Although the results revealed the average search query is, as expected, pretty short – the least verbose, AOL users, average 4.17 words per search and the most, Ask.com users, 4.74 words.

However, things became a little more interesting when the company looked at how often people used queries of eight words or longer, a figure that stood at almost 15 per cent for Ask.com searches. Just 8.38 per cent of AOL searches, the next highest figure, featured eight or more words.

This won’t be much of a surprise to anyone who is familiar with Ask’s history – it sprung out of Ask Jeeves, which was as much a question and answer service as a search engine and has recently switched back to this business model.

So why, when Google is so dominant, should firms bother to optimise longer phrases with Ask in mind? The answer may depend on the demographic you are targeting. Longer searches are often associated with older, less confident web users and those companies looking to target older age groups may find it beneficial to optimise for some of the question-type searches that Ask encourages.

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In the latest Google Webmaster Central video Matt Cutts, head of the firm’s Webspam team, explained that homepage content is absolutely crucial if people want to rank highly.

However, he did admit that bigger isn’t always better and sites which were overloaded with homepage content can become cumbersome and slow to load, something that will anger users.

Clearly then, there’s a balance to be struck especially with current design trends leading to an increasing number of sites embracing multimedia content and featuring it prominently on their sites.

According to Cutts, in these sorts of situations high-quality SEO is even more vital as less text means less space to do a good job.

“If you have more content on a home page, there’s more text for Googlebot to find, so rather than just pictures, for example, if you have pictures plus captions – a little bit of textual information can really go a long way,” he said.

So there you have it, search engine optimisation is vital and can still be achieved even if you don’t have large volumes of text on your home page. (For the record, Cutts’ blog is a little more old school and features around five entries on its homepage and he seems to do just fine when it comes to ranking for SEO-related terms, which is exactly what you’d expect.)

Content remains king, and with a good-quality, well-optimised home page you can expect to increase your search engine visibility significantly.

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Most web users will have stumbled across eHow at one time or another, in fact that’s the whole point of the site. Demand Media, the company behind the project, say it is designed to offer useful information on a range of topics. Its critics say it’s a hodgepodge of poorly written but well optimised content designed to attract visits through search engines in order to help generate ad revenue.

Google clearly felt something was amiss with eHow (along with similar sites) and earlier this year launched Panda, an update designed to penalise sites with low-quality content which didn’t actually provide people with what they were looking for.

Now in an earnings report Demand Media has revealed just how hard it has been hit by Panda, with search referrals falling by 20 per cent in the second quarter of the year and overall traffic dropping by 12 per cent. Clearly, the company has some thinking to do.

But what about other firms using search engine optimisation techniques? Should they worry about the impact Panda might have had on their traffic levels? The short answer is “not if they’re doing it properly”.

Google wants people to find what they’re looking for and as long as your SEO efforts are relevant and involve high-quality content then there’s no reason to fear Panda. In fact, you should probably welcome it – with sites like eHow being penalised there could be more chance of potential customers finding their way to your site through Google.

Of course the advent of Panda means getting your SEO techniques spot on is more vital than ever before because each time Google tweaks its algorithm, the margin for error gets smaller and smaller.

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Vitaly Borker operates DecorMyEyes.com which, on the face of it, offers designer glasses at bargain prices. However, as the New York Times discovered, once people placed an order through the website things would go badly wrong.

Clarabelle Rodriguez found this out to her cost. Not only did she never received the contact lenses she asked for, but the glasses she had ordered appeared to be fake and she was charged more than what the site said she would need to pay.

When she rang “Tony Russo”, one of two aliases used by Borker, to complain it triggered a growing campaign of abuse from the businessman which, she said, included what the Times described as a threat of “sexual violence too graphic to describe in a newspaper”.

A quick Google of “DecorMyEyes” reveals that her experience was far from a one off, and “DecorMyEyes scam” and “DecorMyEyes complaints” are featured among the suggested searches and countless review sites feature details of the threats Borker issued to those who dared to complain.

With that much bad publicity and a vile approach to customer service, you’d imagine the business would be going down the tubes. Not so.

Once the newspaper managed to track him down, Borker explained his behaviour was aimed at actively encouraging complaints and sometimes he would even suggest websites people could use to vent their anger. Why? He wanted links to his site.

Borker had realised that Google didn’t distinguish between links embedded in content which praised his service and content which pointed out just how awful someone’s experience of it had been.

Why, he reasoned, pay for a link building service when he could get angry customers to do it for free? And it worked, until recently his site ranked highly on Google for a number of designer brands and a quick check of the domain’s analytics indicates he appeared to be getting thousands of visitors a day.

