The track details are:

Metrics: Driving Science Into The Marketing Organization
Thursday 9/18
12:00pm - 12:45pm
Session Description:
Businesses too often fail to spearhead customer acquisition and retention strategies with disciplined and sophisticated analytics. How can marketers instill end-to-end tracking systems across their organizations to understand variables and drive critical business decisions? How should marketing organizations advance the science of tracking, testing and optimizing to drive customer profitability and growth? How do you set up systems to precisely connect marketing and advertising investment to internal processes and sales?
Moderator:
Emily Riley, Senior Analyst, Jupiter Research
Speakers:
John Chandler-Pepelnjak, Director, Atlas Institute; Microsoft Advertiser and Publisher Solutions
Jere Doyle, President & CEO, Prospectiv
Clay Fisher, Director, Global Search Marketing, Monster Worldwide Marketing
Geoff Katz, Discipline Lead for Campaign Management and Ad Ops, Avenue A Razorfish
Marshall Sponder, Senior Web Analyst, Monster Insights Group

The highlights:

• Revenues increased to $5.19 billion up 42%
  
• Net income increased to $1.31 billion up 30%
  
• “Our ongoing innovation in search, ads and apps helped drive healthy growth globally across our product lines, yielding another strong quarter for Google,” Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said in a statement

Henry Blodget, the leading paid click disaster wolf crier, has more coverage.

From the WSJ:

” Yahoo Inc. said it will carry search advertising from Google Inc. as part of a test effort that could lead to a broader partnership and boost Yahoo’s leverage in its ongoing takeover standoff with Microsoft Corp.

The test will last up to two weeks and involve no more than 3% of Yahoo’s Web search queries, the Sunnyvale, Calif., Internet company said. It is designed for Google and Yahoo to evaluate the revenue potential of a broader search ad sales outsourcing arrangement, according to people familiar with the matter. They have been discussing such an arrangement as part of Yahoo’s pursuit of alternatives to Microsoft’s unsolicited acquisition offer. Yahoo views the latest test partly as a way to demonstrate its belief that it is worth more than Microsoft has offered, one of the people says.”

Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft have all commented on the news.

More coverage and analysis:

• Techcrunch: Yahoo Provokes Microsoft With Google Adsense For Search Trial
• Search Engine Land: Confirmed: Yahoo To Test Google Ads
• Mashable: Yahoo Close To Search Advertising Deal With Google
• AP: Microsoft’s Official Comment
  

All organizations, big and small, go through a SEO maturation process. Many start with a rough plan to make a website search engine friendly, have a little success, and start to invest more resources into SEO. After a number of years, proven processes are established, sustainable success is realized, and companies reach a mature state of SEO. Small companies, where the SEO manager may also be the web developer often reach a mature state quicker than large organizations where constant coordination, education, and process management is needed to reach that elusive level. Where is your organization? Well, the model below will help you evaluate where you are and where you need to go.

I’ve adapted the commonly used capability maturity model (CMM) used in the IT space to evaluate SEO effectiveness in organizations. I’ve found (and hope you do to) this model to be very useful in identifying where an organization currently is and where it needs to go to reach a mature state of SEO effectiveness.

Background

Before we jump into the model, let’s review the basics. What is a maturity model? Wikipedia has a simple and concise explanation:

A maturity model is a structured collection of elements that describe certain aspects of maturity in an organization. A maturity model may provide, for example:

- A place to start
- The benefit of a community’s prior experiences
- A common language and a shared vision
- A framework for prioritizing actions
- A way to define what improvement means for your organization.

A maturity model can be used as a benchmark for assessing different organizations for equivalent comparison. The model describes the maturity of the company based upon the project the company is handling and the related clients.

