Word of the Week - Cuil

Pronounced "cool", Cuil is a new search engine built by Anna Patterson, a search engine wiz who used to work at Google. While there was a lot of hype and excitement about the launch of the site, those seeking an alternative search engine might have to temper their enthusiasm a bit.

While there are some interesting new features in Cuil, it has had a tremendously difficult time in maintaining relevancy and the meaningfulness of search results (no TravelOregon.com for an "Oregon" search for example!). Moreover, following the wake of their PR push last week, their servers have been overwhelmed and users have experienced significant downtime. As our friend Paul Wille notes in his blog, Cuil has four notable features:

1. Relevancy Approach- Unlike depending on the quantity and quality of links, it "drills down" into the pages they link to and analyze the content for relevancy

2. “Article”-based search results - Rather than the usual list of text-only links, photos and paragraph snippets of content are returned as part of the search results (Similar to Ask.com)
   

3. Dynamic Faceted Searching - Faceted searching is the concept of narrowing search results based on multiple “facets” or aspects of your search results; for example when you search for "Oregon", you can narrow your results based on categories such as "regions of Oregon", "real estate" etc. etc.
   

4. Privacy - Cuil promises not to store search history of search engines
   

Read the full review on Cuil

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

For me, as for others, the Net is becoming a universal medium, the conduit for most of the information that flows through my eyes and ears and into my mind. The advantages of having immediate access to such an incredibly rich store of information are many, and they’ve been widely described and duly applauded. “The perfect recall of silicon memory,” Wired’s Clive Thompson has written, “can be an enormous boon to thinking.” But that boon comes at a price. As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan pointed out in the 1960s, media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski. >>Full Story

Thoughts// This profound piece on how search—and more specifically Google—has transformed our daily lives, can be summed up in this vivid quote: Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.

The author examines how our mind is increasingly dependent on Google and how this addiction is effecting our brains and inhibiting cognition. Besides transforming how we read, technology is deeply embedded in our daily lives—it's our map, clock, printing press, calculator and radio and TV—and is forcing other media to conform to its norms. Consider:

1. Television programs add text crawls and pop-up ads

2. Magazines and newspapers shorten their articles, introduce capsule summaries, and crowd their pages with easy-to-browse info-snippets

3. Newspapers devote devote pages of space for shorter article abstracts

While I am not sure I entirely agree with the premise of this article, this is nevertheless a very interesting read on how technology will continue to impact and revolutionize the consumption of media for years to come.

Travel Trends - Zicasso, Four Points, Google Search

Zicasso - Add one more travel site to your online planning schedule. Zicasso, the online travel planning site that lets travel agents compete for your business (think LendingTree.com), officially came out of beta on Monday. As you can see by a simple Google search, there is quite a bit of buzz about this new site. While we will not go into a full review of the site (take a look at the Google search results for additional reviews), this new offering is certainly a different angle on booking travel online. Personally, I like the idea, but it will be interesting to see if this takes off or simply moves to the end of a very long list.
http://www.zicasso.com/

Four Points - While browsing for hotels in Tucson a few weeks ago, I came across a very different execution for a hotel homepage. Plus, the team at Travolution acknowledged the site as well at PhoCusWright@ITB 08. Considering the typical look of a hotel / resort homepage, I initially thought this page was a mistake. However, as you can see on the site, Four Points simply directs the user immediately to the search function. No upsell, no affinity program to push, no tabs...you came to this site because you wanted to find a hotel, so here you are. Good stuff.
http://www.starwoodhotels.com/

Google Search...in Search - This past week Google rolled out a little experiment it has been tinkering with, search boxes within search results. Take a look at it if you search for 'amazon' in Google. Notice that amazon.com is the top result and within that result is the option to search within the amazon.com site for more information on TVs, books, DVDs, etc. The additional boxes show up when 'we (Google) detect a high probability that a user wants more refined search results within a specific site.' Which means, like most things with Google, you cannot control it.
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/

Word of the Week - Google PageRank

Google PageRank is an algorithm used by Google to determine the weight of a set of linked (or hyperlinked) web pages. It is one of the (assumed to be) primary pieces of the larger Google Search algorithm which determines order of appearance in a keyword search.

A larger number of quality links from high PageRank sites will increase your PageRank.

Of course, that is the condensed version, for a complete and technical explanation of PageRank, I would recommend the PageRank article on Wikipedia.

More FREE Ways to Track Your Web Presence

Due to the popularity of our post last week, 'Easy and FREE Ways to Track Your Online Presence...Plus, See What California is Up To', I thought we would mention a couple other online tools that can help you track and understand you presence on the web.

Not to mention kill off a few hours at work obsessing over your Google Page Rank.

