Archive for November, 2008
Selecting the right online business
Selecting the right online business is the key to being successful on the internet and generating passive income.
There are a number of things a person should know when trying to select the right online business. Namely, that it takes time and effort to find a business that will be profitable and attract customers. Consequently, one should take their time when selecting one.
Research
Finding the right online business takes research, and therefore it should be a person’s top priority. When doing research look to see if the business or product has the potential for long-term growth and to generate passive.
Do not opt for business trends or products that may offer quick money in the short-term but quickly runs out of steam in the long-term. Also, look for an online business that is fairly established but has plenty of potential.
Remember that online businesses are like any other businesses. It takes time, and work to be able to attract customers and generate profits.
Customer
To have a successful online business, especially one where you want to make passive income, you will need loyal customers. Customers look for businesses that offer them high quality products, good customer service and consistency. Why consistency? Because it breeds trust in customers. They need to trust that their product will arrive on time and in the way they ordered them.
When looking for an online business make sure you have a product(s) that customers will want.
Product
If you want a successful online business that will generate you passive income, pick a product that you believe in. Also, the product cannot of inferior quality because in the end it will cost you money, potential customers and time.
When choosing the right online business look to see if it has potential. If it does ask yourself “How much time and effort will it take from you to make a profit?”. Your answer will determine if the business is right for you.
Hours
When starting a business on the internet it is usually advised to not quit your day job. This is important because it will take awhile to generate enough income to live on. Consequently, a person needs to be clear on how many hours a day or a week they can devote to their online business.
The right online business for you might be one where you don’t have to put that many hours in the beginning.
It is best to be honest with yourself about how much time you can put into the business. If you are not honest about it then you might pick a business that require more hours then you can give.
Know what your goals are, whether those goals are monetary or personal. If you know your goals then you can select the right online business for you.
Competition
Before selecting your online business make sure that it can compete with other business of its type. Is there enough room for your business? Is there a niche that your competition is not seeing that maybe you do, which will be profitable for you? These are important things to consider when selecting an online business.
Passive Income
Most owners who own an online business want to make some kind of passive income. The best way to do that is pick the right business (product) for you and has a potential market. Membership sites, software, shopping and information products are the best way to go when wanting to generate a passive income through online business.
However don’t take my word for it or anybody else’s for that matter, do your research, ask for help, and set some goals.
Selecting an Outstanding dress for this prom could land you standing Out of the prom evening.
Prom is one of the most important event in the life of a school student. In fact, people are known to make preparation for months at a stretch for the prom event. While creativity is the limit in the dresses, it is very important that students also adhere to ethical dress codes to avoid the event from going bust.
Getting the dress right is very important to cherish memorable memories of the evening. You dress should comply with the standard ethics code. While selecting a dress you should bear in mind that their dress does not expose your navel or excessive skin in terms of cleavage. The spilt should not be too high and the dress must not be so sheer that your undergarments are visible.
Recently a high school student had come for the prom night dressed in girls dress and had to face suspension. It is very much important to understand that a prom night is a black-tie. You have just one chance to make your mark as a stellar standout on this starry night, so don’t blow it by dressing down. Casual wear is a big NO NO for the prom night. Walking-in in your baseball cap and regular casual attire will land you no where but outside the event.
Trendspotters predict that young men will be seen wearing a lot of white tuxedos and colours. Who would want to look a mismatch with their date after all? No matter what you wear to the evening, it is very important that you groom yourself for the event. If you are tending a beard, a moustache or a bald head, make sure you investigate a few blades and shaving preparations that make shaving a pleasant effortless exercise. Remember to pamper your skin with after shave lotion and add a touch of manly fragrance before leaving the house.
So, if you are getting ready to attend a prom or will be shopping for one soon, make sure you bear these guidelines for a memorable evening. For more information,go to PROM DRESS.
Secrets to Bringing Tons of Visitors to Your Website
The Pay for Performance or P4P was originally invented by Overture. Overture observed that the internet was growing into a unique kind of shopping mall, where people could shop conveniently and easily and that advertising was gaining grounds on the internet. But now, Overture has been taken over by Yahoo and hence popularly known as Yahoo.
