All posts tagged Ny Times
Don’t Count Out Bing Just Yet
Just as the debate between tech pundits was heating up regarding whether or not Microsoft should sell Bing, the most recent Experian Hitwise Search Engine Analysis report for July revealed that Bing and Yahoo search results have a substantially higher success rate than Google. The respected online competitive intelligence service defines success as a user clicking at least one link on the search results page, and this data should give online advertisers and marketing firms reason for pause: 68% of Google searches were ?successful,? as opposed to 80% on Bing and 81% on Yahoo.
This isn?t a fluke either, as Bing and Yahoo have been rated higher for three straight months now. This new development only compounds the effect of Bing?s slow but steady climb up the market share mountain, and while Google still has that on lock-down (66% in July), Bing and Yahoo combined for 43% – hardly a number to ignore.
What does this change? For one, it makes it blatantly clear that companies neglecting search campaigns on Bing are missing a huge opportunity for potential revenue. Though Bing still lags in volume, it is making huge strides in the quality of its searches. Businesses are happy to hear this news, as any meaningful competition with Google is beneficial to them and drives down their advertising costs. Better still, they now know that they have a viable alternative that can deliver even more relevant traffic than before.
Microsoft may use the news as leverage to finally sell Bing for a better price, but whatever the final decision, it has to be some form of vindication for their online services unit. Just recently, a NY Times business column labelled Bing a ?distraction? for Microsoft. Published before the Experian report, it now appears that Bing is a big distraction for Google.
Black Hat vs. White Hat
As mentioned in the previous blog post ?Google Helps the Good Guys?, search engine optimization can attract many unsavory businesses that are trying to make a quick buck through gaming the system. As with anything, in SEO there can be shades of gray as to what is considered ethical. And while the methods used in the DecorMyEyes.com story were definitively not ethical (criminal actually), there are certain practices that are not necessarily de jure illegal, but are certainly considered de facto illegal in terms of the acceptable behavior agreed upon by search engines and Google especially.
In terms of SEO, ?White Hat? and ?Black Hat? have become the popular terminology for separating those practices that are ethical and best for long-term effectiveness, and those that attempt any number of unethical, short-term strategies that risk penalties, respectively. There are several black hat methods that have evolved throughout the history of the SEO, but in terms of David Segal?s excellent NY Times article The Dirty Little Secrets of Search, link schemes are the poster child at the moment.
The crux of the story is that late last year, during the holiday shopping season, JC Penney saw its Google organic search rank rocket to number one when searching for any of the hundreds of its products. Of course, the issue was that while it may be one the largest retailers in the US, it was not the most relevant site for most of these products (it even outranked Samsonite.com itself when searching for ?Samsonite carry on luggage?). Not to get into the specifics of what ranking number one on Google throughout the months of November and December did to JC Penney?s bottom line, but it was likely quite lucrative. And while Google did take minor action during this period, it did not follow up and notice that the rankings were still inordinate.
What caused the high rankings? According to the story, it was irrelevant links back to the JC Penney site. Most of these links were on pages that had either no relevancy whatsoever to the product they linked to at JCPenney.com, or were merely sites with hundreds of links on them maintained for the sole purpose of increasing the PageRank for other sites. Before the story broke, Google was already initiating a change to their search algorithm to account for low PageRanked, spammy sites. As a result, JC Penney results began to drop slightly in early February; however, once their black hat campaign was revealed by the Times, Google manually dropped the average JC Penney position for search terms to 52 by February 10th. None too happy about the bad publicity, to say nothing of practically disappearing from search results, Penney?s also fired its SEO firm SearchDex.
An effective, on-going link building campaign is an essential part of search engine optimization. But it takes dedication to the rules and ethics, as well as a substantial amount of hard work to be done properly. In previous dealings, we?ve observed several link building services in India doing the exact same things that SearchDex was doing for JC Penney, and there are no doubt hundreds all over the world. While they certainly work in the short-term, link schemes and black hat practices aren?t worth the loss of reputation, loss of business, or even the outright banishment from search results as punishment. Proper link building is done over time by connecting to relevant sites, directories, and social networks, and though it takes dedication and patience, attaining a higher PageRank accomplished through white hat methods is much more ethical, effective, and satisfying.
Google Helps the Good Guys
Search engine marketing happened to make front-page news recently as the New York Times ran an expose detailing the illegal practices of online proprietor Vitaly Borker and his gaming of Google?s search algorithm. If you?re not familiar with the story, Mr Borker claims to have used loopholes in Google?s search engine, as well as MasterCard and Visa?s charge-back system, to garner more business through negative responses from customers. Over the past few weeks, the Web has been aflame with discussions over how this could have happened in the first place, as well as how it can be rectified. To Google?s credit, as explained by Amit Singhal in a recent blog post in the immediate aftermath, the search giant has gone to immediate measures to shore up its vaunted search algorithm to more precisely pinpoint and demote those sites which use large volumes of negative postings to raise their search ranking. There seemed to be plenty of blame to go around (i.e. eBay, consumer complaint sites, etc.), and many saw it as an opportunity for some particular Google shaedenfraude, but the problem goes deeper than the search engine itself.
Borker himself theorized that the vast quantity of negative reviews on a variety of online consumer review sites, many highly respected, was what raised his ranking higher. In the original article, one online response to his bilked customers was almost gleefully brazen in his explanation, ?I never had the amount of traffic I have now since my 1st complaint. I am in heaven.? Though there are loopholes that he obviously navigated with success for several months, Google casts some doubt on his simple explanation by countering that even before their revision to their own algorithm, to prevent just such a thing from happening, consumer complaint sites typically included special coding so that bad and/or fraudulent companies would not get higher rankings. It might be reasonable to assume that many times, unfortunately, people are more passionate and willing to post reviews online (especially for something rather innocuous like glasses) when they are livid over having been taken advantage of. What does not seem to be reported as much as the search engine optimization part of this controversy, is that much of Borker?s success, at least according to searchengineland.com?s Byrne Hobart, came from auto-generated spam pages and the fact that DecorMyEyes was frequently linked to by mainstream media sites. Among them? The New York Times.
Less than 20 years after its conception, web commerce can still seem like the wild west, especially after stories such as these. But when shopping for any service or product online, consumers should continue to proceed with caution. As stated above, Less than 20 years after its conception, web commerce can still seem like the wild west, especially after stories such as these. But when shopping for any service or product online, consumers should continue to proceed with caution. As stated above, Google?s response has been laudable, and their consumer rankings of local businesses based on the particular searchers zip code now needs to be extended to online commerce – just for these reasons. As all search engines are becoming more aware of the less-savory uses of link building and search engine optimization, this will thankfully make respected, transparent SEM companies like RSO Consulting and the like more prominent. But, as Mr Singhal himself said, it probably won?t be long before another dastardly business attempts to skirt ethical boundaries and risk imprisonment and loss-of-reputation for a few extra bucks.
