Microsoft Live Search has finally announced that they support XML sitemaps! However, in typical Microsoft fashion, they are using a different auto-discovery method. Instead of submitting an XML sitemap through a webmaster console (i.e. Google, Yahoo!), or providing a way to ping the search engine (i.e. Google, Yahoo! & Ask) Microsoft would like webmasters to add the following line to their robots.txt files:
Here’s an insightful article released yesterday by Business Wire through Target Marketing Magazine, entitled “Yahoo! and comScore Study Finds Online Consumers Who Pre-Shop on the Web Spend More In-Store“, that reports that even though almost 90% of consumers shop for information online, not even 7% of retail sales actually take place on the Internet.
Last week, Search Engine Watch released, through data provided by Hitwise, the Top 10 Search Terms in 10 Categories for June 2007.
Always an interesting report, my favorite term this month is “Unclaimed Money” in the Internet Advertising category.
From left to right: Myself, Angela Yost and Mike Rosenberg
I am currently at the Search Engine Strategies conference in Seattle with my two EngineWorks counterparts, Angela Yost, Mike Rosenberg. This particular conference is focused on organic search, paid search and social media strategies for the travel and hospitality industries. So far the conference has touched on the following subjects:
Last Saturday (07.21), Matt Cutts announced at the Wordpress Wordcamp that Google now recognizes underscores (_) in URLs as valid word separators. Previously, Google only recognized hyphens (-) as a word separator. So feel free to use either word separator in your search engine friendly URLs.
At the end of this post, I list the May 2007 market percentages of the largest players in the current online search industry. Once again, Google dramatically increased its lead in our space with an impressive 42.1% year-over-year growth rate in the month of April, to command more than 55% of the total search market.
What’s crazy to think about is, that when I entered our fledgling space back in the late 1990’s, Inktomi (purchased by Yahoo! in late 2002) was the T-Rex of the search engine landscape (with a combined market share of more than 42% at the time), and the now obscure Northern Light and AltaVista were nipping at its heals. Here is a snapshot of the other dinosaurs (and a one little furry creature) from August 1999:
Interesting article today across the wire from The Associated Press titled “Microsoft,Yahoo become latest to improve Internet search privacy” proclaiming that the search engines are limiting the length of time that they retain potentially sensitive user data. The article points-out that “the search engines all appear interested in staying a step ahead of regulators as the industry mines personal data to customize online ads tailored for the tastes and interests of each individual visitor.”
Yesterday, Google announced its Q2 financial results during an after-hours earnings call. The Street reacted this morning. Negatively. As in driving their stock down more than 5 percent.
Business 2.0 Magazine senior edition, Chris Taylor, recommended on CNNMoney.com four tactics that the search behemoth should immediately pursue in order to maintain its dominance within our space.
The following is a list of common mistakes that may prevent your site from achieving excellent rankings within the search engines.
Search Engine Land reports that Ask.com is officially implementing support for XML sitemaps. The following is from Ask.com’s Webmaster Help section:
