The Rank Magic Blog

Another New Local Search Engine

November 30, 2005 ::: There's a new local search engine available. TrueLocal announced the launch of www.TrueLocal.com, a search engine that specializes in providing users with search results for local brick and mortar businesses.

A search for Pizza in East Hanover, NJ lists a bunch of chain pizza shops with featured (paid!) listings up to 12 miles away before it began to list local pizzerias. And even then it only lists three of the six pizzerias in town. And it misses my favorite, Godfather Pizzeria!

But it's brand new, so let's give it a chance. Try it and see how it works for local searches in your neck of the woods.

The "Best Search Engine" Game

November 28, 2005 ::: The  Search Engine Experiment is a "blind taste test" that shows you the top three results from the three most popular search engines, identified only as Brand X, Y, and Z. You examine the results and decide which seems most relevant.

If you need to visit one of the web sites, right-click and tell it to open in a new window or a new tab, because clicking the back button may not work the way you expect.

You then click a button to register your vote. You may be surprised at which search engine's results you think are most relevant.

You'll find the experiment here. Have fun!

Beware Of Google Hijacking

November 23, 2005 ::: Brian Livingston recently reported, "If you come to work one morning and find that your company's traffic from Google has fallen to nothing, a competitor may be redirecting traffic from your site to his. Amazingly, there may be little or nothing you can do to stop this blatant rip-off." His full column is here.

Search Engine Most Popular Internet Activity After Email

November 20, 2005 ::: A report released jointly by Pew Internet & American Life Project and comScore finds the search-using population totals 90% of all Internet users, a close second to the e-mail-using population of 91%.

Google claims the largest share with about 44% of all searches, with Yahoo! at 28% and MSN in third place at 14%. The top thee thus accounts for a full 86% of all searches. More ...

New Local Search Engine

November 18, 2005 ::: There's a new local search engine available -- it'll be interesting to see how popular it becomes. www.local.com

What Has Google Changed In the Jagger Ranking Algorithm Update?

November 17, 2005 ::: Google wants to make its search engine results pages more relevant by removing some of the spam. It seems that the following elements are the most common reasons that some web site rankings have dropped in Google:

• hidden text on your web pages (especially text that is hidden in invisible CSS layers)
• paid links or other links that are considered outside of Google's quality guidelines
• overuse of internal links or anchor text as the sole source of optimization

Of course, Rank Magic utilizes "best practices", so none of our clients have been adversely affected by the recent update.

Why People Use Different Search Engines

November 15, 2005 ::: For the question of why people use particular search engines, top reasons for each major service were:

• Google: 68 percent say it's because it has the best results.
   
• AOL: 65 percent say it's because they are doing other things at AOL, like checking mail and other non-search activities.
   
• MSN: 63 percent say it's just like AOL, because they are doing other things there.
   
• Yahoo: 52 percent say it's just like AOL, because they are doing other things there. Yahoo got the second highest marks for having the best results after Google, with 33 percent choosing that reason.

The report found that AOL and Google users were the most likely to notice sponsored links (82 and 81 percent, respectively) while MSN users were the least likely to notice them (69 percent).

Read the full  Search Engine Watch blog entry here.

New Search Engine Tackles Natural Language Queries

November 13, 2005 ::: Lexxe claims to provide the best search results when you type in a plain, English language question like  "How long is a soccer field?" or "Who was the voice of Feivel in An American Tale?". Try it out for yourself: http://www.lexxe.com/

Why Is Local Search Important to Your Business?

November 9, 2005 ::: Local search may be one of the most important recent trends in search marketing. According to latest estimates, 20 percent of all searches are locally oriented. As you probably know, Google, Yahoo, MSN and other search engines have started their own local search services to attract people who use their PC instead of the yellow pages to find local services.

Research firm The Kelsey Group forecasts that the local search market will be worth $3.4 billion in five years. This is a huge opportunity for small businesses with both an Internet presence and a brick and mortar location.

How do you optimize your web pages for local search?

If you want to be found for local searches, you should include the name of your city and your region in the title tag of your web pages, if possible. Also, include your city, state and zip code in the footer of your web pages so that search engines can assign your web site to a special area.

It's also helpful to include your geographic information in your keywords meta tag and perhaps also in your description meta tag.

If you have a brick and mortar location, make sure that your web site is optimized for local search so that you can benefit from this trend.

Online Shopping Rush Begins

November 6, 2005 ::: Looking forward to online shoppers on your e-commerce web site? Make sure you're visible in the search engines, because according to eMarketer researchers, online holiday sales will rise 21.9% over last year's to more than $26 billion.

Rank Magic
is a Division of
Treloar Associates

voice 973.887.0778
toll-free 866.RankMagic
(866.726.5624)
fax 973.887.0789