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
New Results Filtering Parameter for Google Image Search
The Google Operating System blog reported this past weekend that Google Image Search introduced a new parameter that can allow you to pull up only images of people’s faces or only images from news sites/stories.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 05/29/2007
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Filed under: Google Google, image-search
The Internet is Killing Independent Bookstores
In all the good done by the internet and technological innovation, it’s easy to sometimes overlook that some changes haven’t been for the better. On Monday, the news everywhere was mentioning the odd and sensational story of the bookstore owner in Kansas City, Missouri, who has started burning books on his doorstep to dramatize his perspective that people are not reading books nearly as much anymore. While I’m afraid his belief that people are reading less is faulty, his observation of the trend in people shopping less at stores like his is correct. I’ve personally witnessed the closing of hundreds of indie bookstores all across America, and there’s no question that the rare book shops and independent book dealers have been under siege and endangered as a species for about ten years. The internet has been killing them.
Burning book – photo used by express permission
of the photographer at Prospero’s Books.
There are worse crimes than burning books,
one is not reading them. ~ Joseph Brodskey
A few weeks ago, I was in New York attending the Search Engine Strategies Conference, and I took a few minutes to walk a few blocks south to the grand old Gotham Book Mart to get a friend back home a birthday present. I knew that the Gotham had moved a couple of blocks over in 2004 from its original home on West 47th (in Manhattan’s famous “Diamond Way”), to East 46th. The Gotham was always a place that gave me the warm fuzzies — it’s been around since the 1920s and was the sort of commercial home to one of my favorite author/illustrators, Edward Gorey, and it was a long-running meeting place for the Finnegans Wake Society and the James Joyce Society. Every spring, I tried to make a point of visiting their annual exhibit of rare old Goreyanna books and illustrations, and I’d typically be enchanted into buying something.
 
“Wise Men Fish Here”, sign over Gotham Book Mart (Left)
Chained door with author’s reflection (Right)
The shop was famed in the book world for its appreciation of humor with its “Wise Men Fish Here” sign above the door, its love of books, and its support of book collectors. It was with extreme shock that I found the Gotham locked up tight and the lights out. There was a terribly tragic air about it, because there were a number of cute stuffed Gorey characters still sitting in the window in their little rocking chairs. With a sinking feeling in my heart, I knew that store was dead, and that this was the end of an era.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 05/29/2007
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Filed under: General, Marketing books, bookstores, cultural-extinction, independent-bookstores, internet-bookstores, internet-economics, search-marketing
Google Calendar Goes To Mobile
Google just launched their shareable Calendars via Mobile today. Here’s the entry about it at the Google Blog.
I love the concept! I’m excited to see this innovation.
Unfortunately, I have a small problemmo. My company uses Google Calendar for us to all share schedules and invite each other to meetings and such. But, when I try to login to Google Calendar sometimes with my netconcepts.com email address, Google Calendar is a bit confused and says I can either set up a custom calendar for myself, or I can click through into the company calendar.
This issue has transitioned over to the Mobile version, apparently, because when I login to the Mobile Calendar, it isn’t giving me the branching page to choose the company calendar. So, it shows no items scheduled for me. I can click through into one of my coworker’s calendars, since she apparently has shared those with others such as myself.
Hopefully, this little blip will be fixed soon. I like everything I see so far!
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 05/25/2007
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Filed under: Google Google-Applications, Google-Calendars, Google-Mobile
Advanced Search Engine Optimization for College & University Websites
I earlier posted some basic tips for SEO of University & College websites here on Natural Search Blog. I’m now circling back around to post some advanced tips for optimization of .EDU sites. Some of these tips are more along the lines of helping out with overall marketing, though using the college’s or university’s web presence to accomplish it. Even those ancillary efforts can contribute to the overall online marketing and natural search optimization success.
I wrote those tips after getting a number of interested questions from educational professionals attending the AMA Hot Topics seminar that Stephan and I provided in San Fran a few weeks ago. Read on for the details of my .EDU secret sauce!
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 05/24/2007
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Filed under: Best Practices, Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, SEO College-SEO, EDU-SEO, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, University-SEO
Experiment with Google Voice Local Search
Google recently released their new Voice Local Search in beta, also known as “GOOG-411”, and I thought I’d kick the tires a bit. They also mentioned it on their new Google Lat Long Blog.
I used to work for a major telco (Verizon), and we had a number of researchers working on various voice recognition systems. I’ve also tinkered a bit with applications using text-to-speech voice synthesis software such as the AT&T Labs Text-to-Speech software, so I’m familiar with some of the issues that are commonly associated with these types of systems.
