When Your Search Traffic Heads South, What Ya Gonna Do?
December 1, 2009
Google gives new sites a little tailwind. Once a site is established, Googzilla, according to my research, becomes a bit more demanding. Over time, sites drift downward in a search results list if the webmaster does not pump value into a Web site. The algorithmic approach is not perfect, but I have examined a number of clients’ sites where the drift downward seems to be a natural process, if a Google algorithm is “natural”.
I read Problogger’s “What to Do When Your Search Rankings Drop” and the comments available at 2 pm eastern on November 30, 2009. The core of the article for me was embodied in this passage:
This approach [cross references and backlinks] had worked for me – however when my Google traffic disappeared I was left with little and realized how short sighted I’d been. I began to change my focus and started working on other sources of traffic. I still love the traffic that Google sends me but today if it all disappeared it would hurt – but it wouldn’t be the end for my business.
To keep traffic up, find other ways to get traffic. Good advice. Might be tough for some webmasters to implement because quite a few people with whom I work live in a Google fishbowl. In fact, the more Google seeps into the global information infrastructure, the more probable the outcome that Google becomes “the Internet”.
Stephen Arnold, December 1, 2009
Okay, a disclosure. Another freebie. I will send a Vulcan mind meld to the Rehabilitation Services Administration, whose professionals can “fix up” blogs and Web sites with declining traffic I presume.
Social, Real Time, Content Intelligence
November 29, 2009
I had a long talk this morning about finding useful nuggets from the social content streams. The person with whom I spoke was making a case for tools designed for the intelligence community. My phone pal mentioned JackBe.com, Kapow, and Kroll. None of these outfits is a household word. I pointed to services and software available from NetBase, Radian6, and InsideView.
What came out of this conversation were several broad points of agreement:
First, most search and content processing procurement teams have little or no information about these firms. The horizons of most people working information technology and content processing are neither wide nor far.
Second, none of these companies has a chance of generating significant traction with their current marketing programs. Sure, the companies make sales, but these are hard won and usually anchored in some type of relationship or a serendipitous event.
Third, users need the type of information these firms can deliver. Those same users cannot explain what they need, so the procurement teams fall back into a comfortable and safe bed like a “brand name” search vendor or some fuzzy wuzzy one-size-fits-all solution like the wondrous SharePoint.
We also disagreed on four points:
First, I don’t think these specialist tools will find broad audiences. The person with whom I was discussing these social content software vendors believed that one would be a break out company.
Second, I think Google will add social content “findability” a baby step at a time. One day, I will arise from my goose nest and the Google will simply be “there”. The person at the other end of my phone call sees Google’s days as being numbered. Well, maybe.
Third, I think that social content is a more far reaching change than most publishers and analysts realize. My adversary things that social content is going to become just another type of content. It’s not revolutionary; it’s mundane. Well maybe.
Finally, I think that these systems—despite their fancy Dan marketing lingo—offer functions not included in most search and content processing systems. The person disagreeing with me thinks that companies like Autonomy offer substantially similar services.
In short, how many of these vendors’ products do you know? Not many I wager. So what’s wrong with the coverage of search and content processing by the mavens, pundits, and azure chip consultants? Quite a bit because these folks may know less about these vendors’ systems than how to spoof Google or seem quite informed because of their ability to repeat marketing lingo.
Have a knowledge gap? Better fill it.
Stephen Arnold, November 29, 2009
I want to disclose to the National Intelligence Center that no one paid me to comment on these companies. These outfits are not secret but don’t set the barn on fire with their marketing acumen.
Ten Trends in Search for 2010
November 27, 2009
Next week I am going to “debate” some European search wizards about the future of search. The venue? Incisive online show. Sure, I know these experts, but I am going to grab my pugnum and two semispathae and chop some logic with these computational killers. Gentlemen, prepare to be skewered.
How will I accomplish this feat? Easy. I am going to make a comment about these trends in search and content processing for 2010, a most auspicious number. In 2010, quite a few vendors are going to lose their precarious grip on survival and fall to their death. Splat.
