Wolfram Alpha, it's Knowledge Engine Not Search Engine

New technology term to add to the lexicon: "Knowledge Engine"

Very distinctly different from a search engine in that you are not intended to "Find" anything at all, then leave to go look at one of the results you found. The intent here is to learn something and gain knowledge by providing queries to the Wolfram "Knowledge Engine" then continuing to learn by refining the direction and scope of those queries until you come up with knowledge. Sometimes you learn things you didn't realize you wanted to know, but still find useful and relevant.

As I watched the demo video I found myself shaking my head in disbelief while I kept mouthing the word "Wow!" I'd be surprised if you don't have the same reaction, because it really is that fascinating and unbelievable. It is of limited use right now due to the factual data stored by Wolfram to compute the knowledge, but is nonetheless incredible.

Often the term "Google Killer" comes up when a new service or tool arises, but it usually turns out to not be a true competitor for a myriad of reasons. I've heard the term "Google Killer" applied to such odd warriors as Twitter or Facebook and now it's being applied by many here. That's foolish in this case as well - especially with the new features released by Google last week.

I've long been interested in the "Open" strategy and have been looking of late at the utility of adding external services to both my own and to client sites. So of course I stumbled into the Wolfram "Developer" section and started ruminating on how I might leverage the power of a knowledge engine and where it would be most useful on my own sites and those of others.

I'm an advocate of using specialists do what they do best and if that means AddThis for social media sharing, or Google Custom Search embedded on every page, I don't pretend that I can do better than those who specialize in those tasks. They are always going to offer evolving functionality and steady improvement that I won't have to bother with.

So it appears that Wolfram Alpha now offers an extensive API, widgets and other interface options with enterprise level partners. Since I've always been a fan of learning and knowledge, there are dozens of places I'd love to integrate Wolfram into my own sites. It seems that others might find that utility of value as well.

I don't see this as a Google Killer or even a competitor except for those who are using Google to gain knowledge, rather than discovery, as intended. When I want to learn something that Wolfram does well, I'll go there, when I want to find a web site, review, video or news, I'll go to a search engine. Maybe the next great innovation will be someone who comes up with a tool that solves the navigational search of those who type web addresses into the search box at Google. :)

SEM or SEO? No Both for Most Search Teams

At the MediaPost Search Insider Summit, I got the opportunity to join a panel on social media and search with Darrin Shamo of Zappos and panel moderator Bob Heyman of MediaSmith (and co-author of the book Digital Engagement). I'm not going to discuss that panel here and will leave that to another post. But an interesting thing came up during my presentation...

The event is pretty heavily weighted toward SEM and I asked what turned out, to those in attendance, to be a bit of a dopey question. I asked "How many here are interested purely in SEM?" then when only a couple of hands were raised, I was encouraged to think it may be more of an SEO crowd, so I asked "How many are interested purely in SEO?" and saw only another sprinkling of raised hands.

So, based on one of my previous experiences at a major company where the team was half SEM and half SEO, and my current position, which is entirely SEO team with no SEM - I assumed a similar situation would be true of most in-house teams at substantially sized companies.

My assumption was apparently skewed. It seems that most do double-duty on in-house teams. When I asked "What's the balance here?" a few people said, (a few with emotion) "Both!"

That surprised me, based on what I knew before asking that question. But now I know that, at least among the crowd attending Search Insider Summit, that the oft joined SEM/SEO label applies to most. Well I suppose that was a gaff then, but...

Later in the day, I overheard a conversation on a shuttle bus which makes me wonder if SEO is being best served by in-house SEM/SEO's. After two strangers from the conference exchanged greetings & pleasantries, the inevitable "What do you do?" came up from one.

The answer, "SEM and I've been tasked with learning SEO for our team." (emphasis mine) Then the response from an ill-informed questioner was short-sighted and probably simplistic thinking from those who THINK they understand SEO - "So you're learning about meta tags and H1's?"

I'd like to argue that the two disciplines should be divided and I'd wager that many SEM's who love what they do will agree. The skill-set is completely different. Both SEM's and SEO's deal with keywords, and target search engine results pages, but that is where the similarity ends.