A visible and popular website attracts more and more people. It provides ads in other sites that link to a particular site can direct potential consumers and customers to that site thus increasing traffic and sales in that website. Yahoo provides a service using which it is possible to show ads kept in their websites when people input certain keywords.
Using Yahoo services, any willing website can have their traffic increased by utilizing the same. When more and more people become aware of your site, the traffic to your website would automatically increase. This in turn would increase the chance of people viewing your pages and products. Even if a small fraction of those people actually buy your products; that would still mean a substantial figure for you and your company.
It is the goal of every internet based company to get a high volume of potential consumers to their website. To accomplish this, the companies try a handful of methods to make their website more and more popular and make the people all over know about the existence of their services.
Yahoo/Overture is very similar to Google’s Adwords. Both of them use the same principle in showing ads according to keyword or keyword phrase searches. Whenever someone types in a phrase or a keyword in their search engine, the result page shows the usual results and along with it, shows the ads matching the search criteria on the right side of the same page. These ads in turn link to the websites of the respective companies.
As an example, let us consider that you run a car parts retail/wholesale site and you have chosen for Yahoo/Overture services, choosing some keywords that can trigger your ad to be displayed. Then, if somebody searches for Honda Accord, your ad might show up if you have designated that as one of your keywords. Using this system, you don’t even need to optimize your website with Search Engine Optimization methods and techniques.
With some labor and work, you can make your site one of the high ranking sites per keyword search and you would have the chance of your site being displayed on the top of the list or at least, on the first page of a search result, thus increasing your chance of people clicking on your links. This is a fast way to have traffic and visitors to your website.
However, remember that this service is not free. There are different ways in which Yahoo/Overture might charge you. They could charge in the number of keywords or keyword phrases your as uses or in the number of times your ad gets clicked on. Similar services might offer other features like having your ad show up on some third party sites, besides showing it on the search result page. You should look out for those.
Some third party supports placing ads that have similar content to that of the site. The more sites your ads are shown, the more is the chance of getting visitors to your site, especially, if the site where your ad is shown is a popular website.
With the internet being the largest network and still growing and which has shrunken the whole world into a global village, with online businesses mushrooming, it is high time to start advertising and surge ahead in this rat race of getting visitors to your site. Yahoo/Overture is a great place to make a start. There are many who have used Yahoo/Overture and have had great success. It is a market strategy which will direct swarming traffic to your site and that in turn will boost your sales and result in profit.
Often it is seen that to make money, you require money. But by using services like Yahoo/Overture and other such types of low cost or free market strategies, it is often possible to get overwhelming results faster and on a big scale. Many of the online companies have learned this fact the hard way. Your company should, however, not be one of them.
Secrets To Affiliate Marketing List Building
The Money is in the List?
I am sure that you have heard this before. If you are involved with Internet marketing, you have probably heard it over and over again. But, Is it True?
Absolutely!!
I am involved with affiliate marketing and the great thing is that you do not need a product to begin making money. There are thousands of viable products available that you can make a great income on.
Whatever your interest or your niche is, there are plenty of products waiting for you to make money with. There is also plenty of room for you to create and promote your own product. Provided of course that it is a good one.
As for affiliate programs, they are very simple to get started with. You just need to sign up for their affiliate program, promote it, and watch the money start rolling in (hopefully). This is all great, but then what? Most likely you would find another product and start all over again.
What if, when you find or create this new product, you already have hundreds or thousands of people to instantly tell about it? You can shoot them a quick email and have immediate money in your pocket. Then you can start advertising this product and create even more people for your next great idea. As you can imagine, this process can take on a snowball effect. Before you know it, your primary income will be from your online business. Now you can work from home!
How do you go about starting a list?
One of the best ways is to create a squeeze page. This is a simple one page website that is designed to capture your visitors name and email address. You can do this by offering a free report, a free subscription to your newsletter, or both.
