Better Living through Better Searching SuccessWorks Search Marketing Tactics™ Training Better Living through Better Searching May 9, 2009 Presented by Leslie Carruthers President of The Search Guru Copyright 2004 SuccessWorks Search Marketing Solutions, Inc. Phone: +1 (360) 224-6260

The most popular common search engines

Search engine statistics for April 2009 Google 72.92% Yahoo! 16.14% Ask 3.95% MSN 3.51%

A sampling of Web 2.0 search engines

Web 2.0 search engine statistics In August 2008 YouTube received more traffic than Yahoo. (ComScore) In December 2008, 3 of the top 10 websites were social (Web 2.0) websites. Google and Yahoo now incorporate “other” media, such as video, news and products for sale, into the normal search results.

Google’s Universal Search Google’s universal search engine now integrates results from its regular “horizontal” search engine along with its many “vertical,” or specialized, search engines about specific topics. Google attempts to place the most relevant results first, since most searchers will generally choose to click on one of the first few results.

Google’s vertical search engines Or you may want to go directly to one of the vertical engines for a specific search

Search engine results are powered by math, not by common sense SuccessWorks Search Marketing Tactics™ Training Search engine results are powered by math, not by common sense Copyright 2004 SuccessWorks Search Marketing Solutions, Inc. Phone: +1 (360) 224-6260

What is an algorithm?

How the algorithms have evolved Technologies that are layered in the search engine algorithms Exact word-for- word matching Stemming of words for faster matching Term vectors, clustering and themes Links and anchor text Communities of sites based on keyphrases and links Next?

What are the major factors in the search engine algorithm? Content and text

What are the major factors in the search engine algorithm? Links

Why this may not return the best results SuccessWorks Search Marketing Tactics™ Training Why this may not return the best results Cheating Leslie: this site has a bunch of text below the fold for the search engines. Copyright 2004 SuccessWorks Search Marketing Solutions, Inc. Phone: +1 (360) 224-6260

Why this may not return the best results Misunderstanding

Why this may not return the best results Vagueness

What determines the order of search results? Your search terms are contained in the URL

What determines the order of search results? Your search terms are contained in the title of the page

What determines the order of search results? Your search terms are contained in the text on the page

What determines the order of search results? Sites that are linking to the page Quality of the links

What determines the order of search results? Sites that are linking to the page How many links

What determines the order of search results? Sites that are linking to the page Relationship of the links

What determines the order of search results? We covered the big ones, but over 400 factors are looked at to match any given search to any given web page

How people search: window shopping vs. buying General search Problem identified Gathering information Specific search Ready to purchase

Improve your search results Be precise – type exactly what you mean. Better results come from 3-4 words rather than 1-2 words.

Improve your search results Include your location when necessary

Improve your search results Use advanced operators Quotes (“search terms”) To search for exact phrase

Improve your search results Use advanced operators Site:domain.com To search pages within a site

Improve your search results Use advanced operators Exclude (-) To omit a search term

Improve your search results Use advanced operators Wildcard (*)

Improve your search results Use advanced operators OR (word OR word)

Improve your search results Use advanced operators Definitions (define:)

Improve your search results Use advanced operators Specific types of files (filetype:)

Improve your search results Use advanced operators Range of numbers (#…#)

Improve your search results Use advanced operators Related:domain.com To search sites that are related to domain.com

Improve your search results Use advanced operators Info:domain.com To get information about domain.com

Improve your search results Use advanced operators Calculator functions + (addition) - (subtraction) * (multiplication) / (division) % of (percentage) ^ (power of)

Examples of using advanced operators effectively Searching university sites

Examples of using advanced operators effectively SuccessWorks Search Marketing Tactics™ Training Examples of using advanced operators effectively Looking only for PDFs Note: This can be used to find MP3s too. Interesting to mention in the talk but not something I would put on the PPT. Copyright 2004 SuccessWorks Search Marketing Solutions, Inc. Phone: +1 (360) 224-6260

Examples of using advanced operators effectively SuccessWorks Search Marketing Tactics™ Training Examples of using advanced operators effectively Sites with bad or no search functions Copyright 2004 SuccessWorks Search Marketing Solutions, Inc. Phone: +1 (360) 224-6260

SuccessWorks Search Marketing Tactics™ Training Free resources Google advanced operators cheat sheet: http://www.google.com/help/cheatsheet.html The Search Guru “Search Questions” blog: http://www.TheSearchGuru.com/blog/?cat=17 Current search engine statistics: http://www.TheSearchGuru.com/ search-stats.asp Copyright 2004 SuccessWorks Search Marketing Solutions, Inc. Phone: +1 (360) 224-6260

Thank You from The Search Guru! SuccessWorks Search Marketing Tactics™ Training Thank You from The Search Guru! 896 Arboretum Circle Sagamore Hills, OH 44067 440-306-2418 www.TheSearchGuru.com Results@TheSearchGuru.com Twitter: @thesearchguru Copyright 2004 SuccessWorks Search Marketing Solutions, Inc. Phone: +1 (360) 224-6260