Towards the end of 2007, Google reported that their supplemental index was now merged with their primary web index. The "experiment" all began about 4 years ago, when Google created this Supplemental Index to separately serve webpage listings for more obscure queries, or pages that don’t have enough link juice. Whatever you want to call it – supplemental, auxiliary, secondary – it was deemed “Google Hell” because pages that fell in this index were believed to have been crawled less frequently, were extremely difficult to move into the primary index, had little to no chance of ranking for competitive terms, and were viewed as the "internet’s trash." Ouch. Google always remained vague about it, though, and never seemed to really fess up to how and why a particular page is in there. Rather, they simply stated that it was “not something to be afraid of.”

The phase out has been in the works for a while now, and back on August 3, 2007, Google announced it would stop using the "Supplemental Results" label. What did this do? Add more confusion. Which ones were supplemental? Were supplemental results getting listed for competitive keywords?

Now the two indexes are merged into one. No tags, no more supplemental index; however, the controversy and confusion remain. Link builders should beware because paid search links are being targeted by Google themselves ... but with the importance of inbound links, do they still help? Does that mean that Googlebot will now spider the old supplemental pages more frequently? How will this affect your site’s overall organic search traffic?

One thing is clear: With more pages competing for the same keyword, SEO is more important now than it ever was, and best practices are no longer enough.

Article by Dan Coe

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales announced the public launch of Wikia Search. While the non-profit Wikipedia dominates the organic listings on most engines, Wikia is a for-profit attempt to beat Google at the search game. Many were excited by the potential of Wikia, hoping for a Google vs. Wikia battle. However, based on the poor results from the alpha launch, the engines have nothing to worry about for now. I performed a search for “diabetes” in which the first 5 results were not .com’s and 2 of them were in German. A search for “Hillary Clinton” didn’t turn up her official website. Interestingly, none of the searches I performed even pulled up Wikipedia results.

Jimmy believes that search engines are very good, but in effect they are organized around a secret recipe that nobody understands. Wikia is founded around 4 organizing principles that they believe will differentiate them from the other engines.

Transparency – Making this an Open Source product allows everyone to know what is going on and how to operate within their system.

Community – Allowing everyone to contribute will make Wikia focused on social and community.

Quality – Improve the relevancy and results for a better search experience

Privacy – Protect it at all costs by not storing or sending data.

It’s tough to believe that this will be a failure based on the success of Wikipedia. However, in this election season, the early polls don’t look good for Wikia.

Article by Joshua Palau

As we all know, the Search Engines are continually adding new programs to increase their plethora of offerings. Google recently added a new program called “Google Select Network” that is currently in a limited Beta release. This program allows an advertiser to run their advertisements on the existing Content network, with a slight twist. If you run on the Google Select Network today, an advertiser’s ad could show up on a potentially controversial website, which could be detrimental to their brand. Google decided to create a “Family safe” network where you are guaranteed that your ad will only show on “safe” websites. Below are statistics that create the guarantees for advertisers:

Number of Sites – The network has 1,200 websites and ensures that they are “family safe,” and that all listings will show only on politically correct websites.

Vertical Alignment – The sites will match your client’s vertical. Google’s network is made up of two key verticals – Consumer Inventory (98%) and B2B Inventory (2%).

Variety of Sites – Such as “The New York Times,” “Forbes.com,” “MarthaStewart.com,” WashingtonPost.com,” and “FoodNetwork.com”

Number of Users – Since the network has 1,200 sites, the number of monthly unique users make up 52% of internet users (93 million people).

Demographic/Gender Variety – Male 50.8% vs. Female 49.2%

Positioning – There is no preferential positioning on these listings. They will go into the same auction model as the existing Content listings do today, and do not get placed above standard Content ads.

Placement Report – As with their standard Content program, you can use the placement report to block sites from the 1,200 in their distribution. However, remember that you would be limiting your exposure.

Google’s reasoning behind this product is to encourage advertisers that were hesitant to test Content targeting in the past. One might say that this implies Google realizes that their network has too broad of a reach, and that therefore they are offering another solution. However, my opinion is that Google wants all of their advertisers to participate in all of their offerings to increase the relevant advertisers within their system (while they make additional revenue).  Since Google now offers the “Placement Report,” where you can see all of the sites that your listings are matching to, it has become easier to remove sites for your ad’s distribution. This is true for the “Select Network,” which has the ability for the advertiser to select negative words that they don’t want their ads to show up for.

Overall, the clients that should use the Beta version of this product offering are the ones that are reluctant to participate in the existing Content network. This would allow for expansion into new programs that they were unable to test previously. Additionally, this might end up being a launching pad into the full Content network, where continued Placement reporting and excluding irrelevant sites can improve/increase the relevancy of matching.

Article by Emma Cockburn

We have certainly seen some new Search Trends in 2007, William Flaiz discusses that some marketers are in for the same old SEO troubles.

Googlebot is learning to read. This past week, Google filed several patents that are intended to have them index more than just the web.

Mahalo means thank you…it’s also the name of the Jason Calcanis search engine powered by real people