Unlike Christmas morning, where I savor the unwrapping of presents, I ripped into my Blekko access as fast as I could. I was not only impressed, I really loved the experience. I quickly started making slashtags for some of my favorite things and I started searching topics that I’m intimately familiar with on Google. I wanted to see the difference between results and I wanted to better understand Blekko’s algorithm.

In addition to my SEO work, I’m a WordPress addict so I frequently search Google for WordPress themes and plugins as I build new websites. Sometimes this process is efficient and other times I’m overwhelmed by spammer websites and useless blog entries from people who barely understand the English language. With Blekko my searches produced a different type of result list or SERP for my fellow geeks. I found myself seeing more quality results for both WordPress themes and plugins. Instead of having to filter through useless information, I was presented with some of my favorite developers. My only disappointment was that StudioPress, my favorite team of WordPress developers, was listed at 57 and not at the top. Since Blekko is new, this is obviously an oversight and they will realize the error in their ways. Blekko did list Yoast on page one for WordPress plugins, so this helped me recover from the StudioPress issue, although this SERP did return more “best of” lists than the theme search. Regardless, I was impressed with the introduction and I found myself wanting another date with the search engine.

For years I have been a huge Google fan. I closely follow Matt Cutts, I own Google stock, and I start my day with Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics. My love of Google and my respect for the company is unmatched by any other company or website. But I have to admit, Blekko has stolen a little bit of my Google love. Not only do I find the search engine fresh and creative, I am thrilled with the idea of not seeing four thousand articles and blog entries written by spammers or want-to-be subject gurus.

Yahoo, Bing, Ask.com, Cuil, Wolfram|Alpha and all the others could not come close to dating me. They simply could not court me or disrupt of my loving relationship with Google. I was formally introduced to them, but I always returned to my first and only love. Blekko, you might be different. I might have to cheat on Google a little bit and I just may have to have a long-term affair with you.

If you’re not familiar with Blekko, you can learn more about the new search engine at Blekko’s website, Blekko’s blog, Blekko on Twitter, or Blekko on Facebook.

If you’re the average small business owner, you know enough about organic search engine optimization to make you dangerous. You know a little about SEO (search engine optimization) and you periodically check your keyword rankings to make sure you are still sitting on page one. Did you know these results are not necessarily the real results Google shares with the average visitor?

Google is now using what is called Personalized Search. Their new algorithms change search results based on what websites you have previously visited. While this is great in some cases, it proves very misleading in other cases.

I was on the phone with a prospect the other day and he mentioned he was sitting on page one for his top three keywords. Well, not so much. He was sitting on page two or three, but he thought he was on page one, because he visits his website more than other websites within the results. Thus his view of his website and his search rankings are a bit skewed and not nearly as accurate as some may believe.

As an SEO consultant it drives me crazy. Don’t get me wrong, I love Google and I all the new functionality and gadgets they offer. That being said, their little feature called Personalized Search distorts reality for many who have no idea Google is morphing results based on a user’s search history.

So how do you really know where you stand? Google’s Webmaster Tools gives you a list of your top search results and where you stand for a particular period of time. I also pay close attention to actual visitor traffic through you guessed it, Google Analytics. Did I mention I like Google? Between the two you will have a much clearer image of your current rank than what your own search can provide. There are also a variety of tools you can purchase to help keep you informed, although since I work with a lot of smaller companies with limited marketing budget, I tend to steer towards free open source packages.

The take away here is to not jump to conclusions on your keyword ranking before you’ve done a little research beyond that of Google’s search box. I start each day with a review of client keyword rank and traffic in Google’s Webmaster Tools and Analytics. Between the two I have a good idea of where we stand or what we need to work on for improving traffic and conversions. It is part of my morning coffee and a ritual I do even on the weekends.

Still confused about Google’s Personalized Search? You can learn more at http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/personalized-search-for-everyone.html.

As of this posting, 198,584 people voted and their results are fairly close to what we see on other websites and analyst reports.

Website Usage Results

Search Engine      Percentage        Votes

Google                    85%                  168,166

Yahoo                     8%                    15,687

Bing                        4%                     8,419

Other                      3%                     6,312

CNN’s poll clearly shows that the website readers use Google more than any other search engine.  While Fox News may find a bit different results, I doubt it would stray very far from that of CNN’s.  Google is by far the major player in search and none of us can dispute this dominance.  It makes you wonder what Yahoo and Bing will or even can do to make the battle a little closer.

