this list and reduce it to just the domain portions like this:

• example.com
• icrossing.co.uk
• icrossing.co.uk
• example.com
• acompletelydifferentdomain.com

It’s possible to use an Excel formula to do this. Here’s one I found by searching:

=IF(LEFT(LEFT(SUBSTITUTE(A1,”http://”,”"),FIND(“/”,SUBSTITUTE(A1,”http://”,”")&”/”)-1),4)=”www.”,MID(LEFT(SUBSTITUTE(A1,”http://”,”"),FIND(“/”,SUBSTITUTE(A1,”http://”,”")&”/”)-1),5,256),LEFT(SUBSTITUTE(A1,”http://”,”"),FIND(“/”,SUBSTITUTE(A1,”http://”,”")&”/”)-1))

This is fine, but as you can see the formula is rather long and combining this with any further functions would be a real headache. To try to solve this, I wrote an add-In for Excel that adds a handy function to perform this step (along with a few others).

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Since Google started including local entries in natural results for location-specific search queries, local search optimisation has been gaining more attention. And with Google allotting more spaces to its Map-packs, pushing the traditional results below the fold, getting listed in the local search space is becoming crucial.

I always thought location was the only factor deciding the ranking of the map listing; the better optimised the map is to the location keyword, the higher are its chances to rank on top. However, according to the latest edition of David Mihm’s Local Search Ranking Factors, there are more points to take into consideration. The most positive ones are summarised below:-

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Writing good content for your site is not a new concept. Content is king after all. However with Googles recent shift in gear, (cranking up its indexing to Caffeine level) to cope with the sheer weight of content being produced online, there is an ever more compelling need to be sure the content you produce is quality and visible amongst the endless quagmire of mediocrity and spam.

Caffeine is “a robust foundation that makes it possible for us to build an even faster and comprehensive search engine that scales with the growth of information online”. What does this mean at this stage? Well exactly what it says on the tin: Caffeine is in it’s infancy but has been built with the future of ever increasing content creation in mind.

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Recently, I have been working in both the PPC and SEO teams at iCrossing. Batting for both sides in this way has highlighted the traditionally very different ways in which these disciplines are generally analysed and reported on.

It feels like we are getting closer and closer to the point where we will be able to use the same metrics across search as a whole, and the points here are where I think that Paid Search methods can now be applied to Natural Search campaigns.

…..and I want to go beyond simply reporting the ROI or CPA of Natural Search campaign because, although it generally makes you look very good compared to Paid Search, I don’t need to explain how to do that (hopefully).

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Last week Google rolled out SSL encryption to its search product.

What it is: The option of establishing a secure https connection when searching google.com

How to use it: Visit https://www.google.com (Attention to the extra “s”) and search as usual.

What it is SSL: SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is a protocol that provides secure communications on the Internet for things liike web browsing, e-mail, instant messaging & other data transfers.

Advantage: Added security for your users. It helps protect your search terms and your search results pages from being intercepted by a third party on your network.

Effect: Potentially a slightly slower service due to the additional time to set up the encryption between your browser and the remote web server.

Other: Not all products are available with a SSL so there will not be the usual links to other products like Maps & Images.

When to use it: When not on a non-secure Internet connection, such as a public wireless or non-encrypted network.

The Evolution of Search

The last eighteen months saw some of the most significant changes to the way Google produces its natural search listings. While Google updates its ranking algorithm almost on a daily basis, inclusion of entirely new signals are rare.

Since the launch of Google in 1998, back link analysis determined the credibility and relevance of a webpage. This worked well in 96 but by 2007, the very thing that helped Google dominate was also becoming its Achilles heel. As the SEO industry battled for the first page, links were getting far too noisy to provide the signal of quality they once represented.

The introduction of user data

In 2009 we saw the introduction of user data in the form of the Vince Update. It was characterised by  the dominance of brands across highly competitive search real-estate, even when they were not specifically optimised in the traditional sense.

While the SEO community complained Google was favouring brands – our research into Vince showed a strong correlation between  user data and better semantics. The sites doing well had a lot in common – they were all highly searched-for in their category and they were also synonymous with their core category keywords on the web.  For example, many people search for ‘British Airways’ following a query for ‘flights’, and the words ‘British Airways’ and ‘flights’ also appeared on the same pages a lot. As a result of this, Google has judged that ranking BA high for a search on ‘flights’ will provide a better user experience, regardless of whether the word appears on its site.