Google Trends: Speaking of which, Google Trends is a good (and fascinating) look at trends relating to keyword searches via Google. For example, you can enter two keywords...such as 'ski resorts' and 'cruises'...and be presented with a graphical representation of the number of searches for those words. See the chart above. Of course, very granular or specific keywords might not show any results, but it is an interesting way to determine search volume, on a timeline, from a high level.
http://www.google.com/trends

Microsoft adCenter Labs: Ah, probably my favorite, not to mention the (at times) most confusing, free stats / SEO tool out there. While Microsoft commonly gets overlooked by Google and Yahoo! in the ad sales space, the adCenter Labs offering is a great look into some of the data available from search engines (not to mention a scary look into how much Microsoft and Google know about your search patterns). Stats available include basic information such as Ad Text Writer, which automatically generate text ads for an input URL, and Keyword Group Detection. However, if you have a computer science degree from Oxford (or a lot of free time) you can investigate topics such as 'Entity Association Graph' and 'Context-Based Acronym Resolution.' In all seriousness, adCenter Labs is another great free tool.
http://adlab.msn.com/

Quintura: Our final example is the 'visual search engine' Quintura, which displays your results as well as a related keyword cloud. The cloud results provide an interesting (and slightly addictive) view of your key search terms as well as some insight into other keywords that you might have been unaware of.
http://www.quintura.com/

Back-to-school SEO

It's that time of year again when the kids head back to school and the air begins to hint at the coming of fall. I'm sure the first few days of school are spent doing a little refresh to get all the kids back up to speed after the summer months. Of course SEOs don't get summer breaks and the learning doesn't ever really stop or even slow down. But that doesn't mean that a little SEO refresher every now and again isn't useful or is any less valuable.

Here are 10 important elements that should always remain top-of-mind with every SEO. >>Full Story

Thoughts// As an e-marketer, it's easy to get inundated and lost in the plethora of tools currently available at our disposal to tell the brand story. While blogs, RSS, widgets and Twitter may give us additional hooks to tell the story and build relationships with consumers, let's face it, organic search is by far the overwhelming traffic driver to most destination sites. And yet, sadly, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is often an afterthought in many marketing budget line items.

This 101 on SEO is a timely and much needed refresher course on some basic SEO tactics. Additionally, here are some "must read" articles for SEO:

• Top 15 SEO tools - http://www.seoposition.com/the-top-15-free-seo-tools.html


• Top SEO mistakes by newbies - http://www.jenniferslegg.com/2007/09/09/top-mistakes-newbie-seos-make

Finally, if you're looking for proof that SEO matters, look no further than the NY Times. The Times last week figured out that there was more value in opening up its entire archives to the public versus locking them up behind a subscription site. Vivian L. Schiller, senior VP of NYTimes.com stated, "What wasn’t anticipated was the explosion in how much of our traffic would be generated by Google, by Yahoo and some others."

Your Momma...

...uses search to shop online. DoubleClick Performics recently released data resulting from a usage study targeting "moms," and completed in cooperation with Microsoft and ROI Research, which showed that of the nearly 1,000 moms surveyed, 89 percent use the Internet at least twice/day, and 90 percent have been using it for more than seven years. 86 percent of respondents said search engines are the most efficient way to find information. >>Full Story

Thoughts// Just in case there were any lingering doubts of how women, particularly moms, use the internet, this new study from DoubleClick reveals that moms are more than capable of using the internet for search. Considering that many statistics and reports point to the female, or mom, as the planner of travel, this new report provides further justification for the importance of a SEO program within your overall online marketing plan. Important results from the study include:

• 70% use search engines to gather information before making any online purchase.
• 95% have been using the Internet for more than five years.
• 86% feel that search engines are the best way to find information.
• 64% use a search engine to gather more information after seeing an advertisement.

Word of the Week - Mahalo.

No....we're not on vacation in Hawaii! Developed by a start up led by famed tech tycoon Jason Calacanis, Mahalo is billed as a "human-powered search engine that creates organized, comprehensive, and spam free search results for the most popular search terms. Our search results only include great links."

For those of you that have been on the "net" long enough, yes, this is a throwback to the old Yahoo! directory days or Mozilla directory days. Mahalo is betting that because its search results are "prepared by humans, sifted and sorted and condensed for maximum relevance," search users would no longer be faced with pages and pages of spam results generated rogue SEO agents. For a fill profile on Jason and his thinking behind Mahalo, check out the latest edition of Fast Company or read about it online here.

Coming next week - Can Mahalo kill Google? A conversation with Portland area SEO professionals.

Travel Trends - MSN, Video, Google, Newspapers

Farecast.com & MSN Travel - MSN and Farecast.com, the airfare prediction Web site, announced an agreement today in which MSN will offer its users free airfare predictions and planning tools on the MSN Travel Channel. This agreement marks the first distribution deal for Farecast to bring its unique travel technology and planning tools to a broader consumer audience. (Ironically posted on CNNMoney.com)
http://www.cnnmoney.com

Online Video Numbers - comScore's Video Metrix report for May said that nearly 75% of U.S. Internet users watched an average of 158 minutes of online video during the month. Viewing of online video has reached 63% of U.S. Internet viewers according to a CTAM report.
http://www.mediapost.com

Google Small Business Search - Google Custom Search Business Edition is a service hosted on Google computers that starts at $100 per year and does not require businesses to run Google ads. The new service marks a middle option between Google's existing Custom Search Engine, a free, ad-supported service, and Google Appliance, a hardware device selling for prices starting around $2,000 which customers manages on themselves.
http://www.reuters.com

Newspaper Crossover - A new study recently released by the Newspaper National Network LP, conducted by Scarborough Research, found that 81% of newspaper website users also read the printed newspaper in the last 7 days. Crossover users (those who used both print and online newspapers in the past 7 days) have deep affinity with both their printed newspaper and their newspaper website, and 83% say "I love both my printed newspaper and visiting my newspapers website."
http://www.centerformediaresearch.com/