Other points I will toss like a verutum are:
- XML repositories will deliver content services that * actually * work and provide more information access functions than traditional search engines
- Google will exert greater pressure on Microsoft. This pressure will disrupt a number of search and content processing companies, which will be collateral damage.
- Rich media will become a major content challenge to an ever growing number of organizations. These outfits have not figured out text and databases, so rich media will create more information stress. Say farewell to information technology managers who can’t cope.
- Organizations will become less tolerant of big name companies whose marketing collateral and contracts spell out one thing while their enterprise software delivers another. Can you read IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP in the interstices in these two sentences?
- Government regulation of information is going to become more oppressive. The problem is that government ability to make use of intercepts, email, and other content is going to decline. Government entities are struggling to keep email working and deal with the nasty internecine fights between those who want Google, those who live for Microsoft, and those who advocate for open source. Efficiency goes down; costs go up. The nanny state gets Alzheimer’s.
- Open source is not open. I know. I know. The community. Baloney. Commercial plays for open source work just like any money-centric outfit. That basic function is to get the client, keep competitors out, and lock the San Quentin cell block. Guards are on patrol.
Disagree? Agree? I am ready. Bring your iaculum. I am gunning for anyone named Trent or Whitney, anyone with an MBA, and anyone who thinks their view of 2010 is more informed than mine. Ave caesar! Morituri te salutamus. For the other trends? Attend the debate.
Stephen Arnold, November 27, 2009
Oyez, oyez, Department of the Navy. I was not paid to make these martial comments. Furthermore, I am a sissy. Put that in my file and stamp me, “Sensitive”.
Cicumvallation: Reed Elsevier and Thomson as Vercingetorix
November 27, 2009
Google Scholar Gets Smart in Legal Information
One turkey received a presidential pardon. Other turkeys may not be so lucky on November 26, 2009, when the US celebrates Thanksgiving. I am befuddled about this holiday. There are not too many farmers in Harrod’s Creek. The fields contain the abandoned foundations of McMansions that the present economic meltdown have left like Shelly’s statue of Ozymandius. The “half buried in the sand” becomes half built homes in the horse farm.
As Kentuckians in my hollow give thanks for a day off from job hunting,, I am sitting by the goose pond trying to remember what I read in my copy of Caesar’s De Bello Gallico. I know Caesar did not write this memoir, but his PR bunnies did a pretty good job. I awoke this morning thinking about the connection between the battle of Alesia and what is now happening to the publishing giants Reed-Elsevier and Thomson Reuters. The trigger for this mental exercise was Google’s announcement that it had added legal content to Google Scholar.
What’s Vercingetorix got to do with Google, Lexis, and Westlaw? Think military strategy. Starvation, death, surrender, and ritual killing. Just what today’s business giants relish.
Google has added the full text of US federal cases and state cases. The coverage of the federal cases, district and appellate, is from 1924 to the present. US state cases cover 1950 to the present. Additional content will be added; for example, I have one source that suggested that the Commonwealth of Virginia Supreme Court will provide Google with CD ROMs of cases back to 1924. Google, according to this source, is talking with other sources of US legal information and may provide access to additional legal information as well. What are these sources? Possibly
Public.Resource.Org and possibly Justia.org, among others.
The present service includes:
- The full text of the legal document
- Footnotes in the legal document
- Page numbers in the legal document
- Page breaks in the legal document
- Hyperlinks in the legal document to cases
- A tab to show how the case was cited in other documents
- Links to non legal documents that cite a case.
You can read various pundits, mavens, and azure=chip consultants’ comments on this Google action at this link.
You may want to listen to a podcast called TWIL and listened to the November 23, 2009, show on which Google Scholar was discussed for about a half hour. You can find that discussion on iTunes. Just search for TWIL and download the program “Social Lubricants and Frictions.”
On the surface, the Google push into legal information is a modest amount of data in terms of Google’s daily petabyte flows. The service is easy to use, but the engineering required to provide access to the content strikes me as non-trivial. Content transformation is an expensive proposition, and the cost of fiddling with legal information is one of the primary reasons commercial online services have had to charges hefty fees to look at what amounts to taxpayer supported, public information.
