RIP - The End of Business.com and Ask.com

First, on November 9th we hear that Ask.com decided it no longer really wants to be a search engine. You can read more here - Ask.com Update from their blog (I think it is weird that the President of Ask.com decided to write his name in all caps, what is that supposed to mean?).

Then, 1 day later, on November 10th we hear that Business.com is going to 'realigned' into some other Dex One Offering. There press release is here - Dex One Realigns Interactive Operations

This after all the excitement of Yahoo! also deciding to get out of the search business earlier this year, has created a lot of change within the search space in such a short time. The problem is that as we lose things we seldom get anything back and/or if we do get a new web property it is usually never as good as something else we lost.

Hopefully, Blekko, a new search engine proves me wrong and fills in the void of Ask.com. So far it does not appear to be happening, but there is always hope....:-)

GroupM Search Study Reveals Advertisers Could See CPC Increase Up To 78% With Yahoo & Microsoft Search Alliance Transition

GroupM just released an incredible study and analysis on the potential impact on pay-per-click campaigns running in Yahoo, Bing or both during and after the search alliance process which show increased costs as much as 78%!

All I can saw is wow. One of the things that I really appreciated about Yahoo and Bing, to a lesser extent was the cost savings on a CPC basis over Google, but with these potential increases much of that advantage is now erased and it will be interesting to see how this play outs for advertisers.

You can read all about it and the methodology at the link below:

Financial Implications of the Yahoo and Microsoft Search Alliance White Paper

Where Do People Search When Google Fails?

So, it may not be often (or as bad as a bad tattoo), but Google sometimes does not provide the results that are needed or wanted. So, where do people turn to get their answers? A great new study by Chitika entitled, "Googlers’ Backup Plan – Ask.com?" gives us some insights. Look at the chart below:


Amazingly enough, when Google is not the answer over 30% of people go to Ask.com. While that is not as much as Yahoo with almost 50%, it does blow away Bing with around 17% (and since AOL is basically just Google repackaged in AOL even 4% is pretty incredible).

So, what does this tell us? Is there more opportunity or value in getting the initial search or is it more valuable to get secondary searches? Maybe Ask.com is more valuable then we previously thought. This research (and others from Chitika on Ask.com) open up data sets that have been ignored or missed before and we look forward to more of this type of information to better plan our search marketing campaigns.

Top Search Marketing Blog Posts (EVER) List!

Many people ask me which posts have been the most popular or which posts bring in the most traffic to the site. So, I decided to outline the top 5 for you in order of overall traffic to the site:

#1 from March of 2008
Add URL - Free Search Engine Submission Links
- Hands down the most visited web page on the blog as people love to submit to the search engines and they love to do it for FREE...:-)

#2 from July of 2009
Seeing Redz - The Story of Click Fraud and RedZee
- RedZ or RedZee, whatever they are calling themselves today are the scam that just keeps giving (and taking from customers). This and its follow-up blog post - The Continuing Scam That is RedZ (formerly known as RedZee) from November of 2009, continue to be the forum for communications about the scam and those that have fought back.

#3 from January 2009
FREE Article Rewriter and Spinning Tool Roundup
- Free SEO tools are always great and article spinning is popular within some of the SEO communities. Spin away my friends with these free resources.

#4 from December 2009
The 10 Best FREE Keyword Research Tools on the Internet!
- Come on, who does not love a top 10 list and who within the search marketing community does not use keyword research tools on a daily basis? This post was a match made in heaven, at least some people's heaven.

#5 from January 2009
To Ping or Not to Ping, That is Not the Question
- With our fun play on words how could you not love this post? Come on, really. When it comes to pinging there are those that love to ping and those that could care less, but those of you that care, made this one of the top posts on the blog and rounded out our top 5 posts ever!

Now that we have shown your our top 5 based on website traffic, we would love to hear what you liked and/or disliked over the last 2+ years. Please leave us feedback by leaving a comment even if you do so anonymously as all are appreciated. Thanks in advance and stay tuned for more fun, helpful and interesting posts to come!

