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Changes in the search engines race by at a mile a minute. If you have ever wondered why your clients think that their Meta keywords tag will give them a rankings boost, a little history lesson might be in order! Anyone working in SEO and SEM today needs to know some history in order to understand clients' expectations, today's best practices, and what's coming next. Pack up your time machines and let's travel together to …
1998: The spam days
Once upon a time, search engine marketing (SEM) was known as search engine optimization (SEO), and was primarily achieved by formulaic algorithms and automatic submittals. The search engines' indexing programs would look at the text on a page and use a "secret formula" to determine page rankings. This era could also be called the Golden Age of Spam, because it was possible to get a high rank by repeating a keyword multiple times, or through other similar techniques. (Yahoo! is an exception – Yahoo! has always been indexed by humans who could identify and ban spammers' websites).
Gradually, search engines started recognizing spam and penalizing accordingly. Unscrupulous search engine optimizers were continuously trying to find new and ingenious ways to fool the indexing algorithms, and search engines were always one step behind. Clearly, search engines needed innovations that took control away from the spammers and auto-submitters. One early anti-spam innovation was incorporating off-the-page information.
1999: Incorporating off-the-page information
Around mid-1999, search engines began using the intelligence of the masses to improve the quality of search results. DirectHit (since associated by Ask Jeeves) introduced a technology that watches sites that are chosen by searchers. In this system, a website that is regularly chosen for a given keyword will rise in ranking for that keyword. More clicks = higher rank! Higher rank = more clicks! This system gives big, popular sites an advantage over smaller competitors.
Another way to utilize the intelligence of the masses is to rank pages based on how many other pages are linked to it. This is called "link popularity" and remains a very important factor in ranking. Again, the advantage goes to the large, popular site.
Both of the above parameters are known as "off-the-page" factors because they are factors that are not directly based on the content on your web page. The appeal of "off-the-page" factors is that spam efforts do not influence them. Google, for example, has made excellent use of the link popularity factor in its well-known PageRank algorithm.
1999: Community-edited directories
Human-edited directories provide quality results and are not susceptible to spam, but often lack quantity because of the limited number of editors. For example, Yahoo !, being primarily a human-edited directory, is limited by the size of its editorial staff, and has difficulty keeping up with the huge number of sites that deserve indexing.
A solution to this problem is the "community-edited" directory. The community-edited paradigm allows for thousands of editors, organized in a system of self-governance, to consistently improve and add to a directory. The Netscape Open Directory Project was the first of these, and the (now defunct) Go.com directory was another early leader. Zeal.com, which feeds results into Looksmart.com and MSN search, is a newer addition to this category.
The Netscape Open Directory had the additional bright idea of being open source. This means that the content in their directory is available for free display on any website. The result is that in the year 2000, listings from Open Directory started showing up on almost every major search engine, along with many other portals and diverse sites on the web.
The marriage of size and quality has made community-edited directories an important element in the search world.
2000: Paid listings
In 1999, AltaVista tried to introduce paid listings, was universally denied, and dropped the idea almost immediately. In contrast, by the end of 2000 all major search engines offered some kind of paid listing option. Overture (previously Goto) began this trend and is still a major player, offering ranking for keywords based on an auction system: the higher the bid, the higher your rank. The bid amount is charged every time a user clicks on your site listing, a payment model known as pay-per-click (PPC), also known as "Pay-for-performance." Overture was later joined by Google AdWords, and these are now the two major players in the PPC market.
Additionally, in 2001 most directories and search engines introduced various payment models for listing submittals: submittal fees for major human-edited directories, indexing fees for the major spiders, and several different types of ad placement opportunities. Yahoo! introduced a "Business Express" submittal fee for commercial content, which was later changed to a yearly fee. Looksm switched from a one-time submittal fee to a PPC model. Major spiders Inktomi, AltaVista, and FAST Search introduced paid inclusion models – a yearly fee that ensures a site will be listed and regularly re-spidered.
As of 2001, a typical search engine marketing campaign involved at least some form of expenditure, either annually or on a per-click basis.
2001: Google's rise to prominence
The years 2000 – 2001 heralded the rise of Google to prominence among search engines. While other search engines were focusing on becoming "portals," Google kept an extremely simple and quick interface that focused solely on search results. Google also developed advanced features such as PDF search and Flash search. Additionally, Google's use of "off-the-page" factors such as link popularity made it quite spam-resistant. Google's dominance was cinched when Yahoo! switched its secondary search result partnership from Inktomi to Google in July of 2000 (Yahoo! later began using Google for its primary search results). Many additional partners, including AOL and Ask Jeeves, followed.