The good news is that the information is free, easily accessible even from an iPhone or other mobile device. The Google service does the standard Google animal tricks of linking, displaying content with minimal latency, and updating new content in a a minute or so that content becoming available to Google software Dyson vacuum cleaner.
So what?
This service is similar to others I have written about in my three Google monographs. Be aware. My studies are not Sergey-and-Larry-eat-pizza books. I look at the Google open source technical and business information. I ignore most of what Google’s wizards “say” in public. These folks are “running the game plan” and add little useful information for my line of work. Your mileage may differ. If so, stop reading this blog post and hunt down a cheerful non-fiction Google book by a real live journalist. That’s not my game. I am an addled goose.
Now let me answer the “so what”.
First, the Google legal content is an incremental effort for the Google. This means that Google’s existing infrastructure, staff, and software can handle the content transformation, parsing, indexing, and serving. No additional big-buck investment is needed. In fact, I have heard that the legal content project, like Google News, was accomplished in the free time for play that Google makes available to its full time professionals. A bit of thought should make clear to you that commercial outfits who have to invest to handle legal content in a Google manner have a cost problem right out of the starting blocks.
Second, Google is doing content processing that should be the responsibility of the US government. I know. I know. The US government wants to create information and not compete with commercial outfits. But the outfits manipulating legal information have priced it so that most everyday Trents and Whitneys cannot afford to use these commercial services. Even some law firms cannot afford these services. Pro bono attorneys don’t have enough money to buy yellow pads to help their clients. Even kind hearted attorneys have to eat before they pay a couple a hundred bucks to run a query on the commercial online services from publicly traded companies out to make their shareholders have a great big financial payday. Google is operating like a government when it processes legal information and makes it available without direct charge to the user. The monetization takes place but on a different business model foundation. That also spells T-R-O-U-B-L-E for the commercial online services like Lexis and Westlaw.
Publishers Get the F Scott Fitzgerald Treatment
November 24, 2009
If you are a fan of F Scott Fitzgerald, you know he skewers his targets with a thin, sharp rapier. When the point finds its mark, often the victim does not realize at the moment that a fatal blow has been struck. I thought of F Scott when I read “Screening the News” by Mrinal Desai, founder of CrossLoop. the story appeared in TechCrunch and I think that that the publication used Mr. Desai as a sharp rapier. The victim is the traditional print media which seems intent on making the word “paywall” next year’s Oxford English Dictionary. Traditional publishers may want to “unfriend” people like Mr. Desai.
The guts of the story is that a motivated and sharp person like Mr. Desai can get along just fine without relying a whole lot on traditional publishing companies’ products. The write up is a tutorial on how to stay informed and use information instead of working the way people did in the Dark Ages. In case the clear explanation and links don’t drive the point home, a nifty diagram is included. I wanted to reproduce it, but the goose does not need a legal eagle darkening his Harrod’s Creek sky. Just navigate to the story on TechCrunch and scroll down until you see the headline “Social Distribution Channels.” You are there.
Several observations:
First, I think the article makes clear how traditional media faces an uphill battle in its slog against the digital environment.
Second, I like very much the method of Mr. Desai. I picked up a few good ideas too.
Third, TechCruch has used an F Scott Fitzgerald technical with a wonderful adeptness.
I wonder if the traditional media know that they have been run through with cold digital steel?
Stephen Arnold, November 24, 2009
I wish to disclose to the National Gallery of Art that I was not paid to write about this artistic piercing of traditional media.
Funnelback Contextual Navigation
November 24, 2009
Short honk: I just watched a video about faceted navigation. You can check out the Funnelback video here. What caught my attention was this title: “Funnelback Fluster Cluster”. Interesting. I have a friend who uses the word “fluster” in a most unusual way. Fluster connotes to me behaving in a confused manner. Search engine marketing has an internal rhythm.
Stephen Arnold, November 24, 2009
Dear Education Department, I was not paid to point out the interesting co-occurrence of “fluster” and “cluster”. What luck from a duck!
Microsoft and News Corp.: A Tag Team of Giants Will Challenge Google
November 23, 2009
Government regulators are powerless when it comes to online. The best bet, in my opinion, is for large online companies to act as if litigation and regulator hand holding was a cost of doing business. While the legal eagles flap and the regulators meet bright, chipper people, the business of online moves forward.
