But if there is one thing that was made predominately clear in 2009, it’s that Microsoft is serious about competing with Google. After buying up Yahoo, Microsoft is claiming a much larger portion of online search results and ad revenue.

Currently Google takes up about 70% of all online searches, Yahoo claims around 16% and Bing claims about 10% (source HitWise). One thing that is interesting to note is that Bing’s numbers have actually dropped since the their launch buzz wore off – they were initially seeing about 12% of search results (as of June 2009).

Despite the drop in numbers, I think most people would characterize Bing as a success. Google didn’t start out a giant, it grew into its position by innovating search results with a more advanced and refined algorithm than its competitors, they also gained popularity by not focusing on ad-based results (which is definitely not the case now), and a unique look.

Bing doesn’t offer much in the way of an improved algorithm, less of a focus on ad-based results, or looks (Bing definitely used Google as a source of inspiration on all of these). Microsoft’s game plan is to set itself apart by expanding search related services, integrating with social networks, and generally spending lots of money.

In terms of search results, Microsoft really doesn’t offer any improvements from the Google algorithm. The search results are similar but nothing especially different or more useful. I think that Google is a better and more friendly search engine than Bing; I get much more traffic from Google, their business listings are much easier than Bings, and Google’s suite of Webmaster Tools, Analytics, and PPC advertising is top notch.

Microsoft was the first to announce a partnership with Twitter for real-time search results (although Google quickly responded with Twitter search of their own). And with the introduction of real-time Facebook results in searches, it’s clear that both search engines view social networking as a burgeoning frontier. It’s still unclear where and if this integration will effect marketing online, but it’s exciting to see the expanse of social networking.

Things started to heat up when Rupert Murdoch spoke out against Google and their “stealing stories”. Microsoft answered the call and began offering publishers money for search results. With stories like these, it’s easy to tell that the search landscape will continue to change in 2010; for better or worse.

While Microsoft seems intent on pressuring Google to spend money in order to compete, it’s unclear on whether or not this tactic will work. Google hasn’t necessarily been open on whether or not they would pay for search results, but it seems contradictory to their nature. Google is known as a search engine where the best site wins, by opening up search results to large publishers this could effectively phase out smaller news sources (like yours truly) from ever gaining the recognition we currently receive through organic search results.

Overall, the fight continues. Microsoft will no doubt try and reclaim more of the search market in 2010 (they still have plenty of fight and money left before they back down). The big question that remains is if Google will set itself apart from Bing. At this point, they seem to be mirroring each other’s innovations and services and not offering anything unique. I think once the Facebook and Twitter search fizzles out the focus will be on content. Will Google pay for results? Will Microsoft even pay for results? I think this will be the key issue that dominate search engine news for the majority of 2010. If one things clear, Microsoft has an uphill battle in front of them, and they will need to provide something unique from Google to stand out and ultimately succeed.

A new survey from Prompt Communications finds that Facebook is the most popular form of communication. Not just social media communication; all online communication:

• Facebook (96%)
• SMS (93%)
• email (91%)

“Yet, people are ambivalent towards the way that technology and social media are impacting society. 60% of people believe that they rely too much on technology, and 71% believe social media is making communication less personal. This indicates that even though they are using social media more, they feel they are having real human interaction less. But they are addicts – over 52% claim they couldn’t last a week without social media.” Says James Gerber.

These results are definitely surprising. Social Media has emerged as a great way to connect and interact with people online but only recently has it become the focus of many large business efforts. But in a world of social media, “people still crave real in-person human interaction.” – says Gerber.

In the past we had predicted Facebook as being the dominant force in social media - clearly beating Twitter in both users and traffic.

Symantec has reported that some search results for “Woods” have redirected users to malicious domains such as:

- vir-curemypc-now.com
- egafuki.cn
- online-scanner-free.net

“From an IT security point of view, this unfortunate incident is just another fruit ripe for the picking as far as malware writers are concerned,” says Symantec’s Hon Lau. “It comes as no surprise that the creators of rogue antivirus or misleading application software have already jumped on the bandwagon and attempted to poison web search engine results to take advantage of this spike in web search activity.”

