I read an interview between Vice President of Engineering of Google and a consultant, and found something interesting:

1. 20% to 25% of the queries received everyday are queries that Google is receiving for the first time. It simply means keyword is unlimited. Everyday, searchers “invent” different keywords to find their information. So, you must think about how you can optimize your site to ensure you can get benefit from a wide variety of keywords is very important. Sometimes, more important to put effort in optimizing for just 1-2 keywords.

2. To improve search quality, Google will place more emphasis on personalization. They will try to understand your search behavior and your background, and try to give you the most relevant results. It can be an opportunity or a threat to SEO. If your site is well optimized for your niche market, your site is more easily get founded by real targeted visitors. However, if your site is not well optimized, and search engines cannot classify your site easily, your site is less likely being found.

In Google HK, you may observe the buttion: iGoogle. What’s it?

In May 2007, Google has launched iGoogle as it moves towards a more user-centric web search experience.

The launch is part of the search engine’s bid to offer users greater scope for personalisation and publish their own content on a personalised Google homepage.

Under the umbrella term iGoogle, users will be able to share their own writings, photos and lists as well as getting a personalised view of the web, based on geographical location and search history.

There will be seven basic templates from which users can personalise their own space, including ones that allow for the publishing of photos, sending virtual greeting cards or creating lists of favourite songs or films.

Speaking at a media briefing, Marissa Mayer, Google’s vice president of user experience, said she looks at personalised search as one of the biggest advances Google has made in the last couple of years.

According to Ms Mayer, tens of millions of users have signed up for the personalised approach to search since Google introduced it two years ago.

A friend of mine asked me “what’s alexa ranking? why some internet marketing and SEO companies mention it when they sell me their services?”

First, let me provide more information about Alexa and then I will talke about my experience about Alexa ranking.

Alexa Internet, Inc. is a California-based subsidiary company of Amazon.com that is best known for operating a website that provides information on the web traffic to other websites.

Alexa collects information from users who have installed an “Alexa Toolbar,” allowing them to provide statistics on web site traffic, as well as lists of related links. It uses these data to form Alexa ranking. There is some controversy over how representative Alexa’s user base is of typical Internet behavior. If Alexa’s user base is a fair statistical sample of the internet user population (e.g., a random sample of sufficient size), Alexa’s ranking should be quite accurate. In reality, not much is known about the sample and possible sampling biases. Alexa itself notes several examples (here and here) A known source of bias is the self-selecting, opt-in nature of Alexa traffic tracking software installation, but the significance of this bias on rankings is not reported.

From my experience, majority of normal internet users do not install Alexa toolbar. Only people with a website who cares about its’ alexa ranking, technology guys (may be they are developing toolbars and the like) downloaded and installed Alexa toolbar. So, data collected have seriously biased. Ask yourself, do you install Alexa toolbar? If you have, why?

In addition, if your site has not much traffic, you and your friends set your site as default homepage after installing Alexa toolbar. You can see your site get a boost in Alexa ranking. It is also reported that spammers have numerous ways to manipulate Alexa ranking.

In an experiment I did 3-4 years ago, a new website of mine can have a higher Alexa ranking (300,000 positions higher) than one of my old sites. When I look at my website traffic log file, the old sites’ traffic has much higher traffic than the new site (over 400%). After the experiment, I laughed. Alexa ranking is really a joke, and I never talk about it with my clients because knowledgeable clients will challenge me.

Since Alexa ranking is not accurate and easily to be manipulated, some internet marketing and SEO companies just manipulate the ranking, and then sell their clients how good they are.

To me, it is absurd.

First, Alexa ranking measures traffic ranking collected from Alexa toolbar users (also, the ranking provides a ranking, not the real traffic level, i.e. visitor numbers). what’s the relationship between Alexa ranking and search engine positions? High alexa ranking has no relationship with high google ranking, yahoo ranking, and etc..