The news that News Corp. and Microsoft are, according to “Microsoft Offers To Pay News Corp To “De-List” Itself From Google”, and other “experts”, these two giants want to form a digital World Wrestling Federation tag team. In the “fights” to come, these champions—Steve Ballmer and Rupert Murdoch–will take on the unlikely upstarts, Sergey the Algorithm Guy and Larry the Math Whiz.
Which of these two tag teams will grace the cover of the WWF marketing collateral? What will their personas become? Source: http://www.x-entertainment.com/pics5/wwe11click.jpg
The idea is to “pull” News Corp. content from Google or make it pay through its snout for the right to index News Corp. content. The deal will probably encompass any News Corp. content. Whatever Google deal is in place with News Corp. would be reworked. News Corp., like other traditional media companies is struggling to regain its revenue traction.
For Microsoft a new wrestling partner makes sense. Bing is gaining market share, but at the expense of Yahoo’s search share. Microsoft now faces Google’s 1,001 tiny cuts. The most recent is the browser based operating system. There is the problem of developers with Microsoft’s former employees rallying the Google faithful. There’s the pesky Android phone thing that went from a joke to a coalition of telephone-centric outfits. There’s the annoyance of Google in the US government. On and on. No one Google nick has to kill Microsoft. Nope. Google just needs to let a trickle of revenue slip away from the veins of Microsoft. The company’s rising blood pressure will do the rest. Eventually, the losses from the 1,001 tiny cuts will force the $70 billion Redmond wrestler to take a break. That “rest” may be what gives Google the opportunity to do significant damage with its as-yet-unappreciated play for the TV, cable, and independent motion picture business. Silverlight 4.0 may not be enough to overcome the structural changes in rich media. That’s real money. Almost as much as the telephony play promises to deliver to the somewhat low key team of Sergey the Algorithm Guy and Larry the Math Whiz
Sergey the Algorithm Guy and Larry the Math Whiz take a break from discussing the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test of normality. Training is tough for this duo. Long hours of solitary computation may exhaust the team before it tackles the Ballmer-Murdoch duo, which may be the most dangerous opponent the Math Guys have faced.
I look forward to the fight promoter to pull out all the stops. One of the Buffers will be the announcer. The cut man will be the master, Stitch Duran. The venue will be Las Vegas, followed by other world capitals of money, power, and citizen concern.
Nicholas Carlson reported:
Still, if News Corp were to “de-list” from Google, we’d expect to see all kinds of ads touting Bing as the only place to find the Wall Street Journal and MySpace pages online. Maybe that’d swing search engine share some, but we doubt it.
France Begins to See Google as a Nation State
November 22, 2009
“The Digitalization of Literary Works: Is Google above the Law” is one of those articles that reveals how far out of touch journalists and Google pundits who talk about the Google Foosball tables and the Google stacks of snacks. Google is 11 years old and has meticulously documented exactly what it has built and what that infrastructure’s capabilities are. Google, in my opinion, figures that if a person is too lazy to read a technical paper, why should Google “connect the dots” for anyone.
The French daily l’Humanité seems to be on a more fruitful path than the folks who explain that Chrome is really not new or that it is no match for Windows 7 or Mac OSX. Whatever. Google is now packaging innovations that are in some cases seven or eight years old. Chrome is being productized to further waterboard Steve Ballmer. I am tired of explaining this misperception about Google. Read my monographs. You won’t learn how those wild and crazy guys figured out “search” from me.
The big news in this story is that Google “gets its hands on Lyon’s public library.” (I thought that another vendor “had its hands on” the Lyon library, but as most Google competitors learn, Google doesn’t have hands. Google is an environment and one day folks at a place like the Lyon public library say, “Hey, we’re Googley.” Believe me, vendors have a tough time selling against an outfit that doesn’t return phone calls or try particularly hard to win accounts. Most Googlers are blissfully clueless about “traditional sales methods” by virtue of Google’s wacky hiring process.
l’Humanité reported:
There is a precedent in France: the City of Lyon signed an agreement with Google in 2008. Over the last few months Lyon’s public library, the second largest in France, has given several interviews. In the columns of Le Monde, the library’s manager indicated that the contract signed with Google extended over several years, and on France 2 (French national television network) put the cost at €60 million, or €120 per title. This information comes as a surprise given that the amount is two or three times higher than that announced two years ago by the president of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Furthermore, according to a report from Lyon city council, the contract with Google is set to run for…..twenty-five years! The same mystery surrounds the benefits accorded to the Californian giant, which claims it merely wants to transmit culture! The aforementioned report stipulates that Google will have full ownership of the digital books.
