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Dear Bruce,
BRUCE ARNOLD is sending you
this newsletter to help you make better use of the Internet for business
results and personal success. This is a complimentary publication. You can
unsubscribe at any time by clicking the SafeUnsubscribe(tm) link
below.
This month Microsoft went live with the new MSN Search, replacing
their old Yahoo-Inktomi powered search engine with a completely
independent ranking algorithm and database. Coming out of the chute with
over 5 billion indexed pages, it may soon be one of the most powerful
search engines on the Web.
MSN is late to the search engine market, but their new
product is ready to compete with Google and Yahoo. In fact, Search Engine Journal reports "...
If you consider all the new features of MSN that Google does not have yet,
its ability to cover natural language queries, quality level and relevance
of results, ability to refine searches, there is no doubt that MSN search
engine is as good as Google."
Closing In On Google
ComScore Networks reports that last November 47 percent of all searches
worldwide were on Google sites, with Yahoo's share at 27 percent, and MSN
Search at 12. Expect those numbers to change:
Both Yahoo and Microsoft have committed hundreds of engineers and
millions of dollars to the dethroning of Google, and Yahoo is already
making significant strides. Comscore reports Yahoo's share of the U.S.
search market rose to 35 percent of searches in November, up from 29
percent the previous year. Yahoo's gains are attributed to improvements in
their core Internet search as well as new features introduced in the U.S.
and soon to be rolled out worldwide.
The new MSN Search may be playing catch-up, but that is nothing new for
the Microsoft marketing machine. Bill Gates has Google in his sights ...
and a bottomless war chest to finance his foray.
click here for more
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Relevance Revenues |
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| The Big 3 search engines--Google, MSN Search and
Yahoo--do not charge users to run searches, and contrary to common
belief and many misleading ads, they do not charge for inclusion
in their ranked listings. Despite that, revenues generated by
sponsored listings, pay-per-click ads and other search-related
products are formidable.
Piper Jaffray predicts the search engine industry will generate
$8.9 billion in revenues by 2007, up from $2.6 billion in 2003. Who
will bag what share of these big bucks will in large part be decided
by which search engines people choose to run their queries. That, in
turn, is a function of the quality of the customer experience. And
for search engines, quality can to a large extent be judged by the
relevance of search results.
So how are Yahoo and MSN Search making headway against Google,
once anointed as king of the search experience? One way is by adding
features Google does not offer. Another is by employing ranking
algorithms that deliver more relevant results.
Recent experience suggests that search results from Yahoo or MSN
Search can be twice as relevant as those returned by Google. Why?
Perhaps because the Google page ranking algorithm has a tendency to
suppress newer domains and to favor incoming links over on-page
relevance. Consequently, if you search for walamazoo widgets,
Google is likely to refer you to reference sources and link lists
related to walamazoo widgets, while Yahoo or MSN Search offer more
direct links to actual walamazoo widget sites.
click here for more
... »
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The Truth About Hits |
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 Many people think getting a hit on
your website means somebody viewed your web pages. Some people think
a hit means somebody responded to your website's
call-to-action by clicking through, calling you, or coming by. A few
people think a hit means somebody came to your website, liked
what they saw, and became a new customer. NONE OF THESE ARE CORRECT.
In Internet terminology, a hit is defined as "... a single
file request in the access log of a web server." In this context, a
hit or "file request" does not equate to a web page visited or
viewed.
When someone calls up a web page, the page itself is one file
request. If that page includes component objects or parts--like
embedded flash animations or standardized headers or footers--they
each count as a file request. And every graphic on the page, both
those you can see and "spacers" used for formatting, each generate a
file request. Consequently, it would not be unusual for a single
visitor calling up a single web page to generate 100 hits from a
single click.
In other words, the presence of hits is an absolute indicator of
activity, but hit counts alone don't really mean much. They should
never be used as a comparative measure of traffic between two web
pages or websites. As we have shown, a website getting 10,000 hits a
month might be getting only 100 visitors a month, yet it might be
getting twice the traffic of a site that boasts 50,000 hits a month!
Hits alone are not a useful measure of website traffic.
You should also monitor unique visits, page views and
referral statistics. If you are not tracking those now, then let us
show you how!
click here to track your
traffic ... »
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Standards Compliance |
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 The World Wide Web Consortium
(W3C) was established in 1994 to lead the World Wide Web to its full
potential by developing standards and protocols that promote its
evolution while assuring interoperability. Validating web page
adherence to these standards and protocols insures that all
users--regardless of their culture, language, education, ability,
material resources, access devices or physical limitations--have
equal access to the resources of your website.
The impact and importance of HTML and CSS validation to winning
web design is frequently overlooked, but should not be
underestimated. Validation assures that your web pages can be
properly read and interpreted, regardless of what
standards-compliant user agent might be employed to view your site.
These include not only Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator and
Mozilla Firefox but all other graphical browsers, text-mode
browsers, text-to-speech synthesizers, site robots and analysis
tools, language translators and search engine spiders.
According to a January 2005 survey of all web design firms with
page one placements on Google, MSN Search or Yahoo for the term
web design miami, only PervasivePersuasion.com was
found to have 100% W3C standards compliant coding. The other 25 web
designer sites tested were found to have as many as 171 errors on
their home page alone! 
Are your web pages--or your web designer's pages--W3C Standards
Compliant?
click here to find
out ... »
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99 ... 97 ... 95 ... 75 |
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 99% of all Internet users
reference search engines to find what they are looking for. 97% of
that traffic goes to the Top 20 listings for any given search.
95% of Bruce Arnold's web clients hold multiple Top 20 positions
for their targeted search terms. Over 75% of Bruce Arnold's web
clients hold multiple NUMBER ONE positions on major search engines.
In other words, Bruce Arnold (re)designs websites so that they look
good, rank high, get traffic and generate revenue for their owners.
Isn't that really what business web design should be about?
click
here for our kudos ... »
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