Once you have their information they are added to your auto responder and they are a part or your list. At this time you would redirect them to your affiliate product website or to your own website with a link.
You have now created a potential customer for your current and your future products.
When you start to email them regularly make sure that you are offering them something of value. Some ideas include: useful information, free reports, free software, and creative ideas that you come across.
You can than suggest your product and offer a link to your product or affiliate page. Build up your product with a strong sales message and watch the sales start pouring in.
One piece of advice, do not oversell to your list. This is a very valuable resource and should not be jeopardized.
You need to give good solid information and only promote worthwhile products. Treat your list as a group of friends that you want to help with the information that you are providing. Not as another dollar in your pocket. Just follow the golden rule and treat your list as you would want to be treated and you will be on your way to success.
Secret, Yet Powerful Marketing Weapon Revealed
So you’ve tried direct mail, advertising, you’ve got a web site, maybe you’ve even tried networking as a marketing strategy. These and many other marketing strategies are all good and if performed properly will most likely bring you favorable results. A word to the wise here though, some of them can run you a fortune in marketing costs. And in my experience, cost has a lot less bearing on effectiveness than one would like to believe. Now being a fan of Jay Conrad Levinson and his concept of “Guerrilla Marketing”, I am always on the lookout for innovative and inexpensive ways to market. And what I have for you here certainly fits that bill.
I believe Napoleon Hill in his 1930’s classic book “Think and Grow Rich” was the first person to coin the phrase “Master Mind” and he defined it as: “Coordination of knowledge and effort, in a spirit of harmony, between two or more people, for the attainment of a definite purpose.”
Hmmm… So basically it’s building a team that leverages their collective brains and brawn to help one another get what they want.
So let’s not beat around the bush here. Are you ready for the secret marketing strategy? Well here goes… It’s quite simple really… there is strength in numbers. Two minds are exponentially more capable than one mind alone. In this equation, one plus one does not equal two, it more closely resembles eleven. We’re talking about leverage here. The secret is simply to gain leverage by creating your own mastermind. Not just any mastermind though; One that specifically focuses on marketing &ndash a “Marketing Mastermind” so to speak.
So my proposal to you is to take that exact concept of a mastermind as Napoleon Hill defined it, and niche it to focus primarily on marketing.
So real quick what should this mastermind look like? My suggestion would be 4 to 8 members from different, non-competing industries, meeting weekly to discuss how they can help each other market their respective businesses &ndash Plain and simple.
Now it’s not my intention here to educate you in any detail on how to set up and effectively participate in a mastermind group, as there are plenty of resources out there already that can do that for you, it is simply to share with you what’s possible by leveraging this concept to support your marketing efforts.
Personally, I see this strategy as a phenomenal way for organizations, especially smaller ones with little spending money for marketing, to use the power of leverage to broaden their capability and effectiveness.
While the benefits of doing this could be endless, let me just share with you five of my favorites:
- Plain and simple, it keeps you in the conversation of marketing.
- It can provide you with unbiased feedback, brainstorming, and marketing advice based on experiences of what has worked, or hasn’t worked for your mastermind teammates.
- You will significantly expand your reach and go beyond who you know and tap into who your teammates know. Now depending on what the group agrees to, you may gain access to the client list and/or mailing list of the other members. Additionally, you can explore the possibilities of joint marketing initiatives and joint venture arrangements where multiple parties share in the results.
- You’ll be held accountable to get done what you say you will get done. This alone inspires people into action and action ultimately leads to results.
- The list can go on and on and on however, best of all, masterminding is free!
So need I say more? I sincerely hope you’ll take this strategy on and try it on for a while. What do you got to lose? &ndash It’s free. Remember, there’s power in numbers so build your “Marketing Mastermind” and reap the rewards today!
Search Marketing for Realtors – Reaching the Top!
For realtors the Internet can no longer be ignored. Significant numbers of home buyers on going online to do their preliminary research for real estate and agents. Recent surveys suggest over 50%.
I personally know a number of local realtors, and it is interesting to see how some are easily adapting to this media, while others are sitting on the sidelines wondering why they are seeing a decrease in prospective buyers.
