August 4,
2004
In
This Issue:
1. Yahoo Goes Local
2. In the News - MSN update / New OWT article
3. More News Headlines
4. This Week's Q&A - Slight correction to last week's Q&A
5. Wrapping It Up
_________________
Yahoo Goes Local
The push toward local search took another big step this week
with Yahoo's launch of Yahoo! Local, a beta search service developed
to help searchers find specific, local content and information
on the web. This service is different from the "SmartView" service
Yahoo launched in March (see our Newsletter
#3), which was an extension
of the Yahoo Maps service. Yahoo! Local is, instead, a direct competitor
for Google Local, which was also introduced in March and was the
subject of discussion in our Newsletter
#4.
The two local search services are very similar, from the spartan
design of the search form to the information included in the
results you get. But at this moment, it appears from a couple quick
test
searches that Yahoo! Local is the better option of the two because
it offers more relevant results and more search features than
Google.
My first test was a search for "Italian restaurant 99336" on
both sites. Google drops the ball by putting two Richland restaurants
and a Umatilla restaurant in the top five results. Yahoo, on the
other hand, has Kennewick restaurants in the top nine spots. Beyond
that, Yahoo also gives you additional task-based options to refine
your search. You can narrow your search by restaurant price, rating,
and even atmosphere, with choices such as "casual", "romantic", "family
friendly" and others. Maybe not so important here in the Tri-Cities
where our choices are a bit limited, but it's a nice feature for
use in larger and unfamiliar cities.
The second test was a search for "hotel seattle wa",
and neither site dropped the ball. The results were relevant and
accurate on both Yahoo and Google, clearly the result of having
so many matches for the search I tried. One obvious difference
is that Yahoo shows the rating of each hotel, and if there are
none, invites you to write a review and rate the hotel right on
the spot -- another added touch that separates Yahoo's local search
from Google's.
Yahoo! Local
Google Local
_________________
In The News
Last week in this spot we mentioned that Microsoft
had launched its new "Newsbot" service in an attempt
to compete with Google News. In its article on the new service,
the Washington Post mentioned one key difference between the two
service: Newsbot gives preferential treatment to news articles
from Microsoft's own MSNBC.com news site; Google shows no favoritism
at all. When The Post visited newsbot last Friday, half of the
22 front-page stories were from MSNBC.com.
This week down in San Jose there's another edition of the big "Search
Engine Strategies" conference. Search engine representatives,
search engine marketers, and many others in the industry are there
for panels and discussions about the latest developments in search
marketing. There are about 4-5 SES conferences a year worldwide,
and some good news and information always comes out of the panels.
I'm sure we'll be talking about some of the news and developments
in upcoming newsletters.
And lastly, we've posted our latest SEO/web development article
on owtweb.com. It's called "Writing Great Copy for the Web",
and it continues our series of article detailing the concepts we
laid out in the "Search
Engine Success Checklist" article.
Writing copy for your web site is a bit tricky, because you have
to target both search engine crawlers and your site visitors. But
when it's done right, you can really help your web site gain more
visibility and more customers.
Writing Great Copy for the Web
_________________
More News Headlines
Here are a few news headlines worth your time to read.
These are just some of the headlines we've posted
to OWTweb.com in recent
days.
Web outshines catalogs, direct marketing and telemarketing, study
says
August 04, 2004 - Internet Retailer
The Internet now influences the purchase decisions of as many
shoppers as mail order catalogs, direct mail, and telemarketing
combined.
Microsoft aiming to deliver personalized search
August 03, 2004 - Reuters
Personalized search promises to deliver search results that are
more relevant by taking into account an individual's interests
based on previous search queries and other information.
Who's not answering e-mail: you'd be surprised
July 30, 2004 - Internet Retailer
Barely half of the world's best-known brands answer e-mail
from consumers, according to a report from consultants
Common Sense
Advisory.
More headlines: http://www.owtweb.com/news/
_________________
This Week's Q&A
Rather than a new Q&A this week, here's an update and correction
to last week's Q&A. You may recall the question was about handling
multiple domain names for one web site, and I answered that doing
a "301 redirect" is the best way to go where search engine
visibility is concerned. All of that is true. I, however, went
a step too far and added that it "has to be done at the server
level". Not so fast, explains reader Greg McCann of the Cambria
Corporation:
"Unless it has not been allowed by the server administrator,
a user on an Apache web server can do this by editing their /.htaccess
file and adding either a Redirect or RedirectMatch directive.
It
can get complicated depending on exactly how you want to handle
it, but ... the "permanent" clause returns a "301" status."
Greg went on to add that the coding of this depends on what version
of the Apache web server software you have running. So I stand
half-corrected: it can be done at the web site level, but it
still depends on software setup at the server level. In any
case, thanks
Greg for the clarification. Web server configuration is far
from my specialty and I should've been more careful with that reply
last
week!
(Have a question? Email questions@owtweb.com)
_________________
Wrapping it Up
For all you heavy hitters and big investors out there, CNN/Money
is reporting that Google's IPO may happen as soon as next Tuesday.
$108 per share? Yikes. That web site I mentioned in last week's
newsletter is now active and allows individual investors to request
the Bidder ID that you'll need to take part.
https://www.ipo.google.com/
Thanks for reading,
Matt McGee
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