The End of the World As We Know It
http://www.isedb.com/db/articles/1808/1/The-End-of-the-World-As-We-Know-It/Page1.html
Rob Aronson
Rob is the founder of Avenue A| Razorfish’s search engine optimization department.He serves as the senior search engine optimization expert for the agency, and oversees the agency’s feed management offering. In addition he sets the strategic vision for all organic search technology product development initiatives for Avenue A| Razorfish.
Rob has over 7 years of experience in planning, executing, and tracking search engine marketing campaigns for clients across a wide range of industries. He dedicates his time to researching the rapidly changing search industry so that the team can anticipate, and respond accordingly to, changes in the search engine marketing landscape. Rob conducts frequent training on best practices in search engine optimization, working with our clients’ in-house optimization, marketing, web services and IT teams.
By Rob Aronson
Published on 03/4/2008
It’s the end of the world as we know it, the search world that is, and the start of a whole new universe. Allow me to introduce Universal Search, the practice of displaying search results that include all forms of media including: videos, maps, news, photos, PDF files, shopping feeds, and social, all in one comprehensive results page for the online searcher.
The End of the World As We Know It
It’s the end of the world as we know it, the search world that is, and the start of a whole new universe. Allow me to introduce Universal Search, the practice of displaying search results that include all forms of media including: videos, maps, news, photos, PDF files, shopping feeds, and social, all in one comprehensive results page for the online searcher.
Universal search is starting to dramatically change the way webmasters, SEO engineers, and other marketers interact with the search engines. The old model of a webmaster’s interaction with search engines was to make changes to a site, then wait for the spiders to crawl the site again and PULL the site’s new content into the search engines’ indexes. Well those days of relying on the engines to pull data is gone, and now it is time to get Pushy.
SEO – Pushing your way to the top
The search engines are turning to us (marketers, webmasters, SEO engineers etc) to help them do their jobs better. Rather than relying predominately on their web crawlers to find and pull data, they are looking to us to push the data to them. To elaborate let’s examine some of the components of universal search results:
Videos – The majority of the videos appearing in organic search results are coming from popular video destination sites such as YouTube. In order to be listed in the video engines the webmaster must upload/push the video to the engine.
Local/Maps – The bulk of these listings are coming from the yellow pages, but the engines do encourage businesses to upload/push local information including hours, services rendered, products sold, pictures and reviews directly to them.
News – These results are the product of RSS feeds or press releases that are being syndicated/ pushed to the various engines.
Shopping Listings – The shopping engine listings that are being incorporated in the organic listings are a result of webmasters pushing a product feed to the shopping components of the search engine.
The push to push is just beginning
Two major developments from Yahoo and Google make it clear that webmasters will need to be adept at pushing data to the engines to succeed in the new search universe.
This week Yahoo! announced that they will be opening up their search results to customization. This endeavor, code named “Search Monkey,” will allow site owners to be able to push all types of additional information about their site directly to Yahoo! Search. So instead of a simple title, abstract and URL, for the first time users will see rich results that incorporate the massive amount of data buried in websites -- ratings and reviews, images, deep links, and all kinds of other useful data -- directly on the Yahoo! Search results page.
Google has recently been testing combining AdWords with PlusBox functionality that will tie into Google Base Product feeds. Similar to the current implementation of PlusBox functionality for local information, a user will be able to click on a PlusBox located next to an AdWord listing. This will result in the most appropriate product listings from that advertiser’s Google Base Product feed appearing with the AdWords listing. Currently the way to get information into Google Base is to push data through a feed directly to Google.
So what does all this mean to you as a marketer, webmaster or SEO engineer? You will now have more control over the information that is indexed and displayed by the search engines. However, getting there won’t be easy. Now, more than ever, you need to be proactively pushing the appropriate information to the search engines. In most cases you will need to create multiple optimized XML feeds. These feeds will need to contain all of the necessary data and be formatted appropriately for each of the engines you are pushing the data to. ROI measurement will be more complicated. Is a video search result worth as much as an organic listing with links to specific products? Ultimately, you need to be thinking of your brand in terms of pictures, videos, maps, press releases and diggs.
Universal search is starting to dramatically change the way webmasters, SEO engineers, and other marketers interact with the search engines. The old model of a webmaster’s interaction with search engines was to make changes to a site, then wait for the spiders to crawl the site again and PULL the site’s new content into the search engines’ indexes. Well those days of relying on the engines to pull data is gone, and now it is time to get Pushy.
SEO – Pushing your way to the top
The search engines are turning to us (marketers, webmasters, SEO engineers etc) to help them do their jobs better. Rather than relying predominately on their web crawlers to find and pull data, they are looking to us to push the data to them. To elaborate let’s examine some of the components of universal search results:
Videos – The majority of the videos appearing in organic search results are coming from popular video destination sites such as YouTube. In order to be listed in the video engines the webmaster must upload/push the video to the engine.
Local/Maps – The bulk of these listings are coming from the yellow pages, but the engines do encourage businesses to upload/push local information including hours, services rendered, products sold, pictures and reviews directly to them.
News – These results are the product of RSS feeds or press releases that are being syndicated/ pushed to the various engines.
Shopping Listings – The shopping engine listings that are being incorporated in the organic listings are a result of webmasters pushing a product feed to the shopping components of the search engine.
The push to push is just beginning
Two major developments from Yahoo and Google make it clear that webmasters will need to be adept at pushing data to the engines to succeed in the new search universe.
This week Yahoo! announced that they will be opening up their search results to customization. This endeavor, code named “Search Monkey,” will allow site owners to be able to push all types of additional information about their site directly to Yahoo! Search. So instead of a simple title, abstract and URL, for the first time users will see rich results that incorporate the massive amount of data buried in websites -- ratings and reviews, images, deep links, and all kinds of other useful data -- directly on the Yahoo! Search results page.
Google has recently been testing combining AdWords with PlusBox functionality that will tie into Google Base Product feeds. Similar to the current implementation of PlusBox functionality for local information, a user will be able to click on a PlusBox located next to an AdWord listing. This will result in the most appropriate product listings from that advertiser’s Google Base Product feed appearing with the AdWords listing. Currently the way to get information into Google Base is to push data through a feed directly to Google.
So what does all this mean to you as a marketer, webmaster or SEO engineer? You will now have more control over the information that is indexed and displayed by the search engines. However, getting there won’t be easy. Now, more than ever, you need to be proactively pushing the appropriate information to the search engines. In most cases you will need to create multiple optimized XML feeds. These feeds will need to contain all of the necessary data and be formatted appropriately for each of the engines you are pushing the data to. ROI measurement will be more complicated. Is a video search result worth as much as an organic listing with links to specific products? Ultimately, you need to be thinking of your brand in terms of pictures, videos, maps, press releases and diggs.