It’s this year’s buzzword and the topic that every search conference goer is talking about, although most people are still unsure about what Universal Search is and how it affects them. The term is used by Google to describe their rollout of a new search result format, combining maps, images, video, news, products and blogs into the main search listings.
Although Google has been offering this data via its “OneBox” for a number of years now, the new format will actually integrate the new data sources into the web search listings. It effectively means that a website ranking 9th or 10th in the web results for a term, could get pushed onto the second page by a video clip or news article outranking them in the new result set.
Google thinks that this new style of results will be more helpful for the searcher and will show them information that they may not have thought to look for otherwise. It’s not surprising that the overall take up of Blog Search and News Search has been slow since launch, with the average Google user only knowing how to use the main search box and rarely venturing onto the other search tabs. The new result set will neglect the need to actively seek out these features, helping a user to find what they want first time. It’s important that the roll-out is carried out correctly however, which is why the process has been a gradual one. Someone searching for car prices doesn’t want to see an image of the vehicle and you don’t expect to see a blog result when seeking professional medical advice. The algorithm needs to determine which data sources are most appropriate for each topic, which is where search and click data will most likely play an important role.
How does this affect your company? Firstly you may find that you web page rankings drop as a result of other content sources outranking them. Listings for images, news and video, also take up more screen space than a normal web listing, so your 5th position ranking may now require the user to scroll down in order to see it.
Other than trying to increase your rankings for key terms, your best defence is to try and get your content included in the various new search types. If your company builds or manufactures a product, remember to use the product make and model as the file name on images and to use “alt” attributes in your <img> tag to describe the product. Keep your company blog up to date and remember to add Google to your list of search providers to ping. Keep an archive of your press releases and publish industry news in order to get into Google News. Demonstrate and promote your products using vodcasts (video podcasts) and upload them to YouTube. As with web pages, it’s important to build links to your content, images and video in order to increase its perceived popularity. This is often a much easier task than with web pages, as the medium has only recently started to be promoted in this fashion. Just because your web ranking may drop, doesn’t mean that your other content can’t be number one. Universal Search is here to stay and will be the default search result format for all Google users. It is important to embrace the issues and opportunities now in order to stay in front of your competitors.
A New Adventure With Ayima and Sphinn
I’m happy to announce 2 new ventures that I’m very excited about.
Firstly, after leaving my in-house role at PartyGaming, I have now partnered up with some brilliant SEOs, to form a new consultancy. The company is called Ayima Search Marketing, please don’t ask me what “Ayima” means though 
. I work alongside Mike Nott, who is a fantastic SEO, but likes to keep a low profile. We’ve also just hired a very talented young SEO, who most Black Hats will know from his plethora of free SEO scripts which many have used or adapted at some point. Ayima specialises in offering a level of SEO that is not currently found in the UK, as well as providing on-site support (it’s like having your own in-house team). Although our team has a strong background in Black Hat SEO, we provide best-practice services to clients and use our darker knowledge to understand on-site and competitor issues to a degree unlike any other.
The second piece of news is my new role as Editor of Sphinn, a forum and community site launched by Danny Sullivan and the crew at Third Door Media. In order to dedicate enough time to my new position, I have decided to step down as Forums Editor at Search Engine Watch. Danny started SEW back in 1997, which he later sold to JupiterMedia (now Incisive Media) and left in 2006. After he departed from SEW, Search Engine Land was born along with SMX conferences and now Sphinn. It’s sad that I’m leaving SEW after my brief spell as an Editor, although I really look forward to playing a key role in building and developing Sphinn.
Lastly, if you’ve tried to email me recently without reply, please try again. I’ve changed email addresses (although the old one should now forward on), as well as buying my first home which proved very time consuming.
My New “SEW Experts” Column
I was recently asked by Incisive to start writing a column for In-House SEM in the SearchEngineWatch Experts section. My first article looking at brand protection went live a few days ago, and I should be writing a new article at least once a fortnight. You can find a list of articles that I write from my Bio page, although I highly recommend subscribing to the SEW Experts RSS Feed. And before you mention it; yes I do look stupid in that photo, no I’m not smiling and yes I did take the picture using my Mac webcam rather then getting a professional to do it. 
Places you’ll find me:
SearchEngineWatch Experts – As above.