State of the Index

Last week Google’s Internet marketing Guru Matt Cutts posted a new video in their Webmaster Central Channel on YouTube.  I love these videos because they are short and to the post and without any pitch or longwinded verbiage cluttering the real message.   The video that caught my eye was Matt Cutts’ discussion on Sock Puppet Marketing.   Yes you read that correctly.  Mr. Cutts is talking openly about puppets.

Puppets aside, the discussion was in relation to an individual or company creating fake Internet personas for marketing purposes.  While Matt did not go into how Google would react to such tactics, he did provide a very funny puppet commentary to illustrate the process.  While the entertainment value alone was good, Matt briefly described a real-world scenario where one company was fined over $300,000 for creating fake testimonials on the Internet.  He further talked about why he and Google felt this practice was harmful for all involved.

The short of this video is this – Internet marketing is powerful and effective.  People, companies, and the government now consider Internet marketing in the same ranks of traditional marketing techniques.  If a technique wasn’t legal in traditional marketing, it isn’t legal on the Internet either.  If marketing misrepresents anything, it isn’t marketing.  It is just bad business.

Matt summed this up with stating you should avoid anything you wouldn’t want your mother to see or read.   I struggle with this, because I am a mother and I know different mothers nag about different things.  I would be a larger nagger than most.  So, I would modify his statement to caution against any marketing tactic you have to think twice about.  If you question it, don’t do it.  You’ll be much better off in the end.

What does Social Search mean to you?

If you use Twitter for business, it means you’ve just had your world expand exponentially.  If you have few Twitter followers and struggle finding new Twitters to follow you, don’t despair.  Your tweets will soon be broadcasted to the world.

If you use Twitter for personal communication and you tweet about anything and everything, tweets beware.  Be a bit more careful about what you tweet, because like it or not, your tweets will reach more people than you may want.

As with anything in this Web 2.0 age, think before you type.

Ms. Moskwa then points to the FAQ section of the forum that states PageRank is one of Google’s 200 plus criteria for performance, but that it is only updated a few times a year so it should not be a focus of SEO consultants.  The FAQ continues with a suggestion of focusing on Google Analytics and a website’s actual performance.

So PageRank is not fully dead, just not nearly as important as solid and unique page content.  In the end is this news at all?  Didn’t we already know content was king?

What does this mean? For some SEO consultants, it means meta keywords can be completely ignored. I consider this the lazy approach. For me, this means I will take note and simply not place as much weight on meta keywords as I did in prior search engine optimization projects. Why? While Google does not use meta keywords in their primary search results, other search engines still do. Yes Google holds the most market share, but it does not hold the entire search market so SEO consultants cannot ignore the fact that keywords are still relevant.

What disappoints me most is the reason for this change. Matt specifically stated that Google assumed this policy because spammers continue to try and capitalize on competitors’ brands by stuffing unrelated keywords into their meta tags. As a SEO consultant who loves the search marketing industry, this saddens me.

Regardless, Google and Matt Cutts continue to win my heart as they collectively come out with additional insight on their algorithm and specific instructions for webmasters and SEO consultants to follow. This transparency makes me believe their tolerance level for illegal and blackhat SEO tactics will grow weaker in the coming days. Google is making every effort to guide Internet marketers in developing quality websites which rank well in their organic search. Take note fellow consultants, as I truly believe the ramifications of blackhat practices will be both swift and deep.

This little birthday celebration led me to wonder if Blogger is as popular as it once was years ago. I also wonder how it fairs against the top competitors in recent years. The geek in me just could not go one wondering or let it go. I had to find out the answers to my burning questions. Well, maybe not burning, but questions nonetheless. I visited Compete to query traffic volumes for Blogger and competitor websites such as WordPress, Typepad, and Livejournal. I was actually surprised at what I discovered.

The chart represents traffic for all four sites and covers the time span of one year. Blogger is still the traffic leader with thirty million unique visitors per month. WordPress – my current darling – comes in close behind. The other sites are falling well behind at less than ten million unique visitors a month. While I don’t know if you can call ten million unique visitors per month “falling behind” in anything, there is certainly a difference in volume between the websites.

Blogger dominates because it is easy to use. I recently sent my mother-in-law to the website to host her personal blog. And it isn’t just easy and it is also free. Users can be completely clueless about website design and still create a blog because everything is drag and drop. My mother-in-law is a perfect example of why Blogger is still going strong after ten years. At age ten it is still cool because it isn’t scary, costly, or difficult for the average Internet user.

The moral of this exercise story is this – you don’t have to be young and fresh to dominate the Internet. You just have to provide value and be marketable to the masses. Blogger and WordPress have both discovered just how to do just that!

