The early days of search pre-Google days were all about crowded interfaces with tons of things going on the page. This was when the main players in the space were Yahoo and Altavista, and those trying to keep up with the page were Excite, Hotbot, Lycos and other. Many of them started with categories displayed since most of these search engines really started as directories.

January 1997 screenshot of Yahoo taken by Ice House Designs

Every other search engine seemed to go into that direction. Categories make sense that it should help guide you drill down into what you are looking for. Then when Google comes out, it take a totally different approach and keeps it clean. Removes all types of categorization and uses the power of search. Google from the very beginning was banking on the fact that their search is sooo powerful, it is easy to drill down into what you are looking for by simply typing in your search query and that their results are so relevant, you do not need to drill down that deep.

Google Beta in 1999 - Screenshot by Chron Tech Blog.

Yahoo and Microsoft Copy Google

The minimalist, clean, simple interface has always worked with Google. Showing the robustness of their search engine algorithm more than anything else that many people really liked which is responsible for all of Google initial boost to success. So if that is the proper formula, they are probably doing something good, so Yahoo and Microsoft have briefly tried it out. Yahoo still has their clean version still up on http://search.yahoo.com.

Yahoo's Clean Search Interface

It was difficult finding old screenshots, and here is one of the older versions of Microsoft Live Search with the clean interface.

Old Microsoft Live Search with a simple clean interface. Screenshot saved by Guardian.co.uk.

Was Clusty First?

After some time, even if Yahoo and Microsoft made the Google looking search interfaces, it didn’t seem to work for them the same way it was working for Google since they never stuck to that interface. The default Yahoo.com screen is still busy as even. Microsoft kept MSN still busy, killed Live search and made Bing simply with a big random postcard at the back of it. Through the years everyone was also copying the standard search result layout. Where organic results were, and were sponsored listings are along with accompanying eyetracking heatmap data proving their effectiveness. Probably not many of you now about Clusty, I have no accurate data saying they were the first to do this, but as far as I remember, Clusty was the first I saw displaying search results with clusters, hence the name Clusty. These cluster were nothing but categories of the search results which can guide users to drill down on what they are really looking for.

Sample search results of Clusty showing it's search result categories.

Although drill downs were implemented in some way on Google, Yahoo and MSN as related searches and not really categories and were not highlighted on the sidebar. Today, Live Search and now Bing makes it a standard. They have been moving away from the minimalist search result interface and started integrating a lot in the search engine results. And as I have seen their presentations in various conferences, they back up their search results layout that has categories on the side with eye tracking heat map data and other user testing saying that these categories really help users get to what they are searching for. Are they right? Maybe, they could be. And it even reaches a point that Google might consider this as well. Right now there are tons of post talking about the preview of Google’s new search result interface showing a side bar. It does not seem to be categories, but just repositioning the Web, Images, Video, News, etc options from the top to the side. I first read about it here, hat tip to AJ Batac, but somehow I am not able to recreate this on my browsers. I search online about this and there are numerous post about it and I guess the post would not get this many if it didn’t work at all, but it supposed to look like this:

Google Search Result Interface with Sidebar. Screenshot by AJ Batac for The Web Shop.

Can you recreate the new Google sidebar search result layout? If you can what did you do? If you think this is a hoax, tell me about it also. Share your thoughts.

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• May 5, 2008 -- A Visual Comparison of Google, Yahoo and Microsoft (2)
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Just a few minutes ago, colleague Laura Beatty here at BusinessOnLine notices something on Yahoo, and says Yahoo is not showing the correct title tag. I took at look at it searching BusinessOL  and yup, it does look different.

Yahoo Title different from the HTML title tag.

After looking at it deeper, of course the first think we checked was Yahoo Directory since Yahoo is already known to do this, in the same way how Google and Bing sometimes pull titles from DMOZ, but they are still different.