New FREE Website SEO/Social Media Analysis Tool

I am always looking for a great and clean (and accurate) way to show website SEO/Social media analytics and Rank Checker just happens to do that in a very aesthetically pleasing format.

Currently, what it shows is this:
- Domain Age
- Domain Name
- Alexa Ranking
- Alexa Backlinks
- AlltheWeb Backlinks
- AltaVista Backlinks
- Google PageRank (PR)
- Google Backlinks
- Google Bot Last Visit
- Google Indexed Pages
- Yahoo Indexed Pages
- Yahoo Backlinks
- Yahoo Directory Listing(s)
- DMOZ (The Open Directory) Listing(s)
- Bing Indexed Pages
- Ask.com Indexed Pages
- Digg Links
- Delicious Links

Check it out for FREE at - Rank Checker

Entireweb Launches New Large Scale Search Engine

Just in case you care - Entireweb is launching it's new (updated) search engine tomorrow (countdown timer available on their website at www.entireweb.com).

Entireweb at a glance (from the website):

Entireweb's goal is to be a leading supplier of search technology solutions. The international Web search engine www.entireweb.com is not only a highly popular general purpose search engine used by millions of people around the world - it is also a showcase of our search technology and our expertise in the field of ultra-high-performance information retrieval from huge unstructured data sources.

Entireweb currently handles over 100 million searches every month, and is a trusted partner of internationally acclaimed meta search engines such as Mamma and IxQuick, who rely on Entireweb to provide world-class search results.

The new search engine promises to be much more robust with a deeper index in order to better compete against Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com. Recent announcements from their blog highlight that the new engine will pull real-time data from OneRiot and image data from picsearch. Ads will be pulled from their SpeedyAds program and their is a new mobile interface available.

You can check it all out at the links below:
Entireweb Search Engine homepage
Entireweb Search Engine updates (via blog)
Add URL for FREE to Entireweb

How Much Do Companies Value The Search Engines They Own?

I would like to put forth a new valuation method to better understand how much a company may value it's search engine. I feel that we can use a search engine's blog as an indicator as to how a company may value it's search engine. I had my own preconceived notions as to what the outcome would be and they were dead on, so maybe monitoring blog activity can tell you a lot. Check out the data below:

Major Search Engines:

Google Blog:
- Last post 3/8/10
- 61 posts for 2010 to date

Bing Search Blog
- Last post 3/5/10
- 35 posts for 2010 to date

Yahoo Search Blog
- Last post 3/5/10
- 18 posts for 2010 to date

Ask.com Blog
- Last post 11/9/09
- 0 posts for 2010 to date

Kind of revealing huh?

Yahoo! Sells You Out!

Everybody is doing it, but Yahoo gets caught. Just saw an article on Download Squad Blog about Yahoo selling subscriber information here - Yahoo's price list for spying on its users leaks. As they point out in the article, Yahoo! even offers discounts for the more you buy, so make sure to stock up and save money (kinda like the Costco/Sam's Club of personal data)...:-)

As all search engines probably sell this type of data to the law enforcement agencies, two things come to mind.

1. Why do they sell it and not offer it free as it is our tax dollars paying for this data, correct?

2. How much money is made by selling this type of data? Is it it's own profit center? I would be very curious to see.

Between Bing going down for 45 mins the other day and someone leaking this embarrassing Yahoo information it only makes Google look better (do I smell a conspiracy?)......

Ask.com Looking for New Employees (from Yahoo)?

Pretty funny...:-)

Search Engine Blind Results Test - Kinda Like the Pepsi Challenge

Want to have some search fun? Then you have to try out Blind Search. This site lets you type in a search query and see the organic results for Google, Yahoo and Bing randomly in columns. Once you have reviewed and you think you know which results below to which search engine than click the button(s) to reveal if you are correct or not.