And what makes up a maturity model? Well, there are five components that Wikipedia has also covered well:

The CMM involves the following aspects:

- Maturity Levels: It is a layered framework providing a progression to the discipline needed to engage in continuous improvement (It is important to state here that an organization develops the ability to assess the impact of a new practice, technology, or tool on their activity. Hence it is not a matter of adopting these, rather it is a matter of determining how innovative efforts influence existing practices. This really empowers projects, teams, and organizations by giving them the foundation to support reasoned choice.)
- Key Process Areas: A Key Process Area (KPA) identifies a cluster of related activities that, when performed collectively, achieve a set of goals considered important.
- Goals: The goals of a key process area summarize the states that must exist for that key process area to have been implemented in an effective and lasting way. The extent to which the goals have been accomplished is an indicator of how much capability the organization has established at that maturity level. The goals signify the scope, boundaries, and intent of each key process area.
- Common Features: Common features include practices that implement and institutionalize a key process area. These five types of common features include: Commitment to Perform, Ability to Perform, Activities Performed, Measurement and Analysis, and Verifying Implementation.
- Key Practices: The key practices describe the elements of infrastructure and practice that contribute most effectively to the implementation and institutionalization of the key process areas.

In summary, a maturity model is a tool to objectively assess a company’s processes and provide a clear roadmap of where the company needs to go to reach a mature / efficient / successful / world-class state.

The SEO Maturity Model

To the good stuff. The outline below will give you an idea of what makes up each level or stage of the SEO maturity model, what to look for within your organization, and how to make the leap to the proceeding stage.

Stage 1: Initial / Ad-hoc

Ah, the early days of search engine optimization (and sadly still too many organizations today). This stage identifies organizations where SEO is done on an inconsistent and erratic basis. There is no coherent strategy and the site is usually optimized in a haphazard way; well after the initial development. Organizations at this stage have very little SEO knowledge and are unable to plan for future SEO projects or quantify SEO investments.

Characteristics:

• Reactive: SEO projects are done after the product/website has been launched, typically to help drive traffic when ad budgets start running out.
• No formal management processes: No management practices or processes exist to implement or manage SEO.
• Dispersed SEO knowledge: Members of the IT dept and a couple of people from product may have basic SEO knowledge.

Functional Expertise & Involvement:

• Marketing: Non-existent
• Product: Individual ad-hoc
• Technology: Individual ad-hoc
• QA: Non-existent
• Content: Non-existent

If you’ve found that your organization is at this stage than you have your work cut out for you. It’s time to scheduled meetings with the product, technology, and marketing teams to begin mapping out an SEO roadmap (initially focusing on making sure the site is search engine friendly) that not only includes site-side projects but a communication and education strategy, a basic reporting framework, and a simple process for project implementation. Read through the next four stages to get a sense of where you need to go.

Stage 2: Repeatable

At the repeatable stage, SEO is typically performed on a project-by-project basis with successes repeated whenever possible. The knowledge may still be limited within the organization to one or two product/IT people serving as resident experts. A basic reporting framework such as a cost/benefit analysis that includes incremental traffic increases may be developed.

Characteristics:

• Proactive & Reactive: Future product initiatives have an SEO component but most projects are designed to fix existing holes.
• No formal management processes: No management practices or processes exist to implement or manage SEO.
• Central SEO knowledge: Usually a person within IT or marketing will be designated the SEO expert for the organization.
• Project-by-project basis: SEO continues to be ‘bolted on’ to existing projects. It is not a driver for project conceptualization

Functional Expertise & Involvement:

• Marketing: Identifies needs and projects. SEO may be a goal or major business objectives (MBO’s) the group is evaluated on.
• Product: Supports marketing through project implementation
• Technology: Supports marketing through project implementation
• QA: Supports marketing through project implementation
• Content: Supports marketing through project implementation

If you find your organization stuck at this stage it’s time to bring in some outside help or hire an SEO manager. The ideal firm/person will help implement a long-term strategy based on sound market research, establish formal processes, and develop an effective reporting framework that showcases SEO’s value to the organization.

Stage 3: Defined

At this stage a SEO project roadmap has been agreed upon and projects are split between new projects designed to capitalize on keyword market opportunities (i.e. developing content targeting blue widgets which generate 50k queries a month) and fixing weaknesses in the existing website. We also see the emergence of defined management processes and the implementation of best practices throughout the organization.

Characteristics:

• Proactive & Reactive: Projects are split between new projects designed to capitalize on keyword market opportunities and fixing weaknesses in the existing website (i.e. re-writing URLs to make the site search engine friendly).
• Management processes: Management processes exist but no company-wide standards & enforcement. For example, IT has agreed to implement your recommendations but continually pushes them out or leaves pieces out with no consequences.
• Central SEO knowledge: There is a dedicated resource providing SEO expertise.