However, as is so often the case with people who try to game search engines, things caught up with him eventually. Following the story in the New York Times, Google confirmed that it had made adjustments to its algorithm to address the issue.

Quite what it’s done isn’t clear as mystery always surrounds the way it ranks results. However, it hasn’t introduced a system that judges links on the sentiment of the context in which they are placed, pointing out this could stop people finding out information about elected officials who often come in for criticism.

Google also stated that it wasn’t the review sites themselves which were boosting DecorMyEyes’ ranking, but links from reputable sites carrying news stories about it, many of which were written in neutral language, so sentiment analysis probably wouldn’t have helped anyway.

What it has done is “developed an algorithmic solution which detects the merchant from the Times article along with hundreds of other merchants that, in our opinion, provide an extremely poor user experience”.

Cryptic, but it seems to have worked. The site no longer ranks for any of the keywords the Times article says it once did and with Borker’s online reputation in tatters, it seems doubtful he’ll be getting much trade in future.

So there’s certainly a cautionary tale for anyone looking to engage in Black Hat SEO and the fact is Borker’s approach was so extreme he had to engage in a range of other dubious practices to ensure it worked.

Even if it seems like the simple option, black hat SEO isn’t worth it in the long run. It may provide a quick boost to a site’s rankings, but once Google cottons on to what you’re doing, you may as well not have bothered setting up a website in the first place.

Ethical, well-thought out SEO plans may take a little while to come to fruition but, ultimately, they’re more than worth it.

Read the New York Times story here. (Incidently, from an SEO point of view, the headline is woeful.)

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A number of firms, including Microsoft and price comparison website Foundem, claim Google gives “preferential placement” to its own services and, in some cases, “lowers the ranking” of unpaid search results. They also say the same applies to paid-for search.

For its part, the search engine giant denied any wrongdoing, but did admit things could be done better.

“Since we started, Google we have worked hard to do the right thing by our users and our industry,” the company said in a statement.

“But there’s always going to be room for improvement, and so we’ll be working with the Commission to address any concerns.”

In February Founem claimed the Google “removes legitimate sites from natural search results, irrespective of relevance”, but the US company countered by saying there were “compelling reasons” why sites rank poorly.

It’s impossible to guess at what decision the European Commission will reach, not least because much of the investigation will revolve around Google’s mysterious algorithm.

However, regardless of the end result the case will no doubt be fascinating for the search community, especially if further details about how the search engine ranks results come to light during the process.

Still, I wouldn’t hold your breath. When Microsoft was investigated by the EC, there was a ten year gap between the initial complaint and the body’s preliminary decision.

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You’ve probably noticed the small magnifying glass which now appears alongside results and discovered that by clicking on it you can see a preview of the page in question. According to the company, the move will stop people from going to irrelevant pages and hence save them time.

Writing on the Google blog, product manager Raj Krishnan said: “In our testing, we’ve found that people who use Instant Previews are about five per cent more likely to be satisfied with the results they click.”

So does it work? Well, yes and no. Clicking on the magnifying glass does give you an instant preview, but often it’s so small it’s hard to tell what the site really looks like. Its major strength could be in helping people to avoid spammy sites that could be potentially harmful. As far as search engine optimisation goes, it probably won’t have a huge impact. It could reduce the number of clicks for sites that have used black hat techniques, but they tend to get penalised in the long run anyway.

For the rest of internet, it gives people a chance to show potential customers just how well-designed and relevant their site is to users before they click through. And if your site isn’t well-designed and relevant, well, you’ll just have to get cracking on some improvements, won’t you?

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For Rich Skrenta, co-founder and chief executive of Blekko, there’s no reason this should be the case. Speaking to the New York Times, he explained his company will look to triumph where Google has failed. As he puts it: “The goal is to clean up web search and get all the spam out of it.”

So what is Blekko? Well, as you would expect from any firm looking to take on the might of Google, it’s a search engine. But, according to Mr Skrenta, it is a search engine with a crucial difference – better quality control.
It scours what the firm refers to as the “worthwhile web” and uses “slashtags” to help users sift out the junk. There’s also a social aspect to the process, with people able to log in and save their own lists of slashtags which others can then use to find relevant content.

So does it stand a chance of usurping any of its more established rivals? Right now, you’d have to say it doesn’t look like it. Admittedly it’s early days, but the results Blekko returns are much less relevant than those produced by Google, especially if you’re based outside the USA.

