February 2,
2005
In
This Issue:
1. First Impressions of MSN Search
2. In the News - A9 Yellow Pages, Google news
3. More News Headlines
4. This Week's Q&A - Google Sandbox
5. Wrapping It Up
_________________
First Impressions of MSN Search
It's live now, and out of "beta" mode. After years
of talking about it, MSN has finally delivered its own search engine
at <http://search.msn.com/>. So now we have three major,
unique algorithmic search engines: Google, Yahoo, and MSN. (I don't
count Ask.com as "major," though others would disagree.)
We know a lot about Google (loves off-page factors like quality
links) and Yahoo (weighs on-page factors more heavily), but what
can we say about MSN Search in its infancy?
The Good
MSN's crawler seems to be very quick and have a good appetite
for adding new pages. The index of pages is relatively fresh,
and as
Google does, MSN crawls frequently-updated pages more often.
The SERPs themselves are not great, but not terrible -- somewhere
between
fair and good for the little bit of early testing I've done.
The Bad
From what I'm reading on webmaster forums, the feeling is that
MSN relies very heavily on inbound links (like Google), but
unlike Google it doesn't assign different weights to each link
based
on the quality of the site providing the link. I'd expect that
to
change because sheer quantity of links should never be a large
factor in deciding who ranks well and who doesn't; it needs
to be a mix of quantity and quality of inbound links.
Also needing improvement is the filtering on multiple pages
from one site. And even though I listed the quality of SERPs
above
in the "Good" section, here's contradictory evidence:
http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=search+engine&srch_type=0&FORM=QBRE
Do a search for the phrase "search engine", and you won't
find Google, Yahoo, or MSN in the Top 10 listings.
The Interesting
MSN Search includes an interesting "answer" service that
other search engines have also played with and still do play with.
Ask MSN Search "who are the rolling stones", and look
right below the sponsored ads: you'll see two orange arrows, and
then an answer to your question pulled from MSN's Encarta encyclopedia.
Also interesting is news that Microsoft is planning its biggest
worldwide advertising campaign for MSN Search since the introduction
of the MSN butterfly. You'll see MSN Search ads on TV, billboards,
in newspapers, and across the web.
We'll keep testing MSN Search, and hope you will, too.
And as I mentioned last week, keep on eye on your site
traffic
to see
what
impact this has on where and how people find you. A big
part of search engine marketing is knowing where your
customers are coming
from when they find you.
_________________
In The News
A9.com Adds Photo Yellow Pages
This is one of the more amazing things I've seen in a search
engine. Amazon's A9.com search engine has added a yellow pages
to handle local search results, but it's not your grandfather's
yellow pages. When you use A9's Yellow Pages, you also get photographs
of the business, when available, next to the listing. Even if you've
never used A9.com, it's worth using your Amazon account to login.
Then you'll see the small Yellow Pages icon -- click that and do
a search for "Starbucks", then change your location to "Seattle." Right
there with your results are images of most storefronts. And even
better, when you click the image, the next page includes an option
to take a virtual walk down the street that business is on. They
did this by using trucks equipped with digital cameras and GPS
receivers. The "how we did it" page is worth a look,
too.
A9.com Yellow Pages: How
We Did It
Two Google News Bits
First, you may know, or may remember us mentioning in the past
that Google has a 100k limit when crawling a web page. If you
have an ultra-long page, Google's spider would only crawl and
index
the first 100k of content. That's not the case anymore -- it
appears Google is now crawling full web pages and documents,
no matter
how large they are.
And second, in the continuing guessing game of "what will
Google do next?", there's news that Google was recently named
a fully-accredited domain registrar. Speculation is that they could
use this with their Blogger platform, and/or with future web hosting
services.
IANA
registrar list (scroll down to #895)
_________________
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.
Interactive marketing: Design matters
January 31, 2005 - ClickZ.com
Smart design solves problems. Weak design frustrates people.
It's not just aesthetics. Industrial design and user interfaces
play
an increasingly important role.
Black-hat myths about white-hat SEO
January 31, 2005 - ClickZ.com
Apple edges Google as top brand
January 30, 2005 - Reuters
More headlines: http://www.owtweb.com/news/
_________________
This Week's Q&A
Hi Matt,
What's this I've heard about a "sandbox" at Google? It's
something to do with new sites not being listed in Google's search
engine, but I don't understand why they'd do that (if they actually
are).
Jill
Hi Jill --
The "Google Sandbox" term has been going around for a
while, and you're not alone -- a lot of folks, me included, don't
understand exactly what's going on. For those who don't know, it
appears that new pages, or new sites, are unable to rank well in
Google's SERPs. Others say it's not the sites and pages being sandboxed,
but the inbound links -- that Google isn't giving credit for new
links as a way to prevent link-spamming from boosting pages higher
in the SERPs.
Here's the problem: for every page that appears to be sandboxed,
there's another similar page that's not. And for every
theory I've read about the sandbox, there's another that disproves
it. In the
end, there's clearly something in place now -- and for
about
the past year -- that makes it much more difficult for
some sites and
pages to rank well in Google. It seems to have the most
impact on new pages or sites, but it can also impact older pages
and sites. The thing is that it appears Google is more
interested
in fighting
spammers than they are in having the freshest and most
relevant SERPs. Keeping spammy sites out does not guarantee relevant
SERPs. And people are noticing that Google's SERPs are
not
as fresh
and relevant as they used to be.
The best advice I can give you, especially now that we
have three major search engines, is to not focus all
your efforts
on building
a site that Google likes. As we reported in recent newsletters,
Google's lead is slipping, and I only see that continuing.
(Have a question? Email questions@owtweb.com)
_________________
Wrapping it Up
This is pretty funny -- a web site called "Fark" is
hosting a Google Photoshop contest. Funny twists on what Google
is and does!
http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=1322360
Thanks for reading,
Matt McGee
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