I have to admit that I am wrong more times than I am right when I am trying to guess which results go with which each and that Bing is actually the winner a majority of the time when I try to find the best and most relevant results for my search query. Pretty interesting and fun stuff...:-)

Check it out for yourself at - Blind Test

The Keys to Owning Your Organic Search Results Messaging

In the highly competitive online world don't leave it up to the search engines to determine what messaging appears for your website rankings within their search results (or SERPs). Take control of that messaging opportunity (while making sure not to disrupt your SEO efforts) by maximizing the content that appears. To make this easier for you I have included an outline for each of the major search engine inclusive of Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com as to what each can handle and read.


Google:

- Google shows 69 characters (including spaces) for page titles.
- Google shows 156 characters (including spaces) for meta descriptions.
- Google does not read meta keywords.

It should also be known that if you don’t include a Meta Description or if Google feels a better description for your page could be given by using a web snippet, then the description shown can be up to 320 characters. Of course, they won’t be the characters that you choose so they might not best represent what you wish your audience to see in the search results.


Yahoo:

- Yahoo shows up to 72 characters (including spaces) for page titles (please note that PDFs can have up to 75 characters).
- Yahoo shows up to 161 characters (including spaces) for meta descriptions.
- Yahoo reads up to 12 unique meta keywords.


Bing:

- Bing shows 69 characters (including spaces) for page titles (Bing Webmaster Tools says it will read only 65, but that is inaccurate).
- Bing shows up to 185 characters (including spaces) for meta descriptions (Bing Webmaster Tools says it will read only 150, but that is inaccurate).
- Bing does not read meta keywords.


Ask:

- Ask shows 69 characters (including spaces) for page titles.
- Ask pulls the meta description for it’s results from a snippet of text from the page and can commonly display around 312 characters.
- Ask reads meta keywords, but total amount is unknown.

Track Your Keyword Rankings Across Many Search Engines Online for Free!

Keyword Envy is a great (and accurate) free online keyword ranking tool. Even though in free mode the tool is limited to 5 keywords. what I like most about it is that it can track against so many engines and variations of those engines. The current list is this:

- Google (US)
- Google (Canada)
- Google (UK)
- Yahoo
- MSN (separate from Bing, not sure why or how, but it is there)
- Live (separate from Bing, not sure why or how, but it is there)
- Bing
- Ask
- Gigablast (one of my favorite smaller engines)

They also offer an advanced service that combines analytics to tell you how strong your keywords are - how much potential traffic they bring in, what their bounce rate is, and more.....

Check it out today at - Keyword Envy

Add URL - Free Search Engine Submission Links

I had rounded up a list of almost every search engine on the Web including top tier, second tier and some really out there search engines that allow you to submit your site for free as many of them have limited crawlers and may or may not ever find your site. Below is that list with the engine name and a direct link to the submission page:


Guaranteed Inclusion in 10 Search Engine Databases
and 10 Associated Web Directories!
Click Here - Rapid Inclusion in The Search Engine Network


Automated free search engine submission resources (includes some web directories and niche search engines):

350 Search Engine Submissions - Link
300 Search Engine and Web Directory Submissions - Link
170 Search Engine and Web Directory Submissions - Link
150 Search Engine Submissions - Link
140 Search Engine Submissions - Link
140 Search Engine and Web Directory Submissions - Link
130 Search Engine Submissions - Link
100 Search Engine and Web Directory Submissions - Link
50 Search Engine Submissions - Link
40 Search Engine and Web Directory Submissions - Link
21 Search Engines and Web Directory Submissions - Link
20 Search Engine Submissions (at bottom of page) - Link
12 Search Engine Submissions - Link

Individual free search engine submission links:

Burf - Submission Page
Exalead - Submission Page
guruji - Submission Page
Gigablast - Submission Page
Entireweb - Submission Page
FyberSearch - Submission Page
MixCat - Submission Page
OneSeek - Submission Page
WhatUseek - Submission Page
Scrub The Web - Submission Page
Search Site - Submission Page
Infotiger - Submission Page
SonicRun - Submission Page
Abacho - Submission Page
Acoon.com - Submission Page
Amfibi - Submission Page
homerweb - Submission Page
JGDO - Submission Page
Myahint - Submission Page
Walhello - Submission Page

Just Added 3/20/08!

