Welcome to Natural Search Blog
Natural Search Blog provides articles on search engine optimization including keyword reasearch, on-page factors, link-building, social media optimization, local search optimization, image search optimization, and mobile SEO.
In addition to natural search optimization topics, we also cover internet marketing, ecommerce, web design, usability, and technology.
Recent Entries
Infospace to Merge with Marchex?
At least, that’s what this Forbes article theorizes as one possible explanation, quoting a Wall Street analyst:
“Scott Sutherland, an analyst at Wedbush Morgan Securities, said the most likely scenario is that the company will take InfoSpace private to save money or merge with the search and media company, Marchex, whose executives are former executives at InfoSpace.”
Just yesterday, I expressed a bit of confusion about why InfoSpace made deals to sell off their mobile services to Motricity, and sell off directory services to Idearc’s Superpages… (more…)
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 10/16/2007
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Filed under: Local Search, News InfoSpace, Local Search, Marchex, Mergers, metasearch-engines, Mobile Search
Antisocial Media Optimization
Techcrunch amused me greatly by mentioning Hatebook, the “anti-social utility that connects you with the people YOU HATE.” If you’re already a member you can “Bog off”, and it invites you to “upload blackmail material”, “publish lies”, and “get the latest gossip from your enemies”. The jokes abound on this antisocial networking site — check out the stuff on the “edit your profile” screen I saw when I signed up:
The site made me stop and think: would it be possible to optimize through antisocial networking? (more…)
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Posted by stephan of stephan on 10/15/2007
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Filed under: Social Media Optimization antisocial, antisocial-media, antisocial-networking, Social Media Optimization, Social-Media, social-networking
Is InfoSpace Cashing Out?
First it was announced that InfoSpace was selling Switchboard and other directory properties of theirs to Idearc for $225 million. Today InfoSpace announces that they’re selling off their mobile services business for $135 million.
InfoSpace’s release says that they’re selling off the mobile services “…to focus on online search”. They’re apparently going to also give a chunk of this change back to their shareholders in a dividend.
This just makes me wonder, is Infospace cashing out?
Local search has been one of Infospace’s strengths over time — they even changed their core website a few years ago to focus on local search & yellow pages more — prior to that they’d been a more general search engine (they still own general meta search engines like Dogpile.com).
Also, this mobile service sale seems odd since the rest of the internet marketing industry is starting to hyper-focus on mobile search and services.
Even though “yellow pages” directories are not exactly the same thing as local search, you’d expect for InfoSpace to hold onto the assets (and hold onto the mobile services), or to sell the assets to use the money to capitalize on the search areas where they want to focus. So, why are they doing this?
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 10/15/2007
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Filed under: Local Search, Market Data, News InfoSpace, Local Search, Mobile Search
Voice Search the Next Big Thing in Mobile
Gregg Stewart has a great article today at Search Engine Watch on how Voice Search may be the “next big thing” that’s actually already arrived to large degree.
He posts an interesting graph from the Kelsey Group that estimates some fantastic growth figures for ad-sponsored directory assistance usage over the next few years.
Although I don’t really question any of the points Gregg made (more…)
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 10/12/2007
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Filed under: Local Search, Mobile Search, Paid Search 411, directory-assistance, voice-search
ThinkLocal.com – Network Solutions’ Entry in Local Search
I noticed that Network Solutions has quietly added a play in the local search / IYP space – ThinkLocal.com. The site includes maps, weather, a yellow pages like search for businesses, and user review features.
I’ve thought for years that a site which allows people to search specifically for business websites would be a killer app, and Network Solutions has always had enough data to provide that very sort of thing through their status as a major domain name registrar. Unfortunately, I think no one site ever created a sufficiently broad directory of business websites, and Google, Yahoo! and MS Live have all evolved to fill that gap to some degree (it’d still be great to have the ability to only search for biz websites and not get unrelated content).
ThinkLocal doesn’t appear to be purely built from Network Solutions’ database, though. I found (more…)
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 09/27/2007
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Filed under: Local Search, Online Directories, Yellow Pages Internet-Yellow-Pages, iyp, Local Search, Network-Solutions, ThinkLocal, Yellow Pages
Google Maps forces Navy to redesign swastika building
Quite some time back, I came across this Swastika-shaped building via Google Maps, and posted the screengrab in my Flickr account. Since then, it became one of my most popular Flickr pictures, since strange stuff like this can become quickly viral. Loads of people (16,000+) have viewed the photo’s page, and then various journalists contacted me and posted the photo on news stories in Europe and elsewhere. Here it is:
(click to view swastika photo profile page)
I researched the building and found it was a Navy building, apparently built unintentionally in the shape of a Nazi Swastika in California. This was built way before people anticipated the general public would be viewing buildings from the sky all that much, but now the easy accessibility of viewing satellite pics from Google Maps, Yahoo! Maps, Mapquest, Microsoft Live Maps, and other utilities have made birds-eye-viewing all too common. I photo-blogged the info I researched on the Flickr page, and quite a few people commented and favorited the unusual picture over time.
