Google’s Eric Stein was part of a panel discussion today at SMX East entitled “What’s New With Local Search Marketing,” moderated by Greg Sterling who posted this Q & A with Stein earlier today: Google Answers Your Local Questions. Sterling’s Q&A with Stein focused on preventing spam and how business owners can keep their listings current.

Stein pointed out that Google values a verified business owner’s listing as the most authoritative. However, Google will list third party data, like yellow page listings, along with the business owner’s listing.

He also discussed why Google doesn’t bold keywords in business names in the local search results. This issue caused some confusion in the past because a Google-promoted best practice is to include keywords in the title of a webpage.

“On Google Maps, our mission is to show users the proper names and addresses of physical businesses,” stated Stein. “The Business Title is not the title of a website - it is the title of the actual business. Adding keywords to this field moves away from giving users the proper representation of the businesses they see on the map.”

Google is also taking steps to prevent spammers from infiltrating the local search results. One of these steps is providing quality guidelines and removing entries that do not meet the specified criteria. Google seems committed to providing quality listings for local businesses.

Read the full Q&A on Search Engine Land’s website: http://searchengineland.com/google-answers-your-local-questions-14956.php

This month’s Web Analytics Wednesday (WAW) – Austin will be held at Little Woodrow’s in downtown Austin on Wednesday, October 8th at 5:30 PM. It will be hosted by Ian Strain-Seymour, Director of Product Development at Apogee Search.

This month’s event will use a “birds of a feather” format. Each table will have an assigned topic, allowing people to easily find others that have similar interests. Attendees will be able to easily network and share knowledge by moving from table to table (the only problem may be making sure your drink order finds you).

Table topics will include:

• Measuring visitor engagement
• Online marketing success
• Web analytics for events
• Offline conversion

Want to add a topic? You can do so on Web Analytics Wednesday’s LinkedIn group.

Details on the event can be found on the official WAW website.

Information on the Austin Web Analytics group can be found on LinkedIn or on Facebook.

What is Web Analytics Wednesday?
Web Analytics Wednesday (WAW) is a monthly networking and educational event. It is held on Wednesdays around the world. It is a great chance for web analytics professionals (and amateurs), online marketers, online merchants, designers, developers, students and anyone else interested in web analytics to meet and share knowledge.

Google is letting web users use its January 2001 search index as part of their 10-year birthday celebrations.

“We dusted it off and took it for a spin, gobsmacked to see how different the web was in early 2001,” states the official Google blog. “We had so much fun searching that we wanted to put this old index online for everyone to play with. We thought it’d be even cooler if we could actually see the full versions of the old web pages, so we worked with the Internet Archive to link to their cache of these pages from 2001.”

It’s astounding to see the differences between the Internet now and the Internet 7 years ago. I was curious to see what pages would be found in Google’s results back in early 2001 and started searching for my high school, since 2001 is my graduating year. I had forgotten that they hadn’t created a website until much after my graduation so all I could find were old football articles.

Still curious, I searched for September 11, and obviously came up empty handed since the terror attacks did not occur until 8 months later. Google 2001 is a window to a completely different world, one without Ipods, YouTube, Dancing with the Stars, and bank bailout blues.

The search index will only be available for one month before it is again, just a thing of the past.

In a rather bold move, Google has taken an official corporate position on California’s Proposition 8, which would ban same-sex marriages. Google’s stance was published on their official blog. Google joins Levi Strauss & Co. in public opposition to the ban.

Many groups that support the proposition are calling for a boycott of Google. For example, Texas A&M’s Catholic Center is threatening to change their blog to a different blog hosting service. The blog is currently on blogger, a Google-owned website.

While it is unlikely that the boycotts will harm Google, Google’s role in the information space is once again questioned. As a search engine, many users expect Google to objectively search and rank information on the web. Endorsing political positions may obscure this role because Google is publicly making judgments about the information that it is sorting.

However, it is impossible for individuals or companies to remain objective all of the time, and the algorithm is just a formula that beliefs do not affect, at least that’s what Google claims.

This is just one of many politically related moves on Google’s part. Google has also launched a campaign to encourage voting that uses Google maps to help citizens find their voting information.

It will be interesting to see what steps Google takes next and if their competitors will use this issue to gain market share in the search space. Some users may already be lured away by Microsoft’s SearchPerks program.

MSN announced the launch of their new SearchPerks program on Wednesday, a promotion that offers searchers points, or tickets, for searching through MSN.com. The points can be redeemed for prizes including airline miles, t-shirts and a wireless XBOX 360 controller.

Users receive 500 tickets just for signing up for SearchPerks before the registration deadline, which is Dec. 31, 2008, and can earn up to 25 points a day. Users can only accumulate tickets using Live Search at Live.com or MSN.com, Windows Live Hotmail and Windows Live Messenger and earn one ticket per search.