Big Finder - Submission Page
Search Hippo (requires free registration) - Submission Page
Web Squash - Submission Page
W8 Search - Submission Page
Tower Search (requires registration) - Submission Page

Just Added 3/21/08 - Decided to add in some of the major players after many requests.

Baidu (in Chinese, but pretty easy to figure out) - Submission Page
Google - Submission Page
Yahoo - (reguires free registration) - Submission Page
Search-O-Rama - Submission Page
Igwanna - Submission Page
Cipinet - Submission Page

Just Added 3/25/08

Navisso - Submission Page
AxxaSearch - Submission Page
Dino Search (for kids sites only) - Submission Page
Boitho - Submission Page
Gheto Search - Submission Page
Intel Seek - Submission Page
Search Ramp - Site Submission
Ultimate Web Search - Site Submission

Just added 3/29/08

Find Once - Submission Page
Net Search - Submission Page
Susy Search - Submission Page

Just added additional Chinese search engines 4/2/08

iASK - Submission Page
ZhongSou.com - Submission Page

Just added 4/7/08

Famhoo (family friendly search) - Submission Page
ExactSeek (requires registration) - Submission Page
AcrossCan (Canadian sites only) - Submission Page
Megaglobe - Submission Page

Just added 4/14/08

AnooX - Submission Page

Just added 4/20/08

Alexa - Submission Page
Aesop - Submission Page
Shoula! Search - Submission Page
NetSearch - Submission Page

Just added 4/22/08

SearchIt - Submission Page

Just added 4/24/08

Biveroo - (in German) Submission Page
Official Search - Submission Page
Iconnic - Submission Page
Coolfishy - Submission Page
CorrectSearch (requires registration) - Submission Page

Just added 4/27/08

Enter UK (UK sites only) - Submission Page
seeknet - Submission Page

Just added 4/30/08

hakia (requires registration) - Submission Page
gogo - (Russian site) - Submission Page

Just added 5/4/08

43N39E - Submission Page

Just added 5/6/08

Antya (click on Submit URL) - Submission Page
VROOSH! (requires reciprocal link) - Submission Page

Just added 5/17/08

Claymont Search - Submission Page
Really Big Search (requires registration) - Submission Page
Search Engine XXX (not adult - requires registration) - Submission Page
shazee (requires registration) - Submission Page

Just added 5/30/08

amidalla - Submit Page
Wedoo.com (requires registration) - Submit Page
Stopdog - Submission Page
searchengine.com - Submission Page
eXactBot - Submission Page

Just added 6/13/08

Vmgo.com - Submission Page

Just added 6/16/08

Blue.lu - Submission Page

Just added 6/29/08

eBingBong - Submission Page

Just added 7/1/08

Jungle Spider (German Sites Only) - Submission Page
NIGMA.RU (Russian) - Submission Page

Just added 7/3/08

Swoogle - Submission Page
Knoole - Submission Page

Just added 7/6/08

XavierSeek - Submission Page

Just added 7/13/08

Lexxe - Submission Page

Just added 7/16/08

Xoole - Submission Page

Just added 7/20/08

eTracking (have to click on 'Add URL') - Submission Page

Just added 7/27/08

Zoohoo (Slovakia)- Submission Page

Just added 7/31/08

Foovey Search (requires registration) - Submission Page

Just added 8/6/08

Cavarzano (Italian) - Submission Page

Just added 8/8/08

Yandex (Russian) - Submission Page

Just added 8/12/08

Yoozila - Submission Page

Just added 9/15/08

(They are all part of the same network, so submitting to one WILL most likely provide data to all of them)