The Internet is not going away, and if someone plans to make real estate a viable career they must incorporate online marketing in order to not only succeed, but to survive. So how can realtors cost-effective connect with potential customers? In addition to MLS listings, they can reach a very targeted audience through search engine marketing. There are basically two forms of search marketing, organic and pay per click advertising.
Organic Search Marketing
Organic search marketing is about ranking at the top of the search results. It is accomplished through search engine optimization (SEO). The goal is to get your web pages at the top of the search results for targeted terms and phrases. For example, if you are a realtor in Boise it would be profitable to have your site rank at the top for terms phrases like “Boise Realtors” or “Boise Real Estate.”
How do you accomplish this mysterious feat? First, you have to optimize your web pages around certain phrases like “Boise Real Estate.” That term becomes the theme of the page, and there are certain techniques that let the search engines know it is the theme.
In addition to optimizing the page you have to convince the search engines that your site is important enough to deserve a prominent ranking. This is achieved by getting other web sites to link to your site. When a web site has a hyperlink to your site, the search engines consider this a vote of confidence. It is more complicated than just getting a bunch of links, since some links are considered more important than others. But in general, the combination of optimized pages and external links results in top rankings. SEO takes time and effort. If you are a new site, you may not see results for 6-9 months with Google.
Pay Per Click Advertising
In contrast to SEO, pay per click advertising (PPC) can provide instant gratification. With Google you can set-up a marketing campaign in less than an hour. With Yahoo it takes 24-48 hours to be approved.
PPC is where you pay to have your web site listed at the top of the search results for particular terms that are relevant to your business. There are basically two search engines where you want to pay to market, Yahoo and Google. PPC is based on an auction model, where you bid for the position of your ad. The ads appear above and to the right of the organic search listings. They are listed as “Sponsored Links.”
PPC advertising is based on an auction model. You bid for positioning on terms that are relevant to your business, just like how you would optimize your web pages for similar terms. Once again if you are a realtor in Boise, you would bid on terms that your prospects would use to find services in your area. The position of your ad depends on how much you bid in relation to your competitors.
The appeal of PPC advertising is you set the bids, you set a maximum daily expenditure and you can turn your campaign on or off at any moment. Even more important is the ability to track exactly how your advertising dollars are being spent. With with this information you can tweak your bids and your ads for maximum performance.
It important to note that buyers who search online tend to be better informed, spend significantly less time with their realtor, and preview fewer houses than traditional buyers. That is another reason why search engine marketing is becoming essential.
Time is running out to ignore the Internet. Either you are going to be a player or you will be cut from the squad.
Search in the Far East
To stay relevant or even solvent, a company must keep itself informed. That’s why research, of both the in-house and outsourced varieties, is essential. At ConductSearch.com keeping tabs on who’s doing what in the marketplace is key to our success, and it doesn’t matter whether our information comes via mailman or email – at the end of the day, it’s still content, right? Recently, I happened to come upon the work of a reliable investment banking firm that specializes in Chinese tech research, New York Global Securities. I learned that New York Global thinks as highly of search advertising’s positioning in China as I do of it was here in America. They initiated coverage of a major Chinese Search Engine, Baidu (which translates to “a hundred times”), with a “Buy” rating.
Funny enough, ConductSearch.com and Baidu, the Chinese search giant, have something in common. But what, you ask? Baidu is based in mainland China (we’re not quite there, yet) and has little American presence. Yet, both companies, one small, one large, and on opposite sides of the earth, share a sentiment associated with search advertising – a sentiment shared by search advertisers all over the earth &ndash namely, that there’s still brilliant opportunities in the field. As players in search advertising, no matter what the size or where we are, we must avail ourselves to these favorable conditions.
We’re no GE, but we’ve got exclusive search technology surpassed by none, while Baidu, an indexer of 700 million pages, is located in a country that didn’t even have Internet access only 7-8 years ago. Incredible, sure, but these are hardly unique success stories in the field.
