SEARCH CLINIC

Yahoo has reported a quarterly profits fall of 26% as it struggled to boost earnings from online advertising.Net profits in the third quarter were £188 million compared with £247 million during the same period last year.

Last month, Yahoo sacked chief executive Carol Bartz after its online earnings failed to keep pace with those of rivals Google and Facebook.

However, its performance beat market expectations, and its shares ended 3% higher.

Yahoo’s net revenue in the three months to September was £668 million, compared with £700 million the year before.

“My focus, and that of the whole company, is to move the business forward with new technology, partnerships, products and premium personalised content,” said interim chief executive Tim Morse.

Yahoo has been looking for a new chief executive since firing Ms Bartz in September amid mounting frustration at failed efforts to turn the firm around.

Analysts say that in recent weeks there has been increasing speculation that Yahoo, or parts of its business, might be sold to an assortment of buyout firms.

There have been rumours that Microsoft is considering a second attempt at a takeover. Microsoft last offered to buy Yahoo for £29 billion in 2008.

China’s internet firm Alibaba has already said it might be interested in buying Yahoo- however american political sensivities will complicate any chinese purchase due to data spying senstivities of the Yahoo email system.

You’ve got a wonderful new website- so the world is going to be knocking your door down. Or so you hope.After the initial disappointment comes the realisation that it’s a big world out there.

If your website starts with the word “welcome” congratulations- there are over three billion other websites listed by Google making the same mistake.

Go on- ask yourself how often do you search for “welcome”?

To get online traffic depends on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and SEO has a number of factors:

1. Technical (how well can it be crawled by the search engines)
2. On page (what’s on the page being crawled)
3. Off page (mainly building links)

Google and most other search engines use links to determine reputation. A site’s ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to it.

Link-based analysis is an extremely useful way of measuring a site’s value and has greatly improved the quality of web search.

Both the quantity and, more importantly, the quality of links count towards this rating.

Of course Google does not just use links; they use over 200 indicators such as:

• domain name
• meta tags
• alt tags
• directory names
• filenames
• heading tags
• link popularity (how many links back to you there are)
• link text (anchor text indicating the subject of the link)
• page title
• Page Rank

PageRank™ is Google’s patented method to assign a numerical algorithm and weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents that provides a rough estimate of the overall importance of a web page.

In short the whole basis of Google’s success- is that success of website pages breeds success.

If you think that buying links is the key to your future success- hold on!

To find the pitfalls of blindly building links, just have a quick look at Google’s own links building rules .

As the article on paid links makes clear: “Buying or selling links that pass PageRanking is in violation of Google’s webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site’s ranking in search results”

So, what you need are good quality links and lots of them.

But what is meant by good quality links?

The seven most important factors for link quality are:

Contextual links. One way is obvious and contextual just means appearing within the natural flow of a page’s text. If the link is reciprocal, Google sometimes discounts some of the value of that link.

High authority websites. Getting one link from the Telelgraph or DMOZ is possible worth more than 10,000 links from your new site. Authority does not
just mean high PageRank- but a site that is also well established as one of the most important sites for a topic.

Relevant / related links. If you have loads of sites that are irrelevant / unrelated to your sites topic you will probably lose out. In natural linking by people, they tend to link to one another within the same topics and industry. Spammers- like addicts don’t care where they get their fix- or link.

Diversity of link sources. Having many links from another site is good but it’s probably better to have one link each from many sites. The former could be spam. The latter is harder to achieve.

Deep links. If you only have links pointing to your homepage and no deep links to other pages in your site then you will probably have less success than with a proportion of deep links.

Different anchor texts -the actual text of the link. For example “Dr Search is an online marketing professional” is something we might be able to place with small variations, but hundreds and thousand of individuals who may link to us will vary the text they use just because they will as they all think slightly differently.

Consistent links growth. Link building is a marathon, not a sprint. Acquiring 20,000 links on one day unless your marketing goes viral is very unlikely for the vast majority of sites, so any search engine will rightly be suspicious.