Web Portal Guide - Submission Page
Search Blast - Submission Page
The Seek Portal - Submission Page
Find That Website - Submission Page
Search It Guide - Submission Page
Find Similar Pages - Submission Page
Smart Search Guide - Submission Page
Klik Point - Submission Page
Hi Seek - Submission Page
Hot Site Search - Submission Page
More Web Search - Submission Page
Peak Search - Submission Page
Prime Search Results - Submission Page
Search Box - Submission Page
Ifernatix Solutions - Submission Page
The Original Search Engine - Submission Page
amele - Submission Page
AZ to ZA - Submission Page
Dr. Search - Submission Page
Help You Search - Submission Page
My Search Pilot - Submission Page
Therbo Search - Submission Page
Search Engine Tool - Submission Page
Your Reply - Submission Page
Mouse Click - Submission Page
Dash Launch - Submission Page
All Best Search - Submission Page
Better Internet Search - Submission Page
I Need Search - Submission Page
Local Search Engine - Submission Page
Ask the Search Guru - Submission Page
Searching Portal - Submission Page
Home Business Data Center - Submission Page
Go Find Here - Submission Page
Webmaster Tools - Submission Page
Sitefind - Submission Page
Gokoole - Submission Page
BruneiFM - Submission Page
AcuSearch - Submission Page
My Coco Land - Submission Page
All Can Seek - Submission Page
All U Search - Submission Page
All We Seek - Submission Page
And Search - Submission Page
AskSearch - Submission page
Beat Bop - Submission Page
Best City Search - Submission Page
Best Net Search - Submission Page
Big Splash - Submission Page
Computer Seek - Submission Page
DigiCrawl - Submission Page
Dot Search - Submission Page
Easy To Search - Submission Page
Final Search - Submission Page
Find This - Submission Page
Find Path - Submission Page
Find Your Search - Submission Page
FindZilla - Submission Page
Fitter Bitter - Submission Page
Search Network - Submission Page
Hip Flip - Submission Page
Hypno Search - Submission Page
Lightning Search - Submission Page
Meta Search Live - Submission Page
MicroSeek - Submission Page
Mota Crawler - Submission Page
One Search Nation - Submission Page
Querybit - Submission Page
Rapid Crawl - Submission Page
Refresh Line - Submission Page
Remote Search - Submission Page
Search Mind - Submission Page
Search Quick - Submission Page
Search Bell - Submission Page
Sly Seek - Submission Page
SparkleBerry - Submission Page
Surfer Search - Submission Page
Sweet Search - Submission Page
Teeter Totter - Submission Page
Text Billboards - Submission Page
Think Seek - Submission Page
Thunder Seek - Submission Page
World Seek - Submission Page
Wow Seek - Submission Page
Yuppy Search - Submission Page
Maddog's Profiles - Submission Page
WaWiz - Submission Page
More Web Search - Submission Page
Find Portal - Submission Page
exopple - Submission Page

Just added 9/22

iDoFind.com - Submission Page

Just added 9/25

DeepIndex (in French, but indexes English pages also) - Submission Page
SpongeLink (currently only US and UK sites) - Submission Page

Just added 9/26

ubExact - Submission Page

Just added 10/9

TROPICA (in German, but appears to accept English sites) - Submission Page
www.search.ch (Swiss, but offers multiple languages) - Submission Page

Just added 10/10

XOLA (Vietnamese, but appears to accept English sites) - Submission Page

Just added 10/18

Thorseek (UK only sites - URL must end in suffix '.uk') - Submission Page

Just added 10/21

WEBoFANT (Swiss only sites - URL must end in suffix '.il' or '.ch') - Submission Page
Oriango - Submission Page
Find Once - Submission Page

Just added 11/9/08

Harmony Search (text mostly in Japanese) - Submission Page
WASALive! - Submission Page
Anopt (in Russian) - Submission Page
Rambler (in Russian) - Submission Page

Just added 11/16/08

META (Ukranian - requires registration) - Submission Page

Just added 12/01/08

Seznam (Czech) - Submission Page
acoon.de (German) - Submission Page

Just added 12/8/08

fastbot (German) - Submission Page
Semager (German) - Submission Page
KOBALA (Dutch) - Submission Page