Then, users must download a Perk Counter which will keep track of how many tickets have been earned. According to Microsoft, the Perk Counter, “also tracks some online activity, like clicks on banner ads. The Perk Counter does not track what you search for or which websites you visit.”

The promotion will end on April 15, 2009 and tickets can then be redeemed for prizes three to four weeks after the program ends. SearchPerks is expected to gain more popularity than MSN’s original search user promotion, Live Search Cashback Program.

Also, SearchPerks works only on Internet Explorer- if you try to access SearchPerks in Firefox, you will receive a message informing you to open the SearchPerks link in IE. Also, the PerkCounter only works in IE.

There’s a scene in the HBO sitcom Lucky Louie where the main character Louie is going to apply to flight school.  He heads down to the library to make a copy of a document and, once finished with the difficult task of pressing Copy, ship out the application - flight school there he goes.  However, when he gets to the library, he finds out the copy machine isn’t working.  Louie says screw it, that’s too much effort.  He doesn’t apply to Flight School.  That does not happen in real life, does it?  It does, sorta…

Who else out there has stumbled upon an interesting website, your finger kicks into high-gear, click, click, click, you notice a mouth watering link within the website, click, click, boom!  The last click takes you to a form.  You need to fill out a form to join the website (read the information, play the game).  Form?  The arrow on your screen darts up to the StumbleUpon extension and you’re whisked away to the world wide web once again.  No flight school for me.

Well, according to recently released research from Google on Federated Login, “when users are presented with a traditional signup page that asks for your E-mail, password and password confirmation, it is quite common for 30% - 50% of users to not finish the process.”  In other words, the words of Michael Jackson, you are not alone.  Google, please count me among that 50% (I already know you’re tracking my behavior anyway, so I probably don’t need to tell you that).

I know what you’re thinking, “Wait a minute, so what you’re telling me is that I’m losing customers because of a measly form?”  So it would seem, particularly because it asks for e-mail, password, and password confirmation.  Ring a bell?

And, “What the heck is Federated Login?  How will it affect my business?”  Well, let’s take a real world example to explain the basic premise of Federated Login.

According to the OpenID website, “OpenID eliminates the need for multiple usernames across different websites, simplifying your online experience…OpenID can stay with you, no matter which Provider you move to…For businesses, this means a lower cost of password and account management, while drawing new web traffic. OpenID lowers user frustration by letting users have control of their login.”  Federated login is the elimination of the need for multiple usernames across different websites. In this example, OpenID is merely one protocol currently in use that eliminates this need across a number of websites.

Rather than continuously creating more and more accounts across numerous e-commerce websites, for example, all you would need to do in order to log in is provide your email and your identity would then be validated and the appropriate information would be provided to the website.  Google has been testing user interfaces similar to those found on Buy.com:


The report on Federated Login states that federated login has been the “holy grail” of the identity community, but has failed to find a model that:

• is simple for end users
• had a reasonable trust model between the the website and the entity that will identify you to the website

The study is a testament to the potential that lies ahead for the online world – specifically the business side of the online world – in terms of usability. Equally, businesses with a presence on the internet should also look to this study as more evidence that while increasing rankings and traffic is absolutely necessary to accomplishing your goals, once that traffic hits your website it needs to be usable and effective.

Here are some great things our clients have been saying about Apogee lately:

“Rimini Street has enjoyed working with Apogee Search for years, and our long relationship is due to the consistent, high-quality results on both paid search and natural search. Technology is a competitive industry, but we have seen great results from the campaigns, including holding top 5 results for several key terms. We trust Apogee to continue guiding us through changes in the dynamic search engine space.”

David Rowe
VP, Global Marketing and Alliances
Rimini Street, Inc

“I have enjoyed working with Apogee since the launch of our website, PowerOverYourPain.com. They have been a good partner in our patient campaigns and initiative for our website.

We have seen wonderful SEO and paid search advertising results with their expertise in the last year. Our site has just recently received top 10 rankings in several of our key terms. We have also seen great traffic generation from our search advertising. Thank you Apogee!”

Meredith Nguyen
Senior Marketing Manager Patient/Web Initiatives
ANS, St. Jude Medical

We love to hear that our clients are happy and that their campaigns are doing so well!

In the past, Companies would hire a PR firm to create press releases on their behalf, and those releases would be distributed to shareholders, key partners and newsletter subscribers who were interested in keeping up with the company happenings. However, in the age of the search engine, press releases can now serve a dual purpose. Not only can these releases be distributed to the above mentioned key players, they can also be submitted to online news wires such as PRWeb for distribution to the masses. While this strategy is not new to the SEO world by any means, it is something we often see overlooked by many otherwise marketing-savvy companies.

At Apogee, we believe that a well optimized press release can not only provide strong benefits to a company’s organic search rankings, but if optimized properly, it can also inhabit other shelf space within the top results on search terms, effectively knocking your competition lower in the natural rankings. Within Apogee, this is one of many strategies that we encourage all of our clients to take full advantage of.