Okay, so people in France don’t know what deal Lyon cut with the Google. Then the article revealed:
In order to find out the truth, we asked Lyon city hall for the documents pertaining to the deal concluded with Google, documents which should normally be public. And surprise, surprise, they refused to communicate this information. We also posed several questions to Google France, in particular concerning the number of French titles available on Google Books. The response was negative! Google claims not to know how many books are in French!
The capstone of the write up appears in this passage:
the Californian company has announced that the location of the centre responsible for digitizing books from Lyon’s library is a secret! Anyone would think we were in a James Bond film! This refusal is, however, legal. That of Lyon’s city hall poses a more serious question. According to city hall, a clause was signed forbidding them from giving access to the contract documents signed with Google. They even refuse to reveal information that the Commission for Access to Administrative Documents has stated can be communicated without reserve!
Dealings between diplomats from France and Germany in World War One were less convoluted. In my opinion, France is realizing that Google operates like a country, not a company. See how far off the mark the “Sergey and Larry eat pizza” analyses are.
Check out those Google technical papers. The Google is quite an interesting company and it just now making public accessible technology that is quite old. The question is, “What’s Google working on now?” The betas are like looking at Google in a rear view mirror of a car speeding away from the Googleplex.
Stephen Arnold, November 22, 2009
Exalead and Real Travel
November 21, 2009
I noted “Real Travel Chooses Exalead CloudView Search” in the SEO Journal. I have been a fan of the Exalead technology for a number of years. You can read an exclusive interview with Exalead’s founder in my Search Wizards Speak series. The last time I was in Paris, one of the Exalead engineers took me to Tennessee Fried Chicken for some “real southern” fried cooking.
The news is that Real Travel will “will use Exalead CloudView to deliver a ‘smart’ search-based application designed specifically for the travel industry.”
According to the Ulitzer, Inc. story:
“We [Real Travel] needed a powerful search solution that could scale with us and effectively integrate traditional travel data with unstructured web information,” said Ken Leeder, Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Real Travel. “After a thorough review, our search and data architects concluded that a partnership with Exalead would enable us to accelerate our development efforts and provide travel shoppers with the rich information they need to plan their next trip.”
A happy quack to the Exalead team. Oh, Tennessee is noted for its Bar-B-Que and whiskey. Kentucky is horses, bourbon, and KFC.
Stephen Arnold, November 21, 2009
To the Department of Agriculture: I was not paid in comestibles or cash to write this article about Exalead.
Google and Artificial Anchors
November 20, 2009
Folks are blinded by Chrome. What might be missed is what’s often overlooked—Google’s plumbing. Once you have tired of the shiny, bright chatter about Microsoft’s latest reason for its fear and loathing of Google, you may want to navigate to the USPTO and download 20090287698, “Artificial Anchor for a Document.” Google said:
Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer program products, for linking to an intra-document portion of a target document includes receiving an address for a target document identified by a search engine in response to a query, the target document including query-relevant text that identifies an intra-document portion of the target document, the intra-document portion including the query relevant text. An artificial anchor is generated, the artificial anchor corresponding to the intra-document portion. The artificial anchor is appended the address.
The system and method has a multiplicity of uses, and these are spelled out in Googley detail in the claims made for this patent application. In this free Web log, I won’t dive into the implications of artificial anchors. I will let you don your technical scuba gear and surf on the implications of artificial anchors. Chrome is the surface of the Google ocean. Artificial anchors are part of the Google ocean. Big, big difference.
Stephen Arnold, November 21, 2009
I want to disclose to the USPTO itself that no one paid me to be cryptic in this article.
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