Just added 12/18/08

Super.Info - Submission Page
Zatka (only Indian sites) - Submission Page
Abraham Search - Submission Page

Just added 12/19/08

Insitor (German) - Submission Page
Pogodak! (Croatian) - Submission Page

Just added 12/26/08
4-everY-1 - Submission Page

Just added 1/6/09
Searchers (UK) - Submission Page

Just added 1/13/09
onkosh (in Arabic) - Submission Page

Just added 1/23/09
Redzee - Submission Page (please note that is says that submissions are to only update the image used in visual portion of the engine results, it will add new sites in this way also)

Just added 1/28/09
Majestic-12 - Submission Page

Just added 2/11/09
SearchWiz - Submission Page

Just added 3/4/09
Sagoon (requires registration) - Submission Page

Just added 4/5/09
ODCN.org (Chinese) - Submission Page
NetSprint (Polish) - Submission Page

Just added 4/19/09
Nepal Search (Nepal sites only) - Submission Page
YAAL.DE (German) - Submission Page

Just added 4/20/09
All Xplore - Submission Page

Just added 4/29/09
Mardox - Submission Page

Just added 5/4/09
AnazitisiS - Submission Page

Just added 5/5/09
Yasmos - Submission Page

Just added 5/11/09
Najdi.si - Submission Page

Just added 5/13/09
HopHunt - Submission Page

Just added 5/21/09
STSEEK - Submission Page

Just added 5/25/09
Cnous.ch (French sites only) - Submission Page
Thagodz - Submission Page

Just added 5/28/09
ilse (Israeli) - Submission Page

Just added 6/21/09
Buscan.com (Canary Islands) - Submission Page

Just added 7/16/09
hengine - Submission Page

Just added - 7/21/09
Watta Search - Submission Page

Just added - 7/27/09
iSTOP.in - Submission Page

Just added 8/10/09
Jabse (Bulgarian) - Submission Page

Just added 8/11/09
Liggs - Submission Page

Just added 8/16/09
IWannaSearch - Submission Page

Just added 8/23/09
Wirtualna Polska (Polish) - Submission Page
Szukacz (Polish Sites Only) - Submission Page

Just added 8/25/09
Portelo (Israel) - Submission Page

Just added 9/3/09
Active Search Results - Submission Page

Just added 9/14/09
Ara.com.tr (Turkish) - Submission Page

Just added 9/24/09
SitiDi.net - Submission Page

Just added 10/21/09
Coyote Search - Submission Page
Spider Monkey - Submission Page
Logical Cities - Submission Page

Just added 11/1/09
ExploreWWW (requires registration) - Submission Page

Just added 11/18/09
Bing - Submission Page

Just added 11/26/09
Geona - Submission Page
LookClick - Submission Page

Just added 11/28/09
Secret Search Engine Labs - Submission Page

Just added 12/2/09
Gooru - Submission Page
Semager - Submission Page
Sujada! - Submission Page

Just added 12/17/09
Duck Duck Go - Submission Page
Search Sight - Submission Page

Just added 12/28/09
Ulysseek - Submission Page

Just added 12/29/09
Active Search Results(ASR) - Submission Page

Just added 1/4/10 (first one of the new year!)
Feedeep - Submission Page
UNAMOO - Submission Page

Just added 2/13/10
cruiser (Serbian) - Submission Page

Just added 2/25/10
SitiDi.net - Submission Page

Just added 3/15/10
Secret Search Engine Labs - Submission Page

Sorry about the delay....:-)
Just added 5/17/10
SoSo (China) - Submission Page
Information - Submission Page

Just added 6/4/10
Slider - Submission Page

Just added 8/13/10
U2Search - Submission Page
Uzoekt (Dutch) - Submission Page

Just added 9/10/10
Gocome - Submission Page

Just added 12/28/10
Ultimate Web Search - Submission Page
Secret Search Engine Labs - Submission Page