Functional Expertise & Involvement:

• Marketing: Identifies needs and works with product & technology to define processes. Have SEO major business objectives (MBO’s)
• Product: Supports marketing through project and process implementation
• Technology: Supports marketing through project and process implementation
• QA: Supports marketing through project and process implementation
• Content: Supports marketing through project and process implementation

Many organizations find themselves at this stage through the help of a consultant or dedicated SEO manager. Often senior management has endorsed SEO and understands its value to the organization; however, the responsibility and knowledge of SEO remains in a silo under a specific group (i.e. marketing).

Stage 4: Managed & Measured

The upper echelon of SEO effectiveness, stage 4 represents an organization that has made SEO a focal point of the business. Typically, organizations at this stage have been focusing on SEO for a number of years and clearly understand its impact on their business. They have a dedicated SEO team or agency and each functional group has SEO goals or MBO’s.

Another key characteristic of this stage is the use of sound research and reporting to drive decision making. Organizations at this stage take a rigorous quantitative approach to evaluate performance and future projects. Because they have built up a certain level of experience they can accurately forecast SEO performance and effectiveness.

Characteristics:

• Complete integration: SEO is a component of all product initiatives. SEO is actively considered for all new projects and specific projects are designed to capitalize on keyword market opportunities.
• Company-wide SEO knowledge: While there may be a dedicated team, most people throughout the organization understand the basics of SEO and how it impacts their functional group.
• Management processes are standard practice: SEO management processes are baked into all functional group processes and rigorously enforced.

Functional Expertise & Involvement:

• Marketing: Identifies needs & projects. Have SEO MBO’s.
• Product: Possesses an expertise and drives SEO through integration in overall strategy. Have SEO MBO’s and specific projects on their roadmap.
• Tech: Possesses an expertise and drives SEO through project implementation. Have SEO MBO’s and work closely with product and marketing to ensure projects are properly implemented.
• QA: Supports SEO through project implementation. Have SEO MBO’s and continually ensure pages are built properly through SEO best practices and guidelines.
• Content: Supports SEO through project implementation. Have SEO MBO’s and develop content to address specific keyword markets. Further, the content team is well versed in SEO linking strategies.

If your company is at this stage than you’re in a great position. For the SEO manager, project management becomes easier and the focus shifts to developing long-term strategies, maintaining communication and education, and researching new growth opportunities. A comprehensive reporting framework will often be developed that not only shows traffic and rankings but SEO’s total value to the organization. Reports will show paid and organic search overlap, the halo effect of SEO on other media, and key consumer behavior metrics that help drive the organization’s overall strategy.

Stage 5: Optimized

Stage 5 represents the old wise sage of SEO maturity and is the level many of us strive to reach. While sharing many of the characteristics of stage 4, the one difference is the commitment to continually evaluate and improve processes. The Internet, and SEO in particular, is extremely dynamic with search engines adding new features, changing policies, and tweaking their algorithms on a regular basis. Organizations with flexible and continually improving processes are able to adapt more quickly and maintain their competitive advantage in the marketplace.

Characteristics:

• Complete integration
• Management processes are continually improved
• Company-wide SEO knowledge

Functional Expertise & Involvement:

• Marketing: Identifies needs & projects. Have SEO MBO’s and works with the other functional groups to improve processes.
• Product: Possesses an expertise and drives SEO through integration in overall strategy. Have SEO MBO’s and specific projects on their roadmap. Works with other functional groups to improve processes.
• Tech: Possesses an expertise and drives SEO through project implementation. Have SEO MBO’s and work closely with product and marketing to ensure projects are properly implemented. Works with other functional groups to improve processes.
• QA: Supports SEO through project implementation. Have SEO MBO’s and continually ensure pages are built properly through SEO best practices and guidelines. Works with other functional groups to improve processes.
• Content: Supports SEO through project implementation. Have SEO MBO’s and develop content to address specific keyword markets. Further, the content team is well versed in SEO linking strategies. Works with other functional groups to improve processes.

Because SEO is completely integrated within the organization and processes are continually improved, innovation is much more likely. Organizations at this stage often sit on the cutting edge of SEO; they’re processes are so fluid that they can constantly test new initiatives, stay ahead of the curve, and quickly adapt to changes in the marketplace.

Progressing from one stage to the next will take time. There are a number of factors at play and in the coming weeks I’ll share some of my tips. I’ll also touch on what the value is to your organization of moving from one stage to the next. Be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed or email list.

Finally, I’d love your feedback on the challenges you’ve experienced and how this framework does or does not fit your organization.

Amit Kumar has posted more information on Yahoo Search’s Open platform. The open platform is welcome news and a fantastic move by the Yahoo team!

I encourage you to read Amit’s post. Here is the key takeaway…

“By supporting semantic web standards, Yahoo! Search and site owners can bring a far richer and more useful search experience to consumers. For example, by marking up its profile pages with microformats, LinkedIn can allow Yahoo! Search and others to understand the semantic content and the relationships of the many components of its site. With a richer understanding of LinkedIn’s structured data included in our index, we will be able to present users with more compelling and useful search results for their site. The benefit to LinkedIn is, of course, increased traffic quality and quantity from sites like Yahoo! Search that utilize its structured data.”

Could this be the catalyst for the semantic web movement? Publishers now have an incentive to properly markup their pages to help spiders infer meaning. Hopefully the other major search engines catch on to what Yahoo is doing. Congrats to the Yahoo Search team!

Additional Reading:

• TechCrunch: Yahoo Embraces The Semantic Web - Expect The Internet To Organize Itself In A Hurry
• Mashable!: Yahoo Search Monkey Reveals More Details on Developer Platform
• ZDNet / The Semantic Web: Yahoo Embraces The Semantic Web?
• The Social Times: Yahoo Tries To Out Open Facebook
• Search Engine Land
  

Coming off the heels of the DoubleClick acquisition approval, Google has launched their first DoubleClick-enabled product; Google Ad Manager. The free service, currently invite-only, allows publishers to easily manage their ad inventory and better service ads on their site. From the Google site:

“Directed at addressing the ad management and serving needs of publishers with small to medium-sized sales teams, Google Ad Manager is a free, hosted ad and inventory management tool that can help publishers sell, schedule, deliver and measure their directly-sold and network-based ad inventory. Google Ad Manager provides an intuitive and simple user experience with an easy tagging process so publishers can spend more time working with their advertisers and less time on their ad management solution. And, Ad Manager helps publishers maximize their inventory sell-through rates by providing detailed inventory forecasts and tracking at a very granular level.“

This approach is very similar to what Google did with Urchin, taking a relatively expensive and robust service and making it freely available to everyone. At the moment this isn’t the DoubleClick suite but don’t count out an integration of advanced features at some point.

What does this mean for search marketers? I believe the acquisition of DoubleClick and the launch of this product are critical pieces to the next phase of Google’s growth and the evolution of search advertising. If this service is widely adopted, it could serve as a catalyst for more precise targeting and ROI management.

Here are my thoughts on what we could see from this in the next year or so:

• More AdSense Volume: I anticipate a windfall of more AdSense volume as not only will publishers do a better job of managing their ad inventory (there’s a yield optimization feature built in and text links typically outperform banners) the remnant inventory (ad inventory that goes unsold) defaults to Google AdSense. We should also see better targeting as Google can incorporate more data based on the user’s behavior (see below).
• Higher AdSense CPC Prices: It’s very possible that with more efficient ad serving it will cost more to receive impressions from targeted websites and beat out effective banners. Publishers who previously only ran AdSense because they didn’t have the time or resources to implement ad serving technology will now have an easy solution that will allow them to experiment with ads in other formats and from other networks. This could also impact volume (so much for the first bullet).
• Behavioral & Re-Targeting Features: Could Google start charging a premium for visitors who match a specific behavioral profile? Particularly if they can show you that visitor converts at a higher rate? Absolutely. We may not pay a premium but Google will certainly incorporate the behavioral data and publishers will benefit the most. Re-targeting (Ad.com calls it ‘LeadBack‘) will certainly be a hot topic as Google’s in a prime position to show ads based on what the user has searched for in the past. This alone could be the carrot to get publishers to sign-up.
• Personalized Search Ads: Additional behavioral data will enable Google to add more data points to their ad serving algorithm. We should see more personalized search ads that are not only served based on the keyword but also the website the visitor previously visited and/or ad they previously clicked on.

There are certainly more implications, let me know by posting a note in the comments.