Slashtag creation is also a pain and rather than offering a true search experience, it’s more like sorting through a list of bookmarks which you’ve already saved. Not much use if you want to find something new.
Even where extensive slashtags have already been set up, they don’t seem to do much good. The top result for “toys /starwars” is a site called Brianstoys.com, which boasts the world’s largest collection of such items. On Google, the top result for “toys Star Wars” is Amazon. I know which is more useful to me.

Blekko may be on to something and it could have excellent SEO applications, but few people will have the patience to configure a search engine themselves, especially when Google’s mysterious algorithm offers results which are, 99 per cent of the time, almost impossible to beat in terms of relevance and speed.

It will certainly be worth keeping an eye on over the next year or so, but don’t be too surprised if it fades into obscurity like that other search oddity, Wolfram Alpha.

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According to data released by Latitude, Google UK mobile search traffic for PPC is growing at an average of 76 per cent a quarter and has just passed the number people who accessed such ads via Bing on their PCs.
It’s not the most exciting fact of all time, but it’s certainly a rather interesting one, not least because Bing’s efforts currently seem to be focused on the more traditional computer-based search.

And it seems like the mobile search market is set to grow, not least because the sector currently accounts for four per cent of PPC volume on Google, while taking up just two per cent of the spend. It seems like value for money.

Then there’s the issue of smartphones, the devices which are driving growth in mobile search. Currently, there are 11 million users of such devices in the UK and that figure seems set to grow. As Apple’s Steve Jobs pointed out this week, non-smartphones currently account for the largest proportion of the mobile market and a significant number of people will convert to the new devices in the coming years.

This means mobile search will keep rising and, through its Android OS, Google already has a significant head start in a market Microsoft is still trying to crack.

Of course, as the two search giants battle it out, other firms would be wise to spend their time ensuring their mobile SEO plans are spot on.

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I’m not alone. David Smith, managing director at online retail industry body IMRG, has massive doubts over the impact apps will have on the world of commerce, and his point is one worth bearing in mind.

“I think the future for retail will be more in mobile-enabled web sites rather than apps. As a retailer, you’ll get lost in the sheer amount of apps there are out there and as a consumer, you don’t want to spend your time trawling through those apps, it’s better to surf in the same way that you surf the web using a PC,” he told Computing.

Some may accuse him of being short-sighted, especially those who are obsessed with the death of the internet, but it would be hard to dispute his point. Searching an app store can be a slow process and you’d be highly unlikely to find an appropriate one using the kind of long-tail term you’d put into Google. If you’re a well-known brand, it may be worth investing in an app, but you’re relying on people specifically hunting you out and you’d still be limiting yourself to a certain platform.

Not only will a mobile website let users of all phones to access a brand, but it should also allow firms to be more dynamic by, for example, ensuring the latest special offers are highlighted.

Of course, people still have to find your site, but ensuring they do so should be a lot easier than directing someone to your app. Search engine optimisation, pay-per-click and social media marketing exist to help people find your site, and that applies whether or not you’ve optimised it for mobile web users. Whatever the future holds, getting the basics right will always be vital.

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It’s this intrusiveness that makes behavioural advertising so unpopular. Yesterday, I talked about how some big brands seem to think they can get away with pretty much anything when it comes to online marketing, and the fact certain businesses seem happy to plunder what is arguably private information in an attempt to boost their sales is further evidence of this. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on which side of the argument you’re on, the European Union looks set to take action on the issue.

Without going into too much detail, the practice of gathering browsing history data in order to target ads has already been given a clean bill of health under UK law. However, the European Commission feels these laws may not go far enough and could be in breach of EU rules, so it has referred the case to court. Ultimately, Britain could be forced to change the law and that could make behavioural advertising campaigns much more difficult to conduct.

However, it shouldn’t take a court ruling to highlight just how pointless the ads are in the first place. The train banners I was subjected to appeared on a football website which had never before carried anything by the firm in question. My suspicions were immediately aroused and, after a few clicks of the mouse, I discovered what had happened and opted out of the “service”. My opinion of the brand in question declined as a result.  Had the banners appeared somewhere else, a newspaper website for example, they would have been less obvious, but that would have made them no more effective – I would have simply ignored them.

Clearly neither result is what a brand would want from a campaign and it amazes me that businesses still seem to think online consumers can be tricked into engaging with them, especially as there’s no need to take this approach in the first place. The nature of the internet means people connect with things they like and brands they trust. If someone joins a firm’s Facebook page, then the company in question pretty much has a direct line into their lives and can keep the person informed about news and special offers. Likewise, a well optimised website will attract people who are searching for what it provides, generating traffic and customers. With this in mind, there seems very little point in snooping into people’s browsing habits in an attempt to attract consumers. If you’ve got things right, they’ll find you.

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