Matt Cutts- Google’s unofficial spokesperson made the Panda reranking announcement in a question and answer session at the SMX Advanced conference.With Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land in attendance they mentioned that ‘Google has updated and approved the changes in the Panda algorithm but that it hasn’t been rolled out yet, but that should happen soon’.

Addressing the frequent complaints from webmasters that web content scraping sites still out rank the original content sites, Cutts said that the Google Panda algorithm update (version 2.2) will tackle this issue.

He also said that Google will keep working on the Panda algorithm until they have a robust algorithm that can penalize the content farming and related sites and display better improved search results.

This means that websites that were penalised by the original Panda update could soon look forward to regaining their original rankings or even getting higher rankings in the SERPs.

The differences with Panda update 2.2 lies in its implementation – Cutts said that the algorithm will be manually scanning for those particular websites that are involved in content farming and/or content re-publishing.

While Panda Update 2.1 was only released in early May, it was a minor update and received no fanfare from Google.

The fact that Matt Cutts has mentioned 2.2 at one of the biggest SEO conferences of the year indicates that its probably going to be big (and have quite an impact).

However, to avoid any great impact to your websites ranking, ensure that your site is kept up-to-date with good quality content.

This will reduce the likelihood of any penalty or if you have already been penalized in previous updates then the penalty should soon be lifted after the 2.2 launch.

Google hasn’t given a specific date on the launch of the Panda update 2.2, but as soon as we hear anything more we will be sure to let you know.

New research has shown the importance of Google’s search results rankings- especially in one of the top three organic positions, as these spots receive 58.4 percent of all clicks from users, according to Optify.
Websites ranked number one received an average click-through rate (CTR) of 36.4 percent; number two had a CTR of 12.5 percent; and number three had a CTR of 9.5 percent. Being number one in Google, according to Optify, is the equivalent of all the traffic going to the sites appearing in the second through fifth positions.

Here’s Optify’s look at Click Through Rates of the top 20 sites’ rankings:
Basically, Optify concludes that moving up to the top spot in Google from second or third could triple visits to your website.

Optify’s study of U.S. Google search engine results pages, conducted in December 2010, analyzed organic keyword visits for B2B and B2C websites. Optify analyzed data from 250 randomly chosen sites and an initial set of 10,000 keywords.

Here are some of Optify’s other findings:

The average CTR on Page 1 of Google was 8.9 percent, but the average CTR on Page 2 was 1.5 percent. Ranking first on Page 2 had a slight benefit over ranking in the last spot on Page 1 (2.6 percent vs. 2.2 percent CTR).

Optify concludes that, because predicting which position your site will appear in Google is basically impossible, your SEO efforts should first focus on getting on Page 1, and then on investing in working your way up to one of the top three spots. Also, ranking beyond Page 2, while good for tracking trends, has almost no business value, Optify noted.

Optify’s study defined head terms as keywords with more than 1,000 monthly Google searches and long tail terms as keywords with less than 100 monthly searches.

Head terms had a higher CTR (32 percent) in the number one position than long tail terms (25 percent). However, long tail terms had a higher overall CTR on Page 1 of Google than head terms (9 percent vs. 4.6 percent).

Optify concluded that you won’t see “huge benefits until you get to the top few positions” with head terms. However, long tail terms can see decent CTR almost anywhere on the first page, though there is less benefit of moving up to higher positions.

Bottom line: let your business goals shape your SEO strategy.

The research was analysed at: Top-Google-Result-Gets-36.4-of-Clicks-Study

A fake security program for Apple computers called MACDefender is infecting a growing number of victims.Hundreds of people who installed the software are turning to Apple’s forums for help to remove it.

The program’s tactic of populating users’ screens with pornographic pictures has increased the urgency of victims to find a solution quickly.

MACDefender seems to have been successful because of the work its creators did to make it appear high up in search results through search engine optimisation.