I was curious about whether Google’s clever engineers had perhaps improved upon some of the issues involved with having software recognize spoken words, and I also wondered how the quality was of their voice-synthesis.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 05/23/2007
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Filed under: Google, Local Search Goog-411, Google, Google-Voice-Local-Search, Voice-Recognition, Voice-Synthesis
How Web 2.0 Affects SEO Strategy
My colleague, P.J. Fusco just wrote a great article over at ClickZ on How Web 2.0 Affects SEO Strategy. In it, she provides a good overview of what’s good and bad about “Web 2.0” stuff, and how some of the technology involved can challenge the goal of natural search optimization of a website. It’s well worth a read if you’re unfamiliar with these issues.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 05/23/2007
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Filed under: SEO, technology AJAX, SEO, Social-Media, Web-2.0
Acxiom to be Acquired by Private Equity Firms – Marred by Insider Trading
Silver Lake Partners and ValueAct Capital Partners LP will buy out Acxiom Corporation (ACXM) for $ 3 billion. As you may be aware, Acxiom is one of the top yellow pages data aggregaters, assembling a nationwide database of business listings by compiling information they obtain from printed yellow pages books of all the major directory companies.
Unfortunately, Bloomberg reports that a lot of Acxiom options were abruptly and suspiciously traded on May 10th, six days prior to the announcement of the acquisition. The spike in trading in that security was ten times higher than average.
The SEC is now investigating, and it’s probably not going to be hard for them to determine if some employees acted on insider knowledge.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 05/21/2007
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Filed under: Yellow Pages Acxiom, Insider-Trading, Yellow Pages
Google Confirms New Local OneBox Placement in SERPs
I earlier reported that Google SERPs were now showing the “OneBox” containing Google Maps listings embedded throughout the listings in the results pages, not just at the very top any more. Days later, Google has now confirmed this new layout on the new Google LatLong Blog:
You’ve probably heard Google’s big announcement about Universal search. As part of this, when you search for local businesses on Google.com, listings from Google Maps are now blended into the results page. These listings may appear at the top, middle, or bottom of the page based on their relevance compared to the other web results.
Previously we only showed local listings at the top of the results page, and since this was prime real estate, we would not display the listings if we were not certain that you were looking for a local business. Within the Universal search framework, we are now able to more smartly handle ambiguous queries. For example, for the query [san francisco bar] we can now satisfy users who are looking for the website of the Bar Association of San Francisco as well as those looking for a local place to get a drink.
Well, you heard it here, first! 😉
I’ll probably circle back around and comment about Google’s new “Universal Search” later on.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 05/20/2007
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Filed under: Google, Local Search, Maps Google-LatLong, Google-Maps, Local Search, Universal-Search
Superpages Launches LocalServe Affiliate Program
I see that my former company, Idearc Media, finally launched the Superpages LocalServeSM Affiliate Program.
LocalServe was developed by one of the development teams reporting to me during the past year before I left, and it was quietly in beta release up until now.
This is a great way for local info sites and vertical industry-related sites to make money, and the content is perfectly compatible for those niche markets. Superpages has a very rich set of general listings and local search advertisers which can enhance the content of local and vertical sites, while also providing a good revenue stream.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 05/18/2007
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Filed under: Local Search, Yellow Pages Affiliate Marketing, Affiliate-Programs, Local-Serve, LocalServe, superpages
New Google Analytics UI – A Downgrade
Google Analytics is updating their user interface and report presentation, and just as I feared, some of it is a downgrade in usefulness. I’ve been using metrics/analytics packages for ages now. At my old company many years ago, I helped set up and use NetGenesis NetAnalysis product to generate reports from our log files. We later used SurfAid and Coremetrics and Omniture. We also built our own, in-house reporting system to supply stats that we couldn’t get via off-the-shelf packages, and I personally programmed some of those and managed other developers who worked on them as well. So, I’m pretty familiar with analytic reporting systems, and I know what’s possible in designing them. I don’t like some of Google’s changes to their service.
Google Analytics has done what I’ve seen so many other analytics companies do: they’ve dumbed down the reporting presentation capability of their service, apparently gearing it primarily toward less-technical marketers and people who run Google ads on their sites or who advertise through Google. The trend with all these analytics companies seems to be to evolve solely towards generating report charts for marketing departments, focusing mainly on conversion statistics and prettified reports that have extracted the ability to easily see quantitative amounts over timeperiods, lulling the brain with pretty colors and obsessing more over slick Ajax/browser interactions than delivering statistical content in a meaningful way.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 05/18/2007
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Filed under: Analytics, Google, Tools, Tracking and Reporting Analytics, Google-Analytics, Internet-Statistics, Statistics