BusinessOnLine Yahoo Directory Title

It’s not Yahoo Directory, it’s not the title tag, so it must be DMOZ?

BusinessOL Title on DMOZ

So far, it does look like the title is pulled from DMOZ aka the ODP. Even if we had the NOODP, NOYDIR tags in there for a very long time.

NOODP and NOYDIR Meta Tags are included in the BusinessOL source code.

I am not sure if I have read anywhere that Yahoo pulls titles from DMOZ, all I know is it pulls from Yahoo Directory. And if this is indeed pulling from DMOZ, it is not following the NOODP tag which I believe it should. Is Yahoo broken? Well I’m not really surprised right now. In the previous SMX East, Yahoo announced they no longer read the Meta Keywords tags, and just after a few weeks, Danny proves them wrong.

Has anyone else been seeing the same observations? We’d be glad to hear from you also if you are seeing the same thing, tell us about it.

<guessing>Benj thinks Yahoo and Bing are working out how to merge these two algorithms and is probably working on it already causing some functions running erratically on Yahoo.</guessing>

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Search Marketing Expo East

In search marketing conferences, there are so much to information that it is impossible to listen to everything so everyone chooses their tracks/sessions wisely to listen to the golden nuggets of information which may not be the same golden nuggets of everyone else. Depending also on each individual’s knowledge dictates if a nugget is really golden of not. So that is why I start my title with a “My” since this is what I found to be valuable to me. Below are my top 10 takeaways from the 2009 Search Marketing Expo East in New York City.

1. Yahoo announced they no longer use the Meta Keywords tag as a ranking factor

The moment this was announced, I had my doubts, I had to double check if it was true since in our own BusinessOnLine SEO Lab, we have tested this before and we all know it is only Yahoo that reads the Meta Keywords tag. With an erratic wifi connection at Javits Conference Center in New York, I relied on my iPhone to check our SEOLabs testing sites and true enough, our unique keyword that was used only on 1 page inside the meta keywords tag that used to show up in Yahoo does not show up anymore! Initial thoughts were, wow, totally useless tag now, we can probably just delete it out. But apparently, Danny Sullivan tested it out and it was showing that Yahoo still looks at the meta keyword tag. False announcement? Faulty system? Delayed search algorithmic processing? I don’t know.

2. A page blocked in robots.txt may still appear in Google search results.

You block it in robots.txt, but it get’s linked from elsewhere, it ends up in the SERPs but with no Title or Description, just the URL. This was best summarized in a video by Matt Cutts.

Learn more about robots.txt. – The Art of SEO (Theory in Practice) Buy the book now!

3. Images will tend to rank better if they are near the title/header of a page.

While listening to Google Engineer Maile Ohye on the session ask the search engines, it was nice to see a different face than Matt Cutts from time to time and she did mention about images ranking better in Google image search and Google onebox if they are near the title/header of a page which I believe totally makes sense. There are so many images a blog or news site can have and multiple articles can appear. Just knowing which image goes with which title can be challenging, so choosing the image closest to the header tag would make perfect sense.

4. Images with captions will help rank better in Google Image search.

Again for the same reasons above, it seems alternative text (the alt attribute of the <img> tag) is not sufficient to help these images rank well in universal search results, image search and onebox results. Maile summarizes it also well on her video on news search under the FAQs part of this presentation, starting at 11:03.

Image Database: Image and Search Retrieval – Buy this book now!

5. JPEGs will do better than PNGs and GIFs

If you listened to the video of Maile well, you should have heard this already as she summarizes it pretty well into clear cut bullet points. Maybe some of you think image search is not that important and may not give enough quality converting traffic, but it really depends on your product or service and what user intent you can spin around your images. In the presentation below by Peter Lindsey, he explains different places where images can appear, onebox, maps, shopping, image search, and various user intent like inspiration, shopping, research, health, and very interesting, as a visual dictionary. He explains how in image search it is not all about being number 1. Image searchers go through many pages before they find the perfect image to click on.

