March 2,
2005
In
This Issue:
1. OWTweb.com - One Year Later
2. In the News - Yahoo Turns 10, SES New York
3. More News Headlines
4. This Week's Q&A - More on Google
5. Wrapping It Up
_________________
OWTweb.com - One Year Later
The site you see at OWTweb.com (the home page for our company's
web services division) was launched a year ago. In fact, this newsletter
was also launched a year ago -- so happy birthday to us, or something
like that!
If you've read OWTweb.com in any detail, you know we have a belief
in how successful web sites are built and marketed. We have a
way of doing things that we think is the right way, and we hope
to
attract clients who feel the same. That belief, in a nutshell,
is that success comes from creating a simple and elegantly designed
web site with lots of great content for site visitors and, in
the process, increases opportunities for search engine visibility.
That was the theory we put to the test a year ago with the launch
of a new OWTweb.com. Now that we have a year's worth of effort
and data to analyze, we've taken the time to review what we
did and how well it worked. I welcome you to read more about it
in
the OWTweb.com Case Study that we've posted this week.
Case Study - OWTweb.com
_________________
In The News
Yahoo Turns 10
Happy birthday to Yahoo, which turns 10 years old today. The
web directory was actually launched in 1994, but Yahoo formed as
a corporation on March 2, 1995. At the time, it was just an index
of web sites organized into hierarchical categories. Today, of
course, it's the No. 1 destination on the web and offers dozens
of services beyond that web directory. If you're up for a bit of
WWW history, here are a few links related to Yahoo's 10th anniversary.
Jerry Yang's first post about the Yahoo directory to the omp.infosystems.www.misc
Usenet group.
Yahoo: 10 years, 100 moments of the Web
Search Engine Strategies Conference - New York
There's a big SES conference going on in New York this week,
and several industry sites and writers are providing recaps
of the
various sessions and panel discussions taking place. A panel
this week called "Searcher Behavior" seems to have covered
a lot of information I find interesting -- namely, how people use
search engines. It's something we should all be somewhat curious
about, and if you're reading this newsletter, I suspect you are.
Speakers at this session discussed studies and surveys that
continue to show Google as the No. 1 rated search engine,
but the next
three -- Yahoo, MSN, and Ask Jeeves -- all posted double-digit
gains
compared to six months ago. Another speaker showed the results
of "eye tracking" studies as people used Google, which
reveal that the most common behavior is to focus on the top three
listings on a page of SERPs. Highly recommend you read Andy Beal's
report on Search Engine Lowdown.
SEL: Search Engine Strategies New York: Search Behavior
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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.
Yahoo folding Overture services into main brand
March 01, 2005 - Reuters
Guidelines for successful link development
February 28, 2005 - ClickZ.com
The focus should always be on high-quality links, not a large
quantity of low-quality links.
AOL takes local search beyond 'enhanced yellow pages'
February 24, 2005 - ClickZ.com
More headlines: http://www.owtweb.com/news/
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This Week's Q&A
Matt,
I'm incredibly frustrated with Google right now. I know you've
mentioned this in the last couple newsletters, that they have
big changes going on right now, but when is it going to stop?
We rank well one day, like I have for a while now, and the next
day my site is nowhere to be found. How long do these things
usually last?
David
Hi David --
"These things" are hard to predict. Google used to
do a monthly update which would last for a few days and then settle
down until
the next shift. Now they have an ongoing update which leads
to relatively minor changes in the SERPs pretty much every day.
But
that's complemented by the occasional major update which is
what we're in right now.
I obviously don't know how much longer it will last, but I'm
seeing some signs that make me think it's nearing the end
now. Some of
the SERPs I watch for clients have settled down quite a bit
compared to 2-3 weeks ago. And I'm also pleased with what
I'm seeing on
some queries -- the SERPs are more relative than they've
been in more than a year. I hope to write more about this in an
upcoming newsletter.
In the meantime, this is a good time for me to remind you
that there are other search engines out there, and that
you should
never put all your eggs in Google's basket. Relying on
free traffic from
any search engine is risky, but much more so when you rely
on just one search engine. Make sure your site is developed
for
good visibility
in Yahoo and MSN, too.
(Have a question? Email questions@owtweb.com)
_________________
Wrapping it Up
Chris Sherman writes an interesting article about a man named
Vannevar Bush, who shared his vision 60 years ago of something
very close to what we now know as the world wide web.
Envisioning the Web, 60 Years Ago
Thanks for reading,
Matt McGee
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