SearchEngineWatch Forums – Spending a lot of time here due to my new responsibilities as the Admin.
Search Engine Roundtable – I feel guilty for not putting more of an effort in for Barry on his site, although most of my forum time is spent looking after SEW. I’ll try to get posting here again soon.
SEO Blokes – I need to post here more often, I think we all do really.
evilgreenmonkey – Sorry I haven’t written much SEO stuff, you’ll find some good content on my SEW Experts column though and I should have some more white/grey/dark-grey hat posts coming here soon.
LondonSEO.org – I only post event news on this site, although any UK SEO/PPC/Affiliate guru should get their arses along to these events. They’re free and you meet loads of cool people (don’t worry, I don’t include myself as “cool people”).
When I’m not working 14 hours a day, I use Lee Odden’s marvellous blog list in Google Reader (it helps my karma) to keep up on the industry news. I’m also impressed with the kingdom that my mate Rand is building for himself over at SEOmoz. Rand has a bit of the Charlies Angels thing going on over there, I’m sure he only hires pretty people. The mozzers always had a big following, although I’m starting to find people who only ever read stuff posted by moz HQ. I think that Scott will be the first mozzer to use his power for evil, tempting readers into a spiral of eBooks, self-help courses and getting links to his network of MFA sites. 
Right, I’m off to look for an office, an apartment and a hangover cure that works.
Threadwatcher.com Is Floating My Boat
I’m sure that we’re all still in the morning stage after losing our beloved ThreadWatch, although there’s a new site in town – and I’m not just on the rebound!
Threadwatcher.com is a sparky new SEM/internet news portal launched by Earl Grey (Syndk8), which takes a lot of influences from Threadwatch and in my personal opinion, many from The Register as well. Now apart from SearchEngineWatch (like our new look?), Threadwatch and The Register were/are my top must-visits of the day. Combining them into one juicy SEO/internet geekfest is just, well… a dream come true. It’s not the busiest site in the world in terms of visitors, stories or comments at the moment, although it’s down to us as an industry to change that.
My only concerns:
- Keeping content fresh and interesting requires a big commitment from the editors.
- Although Threadwatch has always been “edgy”, Syndk8 is way beyond that. Threadwatcher.com may not need to appeal to the mainstream SEM industry, but at least has to be inviting to the typical ThreadWatch reader. Anyone who has read Syndk8 knows what the language and tone is like (which is fine for its audience), but I don’t think that such a writing style will go down well with Threadwatcher’s target audience.
- No geeky gadget section! I’ll make the site my browser homepage if a gadget tab is added
Anyway, take a look, register your username on the site and have a browse around. I think you’ll grow to like it and I look forward to seeing how it develops.
Me Write Good Yes?
My New Years resolution for 2007 was to become a published author, with the thought of writing an SEO book which tackles search from the corporate and in-house point of view. This idea fell by the wayside when several friends in the industry also announced similar intentions (although with different angles and subjects).
The book which I was planning would not just cover the basic Best Practice areas, but also tackle issues such as Black Hat SEO and dealing with agency bullshit. I’ve worked with some of the biggest brands on the web, and really think that there’s still a lot to be learnt when dealing with corporate websites.
Would you read such a book, and should I follow my ambitions?
Win A Date With Lisa Barone
It looks like that crafty Naylor guy has asked his blog readership to vote for him on the “Nicest Bloke In SEO” poll. I’m really lagging behind, which is not nice. If you’re one of the 5 people who read my ramblings here, vote for me now and you could win a date with The Lisa*!
* Lisa doesn’t know yet, although I’m sure she’ll be OK with me using her in this fashion
No More Holidays For Me…
I picked the worst possible time to go on holiday, although my mate Dug and I have been planning a roadtrip around Ireland for a long time now and we’ve already put the date back twice. So we packed our bags and headed to Heathrow for a quick flight over to Dublin and an 11 day adventure. Oh, and to add to things, I resigned from PartyGaming on the day that my vacation began (to move into full-time SEO Consulting)! With the plan being to stick to the rural roads and try to stay away from popular tourist traps, getting internet access was not as easy as first imagined (there weren’t even any WiFi points to leach off!). I therefore had little time to keep up with industry news, which was actually quite daunting for a person such as myself. It seems that Jane is in the same situation as I was – don’t do it Jane!