Having recently worked day-to-day with an SEM team in-house and being separated only by a cubicle wall for 18 months. I recall the SEO team only dealing with the SEM team during our bi-weekly online marketing group meetings.

So if someone who loves SEM is "tasked with learning SEO," (like that overheard conversation I mentioned above) they are not likely to understand or fully invest themselves in truly learning an important aspect of the Search Marketing business. They'll learn a couple of things and not all aspects of the work. They'll continue to do a great job of SEM and start doing a poor job of SEO.

I'll also argue that if that role is reversed and an SEO is "tasked with learning SEM for the team" then they will learn a few things, but not all of the elements of good SEM and not do a complete and thorough job of SEM but will continue to do a good job of SEO.

I recall a couple of job interviews about 5 years ago where in both cases, I was talking with an SEM manager who had convinced their boss that they needed a full-time SEO on staff to handle things they weren't able to continue doing as the company grew. Rather than evenly split SEM and SEO tasks among two staffers, they were dividing the two. That's the smart way to go.

I didn't take either of those jobs, and I'm quite happy about that now. I also walked away from a job that would have required me to significantly sharpen my SEM skills so that I could handle both. I didn't doubt that I could do it, but love SEO and very likely wouldn't have done as well with the SEM piece.

So I'd like to ask the question of those SEM/SEO dual purpose people - are you doing both because you love both or are you doing both because you were "tasked to learn" one of those pieces because your company won't increase the budget enough for a new head on the payroll? Would you rather focus on one or continue doing both?

Is Examiner.com Dominating Search Results Near Yours?

I'm a long-time subscriber to Google News and Blog alerts. They're a great way to stay up to date with any topic and I subscribe to several alerts on subjects, companies and categories I'm interested in across a wide range of topics. Something rather startling has occurred to me in watching those results across multiple categories. The new Examiner.com site is dominating search results for both news and non-news (blog, web) alerts.

Also noted is the interesting fact that many more Examiner.com results appear across dozens of other search results. Since I make my living optimizing search, this tends to stand out for me more than it has for friends and relatives I've asked about it. So tell me - Are you seeing any of your search terms threatened by Examiner.com?

Because they are considered a "News" source, the site gets indexed instantly for almost any topic. Their "News" results appear in Google Universal and Yahoo Blended search results in the top five rankings.

Interestingly, you needn't be a trained journalist to write for Examiner.com and it appears they are actively recruiting writers.

I haven't yet had the opportunity to review their site structure or on-page optimization efforts - but whatever they are doing, it is landing the site in lots of top ranked spots for hotly contested search phrases. This will be interesting to watch.

Meanwhile, take a look at the video below for the root of the story, which is tied to the demise of the Rocky Mountain News in Denver - especially since the biggest name behind the Examiner.com is Denver Billionaire, Philip Anschutz. The video below includes an interview with Examiner.com CEO Michael Sherrod

They are using the tilde for the first time in years in their URL's. I thought that had died long ago. Interesting trend to watch. I also see that Google news shows over 28,498 results for Examiner.com in their site search. More than the 9600 for the New York Times or the 7500 for the Boston Globe. Hmmm - that bears watching as well.

Canonical URL Link Element - Not Meta Tag

Last week we learned of the magical new Link Element which was announced at SMX West which was purported to resolve a longstanding problem with duplicate content by pointing search engines to a single URL for pages which could have multiple paths to the same content.

Well it turns out that the single solution is only a partial solution. According to the video below from Matt Cutts, we should still do all we can to avoid internal links with session ID's, sort order, path analysis and tracking parameters appended. Damn, can't be simple solutions that resolve it all.

It turns out that the search engines will just "prefer" your canonical tag as the single source and "favor" it as the most important ... and they "reserve the right" to do what seems most appropriate, regardless of your link element tags. Damn!

Well I guess a little help is better than none. I've recommended the tag heavily to everyone while trailing around party balloons and confetti. Now I gotta go back and say, "Well, go ahead and do what I told you, just don't expect it to completely solve your problems and - by the way - ya still gotta do the 301 redirects and consistent linking and everything we did before."