Image Databases: Search and Retrieval of Digital Imagery

6. Good Web Server and Scripts Security helps in SEO.

In the session Ask the Search Engines, there were representatives from Google, Yahoo and Bing. And the Bing representative, Sasi Parthasarathy talked more about network security, the importance of server hardening, and making your scripts secure. And he showed many examples of queries he just did the day before of various websites that were compromised where either new pages are coming our selling unrelated products like pharmaceutical products, or similar pages on spammed forums or blogs on .gov or .edu websites and more that can be harming the SEO efforts or simply hurting the reputation of the site that has been attacked. This was not really like new information to me, but it was a big reminder how many blackhats out there and that they are really many of them that could be harming your own ranking.

7. Do not use English keywords and simply translate using tools for international SEO.

For international SEO for other languages, and the lack of robust keyword research tools in other languages, some SEO practitioners use English keyword research and simply translates the words using online tools and thinks these keywords are already the best keywords for another language. Andy Atkins-Krueger who is one of the popular authorities in international search has explained this pretty clearly where a direct translation may not really mean the same thing in the translated language. It is always best to get a local speaker of the language and do the appropriate translation for you.

8. SEO factor to possibly consider: Readability

This was not from one of the SEO sessions I attended, but this idea was mainly from one of the exhibit booths, specifically from Bruce Clay who we all now is one of the pioneers in the industry and has been mapping out the search engine relationships from the very beginning and keeps on updating them and is now getting less and less confusing as the main players in the search industries keep decreasing. Going back to the topic, as I was spying out checking out their tools on how it can benefit me, everything seemed like I can find a tool or some equivalent tool I already know that I can use instead of using Bruce Clay’s SEO Tool Set, although one thing that I noticed that I have not seen in other tools is they take note of Readability.

Readability tests, readability formulas, or readability metrics are formulae for evaluating the readability of text, usually by counting syllables, words, and sentences. Readability tests are often used as an alternative to conducting an actual statistical survey of human readers of the subject text (a readability survey).

- Wikipedia definition of readability

There were a few scoring systems used which I can’t remember which ones were on the SEO ToolSet, but upon search on wikipedia, there are a lot of scoring systems:

• Accelerated Reader ATOS
• Automated Readability Index (ARI)
• Coleman-Liau Index
• Dale-Chall Readability Formula
• Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
• Fry Readability Formula
• Gunning-Fog Index
• Lexile Framework for Reading
• Linsear Write
• Raygor Estimate Graph
• SMOG (Simple Measure Of Gobbledygook)
• Spache Readability Formula

After a simple search of online tools, I was able to find two tools that can be used: SMOG online tool and using Read Able. Now would this be a critical search engine ranking factor? I am not sure, my gut feeling says it is not that critical but could still be a good factor for other purposes. Readability is a metric for showing how easy or how hard some text could be read by some age group, so it does make sense to optimize this for your readers, and not really for search engines, which is what search engines want you to do SEO anyway.

9. Google is getting better and better in reading JavaScript.

We have been reading this is various places being said by various representatives from Google in various ways, so I am convinced Google is pretty smart already in understanding JavaScript. In this specific situation where I was reminded again at SMX was during one of the sessions where Maile Ohye gave an example of using the Link Rel=Canonical tag showing various international sites in folders and using the link rel canonical to point all to the English version. I then asked if we can use geolocation detection by IP and run a JavaScript redirect so search engine would still look at the final English version as dictated by the Link rel canonical but users will experience something different depending on their geolocation and JavaScript will kick in to serve the appropriate page. I was given the answer that just because it is a JavaScript redirect does not mean Google will not follow the redirect. Conversation ended without a good answer since they asked me to ask this in the International SEO session instead. But with an answer like that, again confirms again that Google is really reading JavaScript.

