Traffic Flow SEO

Google has a cool new search-based keyword tool. I just started playing with it, so I am going to provide some insight from the actual site.

As per Google's website:

The Search-based Keyword Tool generates keyword and landing page ideas highly relevant and specific to your website. In doing so, the tool helps you identify additional advertising opportunities that aren't currently being used in your AdWords ad campaigns.

Based on your URLs, the Search-based Keyword Tool displays a list of relevant user queries that have occurred on Google.com (and on other Google search properties, such as google.co.uk) with some frequency over the past year; these suggestions can be found under the Keywords tab, in the New keywords related to (site) section. In the Keywords related to your search section, you can see a broad list of keyword ideas that are also relevant, but aren't necessarily based on your site.

The keywords are also organized by category. Click any category to expand and view its subcategories. If applicable, you'll also see the keywords organized by brand names.

Also, Aaron Wall at SEO Book had a great blog post that compared this new service to one that he has a lot of respect for - Compete.com (which I also like). His article is here - Google Launches a Sweet Competitive Research & Keyword Research Tool, but what he said that made this new service from Google different than Compete.com is:

* This tool is free
* Google has more search data than Compete.com does
* This shows bid prices and search volume estimates next to keywords (like the Google Traffic Estimator)
* This shows your current page titles and keywords
* This shows the % of organic and paid traffic going to a URL


You can learn more here - Google's Search-based Keyword Tool

Alexa just released their new Hot URLs or 'What's Hot on the Web' within the last 5 minutes monitor. It is a lot of fun to check out what people are looking at and provides what Alexa calls 'The hottest pages on the web right now'...according to the Alexa Toolbar.

You can check it out here - Hot URLs

I think the well publicized upcoming Yahoo layoffs (up to 10% of their workforce starting December 10th) have been expected, but little has been said about Google's current and upcoming layoffs, which I find much more interesting.

Google has also been laying off people, a lot of people. A great article from WebGuild points out:

Google has been quietly laying off staff and up to 10,000 jobs could be on the chopping block according to sources. Since August, hundreds of employees have been laid off and there are reports that about 500 of them were recruiters for Google.

10,000 jobs on the chopping block in additional to all the previous layoffs? Wow, what does that mean? Is the search giant starting to show some weakness? What does this mean to the search space?

There are a lot of questions that will be resolved in the next couple of months and about all we can do is just wait and see what happenes. Good luck to everyone out there with their jobs on the line. It is never fun to lose your job, but even less fun if it happens during the holidays.

Google layoffs - WebGuild article

Yahoo! layoffs - Search Engine Land article

An interesting article has been pieced together indicating a theory that Microsoft may be re-branding MSN Live Search to Kumo (or KUMO). While this is interesting what will a re-branding actually provide? If this re-brand takes place as they start to add in the Powerset technology they acquired in August of 2008 this could get interesting. With a new name and new back-end technologies, will Microsoft become a true competitor or do they still need to buy some marketshare (i.e. buy Yahoo! search and/or AOL or Ask.com) to actually provide a challenger to Google.

Read more about the possible re-branding here - LiveSide.net article

An interesting article on Powerset technology (a little dated, but interesting information) - VentureBeat article

Have you ever wondered what key services a site may be using such as:
- What analytics program (i.e. Google Analytics)?
- What programming language is the site using (i.e. PHP)?
- What widgets or social bookmarks are being used (i.e. Digg, Reddit)?
- What server software is being used (i.e. Apache)?
- What affiliate marketing is being used (i.e. Amazon, Ebay affiliates)?
- What ad management is being used (i.e. DoubleClick)?
- Any many more!

Here is all the information from the site:

FAQ
What is Sitonomy?
Sitonomy is a free service that allows developers and designers to find out which technologies are used in a specific blog/site. Together with the provided statistic information of popular technologies, this service makes it easier to decide what technologies are suitable to your own site.

How to use it?
The best way to use it is to create bookmarklet that allows you in one click to get information about blog you are currently browsing.

How does it work?
Sitonomy service is analyzing over 1000 most popular blogs. Then, collected information is used to make a comprehensive analysis of the specific site.

Check it out now at - Sitonomy

I am a sucker for all-in-one tools that try to be the Swiss Army Knife of search engine optimization/marketing. Well I have a new free tool for you to check out. The site is called Quarkbase and I have found it to be quite helpful in collecting a lot of data about a site in a nice easy to digest format. Its initial interface looks a whole lot like a well known search engine (Google) when you first get started, but then unfolds into a data avalanche that is more like what I was expecting.

The site describes itself as such:

Quarkbase is a free tool to find complete information about a website.

It is a mashup of over 30 data sources and many algorithms gathering information from Internet on various topics like social popularity, traffic, associated people, etc.

Take it for a spin today at - Quarkbase