Today, CNN reported on the swastika building, and they added one really interesting new detail: (more…)
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 09/26/2007
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Filed under: Google, Maps aerial-images, aerial-photos, Google-Maps, Mapquest, online-maps, Satellite-Images, Satellite-Photos, swastika-building, Yahoo!-Maps
Am I an SEO Dog? More On Toasting of Internet Yellow Pages
Donna Bogatin apparently disagreed with my article at SEL entitled “Google Trends: Yellow Pages Will Be Toast in Four Years“, posting a bit of a lurid headline herself: “Yellow Pages Trash Talking: The SEO Dog in the Google Local Fight“.
I didn’t really think that my article was quite “trash talk“, and I’m assuming from the article content that the “SEO Dog” referred to was perhaps myself, or perhaps the “dog” is my article conclusions, fighting for the ostensibly narrow viewpoint of all SEOs. Aside from the somewhat scathing disembowelment attempted, I thought it’d be informative for me to address some of the logic-faulty conclusions that were drawn.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 09/25/2007
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Filed under: Local Search, Market Data, Online Directories, Yellow Pages Donna-Bogatin, iyp, Local Search Optimization, local-SEO, Online-Yellow-Pages, Search-Engine-Land, SEO, Yellow Pages
Search Engine Optimization through Yellow Pages
There’s an interesting thread that appeared on Greg Sterling’s blog on Using IYPs as an SEO Strategy.
Some of the commentators pointed out that yellow pages ads are pretty costly, compared with those of the search engines. So, is using yellow pages as part of a search marketing campaign worthwhile for traffic and good for ROI? My answer is: Yes, yellow pages can and should be used as a major component of local search optimization. Yellow pages can be used for SEO, and here’s some details on how to approach it.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 09/24/2007
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Filed under: Local Search, Local Search Optimization, Online Directories, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Yellow Pages iyp, Local Search Optimization, local-SEO, Online-Yellow-Pages, SEO, Yellow Pages
Yes, you can automate SEO – we’ve done it!
Loren Baker at Search Engine Journal wrote a post highlighting Commerce360’s stated intention to build automatic optimization software, using a lot of venture capital they raised for this purpose. Loren asks, “Can SEO Be Automated?”
Inspired by this thread, Lisa Barone at Bruce Clay, Inc. responds with “You Can’t Automate Search Engine Optimization” (which is just the tiniest bit ironic, since Bruce Clay’s Dynamic Site Mapping tool arguably provides a level of automated search optimization).
While Commerce360 is looking to create search optimization automation, we’ve already been accomplishing it for quite some time here at Netconcepts, as I outlined in an earlier article on Automatic Search Engine Optimization. So, do I think SEO can be automated? Hell, yes!
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 09/21/2007
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Filed under: HTML Optimization, Marketing, Monetization of Search, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, technology, Tools Automatic-Search-Engine-Optimization, Automatic-SEO, GravityStream, Netconcepts, SEO, SEO-Web-Services
Using Flickr to Optimize for Yahoo Image Search
Google Blogoscoped reports that Yahoo’s Image Search now particularly likes Flickr content, so this may be incentive for webmasters to use Flickr “as a kind of Yahoo search engine optimization”. My frequent readers know that I’ve been advocating using Flickr for image search optimization for some time now, and I’ve been speaking on this subject at Search Engine Strategies conferences as well.
The Blogoscoped mention of Yahoo’s love for Flickr content is particularly timely, since Yahoo! announced back in June that they were permanently shutting down Yahoo! Photos in favor of their Flickr property, and the final closing date is tomorrow, September 20th.
Previously, I’d railed a bit against Yahoo! because I’d seen a lot of evidence that they didn’t spider/index Flickr content as well or comprehensively as Google did — altogether ironic since Yahoo owns Flickr. Just as with the anecdotal reports in the Blogoscoped post, I’m seeing nice indications that my earlier criticism of Yahoo’s lack of inclusion of Flickr content may now be completely resolved. (more…)
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 09/19/2007
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Filed under: Image Optimization, Yahoo flickr, Image Optimization, Image-Search-Optimization, SEO, Yahoo, yahoo-image-search