Symantec reminds surfers to keep their browsers and computers clean while searching the web. It’s always a good idea to have real-time virus detection software (I personally use BitDefender). When it comes to popular news stories, it’s always better to use trusted sources online, avoid sites you’re not familiar with and make sure your safe out there.

There is nothing better for a website than a high authority link. A couple great links can lift a website from obscurity to ranking well in the serps in a very short amount of time. Although links can be a great thing, it’s important to remember that bad links can harm your website as much as good ones can help them.

As search engines get smarter, the serps become more and more filtered with quality results. It’s no longer a viable option to just buy a bunch of links and hope for good results. The most powerful links today are gained organically and bring a good amount of quality traffic to your site. Remember the word quality because it’s the most important thing about your web traffic. You could get 100s or 1,000s of visits a day but unless those visits are coming from quality sources and actual people, they don’t mean anything. Search engines are looking more and more at the quality, consistency, and longevity of traffic to a website when they compile their results.

Most Bad Links Are Paid for.
It’s sad but true. You will want to avoid bad links like the plague and the most common place to find them is by paying for them. There is an awesome article by randfish from SEOmoz that explains how link building has changed. While I don’t agree with him that buying links is entirely a bad thing; it definitely pays to be cautious.

Don’t use link building services
It’s so tempting. There’s a site offering hundreds, possibly thousands of links for a mere $100. They promise you the links aren’t bad, they even claim most of the sites have a PR between 1 and 4. Sounds too good to be true; that’s because it is. What these services don’t tell you is that some (if not most) of the places your link will end up are in the bad part of town – the javascript-trojan-spam-fest part of the web.

Submit to Directories but be Cautious
Directories can be a great source of high quality back links but you’ll want to avoid submitting haphazardly to any directory you come across. Long term SEO goals should not rely on directory submissions, they are however, a good way to build page strength and quality back links quickly. Here are a few great tips to remember when submitting to directories:

What Makes a Good Directory?
Here are some quick things to keep in mind when looking at a directory for a potential back link.

What’s the Page and Domain Strength
Check the strength of the page your link will be appearing, is it worth having a back link? Is it worth paying for that link? Check the page and domain strength (I recommend Linkscape) and find out whether or not this link will be valuable.

Is the Site Indexed?
Always make sure your link will be indexed by search engines. If it’s not, don’t submit. If they don’t recognize it, the link is pretty much worthless; especially if you paying for it. Here’s a simple trick to find out whether or not your link will be indexed:

Type site:http://www.yourwebsite.com in any search engine and find out if it’s being indexed.

How much Advertising do they have?
Directories with so many ads that it becomes cumbersome to navigate (there are tons of these) are not worth links. You’ll find that the best directories online (free and paid) don’t have that many ads; sometimes they have none. It’s not a coincidence.

Do they List Adult Sites?
If a directory lists adult sites (unless it’s a large and prominent directory) don’t list your site there; unless of course you’re promoting an adult site. It’s always a good idea to remain in family friendly directories, the links are typically worth more and there is no possible guilt by association.

Avoid Auto Approval Directories
A good rule of thumb when submitting to directories is to make sure that they are human edited. If all sites are accepted, chances are your link won’t be worth much. Search Engines put more emphasis on directories which are human edited and actually try to avoid auto-submit directories.

Avoid Free Directories
In my experience, most free directories are not well edited. Most are used in hopes of generating traffic to click on their ads and make a few dollars for the webmaster; they’re mostly junk sites. But that’s not to say that there aren’t great free directories online, they’re just usually hard to find. The truth is, I’ve probably spent more time removing bad free directory links then I’ve ever had gaining good free directory links.