With Google's success, several other search engines are trying to follow its lead: Wisenut, Teoma, and FAST search are competitors that present simple, quick search results. Other threats to Google include the Inktomi spider, now owned by Yahoo !. It remains to be seen while any of these will succeed in chipping away at Google's monopoly.
2002-2003: Hybridization and partnerships
Hybridization of search results means that search engines can combine the best of all worlds: high quality listings from editorially-reviewed directories, a large quantity of pages indexed by the large spiders (Inktomi, Google, and others), and income from PPC listings. By 2001, all major search engines provided search results using a hybrid of the various systems indicated above. For example, Yahoo! search results mixed Yahoo! -directory results, Overture (PPC) results, and Google results. MSN provided results from Overture (PPC), Looksmart, and Inktomi.
2002 marked several major purchases among search engines: Yahoo! purchased Inktomi, Overture purchased FAST, and there were also many shifts in search engine partnership contracts. The 2003 purchase of Overture by Yahoo! was another step in what appears to be an industry consolidation.
Consolidation certainly simplifies the job of the search engine marketer: no longer do you need to worry about submittals and optimization for five or more major search engines. And for the novice searcher, consolidation may actually be an improvement. A novice searcher who does not have the savvy to try multiple sources may have better luck with one large, hybrid search engine. However, it represents a loss to the searching public overall. Fewer independent editorial staffs and index databases mean few options for a searcher when he or she has special searching needs. For example, currently I often use Yahoo! directory when searching for an official company site, Froogle for shopping search, Google for most other searches, and AltaVista or FAST if I do not find what I'm looking for at Google. Search engine consolidation would take away much of this choice and control.
2003: Little guys get in on PPC with contextual advertising
"Contextual advertising" is a general term for sponsored links that are run on content sites around the web, rather than just on search engines. This term was originally used to describe systems (such as eZula and Gator) that created hyperlinks within the HTML of content pages. For example, if your webpage utilized the word "car," these systems would change the way your page looked to users, and make each instance of the word "car" into a link to their search results. Before 2003, these systems did not get the content provider's permission, did not label the links as ads, did not provide revenue to the content provider, and required a browser plug-in that was often installed without the users knowledge or consent. Because of these flaws, it is a system that was never embroidered by the SEM community.
In 2003, the "little guy" got a chance to jump on the PPC bandwagon in a legitimate way with the launch of Google AdSense. AdSense allows almost any content-provider on the web to list Google AdWords (PPC links) on his or her site and receive part of the PPC revenue. The advertisements are clearly labeled and separated from content, similar to a banner ad. Overture is expected to launch a similar service in the near future. The success of this service will depend on good editorial review (or excellent algorithms) to ensure that ads are served on well-matched pages. My hope is that the system will evolve into one that allows content providers to choose which ads will run on their pages. This would provide a natural, built-in editorial review to ensure appropriate, well-matched advertising and maximized clickthrough rates.
2004 and onward: The future of search engine marketing
Search engines have evolved into sophisticated systems, and will continue to enhance their technical side, with improved capabilities to index "deep" pages and pages that are dynamically generated, indexing of non-HTML content such as PDFs, Macromedia Flash, and graphics, improved ability to rapidly integrate new content such as news using XML feeds or other technology, organization of search results into logical categories, artificial intelligence, personalized search, and other advanced features. (For insights into the future of search, visit Google Labs and Overture research.) These advances will improve the quality of the search experience for everyone. Search results will be more accurate, and spam techniques will be a thing of the past. The site optimization techniques of 1998-1999 will be only a very small portion of search engine marketing.
At the same time, corporate mergers, consolidation, and the old-fashioned "highest-bidder" approach are making search engines feel more and more like a traditional advertising venue. Search engine marketing firms will need to provide services similar to an advertising firm: understanding client business goals and messages, advertising advertising channels, and designing campaigns that will capture user interest and attention.
Lastly, the search engine marketer will need to provide a holistic approach to the user experience of searching for, finding, and utilizing a business website. This could include usability studies, conversion tracking, and research related to the user experience on a website. When all is said and done, the success of a business website depends on much more than its rank on a search engine.
Each of the above components, site optimization, advertising management, and holistic online marketing analysis, will be key components of online marketing in the future. The question arises if these services will be provided by stand-alone SEM firms, or if they will be absorbed into advertising firms and marketing departments. My belief is that the SEM specialty firm will survive for at least the next several years. After that, some SEM firms may be bought up by advertising firms, some of the work will be absorbed into corporate marketing departments, and some will be provided by the PPC engine's sales agents. My hope is that my favorite part of SEM – consulting with companies about their business goals and then developing a customized online marketing strategy, including usability, writing, and design – will survive to become a successful, vital industry in its own right.
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Source by Veronica Riking
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