One great aspect of search is that as it evolves, advertisers grow increasingly aware of its effectiveness. This makes the task of selling the revolutionary concept much less difficult, and industry forecasts indicate this advertiser confidence with predictions of continued search advertising growth through at least 2010. Advertisers simply can’t get enough of measurable, targeted end-users.
According to Andrew Collier, New York Global’s analyst who’s recommending Baidu, the Chinese populace is even more receptive to Baidu’s relevant advertising than would be Westerners since existing Chinese advertising channels (that’s print, TV, and radio) are relatively weak.
So enticing is China’s advertising landscape for the accommodating platform of search, that Yahoo and, as of last January, Google, have launched Chinese versions of their popular search engines themselves. Baidu is sure to meet some stiff competition from Google.cn. Says New York Global’s Andrew Collier: “search is one of the best advertising models for the Chinese market because of its ability to target a specific customer base.” Do no evil and do much business, right Google?
In the meantime Baidu, with a 50% share of the Chinese search market, is reaching targeted customer bases within China. Search, by its flexible nature, adapts well to that frenzied economy. Massive ramp ups in Internet connectivity has been all the impetus needed. New York Global rates Baidu (BIDU) with a “buy” recommendation largely due to its positioning as a provider of this highly effective search advertising platform.
The deep reach that search advertising provides Baidu in connecting with Chinese Internet users contrasts greatly with the Chinese Internet Portals whose total end user numbers are still too small to deliver mass goods to large audiences through banner ads and the like. So, too, is this a problem with traditional media, where government ownership is essentially a monopoly, thus preventing a healthy advertising environment. In China, Internet search marketing shines brightest in a sky of less than stellar advertising opportunities.
Maybe I’m biased, but I believe it’s the best means here in America, too. Domestically, my company or yours might not have 50% of the search market, but, like any firm involved with search, we do have the same wind of opportunity blowing at our backs as Baidu.
Jeff Conduct
Director of Marketing
ConductSearch.com
.conductsearch.com
marketingconductsearch.com
Search Engines and the Small Business Website
If you’re doing any type of business on the internet than search engines like Google and Yahoo! could play a large role in the success or failure of your business. Even though most internet user have experience using search engines, many don’t know how the engines work.
For website owners it is important to understand how, at least at a high level, search engines work so they can take advantage of the website traffic that only search engines can deliver.
Search Engines are special sites on the Web that are designed to help people find information stored on other sites. There are differences in the ways various Search Engines work, but they all perform three basic tasks:
- They search the Internet or select pieces of the Internet based on important words,
- They keep an index of the words they find, and where they find them, and
- They allow users to look for words or combinations of words found in that index.
Early Search Engines held an index of a few hundred thousand pages and documents, and received maybe one or two thousand inquiries each day. Today, a top Search Engine will index hundreds of millions of pages, and respond to tens of millions of queries per day.
Before a Search Engine can tell you where a file or document is, it must be found. To find information on the hundreds of millions of Web pages that exist, a Search Engine employs special software robots, called spiders, to build lists of the words found on Web sites.
When a spider is building its lists, the process is called web crawling.
In order to build and maintain a useful list of words, a Search Engine’s spiders have to look at a lot of pages. How does any spider start its travels over the Web? The usual starting points are lists of heavily used servers and very popular pages. The spider will begin with a popular site, indexing the words on its pages and following every link found within the site. In this way, the spidering system quickly begins to travel, spreading out across the most widely used portions of the Web.
To increase the likelyhood that the spiders find your website make sure you are listed on high ranked websites like Merchant Circle. You can create a free business page and blog that will not only increase your chances of being found but also be another place for potential visitors to find about about your website.
Once the spiders have completed the task of finding information on Web pages, the Search Engine must store the information in a way that makes it useful. There are two key components involved in making the gathered data accessible to users:
- The information stored with the data, and
- The method by which the information is indexed.