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One of the handy things about having US offices is that when a new developments happen in Search, they are usually launched over in the States and then filter out to the rest of the World up to 6 months later. This happens with Search Engine updates such as Vince and the launch of new Search Engines such as Bing.

Most recently is the launch of Google Places to replace Google Local Business Listing on Tuesday of this week.

So what’s new in Google Places:

• Service areas: Businesses that travel to their customers can now specify which geographic areas they serve and be eligible to show in search results for queries in those areas. Also, if a business doesn’t have a physical street address, its address can remain private.
• Tags: For a flat fee of $25/month, businesses can enhance their listings with a yellow Maps icon that displays a customizable line of text describing any aspect of the business.
• Business photo shoots: Businesses can already upload photos of their locations to their Google Place page. Now Google is offering to do a free interior photo shoot of the business as well.
• QR codes: From its Place page dashboard, a U.S. business can now download a QR code, that if scanned by a user’s capable smartphone, will direct that user to the mobile version of that business’s Place page.
• Favorite Places: Google plans to mail window decals with QR codes to 50,000 businesses around the U.S. to use in advertising at their locations.

Below is some handy advice from Eric Sidone (@esidone) our Natural Search Strategist in the Phoneix Office of iCrossing.
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A while ago Google said they were going to be looking at a site’s performance speed as a ranking factor and at the end of last week (Friday April 9^th) this was confirmed to now be in place in the US results, yet to be rolled out internationally.

Google aims to give a great user experience by delivering users information more quickly and webmasters now play a role with responsibility to contribute towards this by developing sites with good performance. By prioritising sites which can deliver their content quickly whilst also being relevant, Google steps again in the direction in achieving their goal.

This new ranking factor is still one in hundreds, effecting a nominal amount of search queries and is still marginal in comparison to ‘relevancy’, so don’t down tools and change strategies. It is recommended to continue focusing on relevancy and providing valuable accessible content, but do not neglect looking at site performance speed to fine tune your rankings.

There are a number of free tools to use to diagnose your site performance issues and amongst those is ‘Site Performance’, an experimental Google labs feature which can be accessed through Google’s Webmaster Tools. From here you can find out latency information about your site and find some recommendations on how to make improvements.

If not for your rankings alone, it is worth considering page load performance for onsite usability to increase your conversion rate!

A few weeks ago I created an extension that would number the search results in Google and Google UK.

I’ve now updated it so it works on all Google regional engines, as well as Yahoo and Bing including all their regional engines.

It also now has another feature which I thought would be quite helpful; one-click switching of the number of displayed results.

Links are placed at the top of Google and Yahoo, which link through to SERPS of different result sizes for the same search term. This utilises parameters in the search engines URL, and will not change your default setting.

You can install the extension by clicking here in Chrome, and extensions homepage can be found here.

1) Video content & Personalised SERPs

When creating a video or TV ad, reference your web site – and not just with the URL but also with “Search for …”. Not only with this aid in the viewer of the video remembering more easily how to navigate to your site, or even a specific web page, but also it can help influence viewers personalised searches within Google.

Through understanding Social Media platforms and understanding the networks your target audience live in you can seed these videos effectively for maximum exposure.

With personalised search now by default within Google, brands need to think how they can maximise on their audiences search history. Instead of suggesting at the end of the video or TV ad to search for just the brand name, consider incorporating non-brand terms into the call to action as well, i.e. “Search for brand product/service“. This can then build you brands relation to these non-brand terms and influence your rankings for these terms as well.

Of course this has huge potential if the videos created are useful, engaging, easy to share and of course have that ‘je ne sais quoi’ element that makes videos go viral.

Photo credit: CC Flickr user dan_taylor

But be aware, if executed poorly like the Orange ‘I am’ campaign you open yourself up to a lot of criticism. Orange promoted “I am” through their commercials & billboards, initially it  was a fail (it still is.. they rank #3 currently) as their site wasn’t ranking for the keyword in Google natural search and industry experts criticised them for their poor implementation.
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