Additional Reading:

• Google’s Ad Manager Official Site
• Official Google Blog: Our solutions for ad serving
  
• TechCrunch: Google Enters The Ad Management Game
• Wall Street Journal: Google To Offer New Ad Service For Publishers
• Search Engine Land: Google Ad Manager Targets Medium-Sized Publishers, Seeks Broader AdSense Distribution
• VentureBeat: Google Ad Manager allows direct slaes of ads, Adsense fallback
• Mashable!: New Google App Provides Free Ad AManagement
• The Paradigm Shift: Google Admanager (should be a good discussion)

Google AdManager image copyright Google, Inc.

What Happened?

Comscore reported January 2008 click-through rates on paid search ads remained flat in comparison to January 2007. Let me repeat that, CTRs on paid ads on Google.com remained FLAT. Not traffic declined, not revenue per click declined, not net profit declined, and certainly not EBITDA declined. Is this worth raising an eyebrow? Sure. Is this worthy of a knee-jerk reaction that results in a 4.6% decline in the stock and billions of market cap value? Absolutely not.

What Could Be Causing A Deceleration in CTR Growth?

A deceleration in CTR growth may be a signal that Google’s paid advertisements are seen as less relevant to searchers. While there are a host of factors that could cause this, I think two in particular are playing a significant role; Google’s expanded broad match and paid search marketing campaign maturation.

Before jumping into each factor, there’s also a macro element at play; the long-tail of search. Search engine users tend to evolve from using one keyword per search to using two, three, and four keyword phrases. As they get more experienced using search engines they tend to use more keyword phrases (eMarketer muscle). These longer keyword phrases represent more fragmented keyword inventory (we move from ‘flights’ to ‘cheap flights to miami’) and a longer tail of keyword volume. This evolution is playing a role in the two (potential) deceleration factors:

• Google’s Expanded Broad Match: In recent months Google has been very aggressive with their expanded broad match feature.Google will take an advertiser’s ad targeted to the keyword ‘flights’ and display it on searches for ‘trips’ – a practice that’s very difficult for advertisers to control.Google has taken upon themselves to help advertisers reach the long-tail keyword queries they may not have included in their campaigns.While this delivers additional volume it also produces less relevant ads for searchers and lower click-through rates.
• Paid Search Marketing Campaign Maturation: As search engine campaigns mature, managers expand their keyword lists to find more and more search volume (more eMarketer muscle). They tend to venture outside of keywords within their primary keyword market (‘cheap flights’) and move into keyword phrases that reach their target market but may not elicit a direct response/conversion (’luggage’).This activity, particularly for large advertisers who can afford to do it on a large scale, means less relevant ads for searchers and lower CTRs.

Some other theories require a bit more data which isn’t available. I’d love to know if…

• Paid search ads are becoming more and more commercial. With CPC’s rising, are less and less content focused advertisers being pushed out by commercial/commerce focused advertisers who can attribute a direct ROI?
• Organic results, particularly Google’s move to blend images and video into results (universal search) is affecting paid search CTRs. Could the move to blend video into paid ads change this?

In summary, there are a number of factors at play causing the (potential) deceleration. Two in particular involve the long tail of search and how advertisers capitalize on it. And while this is potentially causing a deceleration in CTR’s it’s not necessarily a bad thing for Google’s bottom line. Which leads me to…

Why You Shouldn’t Get Too Excited About Comscore’s Report

Google has many ‘levers’ they can pull to improve quality and increase revenue. While CTR on sponsored links is certainly looked at, it can easily be manipulated and I highly doubt it’s one of their KPIs.

To illustrate a lever, Google has a minimum bid and CTR threshold for an ad to qualify for the premium position (top left above the organic results). Ads that appear in this premium position receive extremely high CTR’s; well above the norm. Now, if Google was concerned about CTR (to the extent where it should be used to evaluate the health of the business and influence financial analyst buy/hold ratings) they could easily lower the threshold and allow more advertisers in that space.

Why doesn’t Google do this? Because CTR isn’t a primary KPI. Revenue (in addition to user experience metrics that encompass ‘quality’) is and with their continuous market share growth they don’t need to worry about CTR. A simple illustration:

If this was your search engine, would you like period A or period B? If A was January 2007 and B was January 2008 (yes, I accounted for the 85% YOY search query growth) would you be as concerned about Google’s health let alone their susceptibility to the market slowdown? I think not. The sell-off has created nothing but a bargain for savvy buyers.