10. Google is proposing the #! in URLs for crawling AJAX sites using a headless browser.

In the session where I was speaking more on CSS and code positioning and duplicate links order, there were two other Google representatives, Bruce Johnson and Kathrin Probst talking about crawling AJAX. They are proposing a new way to make AJAX sites. AJAX developers all know how convenient it would be to use the # symbol in URLs as a parameter since you can pass this around in the URL and the page does not even reload. You use it like a GET variable, but ideal for AJAX since AJAX sites do not require page reloading. And search engines normally will not see this since URLs with different text strings after the # symbol will all be treated like the same URL without the #.

Normally websites would treat these URLs as the same URL:

http://www.example.com/path/file.html

http://www.example.com/path/file.html#parameter1

http://www.example.com/path/file.html#parameter2

http://www.example.com/path/file.html#parameter1-valuex

And since the # parameters cannot be read by server-side programming languages (PHP, ASP, JSP, etc), and are read on the client-side by your web browser and JavaScript, search engines would not even see the changes on the page. So Google proposes something new, the use of the #!.

Now Google was proposing the use of a headless browser. This is a browser with no UI, but mainly like some script interpreting JavaScript code just like how a browser does. That way it will first fetch a page with the # parameters and render it first in the headless browser before Googlebot crawls the content. As this is only a proposal and is in experimental stages, to trigger the headless browser, you simply use #! instead of # in your URLs.

Being a developer myself and was sitting in that same session, I was curious to know how will we determine if Googlebot crawled the content correctly, and I asked if Google cache could be used. Kathrin replied no. And said they might make a separate tool for this. Maybe they would include it in Google Webmaster Tools. Vanessa Fox also added Google does crawl Flash links and Flash content but Google cache is also not a good way to see what Googlebot sees.

Interesting that AJAX for SEO is starting to get easier and easier and no need to do some complicated tricks once this headless browser crawling becomes a standard. This is definitely something the web analytics team would like to look at deeper for tracking AJAX.

Again this is “my” top 10 takeaways. Of course someone more interested in PPC, or SMO might have something else as their main takeaways.

After being on vacation in the Philippines during Typhoon Ondoy, speaking at SEMCon 2009 and SMX East 2009, I come back to work after 2 weeks and suddenly plays catch up with all the work that has been waiting for me and that kept me busy for the whole week that this SMX post is way overdue, but better late than later.

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Let’s do a quick search exercise on Google, Yahoo and Bing.

Search Results on Google for the words: Google, Yahoo & Microsoft:

Google Results for the keyword Google

Google Results for the keyword Yahoo

Google Results for the keyword Microsoft

Clearly results are relevant, complete, and has tons of information on each keyword searched. The same seems to be true on Yahoo.

Search Results on Yahoo for the words: Google, Yahoo & Microsoft:

Yahoo Results for the keyword Google

Yahoo Results for the keyword Yahoo

Yahoo Results for the keyword Microsoft

Both Google and Yahoo showed sitelinks which should be normal for a very popular company with a very large website. Now take a look at the result of Bing below. This makes me question Bing’s credibility in giving search engine results as the results seems to be biased to Microsoft owned properties.

Search Results on Bing for the words: Google, Yahoo & Microsoft:

Bing Results for the keyword Google

Bing Results for the keyword Yahoo

Bing Results for the keyword Microsoft

Wow, Bing gives pages full of information about Microsoft, and they only give 1 entry for Yahoo and 1 entry for Google. With tons of properties of Google, I can imagine something else should be in there, Gmail, Gtalk, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Picasa, Blogger, or even just the tons of articles talking about Google. The same goes with Yahoo! Yahoo Mail & Yahoo Messenger are two very popular products that I am sure these are very keyword focused and has tons of links using the Yahoo keyword. If Bing cannot display them, it is either their algorithm really doesn’t work or their results are skewed by hand.

Even less popular search engines such as Ask and Cuil are showing better results.

