A Search Engine For Search Marketers

Lee Odden recently released a list of search marketing blogs, which he plans to update every Friday. The article has received well-deserved accolades for its nearly exhaustive collection of links related to search marketing.

The list and its accompanying OPML file has led to the creation by Alister Cameron of a Google Custom Search Engine to search specifically within the listed blogs. Ideally, this could be used by search marketers to create a well-rounded view of search expert opinions on particular subjects. To conduct a search, see Alister’s post Introducing The Search Engine Marketing Search Engine or the SEM Search Page. Following is a review of a few searches conducted today, and a link to the SEW Forums thread to discuss the idea.

The first search conducted on 1/12/06 for “301 redirect” yielded the following top 5 results (descriptions omitted):

Permanent 301 Redirect – High Rankings Search Engine Optimization
www.highrankings.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=5644

David Naylor » DaveN » 301 Redirect on page code301 Redirect.
www.davidnaylor.co.uk/archives/2005/12/22/301-redirect-on-page-code/ – Similar pages

URL Redirect
www.seocompany.ca/seo/url-redirect.html

301 Redirect Help!
www.webmasterworld.com/forum21/11903.htm

Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO » SEO advice: url… (tsk tsk Matt Cutts for that long title)
www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-url-canonicalization/

By Comparison, a regular Google search yielded the following top 5:

301 Redirect – How to create Redirects301
www.webconfs.com/how-to-redirect-a-webpage.php

Giving search engine spiders direction – 301 redirect
www.tamingthebeast.net/articles3/spiders-301-redirect.htm

How to Do a 301 Redirect
www.internetbasedmoms.com/seo/301-redirect.html

How to Redirect a Web Page Using a 301 Redirect
www.isitebuild.com/301-redirect.htm

301 Redirect – 301 Permanent Redirect by Brian V. Bonini
www.gnc-web-creations.com/301-redirect.htm

My Score: SEM Search 1, Google Search 0
Perhaps I am biased, but the 5 top results for that particular search yielded far more answers and thought-provocation that the Google results. However, the Google results may be of more use to “regular searchers” that do not have as much skill in SEO as SEM’s may have. Note also that this search only yielded one Paid result when I conducted it. (Hmm wonder how many there will be in a few days after some SEM’s read this?)

The next search for “duplicate content” yielded far more Sponsored results – 4 on top and 4 more on the side. Note also if you are concerned with every impression that an ad may receive, the Paid listings are repeated on the subsequent results pages. The top 3:

Duplicate Content Issues
www.seroundtable.com/archives/003398.html

» Duplicate Content – Penalize Me, Please (yes the >> is in the Page Title…nice trick)
www.pandia.com/sew/169-duplicate-content.html

Duplicate Content – Get it right or perish
www.webmasterworld.com/google/3060898.htm

Regular Google results:

Duplicate Content Issues
www.seroundtable.com/archives/003398.html

Avoiding Duplicate Content Penalties
www.elixirsystems.com/seo_tips/avoiding-duplicate-content-penalty.php

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Deftly dealing with … (ahem perhaps Webmaster Central Blog should get shorter Titles too?) googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2006/12/deftly-dealing-with-duplicate-content.html

I would give this one a tie. It is probably due to the fact that the term “duplicate content” is so often used by bloggers and in forums that the top three are all SEO-related in the regular results of each of these searches. It seems interesting and also a good sign that Google’s Webmaster Central Blog does not show in the top three on the SEM-search feature (they are on the list). Obviously Google is not trying to manipulate any results in favor of their own blog.

I feel very confident that I will be using the SEM search blog almost exclusively to search for SEO and Paid Search topics in the near future. Thanks for this great tool, Alister, Lee and Google – I am pretty certain that you better get ready for lots of traffic from search marketers and students interested in the subject as well. In fact, if I was to advertise, student-populated sites would probably be my first target. After all, this will probably end up getting blogged failry heavily so those in the SEM community should find out very rapidly.

Please share your thoughts on this search function at the thread at SEW Forums, Google Custom Search For Search Marketers and Search Students