In the simplest case, a Search Engine could just store the word and the URL where it was found. In reality, this would make for an engine of limited use, since there would be no way of telling whether the word was used in an important or a trivial way on the page, whether the word was used once or many times or whether the page contained links to other pages containing the word. In other words, there would be no way of building the ranking list that tries to present the most useful pages at the top of the list of search results.
To make for more useful results, most Search Engines store more than just the word and URL. A Search Engine might store the number of times that the word appears on a page. The engine might assign a weight to each entry, with increasing values assigned to words as they appear near the top of the document, in sub-headings, in links, in the META tags or in the title of the page. Each commercial Search Engine has a different formula for assigning weight to the words in its index. This is one of the reasons that a search for the same word on different Search Engines will produce different lists, with the pages presented in different orders.
You can get a customized Page Critic Analysis Report from Webs 4 Small Business that tells you how YOUR webpages should be set up to make sure give the search engines what they are looking for when they review your page.
An index has a single purpose: it allows information to be found as quickly as possible. There are quite a few ways for an index to be built, but one of the most effective ways is to build a hash table. In hashing, a formula is applied to attach a numerical value to each word.
The formula is designed to evenly distribute the entries across a predetermined number of divisions. This numerical distribution is different from the distribution of words across the alphabet, and that is the key to a hash table’s effectiveness.
When a person requests a search on a keyword or phrase, the Search Engine software searches the index for relevant information. The software then provides a report back to the searcher with the most relevant web pages listed first.
Not sure what keywords you should use? Picking the right, or wrong ones, can make or break your chances at online success. Consider getting a customized Key Word Report from Webs 4 Small Business that tells you which keywords you should and should not consider for your site. These keywords are specific to YOUR website not a generic list of keywords.
So, why are search engines important to business website owners? Simple. You need traffic and Search Engines have lots of it. And, their purpose is to drive traffic to sites that they think match their visitors’ needs.
The way to get a portion of that traffic, is to optimize your website (you’ve likely heard of Search Engine Optimzaiton or SEO). That way when a someone searches for a keyword that is relevant to your website, the search engines includes a link to your website in the search results. That puts traffic and potential visitors just a click away from you website.
Search Engines and Small Markets
If your business is focused on a very particular, small market, you are going to love search engines. The more focused you are, the easier it is to win on the engines.
Search Engines and Small Markets
Once you have identified a small market and built a site, you need to start thinking about Internet marketing. Search engines present the best marketing platform on a dollar for dollar basis. There are two specific ways to go about the process.
Pay-per-click advertising on search engines is a great way to immediately reach your target audience. Google Adwords and Overture represent the two best ppc platforms. Place ads using these two platforms and the ads will appear on the search results for Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL and a host of other search engines.
The second platform for getting in front of your market on the search engines is search engine optimization, better known as seo. The goal in seo is to identify the keyword phrases your prospects are using to find things. You then try to get your site ranked in the top three or four positions when the relevant search engines return results for any of the searches. The upside of seo is you don’t pay for advertising and rankings tend to stay high once you achieve them. The downside is it can take a couple of months before you appear high in MSN rankings and up to a year or longer on Google.
Regardless of the approach you take on the search engines, your focus on a small market gives you a huge advantage. By focusing on a lucrative, defined area of the Internet, you have limited the number of competitors you must take on. It is far easier and cheaper to market to “San Diego Mortgage Loans” than going after “Mortgage Loans.” The first phrase has a limited number of competitors while the second phrase is contested by huge sites with lots of advertising dollars. To this end, make sure you stick to your area when pursuing your marketing. If you offer services in a location, only advertise for keywords incorporating that location. Having a person three states over call you is just a waste of time.
Advertising for small, defined markets on the search engines is inexpensive compared to general markets. It is also easier and quicker to get seo listings.
Search Engine Wars – Quality Searches Vs Quantity!
Search Engine Wars – Quality Searches Vs Quantity!
By: Martin Lemieux
It is no secret that Google and Yahoo are on a continuous battle to win our hearts and get everyone to convert, but is converting someone really a matter of the quantity or the quality?
