aaron dalrymple dot com

Hitwise has released search engine volume data that shows Google with just over 60% of total online searches in the U.S. Here is the breakdown, according to Hitwise:

U.S. Volume of Searched Top Search Engines Four Week Period Ending July 29, 2006:

• Google: 60.2%
• Yahoo: 22.5%
• MSN: 11.8%
• Other: 5.5%

They indicate that it is a slight increase for Google and Yahoo and a slight decrease for MSN.

I wonder how Ask.com fares in all of this. I still think they have a great search engine and I find myself more disappointed with Google and Yahoo results all the time. With Yahoo’s recent update, results seem to be even closer to Google. Is search becoming just another commodity? In “organic” search results, what does, can or will differentiate the brands? Does it even matter any more?

Here’s a fun tool to see the overlap of Yahoo and Google results:
yahoo! vs. google

Here is the Hitwise piece:

Bill Tancer - Hitwise US: Google Breaks 60% - U.S. July Search Volume Numbers

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Tagged as: Google, Search Engines, Yahoo, SEM, SEO, MSN, Ask, Hitwise, search engine market share, Bill Tancer, search volume

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I get a lot of questions from clients about redirects.

• How do I move my site to a new domain and keep my search engine rankings in tact?
• I’m going to take down some old pages/sites, will this affect my rankings?
• I’m redesigning my website and my directory and/or page names are changing, will the engines just point to the new pages?
• How can I tell the engines to send all my traffic to my home page?

There are answers to these questions, but first I usually say something like, “Are you sure you want to do that?” The reason I ask is that often times the pages or sites that the company wants to get rid of are older pages that have great link reputation and are well “aged” in the engines – they get crawled a lot, have a high Page Rank, etc. Plus, more content is usually better; can the pages be repurposed?

After assessing the need for getting rid of pages or moving domains or changing the page/directory structure (which are all valid and necessary in a lot of cases), using a 301 redirect is usually the answer. A 301 redirect won’t get you in trouble with the search engines as some redirects, like a meta-tag refresh, can. It tells the engine that a page has permanently moved and asks if it would please start indexing the new page in its place. It’s the safest way to change page names, domains, directories, etc. when changing these elements of your website. If you’re deleting an old mini-site or set of pages, you should consider redirecting each page you’re deleting to a similar page on your new or main site.

The next question is, naturally, “how do I do that?”

Here are some good sources that I’ve com across recently on redirects, 301s and how to implement them:

Steve Hargrove - How to redirect a web page, the smart way - added 6/20 

Wikipedia - URL redirection

TamingTheBeast.net - Giving search engine spiders direction

SEOBook - .htaccess, 301 Redirects & SEO: Guest Post by NotSleepy

Bruce Clay, Inc. – Sorting out Redirects

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Tagged as: Google, Search Engines, Yahoo, SEO, Online Marketing, MSN, Ask, Link Building, Optimization Tips, SEO Tools, 301 Redirect, URL Redirect, Redirect, Bruce Clay

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I’ve been traveling again this week, so I’m still going through my notes from Pubcon in Boston earlier this month and trying to interpret them before I can’t decipher my own writing anymore. The last session was the Super Session: Search Engines and Webmasters which included Tim Mayer from Yahoo, Matt Cutts from Google and Rahul Lahiri from Ask. They also had a previously unannounced MSN rep that I don’t have the name written down for… Anyone? Anyhow, here are some of notes from that session. Mostly sound bites identified by which engine they refer to:

ask: Provide HTTP last modified header for your pages. Freshness Counts

ask: Don’t require cookies!

ggl: Use Sitemaps as a webmaster tool

ggl: Big Daddy update included an infrastructure upgrade to crawling and indexing. Different Google services are sharing a crawl cache to save bandwidth.

ggl: Using Adsense will make no difference in your natural rankings.

y!: Use distinct meta data for each page and change your meta data when you change your page content.

y!: only use separate domains for distinctly different businesses.

y!: when using Yahoo’s Site Explorer, the inlinks are roughly ordered by Yahoo’s popularity rank.

ggl: use dashes instead of underscores in file names, directories, etc. Dashes separate the words while underscores run them together in the engine’s view.

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Tagged as: Google, Search Engines, Yahoo, SEO, Ask, WebMasterWorld, Optimization Tips, Search Engine Optimization, Pubcon, SEO Tips, Matt Cutts, Tim Mayer

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Ask Jeeves isn’t wasting anytime between the announcement of their new PPC listing service and the launch date. It’s available now to existing Ask advertisers and will be available to everyone on August 15. Their timing is very strategic as well… MSN is supposed to announce their long awaited PPC product this month too. In fact, a representative from MSN told me in New Orleans to expect an announcement at this month’s Search Engine Strategies Conference in San Jose, CA on their new product.

Generally speaking, the new services will simply be shifting money away from Google (Ask’s current partner) and Yahoo! (MSN’s current partner). MSN is promising some great technology though, including demographic profiling, that could significantly change the way we buy sponsored listings and target potential customers.

Ask Jeeves Launches Ask Jeeves Sponsored Listings

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Tagged as: Search Engines, SEM, Online Marketing, Ask

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I’ve been watching and predicting for a while that AskJeeves was a re-up-and-comer. The recent acquisition of Jeeves by Barry Diller’s InterActiveCorp only strengthened that analysis. The number of searches on AskJeeves grew by 16% from Q1 to Q2. AOL also grew by 15%, but since they currently share results with Google, I don’t see that as really being separate from Google from a pure SEO perspective. Jeeves continues to add great technology to their portfolio and is just as active in the development of their engine as anybody.

If you’re not already, make sure you’re monitoring your AskJeeves traffic and search positions. Here is the article from Reuters:
AOL, AskJeeves search growth outpace leaders - Yahoo! News

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Tagged as: Search Engines, SEM, SEO, Ask

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