Here's Matt Cutts with the news that - not only won't this magical tag solve our problems, but we also have to be careful how we use it and make certain those tags all use absolute URL's and not relative URL's.

So really, this is just something we should adopt as a best practice for SEO and then keep fighting the good fight for 301's and consistent linking practices. Hmmm. Glad I fought for an application which does internal redirects while tracking URL's before this whole thing came up. :)

Canonical Tag Ends Dupe Content, Consolidates PageRank

Big News in an SMX West announcement by search engines last week! There is a new tag to place in the "Head" section of your web pages which can resolve forever the problem of duplicate content in search!

Something many SEO's have fought for years are things such as session ID's, tracking ID's, referrer tags, clickstream data, and variable formatting and source strings in URL's. As of this day in SEO history, those are no longer a problem.

Google's Matt Cutts, in the WebProNews video below announces that the three top search engines have each signed on to support the "Canonical tag" concept, which allows webmasters to post the canonical source for all potentially duplicated URL's. (Those URL's that vary, but produce the same content.)

That new magical tag (shown below) is a godsend for those of us who have fought for years against "Print page" URL variations, "Marketing tracking URL's," database strings which tell servers how to display everything from page formatting to custom logos and that dreaded "Session ID" problem.

I'd started to dread speaking with engineers and developers to request a new 301 redirect, and now I can simply ask for a site-wide application of this tag to tell search engines to redirect everything that varies that URL string.

<link rel=”canonical” href=”http://RealitySEO.com/” />

That way, if we have a marketing campaign running with an URL like this:

http://RealitySEO.com/?ref=blog&trackingid=9876&sessionid=654321

That Canonical tag above simply tells search engines to consolidate PageRank and more or less treat any variation in that URL with added appendages as a single headed beast, rather than the many headed Hydra it can turn into on some sites.

More WebProNews Videos

I intend on continuing the fight against splitting pagerank among many tracking coded URL's, but the search engines have just made it much easier to solve for this problem in cases where 301 redirects are not practical. Thank goodness for this little SEO godsend.

Marissa Mayer Leaving Google? Don't Laugh

There are reports that Marissa Mayer is leaving Google. Barry Schwartz commented briefly about it today on SearchEngineLand and he points to a report coming from Valleywag yesterday. I've heard Mayer speak at Search Engine Strategies (SES) San Jose in August of 2007 where I took a few photographs of her conversation with Danny Sullivan, below. (Click the image for more photos)

SES-8-22-07

She seemed personable and intelligent there as she discussed Google search and displayed the iPhone interface on her phone. I've briefly mentioned her comments in a post on "previous Query Refinement" but don't recall hearing much from her elsewhere.

To get a better idea of what google is losing if she does indeed depart, I took a look at a video of her presentations at Google I/O Developer conference 2008. Here's that hour long presentation if you have time for it:

It's often odd to see executives leave successful companies, knowing that they have made major, substantial contributions to the shape of that success. The video above is a great way to become familiar with what Google is losing.

Gawker apparently wants to poke with the sharpest stick and they focus on her personal fortune as the 19th employee of the startup, fresh out of Stanford and her laugh! The laugh does surface a time or two in her I/O conference presentation above, but seems endearing and humanizing there.

Google is apparently about to lose a big talent. I've often wondered why people leave startups after they go public - those who help to build the vision over time. Sergei and Larry are clearly not serial entrepreneurs. They are staying. Is Mayer on the way out?

UPDATE: Turns out she isn't leaving. Still there as of April 1st. Maybe it was an early April fools joke played on Google by Valleywag?

eHow Wins Mashable's "How To" Open Web Award Category

eHow.com won the Bloggers Choice for the "How To" category of the Mashable Open Web Awards! Rich Noguchi, community manager for eHow, announced the win this morning on the eHow Blog.

This comes on the heels of getting a bit of Television love from New York Fox Affiliate WNYW where eHow GM Greg Boudewijn along with eHow Food expert Bethany Frankel were both featured in a "How to Make Money from Home in a Tough Economy" news spot. How-To is an expanding category of content and to dominate for what are normally "Stop Words" is quite an achievement.