Thoughts?

UPDATE (2/29): Comscore has released their explanation here. Very much in line with my thoughts. Choice quote…

“We generally do not comment on industry data that we release because we are expected to provide information and not opinions. However, the conclusion that was being drawn about the softening of the online advertising market, while at first glance is supported by a data sound bite like a “drop in paid clicks”, does not hold water once you dig deeper into the more detailed information provided in the paid click data. Left unchallenged, it harms the interests of the overall Internet industry. That is why we took the unusual step of writing this note.

It is important to emphasize that we are not repudiating our own data. Quite the opposite: our data remains unchanged, and, we believe, correct. We are just offering a more thorough analysis to ensure the information is interpreted correctly and that the proper conclusions are being drawn from it.”

Related reading:

• Google Watch (2/29), It’s Google, Not The Economy, Stupid
• Clickz (2/29), ComScore Weighs in on Google Click Volume Debacle Sparked by Its Data
• Barrons (2/29), ComScore: Weak Paid Clicks Reflect Google Policy Shifts
• Techcrunch (2/29), Google CTR Down Due To Click Area Changes
  
• Silicon Alley Insider, Google Disaster: Comscore Reports Awful January. Choice quote, “Yes, Comscore could be wrong, and, yes, it’s only one data point. But hard to imagine how the bulls are going to spin this one.” And the link to Google Bulls Try to Spin Comscore Disaster, Fail doesn’t seem to be working.
• New York Times, A Highflier Loses Altitude as Google’s Clicks Go Flat. A well balanced piece.
• NYT/Reuters, Google Shares Fall 8% on Ad Fears. Choice quotes, “UBS analyst Benjamin Schachter cut his 12-month target on Google from $650 to $590 — a new low among bullish Wall Street analysts”. Followed by, “Schachter maintained his long-term buy rating on Google. The UBS analyst also noted that comScore had recently revised the way it measures visits to Web sites, which made comparisons to previous trends difficult.” Huh?
• Seeking Alpha / Techcrunch, Did The Market Overreact To Google’s Paid Click Decline. The best read of the bunch. The correlation analysis from JPMorgan is particularly interesting.
• Fred Wilson, Thinking About GOOG This Morning. Always a pragmatic approach.
• Hitwise Intelligence, Google: Does Search Data Indicate a Recession? An alternative data perspective.

Bernard touches on the decline of relational databases, the impact on Google, and what the killer app will or will not look like. Here are my thoughts on where he’s dead-on and where he may have missed it:

5. Don’t look for a killer app. That implies a client/consumer win. This is much more likely to be a server/platform/enterprise win. Even if the initial experimentation is done in the consumer domain; Freebase for example looks like a mass Beta test for some enterprise technology that Metaweb wants to release later.

The killer apps are out there. Trust me. Some are in development, some are in the wild, and some are just waiting for the enabling power of the semantic web. I know Alex Iskold would argue it’s in its infancy and well positioned for the emergence of the semantic web.

7. Semantic Web could slow the Google steamroller. This could be like the PC for IBM or the Web for Microsoft. The steamroller’s momentum carries it forward for a very long time and it can build all kinds of wrapper systems around it, but something new always does come along. Google mastered how to give some structure to countless unstructured HTML pages. Semantic Web will gradually make that less critical as the underlying content will be more structured. These big generational changes - mainframe to PC to Web - seem to be happening faster, so it seems about time for another big generational change to start happening.

Google is well positioned for the semantic web. Their algo’s are just salivating for more contextual data and their toolbar (among other tools) will evolve to provide further structure to the quasi-unstructured web. Google will face some new competition but they’re in a tremendous position for this evolution. See vertical search below.

8. But don’t look for Yet Another Search Engine (YASE) to be the David to Google’s Goliath. Just like PC was not another mainframe and Web was not another PC. Don’t ask me precisely what it will look like; if I did know I would have to kill you if I told you. I just know what it won’t look like.