Here are some great free directories I’ve come across:

DMOZ

Simply put, this is the best directory online. If you can actually manage to secure a link here, it will significantly boost your page and domain strength. Be aware, the wait for link approval is beyond long and it’s highly political. So don’t count on your site being linked here, but if it is, be happy.

Pegasus Directory

This is a great human edited free and paid directory. They have almost no advertising and have great domain and page strength. Their free approvals can be very long (up to 6 months) but they only list quality sites.

Web World

No advertising, human edited, great page strength.

Little Web Directory

No ads, human edited decent page strength.

Best Web Directories provides a great list of free directories online.

Listen to the Search Engines
Google, Bing, and Yahoo constantly give out information in interviews, blogs, and other sources which explains parts of their ranking process. In a great article by Chris Crum over at WebProNews, he talks about the dos and don’ts of link building for Bing with Rick DeJarnette of Bing’s Webmaster Center. The interview provides a great layout of what makes a website successful in today’s serps.

Be in Control of Your Links
The easiest way to avoid bad links is to know where your site is being linked. Keeping a constant watch of your back links is a great way to make sure your site isn’t ending up in the wrong part of town.

Google Webmaster Tools provides a great free service for your website which can check your back links recognized by Google.

Domain Inbound Links Checker is a really great tool that picks up on links a lot of other services don’t. (no anchor text in the results).

Backlink Watch is another great tool and picks up a lot of backlinks other tools don’t, but they have a lot of ads and the results are kind of slow (they display the anchor text).

Business directories can be a powerful tool that can gain you more exposure online. Many provide free links and a great platform to present your business to potential customers. After all, making your business easy to find is half the battle of a good SEO campaign.

Keep in mind that the majority, if not all, of these directories will “nofollow” your links. You won’t be gaining any quality back links here, but you will be improving your geo-targeted search results; not to mention appearing to millions of potential customers every day.

If you’re not familiar with geo-targeting, it is the practice of targeting your search results and business listings to a local or regional marketplace rather than a worldwide or national marketplace. Many companies receive a large amount of traffic and business from geo-targeted results. In many places, geo-targeting will still be attracting millions of potential visitors and is a very powerful form of search engine optimization and online marketing.

Here are some great geo-targeting business directories to list to:

Google Local Business Center

Google Local Business Center, or more commonly known as Google Maps, is probably one of the best places to list your business online.

A free listing here notifies Google and its millions of users that you exist. Your listings can include pictures, movies, links, descriptions (it’s pretty much a mini website).

Your listing can appear in local search results for relevant keywords, Google Maps, and Google Maps applications (Iphone, etc.).
If you haven’t already listed your business here, what are you waiting for?

Be aware that phone verification is required.

Yahoo Local and Yahoo Directory

Listing with Yahoo Local is similar to Google Local except the level of exposure is not as great. Their search results do not include business listings in relevant areas like Google Maps, and I know of hardly any platforms that use Yahoo’s Local directory in their search results.

If you want to improve your traffic with Yahoo you should consider listing to the Yahoo Directory. It’s expensive ($299 per year) but can provide dozens of great quality back links and will increase your traffic in Yahoo’s search results.

Yahoo used to include directory results within their organic searches, but I don’t see this being applied anymore. However, listing to their directory will increase your traffic with them and possibly give you a good bump in PR.

Bing Local Business Center

Bing, like Yahoo, does not include its local business listings in search results, and really has no other platforms that carry their business listings either.

Listing your business with Bing is beneficial because it’s growing in popularity and its persistent battle against Google, will probably end up in a lot of similar features; including map results in geo-targeted searches.

The one really bad thing about listing your business to Bing is the extremely long verification process. They only allow verification by snail mail. That’s right, you’ll need to wait 6 weeks (they claim 3; it was 6) to get a letter in the mail with a PIN verification. From there, you’re listing is still under review for another week or two until they decide to approve it. It’s an extremely annoying process.