Second, the most accurate source of website traffic is from log file. One should use log file analyzer or third party tracking systems such as Google Analytics, Sitemeter, and etc.. to collect website traffic information. If log file shows you an increase in traffic, you really get improvement. Why do I need to look at Alexa ranking?

To conclude, Alexa ranking is not trustworthy, and personally, I do not use it as a measurement indicator. If someone sells their service to you and talk how good they are with a reference to Alexa ranking, beware! You may be disappointed after using their services.

What is experiential marketing? It is a relatively new marketing concept. It means marketers create experiences for potential customers to feel or touch the benefits of services and products. E.g. an art show, road show, investor forums, and etc.. In Hong Kong, there is an experiential marketing company who are very good at producing experiences. You may visit their website and contact them should you want to apply experiential marketing in Hong Kong and Greater China region.

Google publicly unveiled a new era for their search technology in May 17, 2007, and it is called universal search.

The universal search model, currently in its nascent stages, will present search results in a much more integrated manner than before. Depending on what users search for, the results page could feature sections with images, video, links to book content, maps or local business listings. A few months ago, Ask.com launched its experimental Ask X search engine, which also integrates results from image, video, encyclopedia, shopping and other categories on the main results page. Microsoft’s Live Search takes a less robust approach, displaying images, links to related keyword searches, and a map image on results pages.

I believe it is a trend in search engine industry.

For advertisers, it means both threats and opportunties.

Threats: More different content types will compete for top positions in search engines. One day, you may find all your web page get buried if you do not incorporate new thinkings and implement new strategy now.

Opportunities: You can now thinking of optimizing your multimedia content for search. Now, you have a chance to display MP3, images, video, and etc.. in search listing instead of only dull text. Creative use of multimedia to present your products and services can improve your conversion.

Whether universal search is your threat or your opportunity, it depends on whether you will adopt a new thinking of search engine optimization and search engine marketing. Are you still thinking of ranking only?

I will discuss this issue in depth later.

Do you need comtemporary search engine optimization approach to accommodate new search era? Talk to us. You can also learn more about our company background of search engine optimization.

A new article is published at http://www.agogdigital.com/seo-google-optimization.html. The article is about SEO and Google Optimization. It gives insightful ideas for optimizing website for Google.

I read an interesting peice of information relate to SEO:

“According to a recent KnowledgeStorm and Marketing Sherpa study, 84% of tech buyers use multiple online channels to research product purchases. Because they use three or more words in a search keyword and often employ the use of words like “and” and “or“, the results they receive go much deeper than simply search queries. They will scan as many as five pages of search results while looking for the information they deem most helpful.”

According to this study, it gives some insightful ideas for SEO:

1. You should optimize highly targeted keyword phrases even though they have 3 or more words. Otherwise, you will miss a large portion of highly targeted search engine users.

2. Research and find out your keywords with more creativity. General marketers may think that people will use only 1 word or 2 words in search. In fact, people use more specific keywords to find out what they want. If they cannot find it or think the result is still too general, they will even use the word “and” and “or” to refine the search results.

3. General marketers think that people will only see page 1 search result page (top 10 search engine rankings), this study dismisses this thought. If people are really searching for information to finalize their purchase decision, they are willing to read deep, e.g. the first 5 top search result pages.

4. To SEO, it tells us even top 50 search engine rankings has their value, and keyword combination is unlimited. If you want to start aggressive search engine optimization campaign, you must optimize for lots of keywords instead of only 10-20 keywords. Otherwise, you may miss many prospective.

I found that if your business and your home have lots of stuff to store, it can be a troublesome. E.g. lots of files, invoices, magazines, books for memories, and some less used clothes…

Recently, I read some ads, and find out there is a solution called mini storage. You can rent your spaces and store those stuff. It costs you a few hundred dollars but it saves you lots of space. I just don’t know how they organize your stuff, and whether it is convenient to take your stuff out. I will do more research about mini storage.