Internet Marketing Toronto - Ignite!

Google Allows You To Sort Your Search Results

If you’re logged in while searching on google you can now resort your results, remove entries, and add your own.

This next move by Google has been in the works for quite some time now. Having used it myself I’m not quite sure what the real benefit is to me as a user. What I mean is I use Google to find things I don’t already know about. If I know about it - I’ve likely bookmarked it or remember the URL. I don’t need to use Google SERPS to have precisely the results I want. That being said - I am convinced millions of people are going to play around with this and Google will eventually put this good data to use in some way for the rest of us performing regular searches.

Have you seen this new feature? Have you tried it. Let me know what you think about it and how you feel Google will put this information to use.

Yahoo! & Rhapsody Launch Enhanced Music Features In Organic Search

This past week Yahoo! has launched some interesting enhanced music features using technology from Rhapsody.

I found this to be quite interesting and a real leg up over Google search. When you search for a popular artist like Madonna Yahoo! will present a music results listing using data from Rhapsody. Right from the Search Engine Reults Page (SERP) you can click one of the listed songs and play it right in the browser.

The deal with Rhapsody allows for an individual to listen up to 25 songs per month using this service. I find it interesting because it happens right in the SERP, does not require any other technology or windows to load, and keeps the user on the SERP page longer - longer to see the ads on the page!

I’ve tried it out a few times and am thrilled with the results. I’m keen to see where else Yahoo! can take this feature - and what Google will do to answer back!

If Yahoo! keeps innovating like this it may actually have a chance at becoming popular again and pulling some of the eyeballs away from Google.

Cuils VP Product Bails Out!

It’s true! Louis Monier who was plucked from Google to join Cuil has bailed out a month after launch.

I’m not surprised by this, and it will hurt Cuil. Louis is a search powerhouse and his departure clearly underscores the short comings of the new search engine. While Cuil claims it can index the internet faster and cheaper than Google it means nothing if they can’t provide relevant content for most searches!

Without that crucial facet of search they won’t get the eyeballs to switch from Google and they won’t amount to any kind of competition. In fact they may just be relegated to a really cool experiment.

That would be an unfortunate end for the search engine startup since competition is what accelerates innovation. So, I hope that Cuil regroups and focuses their efforts on producing relevant results for every search. With the launch of 123People.com I’m amazed at how relevant their results are for a search on my name. Granted they are using Yahoo! to produce the results but boy they sure are more relevant than Cuil. Perhaps Cuil should drop parts of the index such as images and focus on web pages till they sort out the algo. In the meantime they have to find a replacement for Louis!

For more on this story see the TechCrunch story.

New Google Tool - Insights for Search

I was popping by Google’s Inside Adwords Blog today and read a post about a new tool called “Insights for Search.” I tested it out and was impressed at what I saw so here is a review and some notes on how to utilize Insights for Search

The idea of this tool is to give the end user a glimpse into some search history, compare peaks and valley’s to news articles (much the same way Google Trends did) but also give a user the ability to understand search behaviour. It has some really powerful features, especially for an Internet Marketing agency like ours

Some very cool features include a “heat map” of the world or any geographic region you want to target and the corresponding rising search terms for a particular keyword you are examining. Additionally, you can compare up to 5 search terms and see how a users search habits differ across geographic areas. For example, if you are in the market for Laisk surgery - the west coast of the U.S. might be more inclined to use the search phrase “lasik eye surgery” while the east coast might use the phrase “laser eye surgery” more often. As an advertiser, it is important to segment these keywords and phrases depending on the target market you are focused on.

Furthermore, you can filter your queries by various categories. One example might be “java” which will have a different meaning depending on if you are looking for a programming language or a hot cup of coffee. Using the category drop down will allow you to segment the data accordingly.

You can also look at search trends by a particular date range. The default is set to 2004 - present but opening the drop down allows you to select some set ranges as well as a custom range.

Comparing your data by “location” and “time ranges” is also an option which can present some very powerful data but only for the top searches for the day, not custom keywords you select.

The tool also has a handy export feature to excel.

I was puzzled by the numbers that appear in the graph and upon further investigation found that these aren’t actual search numbers but rather “normalized” numbers that Google is displaying. You can read more about this here.

Cuil Is Live - But Is It Relevant?

Cuil, the new search engine founded by former Googlers has finally launched.

Back on June 10th 2007 we wrote “Cuill - A New Search Engine From Ex Google and IBM Staff“. Well, Cuil has finally launched live and they make some pretty bold claims including having indexed more content than Google itself. I guess only time will tell.

If you’ve not checked it out I suggest you do www.cuil.com. It’s got a nice fresh interface for a change although I’m still not sure if I find it as useful. Searching for me is about accomplishing a task - not playing around with results. I use StumbleUpon for that.

What bugs me more is that I don’t think that Cuil has not quite figured out the relevancy part of search yet. I ran a few tests and for me the results were less than pleasing. For example a search on Google for my name in my opinion produces my profile pages from our company www.sparkinternetmarketing.com. The same search on Cuil does not - in fact you get a bunch of stuff about me from other sites, but not my own site or other sites I operate. The only time site comes up is for a blog posts I did here. That’s just my author name in that page vs. the anchor text off our home page and so on.

Here’s a screen cap of my search results…

I welcome the introduction of another search engine - but Cuil is not going to change my world yet. When I get better more relevant results from Google, Yahoo and yes, MSN - I won’t be switching anytime soon.

That being said - keep it up Cuil and continue rolling out algorithm updates to improve the relevancy! Add in the ability to provide search results feedback and you’ll be on your way to capturing some of that search market share!