Yelp

Yelp receives an estimated 6.6 million visitors a month (data by Quantcast). Although all businesses can benefit from a listing here, I find that the most frequently searched businesses through Yelp are retail or restaurants.

Yelp also has a very popular iPhone Application that contains all the same information as its online service, including map locations.

Local.com

Local.com is a great resource to gain exposure for your business. I have clients that receive dozens of customers a month through their local.com premium listing ($49.95 a month).

Local.com receives an estimated 4.2 million visitors a month (data by Quantcast) and has a very loyal user base. It is a great place to list your business online; either free or paid. Any type of business has a good chance to gain exposure here. Premium listings aren’t required, but they will certainly drive more traffic your way.

Superpages.com

Superpages.com is another high traffic business directory that offers both free and paid listings. I don’t see much traffic or phone calls as a result of a free listing, but you can gain a link to your website and blog through their free submission service.

iBegin.com

iBegin is a business directory for the US and Canada. Listings are free and provide photos, links, and descriptions for your business.

Be aware phone verification is required.

Yellowpages.com

Yellowpages.com is large business directory that accepts both free and paid listings. The only problem with the free listing is that they will constantly call you in hopes of upgrading your listing. I used to get about 4 calls a month asking me to upgrade my listing, I eventually had to tell them to stop calling.

You won’t see much of an increase in traffic or phone calls from a free listing but premium listings do receive a decent amount of traffic and they do a good job of promoting your business through their service.

Localeze

Localeze offers an interesting service. They claim that listing with them will improve your local search results. It’s an interesting concept that could benefit a geo-targeted business (which the majority online are). Their listings are free but I believe they offer some premium services as well.

Insiderpages

Insiderpages is another large geo-targeted business directory. They emphasize reviews for local businesses so retail and restaurant listings will benefit more than others.

Openlist

Open list is another large online business directory but they only allow businesses that meet their category criteria (mostly retail, automotive, and physicians). If you can list your site here, do it.

City Search

City Search is a good geo-targeted business directory for retail, bars and clubs, hotels, and other specialized business listings. Most businesses will not be able to list here, but if you’re in their desired category, make sure you submit a listing.

If you have any additional business directories you would like to mention, please leave them in the comments below.

More and more I see sites that are using inbound links in the footer. The idea of creating a list of inbound links is a great idea (you can help distribute page strength) but it’s become increasingly clear that the footer is no longer the place to keep them.

Search Engines might devalue Footer links

An interview with Yahoo’s Priyank Garg reveals they might devalue footer links. There is also speculation that Google might penalize sites for too many Footer links. Not to mention numerous reports from webmasters (including myself) that they have seen a jump in rankings when inbound footer links are removed.

Footer links have terrible CTR.

While I doubt that webmasters place inbound links in their footer in the hopes of directing traffic, the truth is, nobody clicks on them. Consistently we’ve seen that footer links are almost never used by visitors.

Footer links can lead to unhealthy link totals

The amount of juice passed by a link is affected by the number of links on a page. Many sites have dozens of links per page and adding more links in the footer can negatively affect the strength gained from each link. This is also something to keep in mind when evaluating the value of a link in general – try to stay away from pages with over 100 outbound links.

Use ‘nofollow” links instead

If you must use links in your footer, think about using some “nofollow” links. I’m sure there are some pages on your website that you wouldn’t want gaining in page strength (policy pages, forms, etc.). “nofollow” links are not recognized by search engines and thus wont negatively affect your page or link strength.

Make functional Footers

Don’t just stuff links into the footer of your website. Make them look attractive and provide a functional purpose. There’s nothing worse than seeing a footer jumbled with inconsequential links. Try placing relevant links in your footer, or separate them into categories, your visitors will be much more inclined to use them.

This is a very common mistake perpetrated widely throughout the online community. Footers might provide functional aspects for larger websites but most websites simply don’t need them. Additionally, the fact that search engines might devalue these links might convince webmasters to stray from this practice.

