The overlap between Google and Yahoo! results is less than you might think
There’s a brand new meta search engine on the block called Jux2. Its premise is to find the overlap between the top 10 results across two major search engines. So far I’m really impressed with it. It even has a toolbar for Mozilla FireFox.
Jux2 conducted some tests to determine just how much overlap there is in the top search results on Google versus Yahoo! The results of their tests are very interesting. Such as:
- Analysis of Google and Yahoo! search results on the 500 most popular search terms found that, on average, Google and Yahoo! shared only 3.8 of their top 10 results. Furthermore, 30% of the search terms had 2 or fewer overlapping terms, and only 17% had 6 or more overlapping results among the top 10.
- The overlapping set of top 10 results between Google and Ask Jeeves was even smaller: 3.4 out of 10. And between Yahoo! and Ask Jeeves, smaller yet: 3.1 out of 10.
- Analysis of 91 random searches on Google and Yahoo! found that the two engines share only 23% of their top 100 results. Furthermore, only 4.8 of Google’s top 10 results even made Yahoo’s top 100. And only 5.4 of Yahoo’s top 10 made Google’s top 100.
For me, Jux2’s findings were a good reminder that the algorithms of the major search engines are markedly different, more so than one might imagine. So a metasearch engine that compares and contrasts two partially overlapping sets of search results makes a lot of sense. I think I’ll try Jux2 for a while and report back on my experiences.
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Posted by stephan of stephan on 08/29/2004
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Yahoo! is blogging
Yahoo! now has a corporate blog, Yahoo! Search Blog. I’ve been a fan of an unofficial Yahoo blog, namely that of Yahoo employee Jeremy Zawodny, for a while now. But it’s good to see the company embracing blogging in an official capacity.
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Posted by stephan of stephan on 08/20/2004
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Filed under: Yahoo
Optimizing your search engine advertising
DoubleClick’s Smart Marketing Report in a recent interview of Jamie Crouthamel, president and CEO of Performics, were treated to some words of wisdom on how to launch and optimize a paid search advertising program.
Here’s some of the takeaways I got out of the interview:
- Build out your keyword portfolio. Incorporate product names, product numbers, relevant adjectives (colors, sizes, etc.), and occasions for which products could be sought. A number of linguistic exercises for the agency and client exist that can help with this process. A SEM program can encompass a keyword portfolio of as large as 50,000 keywords with varying ROIs. Although “belt” might not convert well as a keyword, it has many related terms that may convert much better, such as “leather belt,” “men’s leather belt,” “brown belt,” and “men’s brown leather belt.”
- Collect an adequate amount of data before you begin optimizing. Don’t alter a keyword until that keyword has received at least 100 clicks.
- Constantly improve your keyword portfolio by adding new search terms and improving/removing keywords that don’t produce a good ROI.
- Experiment with reducing bid prices to improve ROI.
- Optimize your search ad copy to make it as compelling and relevant as possible.
- Make the landing page as relevant to the user’s keyword as possible.
- If your products are seasonal, bid on the keywords during the season when your target audience is in need of them rather than year-round.
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Posted by stephan of stephan on 08/17/2004
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Filed under: Paid Search, Site Structure
Caveat Emptor (Bidder Beware) – Google AdWords contextual ads gone wrong
Google’s contextual advertising technology that they picked up with the Applied Semantics acquisition isn’t flawless. It’s not always in the best light that your brand gets displayed within sites subscribing to the Google AdSense program. Take for instance the case where a web page featuring a story about a hacked up body in a suitcase displays a Google AdWords ad for luggage, as described in this Fast Company article. Or the also embarrassing but less gruesome example I came across on Robin Good’s website recently, as shown below:
Bottom-feeding email marketing solution, anyone? 😉
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Posted by stephan of stephan on 08/15/2004
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Filed under: Google, Paid Search
Googling Searching – my part 2 now on MarketingProfs
Part 2 in my 4 part series on Google power searching has just been released on MarketingProfs.com. This installment covers the range of advanced search operators, including site:, filetype:, inurl:, intitle:, cache:, info:, etc. and their application.
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Posted by stephan of stephan on 08/11/2004
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How to Become a Google Power Searcher
The first part of my MarketingProfs.com article series called “Unlocking Google’s Hidden Potential” is now available for MarketingProfs premium subscribers. The article provides tools to improving your Google search skills, including: word order, wildcards, Boolean logic, stemming, synonym searches, and much more.
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Posted by stephan of stephan on 08/04/2004
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Filed under: Reference Material, Searching
Etail Search Engine Optimization Awards… That was bizarre
Attending the Etail Awards dinner tonight at the Etail Conference in Fort Lauderdale, I was surprised to hear that Land’s End won in the search engine optimization category. Not because they didn’t deserve an award. They certainly do; they’re a great company and a true innovator in the online space, but because the award was based around their great internal search engine. Yes, you heard me right: an SEO award was granted for work done on internal search rather than external search. Kinda bizarre. Hopefully they’ll rectify this next year and break out internal search into its own separate Awards category.
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Posted by stephan of stephan on 08/02/2004
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