So, what does it mean to optimize a press release? The key ingredient for optimization is the inclusion of links back to your company website. With online distribution, your reader is already online searching for information, so why not link to your website throughout the release, to help provide more relevant information for the reader? These hyperlinks should utilize anchor text which is a keyword within the page which you are sending the link. This link with anchor text will provide benefit to the site for that search term, and help to improve your rankings within the search engines. Three to four links should be scattered throughout the press release. This will hopefully work out to be one link every paragraph or two. Overuse of links can not only distract a reader, but may come off as spamming and can prevent the release from being picked up by other resources.

Another important factor to keep in mind: Don’t create a press release just for the SEO benefits. If there is no interesting news to justify a release, this can also diminish the chances of this release being picked up for distribution.

As with any SEO strategy, there are some pros and cons to keep in mind. As previously stated, you can benefit your natural search rankings, as well as occupy more shelf space within search results (This is certainly the case when less competitive keywords are in place). A well optimized and relevant press release can be picked up by numerous news wires and distributed across a wide variety of sites, effectively increasing the visibility of your company. While there is no guarantee that the release will see this kind of action, it is worth taking the chance of a single link turning into links from tens or hundreds of different resources.

In regards to the cons, there are a few to keep in mind. First, not all news sites have archived releases, so there is the chance that the release could be in place for a week, and then be replaced with more recent news. However, if the release is archived, you have now gained a valuable link that will be in place and age, increasing the benefits over time. Another drawback to this strategy is that generally, for hyperlinks to your site to be included within the release, there may be some additional costs. Yet, the small fees up front will generally have a strong ROI from the added SEO benefits to your site. If you are already spending money to have them created and distributed, why not put a few extra dollars into the optimization and gain the dual benefits?

So, if you are not utilizing your press releases for optimization, then start. It is an efficient and easy way to gain backlinks to your site and can be valuable to your company on a variety of levels. While the extent of the benefits is difficult to measure, as these are rarely the only strategy involved in a link building landscape, the pros far outweigh the cons.

Undeniably, what currently works in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) occupies a majority of the collective mind of Apogee’s SEO department – links, links, links, on-page recommendations in the form of content, internal linking and tag optimizations, among others. However, we are also keenly aware of the future – that is, what does the future hold? Where is search heading? How will search engines determine a website’s relevancy for a keyword in the future? What will search results look like in the future? Where will Information Retrieval lead us?

To borrow an ongoing joke from Late Night with Conan O’Brien, what will happen in the year 2000 (9, 10, 11, etc.)? It behooves us to be Google, Yahoo! and MSN voyeurs because we are in the business of maximizing web sales or leads for our clients. Constantly researching industry trends will allow us to continue to produce solid results.

At present, Microsoft sits in third place behind Google and Yahoo! in the search engine space. Essentially, Google’s current domination of the market is due mostly to their search engine. Google provides the most relevant search results and, as a corollary, receives the bulk of traffic.

However (emphasis mine), according to Google, as quoted from their quarterly investor report, “[i]f Microsoft or Yahoo! are successful in providing similar or better web search results or more relevant advertisements, or in leveraging their platforms or products to make their web search or advertising services easier to access, we could experience a significant decline in user traffic or the size of the Google Network. Any such decline could negatively affect our revenues.”

So, how is Microsoft attempting to provide better web search results and snag the gold? Microsoft thinks it has an idea about where search could head in the future and, of course, they are looking to mold that future. PageRank meet BrowseRank. Google’s PageRank algorithm places emphasis on the number of incoming links to a website when determining relevant search results for a query. It is not the only criteria for determining rankings, but it’s very important. Researchers at Microsoft feel incoming links are important as well, but their BrowseRank algorithm places greater emphasis on how users interact with a website – length of time spent on the website and click through path, for example. In a paper entitled BrowseRank: Letting Web Users Vote for Page Importance, researchers concluded that, “PageRank only models a random walk on the link graph, but does not take into consideration the lengths of time which the web surfer spends on the web pages during the random walk. Such information can be a good indicator of the quality and thus importance of the pages.”

What might this mean for you and your website? Since we’re strolling through “what if” land (my history professor, Dr. Larson, always said “what if” history writing is terrible history writing, by the way), let’s assume PageRank and BrowseRank somehow form like Voltron to produce ProwseRank, the ultimate algorithm.

First, developing incoming links would continue to be vital to any SEO campaign. Second, providing users with the best experience possible through informative and interesting content, useful internal linking and optimal website effectiveness and usability would not only increase conversions, but would definitively increase rankings. It already sounds like a recipe for success!

As part of Google’s celebration for their recent 10th birthday, the search engine giant has announced that it will award $10 million to “those who help the