Okay I may have just dated myself with the analogy, but Google reminds me of the TV show intro. Google is better, stronger, and much faster. If you submit a brand new URL and website to Google via Google’s Add URL option and follow up with a XML sitemap through Google’s Webmaster Tools, the main URL is indexed within 24 hours. Actually, my latest website submission was indexed within about 18 hours. The entire website gets picked up over the course of the next week. That is fast. Much faster than the Google we knew years ago.

Of course, please remember that fast indexing does not come without work. Your website needs to be Google friendly and you need to have a few inbound links on Digg or another popular content tagging website. Keeping that in mind, it is much easier to get web presence these days that it was in years past. Google friendly websites and organic off page search engine optimization can and will reward a new website quickly.

Search volume inched up from June to July, but this change didn’t benefit everyone. Both Yahoo and Bing lost paid referral traffic in July, while Google rose slightly.

After all the fanfare and money Microsoft threw on Bing’s arrival, the search engine gossip and hall chatter only lasted for a short time. The newness factor appears to be disappearing. This Internet marketer projected this, as I felt Bing was a complete bust. And while I do like Yahoo better than Bing, I still cannot see how either company is going to catch rival Google.

I would like to say the pay-per-click numbers are clear on who will be the ultimate search engine winner, but I cannot do so with the increased in AOL’s paid search usage. While AOL’s organic search stayed constant, its paid search rose almost 5%. I cannot begin to image who these advertisers might be, although my gut would tell me they are new affiliate marketers who are simply going for the lowest PPC costs.

Regardless of my personal opinion, I wonder what will happen as we move closer to the Christmas holiday season and an improved economy. Americans have been locked down on spending for quit some time and I believe we are going to see some explosive search volumes and online shopping in just a few short months. This however, is a whole other conversation!

Source: Image and search volume provided by Compete.

As usual, Google continues to provide free and valuable tools to webmasters and online marketers. Their Google Insights for Search tool allows users to view search volumes, geographical hot spots, and search volume increases.

For my example search, I selected “marketing”. Internet marketing scored fourth with online marketing scoring sixth in search volume. I learned Illinois was the top state for US based search with Minnesota and Georgia following close behind. My beloved Michigan was not in the top ten, but I will not blame this on Google. Rising search terms were social media marketing at 250% growth, SEO marketing at 50% growth, and affiliate marketing at 40% growth.

The tool also gives the ability to select a given region, state, or city and see the data all dynamically change based on the new selection. A decision support system at its finest, all free and all within my world of Internet marketing.

Once again, I say Google is Googlelicious.

If you make any attempt to learn about search engine optimization, Google provides you with the proper tools. Google’s Webmaster Tools provide a complete starters guide to search engine optimization that explains what is allowed and what is not allowed. The document provides – in detail – what Google wants to see in website meta, URL’s, and on page content. Following the rules is simple if you take the time to download and read the white paper.

If that isn’t enough, Google Adwords provides a free keyword research tool that will help pick the right keywords for optimization. Google Adwords will even show keywords that competitor websites use in their online marketing efforts. All available for free without registration and to anyone who is willing to do a little bit of online research.

Once a website is up and running, Google continues to provide value by offering Google Analytics – again for free – to track website visitors, view inbound referrals, track visitor movement, and optimize for reducing visitor bounce rates. Dig a tad deeper to discover the company name of business based visitors, their geographical location, and which browser they use. In most situations, Google Analytics provides more than most small to mid-market companies need or want.

I truly do believe Google is Googlelicious and I challenge anyone to provide me with another company that offers so many free tools to help companies succeed.

According to Google’s Webmaster Central Blog the new search technology is supposed to improve the search engine’s ability to process large chunks of data, increase indexing speed, heighten the accuracy of search results, and provide a greater level of overall comprehensiveness.

After reviewing the web developer’s preview version, this Internet marketer is impressed. The results seem to be similar to those before, but incredibility faster. And while Google has asked for feedback on any dissatisfaction, this Internet addict could not find anything to report.

The new search is available for preview at http://www2.sandbox.google.com/.

Google regularly amasses between 70-80% of search volume, which leaves little marketing and advertising dollars for those “other” search engines to vie for and actually obtain. Those who know Microsoft, know Microsoft has the funds and marketing knowledge to bring fast and furious attention to Bing. But does Bing have the strength to continue the current excitement? This Internet marketer says no, no way, and even no way Jose. There isn’t much meat to Bing and I fail to believe there is enough to keep visitors excited and to keep them coming back.

When Microsoft’s marketing campaign runs its course and the hype dies down, Bing will be no more than a memory and a lot of money spent by Microsoft. Google will still dominate the search engine market and Internet marketers like myself will still look to Google to set the stage for future search engine development and Internet marketing best practices.