I agree completely. I have a hunch what it will look like and I think it will strike Google by changing user behavior. I’ll elaborate on this when the time is right

9. Vertical Search is the pragmatist’s Semantic Web. Vertical Search businesses use whatever techniques they need - basic search engines, scrapers, APIs, human editors - to create some meaningful/useful structure in a single domain. Over time these cobbled together pragmatic solutions will be replaced by a semantic web platform, probably by an API that enables human editors to leverage their valuable domain expertise.

A fantastic point that’s often overlooked. Google looks for scalable solutions and today’s vertical search engines are very difficult to scale (across verticals). The semantic web will allow Google to build scalable apps in all kinds of verticals.

10. Tagging is the quietly disruptive technology. Everybody tags. It is the most basic human urge to mark what we find. We do it with Folders in Windows. We do it online with Bookmarks. Specialist tag Microformats such as Hcard and Hcalendar add more structure and we are only at the very start of this wave.

Another great observation. Fred Wilson pleaded with the Delicious team not to sell out and create a next generation search engine based on tagging. While Yahoo has started the integration process by displaying Delicious data in their SERPs there have been no indications the data is being used as a ranking factor.

11. Semantic Web will leverage the “community” to add structure and this will use some techniques from first generation Social Networking. But it is very unlikely that Semantic Web will emerge from the walled gardens of current social networking sites. The winners will know how to motivate community to provide structure and will provide the tools that make the structuring so easy that nobody knows they are doing anything so boring as structuring. That is the big lesson from Web 2.0 that will be applied in the Semantic Web.

Right on but an application must exist that allows the community to connect & communicate outside of their primary destination. This will come.

What are your thoughts?

Here’s a rundown of what’s in the guide (the index):

• A brief overview of web search
• What’s new in Google web search?
• Can Google find your site?
• Can Google index your site?
• Does your site have unique and useful content?
• Increasing visibility: best practices
• Webmaster Central
• FAQ’s
• Glossary

And here are some highlights:

1. A nice visual of Google’s process:

2. A short and concise summary of useful and unique content that’s properly optimized.

“Once the site is discoverable and indexable, the final question to ask is whether the content of the web pages is unique and useful.

First look at your text as a whole. Are your title and text links descriptive? Does your copy flow naturally and in a clear and intuitive manner?

Just as a chapter in a book is organized around specific areas and themes, so each web page should be focused on a specific area or topic. Keywords and phrases emerge naturally from this type of copy, and users are far more likely to stay on a web page that provides relevant content and links.

Make sure, however, that the phrases you write include the phrases that visitors will likely search for. For instance, if your site is for an MG enthusiast club, make sure the words ‘MG’ and ‘cars’ actually appear in the copy, rather than only terms like ‘British automobiles’.” (copyright Google, Inc.)

3. Google’s best practice recommendations:

What to do:

1. Create relevant, eye-catching content…
2. Involve users…
3. Monitor your site…
4. Aim for high-quality inbound links…
5. Provide clear text links…

What to avoid:

1. Don’t fill your page with lists of keywords
2. Don’t attempt to ‘cloak’ pages…
3. Don’t put up ‘crawler only’ pages…
4. Don’t use images to display important names, content or links…
5. Don’t create multiple copies of a page under different URLs with the intent of misleading search engines.

There are a couple of additional goodies in the guide. Give it a read.

“With traditional spam finally losing traction among e-mail users, spammers have stepped up their pace of innovation. Last year, they adopted new techniques like image spam, .pdf spam and even audio spam. These disappeared as quickly as they came. But starting in January, spammers began flooding inboxes with a new kind of spam that uses a much simpler form of deception. In the body of these e-mails, recipients see what looks like a link to Google search results — and in fact, that’s what it is. There’s trouble, however, on the other side of that link.

The attack combines two tactics. First, spammers game Google so the Web site they want recipients to visit ranks at the top of the search engine results. Second, they alter the URL pasted in e-mails so users who click on the link go directly to the top result via Google’s “I’m Feeling Lucky” feature – bypassing a stop at Google’s Web site.”

Apparently using a legitimate Google link bypasses spam and phishing filters. Google, always on top of their game, said they’re already working on stopping this.

“A Google spokeswoman who asked not to be named said the company has seen “I’m Feeling Lucky” attacks, but added that help is on the way.

“Google began deploying a fix that should block most of these ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ redirects, and we will work to reduce such issues in the future,” she wrote in an e-mail.”

Full story, New Cyber Trick: Search Engine Spam.