• Ask Results for the Keyword Google
• Ask Results for the Keyword Yahoo
• Ask Results for the Keyword Microsoft
• Cuil Results for the Keyword Google
• Cuil Results for the Keyword Yahoo
• Cuil Results for the Keyword Microsoft

Hat tip to an SEO friend of mine, web designer Alfredo Palconit, told me about this search on Bing result just yesterday showing that Bing seems to have skewed results. Thanks also to Sulumits Retsambew posted the result earlier.

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Good news from Google, Yahoo and MSN/Live who have announced support for the rel=”canonical” tag. This new tag with the following syntax:

<link rel=”canonical” href=”http://www.example.com/product.php?item=whatever”>

This should be placed in the head section of each page of the site, with the URL that should be used as the primary URL for that page.

So if for example, if this page is linked to somewhere in the site with this URL:

http://www.example.com/product.php?item=whatever&trackingid=1234

where a tracking id has been appended, Google, Yahoo and MSN will now understand that this page is really the original:

http://www.example.com/product.php?item=whatever

Therefore the duplicate URL is not indexed and the link connectivity is assigned to the right page. This is a wonderful new tool that now allows sites with extensive tracking codes to use that technology without duplicate content issues. Additionally, sites have CMS systems or dynamic Web platforms that generate multiple URL combinations for the same page can now be brought under control without a huge list of 301 redirects. Cheers to the search engines for getting this one right.

Catfish

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If you read this patent, it really is all about determining whether or not the page is “cluttered” and how that might affect usability. Certainly the study of usability encompasses much more than just how cluttered a page is. But I believe more and more of these types of mathematical models that quantify known relationships between measurable data and user experience will continue to evolve. And rather than trying to reverse engineer each one of them as SEO people like myself are prone to do, it makes more sense just to focus on building the best possible site with the user in mind at all times.

The good news of patents like this one is that going forward, Web sites that are user focused will be rewarded as it relates to their search engine rankings. As search engines develop more sophisticated algorithms that bring more continuity between SEO and Usability, good usability will be directly attributable to high search rankings. SEO professionals at all levels will have to pay more attention to usability which should have a very positive effective on the overall quality of optimized Web sites. And that will only increase the value of SEO services and the community as a whole. So if you are an SEO, now is the time to start studying good usability principles!

It makes me feel very lucky to work with a team of usability experts who can answer my questions.

Have a great week.

Catfish

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You can see it at every level of the equation. Google is an innovative company that is constantly on the forefront of development and constantly trying to improve their products with a big focus on user input and even collaboration. Their computer infrastructure is at the forefront of technology and no one has a more powerful system to execute search. Google is constantly getting awards for “best place to work” and attracts the best new talent. If you ever go to a Google party at SES or some other conference, its always a young, hip, dynamic feel to it. If you look at Yahoo and MSN through the same lens of evaluation, both fall short. It’s company culture and it starts at the top. When you deal with Google, you get the impression that you are dealing with a company that is focused on their users. With MSN, you get the impression that you are dealing with a company that is focused on money. And therein lies the difference and it’s why this deal sucks so bad. I just know that if MSN gets their greedy little hands on Yahoo, they will ruin it. And I will bet you that it won’t take for existing Yahoo users to jump that ship in favor of Google. And that’s just from the user perspective.

From an SEO standpoint, having two major portals instead of three that matter, reduces the opportunity to provide search listings for clients. So granted MSN listings would mean more, but at the same time, the competition to get those listings would be tougher. I’m not saying that Google doesn’t need competition and I certainly don’t think that Google is perfect (see Position 6 error..lol). But, I just don’t see how repositioning market share without an improvement in innovation is going to improve the quality of Yahoo or MSN’s search. If anything, it’s going to make it worse while these two huge organizations try to figure out how to merge with one another. To say nothing of all the jobs in search that would lost as the companies consolidate their resources. I really hope that the this deal doesn’t happen. I don’t think it’s a positive development for the SEO community, or for consumers.

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