September
15, 2004
In
This Issue:
1. Google Upgrades Local Search...or does it?
2. In the News - Amazon.com Updates A9, Search Behavior, Save Time
Searching
3. More News Headlines
4. This Week's Q&A - How long to wait for the ODP?
5. Wrapping It Up
_________________
Google Upgrades Local Search...or does it?
We've been writing about local search since just about day one
of this newsletter. It's one of the unconquered "frontiers" of
the search industry. Google, Yahoo, and many others want to be
the place you go on the web for local business information -- just
like you go to the yellow pages offline to find local businesses.
For background, we wrote about Google's Local Search in Newsletter
#4 back in March. Then
a little more than a month ago we wrote about Yahoo Local Search
in Newsletter
#22,
and my impression at that time was that Yahoo was the better
of the two options "because it offers more relevant results
and more search features than Google."
Now this week Google has announced upgrades to its local search
service, and one of the improvements they claim is "More relevant
results - improved relevance technology returns even more precise
results." But in running the same test we did last month,
I don't think Google can make that claim quite yet.
Using Google Local to search for "italian restaurant 99336" on
Tuesday of this week, I had a restaurant in Richland as the 4th
listing, with eateries in Umatilla, Pendleton, and Walla Walla
in spots 5, 6, and 7. For those of you outside the Tri-Cities
area, only Richland is in reasonable driving distance of the 99336
area
code, which is the city of Kennewick. What makes this a problem
is that the Olive Garden restaurant in Kennewick is listed
after those restaurants in other cities. That's not my definition
of more relevant local search. Yahoo does a much better job,
with 7 of its first 9 listings being Kennewick restaurants, and
the
other two across the river in Pasco.
Google's other upgrades, though, are a step in the right direction
-- quicker access to maps, more links to get related information
about the businesses listed. But there's obviously still a
way to go for local search to compete with the phone book.
Google Local
Yahoo! Local
_________________
In The News
Amazon.com Updates A9
Hot off the presses is an Amazon.com announcement of upgrades
to its A9.com search engine. A9 now includes five types of results
-- web sites and images from Google, book text from Amazon.com,
movie information from IMDB.com, and reference material from
Gurunet.com. I have barely had a chance to check it out, but
I love what I see -- including the switch away from the awful
color scheme it had before today. I'll have to dig into it more
during the next week....
A9 search engine
Search Behaviors
Some articles are now starting to appear from authors in attendance
at the big Search Engine Strategies conference last month,
and one caught my eye -- "Delving deep inside the searcher's
mind",
an article which offers plenty of details about how people
use search engines. For example:
- more than 70 percent of people start with a general search
term, like "cruise", then narrow it down to find
exactly what they're looking for
- almost 23% of users abandon a search after looking at only
the "top" listings
on the first page of results
- almost 20% of users do the same
after the entire first page of results
- almost 26 percent do the same after viewing two pages of
results
- almost 15 percent try a new search after the first three
pages
Add those last four stats up and it appears that only
15% of searchers will look past the first three pages
of search
results.
The article
is a good read with good information for anyone whose
business needs search engine visibility -- it helps
to know how
people are using search engines.
Delving deep inside the searcher's mind
Seven ways to save time searching
We mentioned last week a PDF from Tara Calishain called
Four Things Yahoo Can Do That Google Can't, and
this week Tara
has another
one available you may enjoy.
Seven ways to save time searching
_________________
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.
Domain name registrations hit record
September 14, 2004 - News.com
VeriSign says the growth in registrations last reached this level
in the late 1990s during the height of the dot-com bubble.
SEM and branding are not mutually exclusive
September 13, 2004 - Search Engine Guide
More headlines: http://www.owtweb.com/news/
_________________
This Week's Q&A
Hi Matt,
We recently submitted our site to be included in the Open Directory
Project web directory that you talk about on your web site. Well,
it was about 2 months ago actually, and we're still not listed.
Is this normal?
Kevin
Hi Kevin --
It is normal, yes. The ODP is edited by volunteers and you never
know when your submission will be reviewed. In a nutshell,
the best advice I can give is to 1) follow the submission guidelines
to a 'T', 2) submit your site to the most appropriate category,
and 3) forget about it. I say "forget about it" because
I've seen people go crazy waiting months for their submission to
be approved, and the reward isn't worth the aggravation.
That said, if you submitted to a category which has no editor
(scroll down to the bottom of the page and look to see if
a name is listed),
you could contact the editor of a higher-level category and
politely ask that your submission be considered. Alternatively,
there's
a public forum where anyone can ask (and hope for a reply)
about the status of a submission. Here's the link:
Open Directory Project Public Forum (Have a question? Email questions@owtweb.com)
_________________
Wrapping it Up
Here's a gorgeous web site, simple and elegant:
Calibre - http://www.calibre.com/
This is a financial management service company under the wing
of Wachovia Bank. I only point it out here because I think
the design
is stunning. It may or may not be the most search engine-friendly
site around, but it's very easy on the eyes. (And besides,
with Wachovia's marketing wallet behind Calibre, they don't need
to
sweat the SE-friendly details like the rest of us......) Thanks for reading,
Matt McGee
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