Let’s take a look at some top key searches and compare them with some search engines online. I will outline a few things for each search result:
1) Search Engine
2) Number of results found
3) Quality & content of the top 10 sites
4) What you find going beyond the first 10 pages
Each section will get ranked out of 10 points for quality (information taken on August 26,2005).
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Starting with my all-time favorite search term: “INTERNET MARKETING”
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Google.com
- 99,000,000 results
- 10/10 on quality
- 10/10 Past 10 pages still delivers top quality results
Yahoo.com
- 281,000,000 results
- 7/10 on quality. There’s no reason to list a “Hotel Marketing Firm” & “Building websites”. The #1 spot was reserved for Yahoo marketing.
- 9/10 Past 10 pages, it is very generic for business, not specific.
MSN.com
- 93,661,176 results
- 10/10 on quality
- 10/10 Past 10 pages still delivers high quality results. I am surprised and give MSN two thumbs up for their attention to detail.
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Moving onto the search term for “BUSINESS NEWS”
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Google.com
- 627,000,000 results
- 10/10 on quality
- 10/10 Beyond 10 pages delivers high quality & local news centers.
Yahoo.com
- 1,260,000,000 results (wow)
- 10/10 on quality
- 9/10 Beyond 10 pages. There are still some sites that should never be there.
MSN.com
- 381,631,054 results
- 8/10 on quality – Some aren’t related at all and brand new sites as well.
- 10/10 beyond 10 pages. Their results seem to tighten up and get better.
Let’s now take some more “local” search results to see deeper and more targeted results…
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Moving on to the search term for “WASHINGTON UNIVERSITIES”.
I hope to find the “University of Washington” come up #1 or thereabouts.
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Google.com
- 22,700,000
- 10/10 on quality (.washington.edu is #1)
- 10/10 beyond 10 pages. The results still deliver “university” topics.
Yahoo.com
- 143,000,000 results
- 9/10 on quality – The top spot is reserved for Yahoo on Washington University in St. Louis. There seems to be a strong battle going on here on which university to list.
- 10/10 beyond 10 pages. Content is specific and relevant.
MSN.com
- 34,442,536 results
- 9/10 on quality – Again another battle going on and washington.edu is #10 tilting on the verge of page 2.
- 10/10 beyond 10 pages. All related to Washington & University living
Let’s now get even more specific than that… For this search term I will be using something very local that I can relate to and give a better analysis.
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Moving on to the search term for “HAMILTON ONTARIO CANADA”.
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Google.com
- 3,700,000 results
- 10/10 on quality – Great job
- 10/10 beyond 10 pages – Anything goes but is directly related to Hamilton.
Yahoo.com
- 14,900,000 results
- 10/10 on quality – Almost the same as Google but a couple of different choices.
- 9/10 on quality – Some results are found by keyword stuffing their pages.
MSN Local *New (search.msn.com/local/)
- 1,280,405 results
- 9/10 on quality – Getting some random placements & keyword stuffing
- 10/10+ beyond 10 pages – Many local companies well listed in the results.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Let’s now take a look at these results as a total. Out of a possible score of 80 points, here are the total scores for each:
Google – 80 points
MSN – 76 points
Yahoo – 73 points
Total search results delivered:
Google – 752,400,000
Yahoo – 1,698,900,000
MSN – 511,015,171
And people wonder why Google is the king of searching?! But wait, without even noticing the results, as I totaled the final point standings, MSN came up in second place! In my study, I tried to be as neutral as possible.
How is it that Msn & Google have 50% the amount of results shown in Yahoo, but outrank Yahoo in quality?
In conclusion:
Even though Yahoo delivered a report stating that it has over 19 billion search items, what does it matter when you’re still trying to figure out how to deliver all that content? MSN & Google seem to know exactly what to do with their results. They don’t seem “off the wall” at all. If Yahoo is to step up and be crowned the search king, I really think that they need to refine the amount of search terms they have, to match the quality of search results as well.
Yahoo has major potential to outreach Google but they still have a lot of work ahead of them and by the time they figure things out, Google may even step up their game even further and wow us all on some other search plateau.