TechCrunch reports that Google is testing integrating results from its shopping search engine (formerly known as Froogle) with its regular search engine results. The upshot is that when you search on a given search phrase, you may see a few shopping results squeezed in between traditional search results.

Now TechCrunch’s article is based on tips it’s received, and it’s not apparent whether, if true, the integration is confined to U.S. search results… or whether Google is just conducting a small test…

But if true - and total integration between Google’s shopping and regular search engines is on Google’s agenda - it might be a good idea for YOU to get listed in Google shopping search engine sooner rather than later…

Source: Robin Wauters, “Google Starts Blending Web And Shopping Search Results Again,” December 15, 2008

Google will begin indexing scanned documents in its search results.

Since Google’s spiders can’t index text data, Google will be using optical character recognition (OCR) technology to convert photos of words into digital text files, necessitating a huge amount of processing power.

Source: Jason Kincaid, “Google Now Indexes Scanned Documents”, TechCrunch, October 30, 2008

Could it be that we don’t really need to get the first spot on the search engine results pages (SERPs) in order to attract our most qualified prospects i.e. the supposed 20 percent of prospects who generate 80 percent of sales?

Well, some research from MarketingSherpa indicates there might be some truth in this…

In a recent study, MarketingSherpa found that certain kinds of search engine users are prepared to wade through more SERPs than one might normally expect. It found that among industrial engineers:

• 14 percent just looked at the first few results on the first page of results;
• 39 percent looked at the first page of results;
• 10 percent stopped looking after the second page of results; and
• 37 percent looked through more than two pages of results.

MarketingSherpa reckons these findings would be typical of niche searchers. Presumably, anyone highly motivated to find uncommon (i.e. niche) information is more inclined to look through more pages of results than other kinds of searchers.

Given that search engine optimization (SEO) - like anything - comes at a cost, it *may* follow that at a certain point it may no longer be cost-effective to keep striving to become number in the SERPs, simply because niche prospects are prepared to look through more results anyway.

Maybe…

Source: MarketingSherpa, “New Chart: Optimize All Your Web Pages For Niche Searchers Seeking Relevant Results”, MarketingSherpa, October 14, 2008

Ross Dunn’s recent article in Web Marketing Today provides a handy outline of some of the search engine optimization (SEO) tools you can use to improve your search engine and general Internet marketing results.

Helpfully, Mr Dunn lists both free and paid tools in terms of four key areas:

1. Monitoring search engine rankings
2. Keyword research
3. Link tracking
4. Website check-up

The good news is that most of these tools are available free via a Google Webmaster account. Don’t have one of those? Sign up for free at http://www.google.com/webmasters/.

Source: Ross Dunn, “SEO Tools That Will Help You Succeed. Part 1″, Web Marketing Today, September 16, 2008

You may think you know the answer… but you may be surprised…

Magazines.com recently ran several tests that, among other things, compared the results of using the homepage as a search landing page compared with using a product-specific landing page.

The Magazines.com team, led by Kate O’Neill, director of customer experience and product development, ran a two-week test to see how the Magazines.com homepage - featuring a highlighted special offer on O magazine (a 67% discount for a 1-year subscription) would fare against their O magazine product-detail landing page, for search traffic.

Ms O’Neill then expanded the test to include other magazine titles, with markedly different audiences to those of O magazine. In each case, the homepage - including a special offer highlighted for a given magazine - was tested against a title-specific page for search traffic.

Surprisingly enough, O magazine search traffic converted more when they landed on the homepage/special offer combination than when they arrived at the product-detail page. But for the other titles tested, the title-detail page outperformed the homepage/special offer combination.

Once again, these results highlight the fact that different audiences respond differently to the same elements and… that you need to TEST before reaching any conclusions about what will work best for a given product or target market.

We’ll undoubtedly return to this theme again and again, as tests we’ve run on our own sites and those of our clients continue to bear this conclusion out.

Source: MarketingSherpa, “Homepage Offer vs. Product Landing Page - Search Test Results”, MarketingSherpa, June 19, 2008