Renegade Search

Yesterday, I was shocked to see a post on Search Engine Watch, a well-known and widely-read industry site, covering a new service called 'Local Paid Inclusion'. According to the article, LPI was some sort of a partnership between Bruce Clay, Inc (a long-running internet marketing and training agency), and multiple search engines and directories -- including Google, Bing and Yahoo. The post explained that the new service would allow companies to pay to show up in the local results section of a search engine results page.

At first glance, that might not sound unreasonable. After all, search engines do make nearly all of their money off of advertising, right. So it seems entirely possible that they might partner with a third-party agency to improve their local advertising solutions. But what really stuck out about this proposal was the suggestion that this wasn't advertising in the usual, search engine sense. Rather than placing their customers' sites in a clearly-marked 'paid advertisement' area on the site--which has been the MO of search engines since the dawn of online advertising--this new service would actually allow people to pay their way into the normal search engine results.

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We have been discussing Google's recent decision to encrypt searches for those signed in to a Google profile, rendering a portion of keyword referrer data "(not provided)" within Google Analytics reports. Webmasters and professionals throughout our industry utilize this information to improve a site or campaign. At the time that Google announced this decision, Google associate Matt Cutts attempted to allay fears that a large percentage of this keyword data would be lost by stating that only a "single digit" percentage of people are actually signed in while searching. Since then there has been much debate as to whether or not Cutts' statement was accurate. We decided to investigate further with a study of our own.

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This week Google rolled out a feature in the new version of Google Analytics that will have most SEOs feeling thankful as we head in to the upcoming weekend. It allows those that have synced their Webmaster Tools account to their Google Analytics profile to access Search Engine Optimization reports. These reports will allow SEOs the opportunity to assess site performance through an entirely new lens in Analytics. Considering the lack of ability to test and receive real time feedback by running an organic search campaign (as you would for example have the ability of doing with a paid search campaign), these reports may also reduce the amount of time it takes to identify what keyphrases are truly most valuable to rank for, and what pages of a site are performing the best in the SERPs.

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On par with their biennial report, earlier this year SEOmoz released their search engine ranking factors for 2011. The finished product is a collection of in depth ranking analysis, correlation-based data, and opinions from some of the most well respected SEOs in the community. And while many of the predominant factors that Google uses in their ranking algorithm have remained steady influencers, the sudden impact of social signals on ranking positions, while all things considered still relatively weak, cannot be overlooked. As we move in to 2012, it is evident that Google is honoring social relevance and user experience, and finding ways to incorporate those elements on a greater scale in to their algorithm to impact SERPs for the better.

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Search marketing is a data driven field and that's why I'm very excited about a new feature added to Google Analytics. Last week, Google announced that multi-channel funnels will be now available to all users through the new version of Google Analytics.

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