The number of people seeking help was uncovered by ZDNet journalist Ed Bott. Ironicaaly he is a Microsoft specialist but his blog post, he wrote about finding more than 200 separate discussions on Apple’s official forums about MACDefender malware security software.

The volume of reports about the problem was “exceptional” in his experience, he said.

The fake Mac anti-virus software, which goes by the name of both MACDefender and Mac Security, began circulating in early May and has been steadily racking up new victims.

Such programs, often called scareware, urge people to install software that then pretends to scan a machine for security problems. It then fabricates a list of threats it has found and asks for cash before it will fix these non-existent problems.

One trick the software uses to make people cough up cash quicker is to launch the browser of unattended machines and call up one of several different pornographic websites.

Although the vast majority of malware that security firms see is aimed at Windows users, there is much less malware in existence for Mac OS X than there is for Windows.

But that’s no reason to blithely think that there are no Mac threats.

Further to the Search Clinic post last week: Top UK search engine and social media websites- latest figures by HitWise research, new number crunching hypothesizes that if current search engine growth rates continue Bing will overtake Google in  2012.

According to the report from Hitwise, Bing dominated 30% of all searches conducted in the U.S. in March 2011. That’s an impressive 5% jump compared from February 2011 results.

Though Google still leads the market share with 64.2%, the search engine actually dropped 3% market share in March.

While these stats are good news for Microsoft, Google should be paying a lot of attention to these results. Its market share has been constantly dropping: from 69.7% in December to 68% in January to 66.7% in February to 64.4% in March.

So what would happen if this trend continued? Check out the chart below. Looks like Bing will take the number one spot by January 2012.
Image Source: Mashable

Why is “search giant” Google seeing a decline in its market share? A WebmasterWorld forum discussion has many theories including the following from Brett Tabke:

Google has so screwed around with their serps this last year, that any alternative dependable and reliable that users can count on is going to gain share. Google has done something I didn’t think possible – they have broken the trust of the end user. While Bing has been busy showing that they are in it for the long haul and staying-the-course with a user experience that people are coming to trust.

I believe the reason for Google’s increase in market share is the fact that they have been playing around a lot with their SERPs over the last year. Such changes could have upset users who are looking for a more dependable and reliable source which Bing has been able to provide.

So while Google still controls two-thirds of the market, I think it should start getting concerned at Bing’s impressive market share growth.

From: http://blog.ineedhits.com/warning-to-google-bing-to-control-search-by-2012

Google has defended recent changes to its search ranking algorithm that reduced the prominence of some popular websites.

One of the worst hit websites by the “Panda” update was Ciao.co.uk, a Microsoft-owned company that had been leading an EU competition case against Google.
Its web visibility fell by 94% according to analysis by Searchmetrics.

Google often changes the algorithms that determine the results that users sees when they search for something. Such updates are often done to weed out “content farms” – websites that copy material from other sites in order to get hits.

Where a keyword search may previously have returned their site on Google’s first page, afterwards it may be relegated to further down the rankings.

When the update, known as “Panda”, was rolled out on 11 April, Google published a blog post explaining that it was designed to “reduce rankings for low-quality sites-sites which are low-value add for users.”

Shopping and price comparison sites such as Ciao.co.uk sometimes suffer when Google algorithms change because they carry comments and reviews replicated elsewhere on the internet.

However, experts said that it was unusual to see a legitimate website hit as badly as Ciao.

Ciao.co.uk was involved in initiating an EU investigation into Google in November 2010. Its parent company, Microsoft claims that the Google has used its dominant position to limit rivals’ products.

Searchmetrics analysed Google results in response to a range of keywords, both before and after the Panda update.

Alongside Ciao’s 94% reduction in visibility, it found that hubpages.com fell by 85% and eHow.co.uk dropped 53%.

A Similar analysis by Sistrix found a 81% drop in visibility for Ciao.co.uk, 72% reduction for hubpages.com and an 84% fall for eHow.co.uk.

There are  a number of ways of using Twitter to maximise traffic and revenue for your website. As Google and Bing now count tweets, Facebook posts, and other social media activity in their search results, search engine optimisation is more important than ever.

Your profile is the starting point to any successful profile.

Firstly register an account using your most important keyword phrase. For example the Search Clinic has two Twitter accounts: http://twitter.com/searchclinic and http://twitter.com/seo_services_

Then use as many keywords as possible, because when a Twitter profile shows up in search results, Google may use the bio portion of the profile for the description.

Hashtags (#) are an easy way to implement keywords.

Marketing campaigns now create customized keywords for events and many people add keywords at the end of their tweet.

This is useful when the blog title or content you are sharing doesn’t list any relevant topic keywords.

Including hashtags that are broader and name the industry may make tweets easier to find. Additionally, naming specifics as hashtags in generic titles can also help.

Try to choose hashtags that are the most important keywords in the tweet and overall content that is being promoted. Hashtags make it easy to search by topic and will increase search result frequency and relevancy to the target audience.

Particularly over the past month Search Clinic has noticed that some of Google’s search results are becoming dubious- to say the very least.And it’s not just us who have noticed a marked deterioration is their results.

A number of of other bloggers have also noticed this downward trend who are critical of Google’s search quality.

Could it be that Google is getting greedy as spam results may force some lazy and desperate online marketing companies to resort to their notorious pay per click AdWords?

It isn’t that tricky to spot these rogue websites. Step forward SeoQuake, McAfee and a number of other free and paid for services which provide a checking facility.

While there doesn’t seem to be a single tipping point for these posts, many people are getting frustrated at spammy search results and the large number of content farms which have started to emerge.

The result, however, is awful. Pages and pages of Google results that are just, for practical purposes, advertisements in the loose guise of articles, original or re-purposed.

While the major problems with Google’s search quality appear to be the rise of content farms and review sites, some posts also mention a number of other black hat SEO tactics like link buying and doorway domains that are still working for some sites.

With the number of posts on this topic, I don’t think it will be long before a Google representative steps in to clear the air. In the mean time, what do you think about Google’s search results? Have you seen a decline in quality in recent months?

Let us know via the blog comments below!

The European Commission has finally launched an investigation into Google after other search engines complained that the firm had abused its dominant position.
The EC will examine whether the world’s largest search engine penalised competing services in its results.

The probe follows complaints by firms including price comparison site Foundem and legal search engine ejustice.fr.

Google denies the allegations but said it would work with the Commission to “address any concerns”.

The objection is that Google manipulates its search results.

“The European Commission has decided to open an antitrust investigation into allegations that Google has abused a dominant position in online search,” the ec said in a statement.

It said the action followed “complaints by search service providers about unfavourable treatment of their services in Google’s unpaid and sponsored search results coupled with an alleged preferential placement of Google’s own services.”

The European Commission’s competition watchdog has quite a track record with technology companies- Microsoft and Intel both received massive fines.

This case, though, will be a tricky one, because to determine the outcome the Commission will have to look closely at Google’s all-important search algorithm, the rules that determine whether your company shows up high or low in Google’s search results.

Google regularly changes this algorithm, and as it changes the ranking it can make or break companies when they re rank websites.

To pin down the US search giant, the Commission will have to find a smoking gun, either in the algorithm itself, or in Google’s e-mail trail.

The Commission’s investigation does not imply any wrongdoing by Google.

Google offers two types of search result – free results produced by the firm’s algorithms that are displayed in the main body of the page and pay per click “ads”- or called sponsored links.

The investigation will try to determine whether the firm’s method of generating free results adversely affects the ranking of other firms, specifically those providing competitive search services.

These are specialist search providers, and can include sites that offer price comparison, for example.

Dr Search points out that Google has never published it’s full free results ranking algorithms in full, so it will be very interesting if they ever become accidentally leaked during the investigation.