The holiday was superb though; meeting the Kerry clan…
Re-creating the cover of one of my favourite books… can you guess what it is yet?
And drinking the black stuff of course!
While I was away, ThreadWatch closed its doors, which was not good at all. Although Aaron announced his intentions before my holiday, I was sure that a) It wasn’t just a link bait idea and b) someone would buy the rights and keep things flowing. So when I got home and discovered a page of stale news, I was mortified. If you’re wondering, I heard that Dave Pasternack and Jason Calcanis were to blame for the site closing – threatening to use clickbots on Aaron’s PPC campaigns and write a negative bio about him on Maholo .
I thought that JasonD planned to create a Threadwatch2 at w3wisdom.com, although the site seems to have disappeared.
The big chief also started a Threadwatch/Digg style extravaganza called Sphinn which I hadn’t spotted before. It allows you to submit new search industry stories like on Threadwatch and vote for other people’s stories like on Digg. I like how extensive the profile pages are, with lots of room to pimp out your blogs and contact details. I’m actually very keen on the site so far, which is very unusual for the grumpy old bastard that I am. Well done big chief, and I look forward to spamming (sorry, SMO’ing) it soon If you haven’t check it out yet, get in their fast before I hold all your usernames to ransom!
The SEO Chicks also raced ahead of us Blokes with a plethora of almost respectable articles, gaining some cred from Stuntdubl among others. I accept some of the responsibility for SEO-Blokes.com not keeping up with our female fatales, so I’ll try to start blogging again soon.
I don’t think that anything else major happened, not that I can mention here anyway. Maybe I’ve missed something over the last 2 weeks?
It will be hard for me to go without internet access for that long again, hopefully I’ll get a Blackberry soon for my email and RSS fix.
… you launch a new blog with a post like this: Time For A Valid Opinion
Oh well, I’ll just sit back and watch the flaming begin
PS. Stick the RSS Feed in your aggregator, or I’ll <edit>someone scary</edit> will come and beat you up
I Love Google – Seriously!
Adam Lasnik joked during lunch at SMX and at the SEOmoz party that I was “that guy who hates Google”. Maybe some of my blog posts such as “Hacking Your Way To Number One” gave him that impression, although I do truly love Google. It’s my default search engine of choice, my email provider, my calendar organiser and my income source. Sure, I’ve said lots of negative things towards the Big G, although correcting these issues will only make the company stronger.
I also cannot think of one person I dislike at Google; my comments about Matt Cutts’ views on paid links were aimed at challenging Google’s policies and plans on this matter – not challenging Matt on a personal level. I don’t really speak to Matt much at conferences as he’s usually busy in big crowds of star-struck newbies, although I’ve had a few drinks with Brian White, Vanessa Fox and Amanda Camp before and think they’re top notch. I’ve also seen a glimpse of the future and was very impressed after chatting with Google Webmaster Central intern, errr… Red Googler (sorry that I can’t remember your name despite you telling me several hundred times).
So in summary, please don’t hate me just because I’m evil. Anyway, more tips and tricks on how to spam and hack Google coming soon
SMX Advanced in Seattle
I’m over in Seattle this week for Danny’s first SMX conference event. We kicked off last night at the Microsoft pre-conference party, which seemed to have more Googlers present than MSN Borgs. It turns out that Vanessa wasn’t joking about always registering domains on her Blackberry, buying seobreasts.com at the party after Danny suggested it as an alternative to Lisa’s SEO Chicks idea (would be funny if she stuck an MFA site on it). I’m sitting in a session right now about duplicate content, it’s a little disappointing that the content being presented is just as basic as found at SES conferences. It’s great stuff for beginners but not exactly worthy of the “Advanced†title. I suppose it’s the age old problem of advanced techniques being too valuable to just give away. The duplicate content panel is made up of all the engines as well, and lets face it – they hesitate and circumvent even the simplest of questions at all the search events. I’ve put some photo’s up on Flickr if you’re unable to make this event or want to see if you got into one of my pics. Not sure who’s blogging the sessions, I’m guessing that Barry and Tamar will be over at Search Engine Roundtable.
UPDATE: I’ve just come out of a “SEO, meet SMM” session and it was actually very good. The majority of it was the usual Social Marketing basics although I felt that Rand and Stuntdubl did well at expanding things a bit more and offered some excellent tips. More “Advanced”