A recent article from CNN.com reveals that Microsoft is in talks with NewsCorp to “de-list” its news sites from Google. This is interesting news coming off the recent interview with Rupert Murdoch (NewsCorp chairman) in which he spoke out against Google.

Financial Times has reported that Microsoft has contacted other big name online publishers in hopes of persuading them to “de-list” their websites from Google as well.

“This is all about Microsoft hurting Google’s margins,” said a web publisher familiar with the plan.

Are we about to see a bidding war between Google and Microsoft for content?

This could be good news for the newspaper industry, which has yet to develop an online business model that could support their declining revenues from print and advertising.

Matt Brittin, Google’s UK director, told a Society of Editors conference that Google did not need news content to survive. “Economically it’s not a big part of how we generate revenue.”

After Microsoft’s launch of Bing (which reportedly receives around 10% of search traffic; reported by ComScore) they have been actively trying to steal users from Google. Striking deals with Twitter, Yahoo, and now possibly large news publishers, Microsoft is actively pursuing paying for content in order to gain in users.

Do you think Google, which currently holds about 60% of the total searches online, would suffer from a “de-listing” from large news sources?

More importantly, how would this affect our current search results? Would paid content get priority?

Are you gaining traffic to your site from Twitter? Are you measuring your traffic through an Analytics program like Google Analytics or Omniture? Well, according to Stan Pugsley, director of business intelligence for iCrossing, up to 70% of referral traffic from Twitter goes unnoticed by analytics applications.

“The problem is not with the web analytics tools, but with the Twitter applications like Tweetdeck and Twhirl that are not based in an Internet Browser,” says Pugsley. Apparently links within these programs are counted as direct traffic rather than referrals. Pugsley explains, “When a user clicks through a link in a tweet, those applications do not register a referring URL that can be picked up by the destination website. It appears that they are coming directly to the site. According to TweetStats, only 31.7% of tweets originate from twitter.com, and those are the visitors that can be tracked back to tweets.”

Is Twitter providing more quality traffic than we originally thought? Since there is no way to analyze your direct traffic – not that I know of at least – we can’t accurately analyze whether or not these third party applications really are providing any sort of quality traffic. I wonder how popular programs like Tweetdeck and Twhirl really are, and whether or not they provide quality traffic.

An interesting YouTube video with Google’s Matt Cutts reveals that Google might change your page title in it’s search results. “We’ve been willing to show the titles that are most useful,” says Cutts. “Suppose the title of your page is ‘Untitled’, or if there is no title. If that’s the case we try to show a useful relevant title.” This seems like a good idea, but how often do you see a high ranking page without a title? I don’t think this is something that we will notice much in the serps.

Cutts explains later in the video that repeating meta tags or title tags might also be altered in Google’s results, “we reserve the right to try to figure out what’s a better title, what’s a more descriptive snippet.” Again, this seems like a good move on Google’s part, but how often are well ranked pages using duplicate titles and meta-tags? Anyone familiar with Google’s Webmaster Tools is well aware of the potential serps hit for duplicate titles and tags. This again seems like something we wouldn’t really notice.

Cutts also provides an interesting comment on longer titles, “If you have a title that’s really really long and has a bunch of different words in it, we may still use that in our scoring but when we’re ready to show the snippet to the user we may try to find a better title.” This is interesting news because its long been considered good seo practice to keep page titles under 70 characters. Are Google’s serps taking into account titles longer than 70 characters? It would be interesting to find out if there is any hidden truth behind this comment.

Below is the full video:

It’s clear Yahoo is making some big changes. Their homepage re-design has been a success, they’ve pretty much given their search results to Bing (read about it here), and now they’ve decided to get serious about their news presentation.

I think this is a great decision by Yahoo. The one gripe I’ve had with their news service in the past is the fluctuations in the quality of articles. Some are very well written, while others are riddled with typographical errors and poor insight. Placing the news in the hands of a capable editor seems like just the way to fix this problem.