While the significance of external links in ranking is well known, it may be less well-known that internal anchor text—links coming from your own domain pointing to pages within your own domain—can significantly impact search visibility.

Given the important but less-talked-about significance of internal links for ranking, and based on feedback after last month’s article asking how websites implement internal links, this month we’ll narrow our focus and examine how websites implement internal links.  This research includes data from more than 3,000 ecommerce and non-ecommerce domains and examines more than 280,000 internal links and their corresponding anchor text. With this sample size, the resulting analysis should give us a good sense of how websites implement internal anchor text.

Internal Anchor Text More Condensed than External

Like last month, our first look is at a distribution of links by length of anchor text. We compared internal to external links to discern how anchor text might differ for each. In comparing internal to external link text, we found more than three-quarters (77%) of internal links were between 1-3 words, compared to just over half (53%) of external links.

Most Common Words Used in Internal Anchor Text

Analysis of the most common phrases used in anchor text gives us insight into the 1 to 3 word skew for internal linking: 100% of the 20 most commonly-used anchor text has between 1 to 3 words in it. The majority reflect the kind of navigational and standard enterprise page links found on websites such as ‘Careers’,  ‘Customer Service’, ‘Home’, and ‘Blog’.  Avoiding over-optimization of one’s website is key, and a natural link graph is important to the search engine algorithms, but our data suggests marketers may have opportunity to build more long-tail anchor text into their internal linking structure to rank for more specific, longer tail queries.

Internal Links in Text vs. Images

Analysis of the breakdown of internal image links vs. links contained in text shows the vast majority of links are textual, while 16% of website internal links were located in images.

Compliance With Internal Linking Best Practices

Josh McCoy of Vizion Interactive wrote a great article earlier this month about internal linking. In it, he reminds us about the importance of internal linking to a website’s search rankings and lays out a series of best practices.  Based on the best practices laid out by Josh and others we gathered from industry sources, we evaluated the websites’ internal links for how well they comply with several key best practices:

• Image Alt Text: The search algorithms use an image’s alt text to determine relevancy for universal search and image search.  Recent researchshows 8 out of 10 high-volume keywords now have universal listings of some kind, making optimization of digital assets more important than ever. However, more than a quarter of images (28%) with internal links we analyzed did not have alt text.
• User Site Maps: Josh points out that an important part of a complete internal linking strategy includes a sitemap. SEOs understand the importance of submitting a sitemap to Google via Webmaster Tools; but in this Google Webmaster video Matt Cutts is explicit that an html sitemap for users will help with search rankings—both in passing page rank to internal pages and in helping the Google bot with crawling.  Our analysis of the internal link data for the presence of ‘sitemap’ (both in anchor text and in the URLs) shows that the a large percentage of sites still do not have a navigational sitemap: 4 out of 10 of domains do not have a user site map.
• URLs Containing Anchor Text Wording: It may not be possible or practical for every url to contain the linking anchor text wording in it, but many in the industry suggest it is a best practice.  Nearly 6 out of 10  (58%) internal links we evaluated did not contain the link’s anchor text.

In our original post, we analyzed the frequency Wikipedia appears in Google’s search results.  In his coverage of the study, McGee asked about how Google’s treatment of Wikipedia compares to Bing, so today we are publishing the Bing data alongside Google.  Data was gathered in Conductor Searchlight in February 2012.

Google Favors Wikipedia Far More than Bing

A comparative analysis of Wikipedia’s appearance on page one of the search results shows Google favors Wikipedia far more than Bing, appearing on page one 46 percent of the time for combined keywords (informational and transactional) compared to 31 percent for Bing. Comparison of instances Wikipedia did not appear in the search results at all shows it occurred 64 percent of the time for Bing compared to 29 percent of the time for Google.

When on Page One, Wikipedia in Position 1-3 More Frequently on Bing Than Google

Although Wikipedia appeared on page one far more frequently on Google than on Bing, when it was on page one it was in  hyper-traffic ranking positions 1-3 far more often on Bing than on Google.  83 percent of the time Wikipedia was on page one on Bing it was in position 1-3, compared to 65 percent of the time on Google.

Excluding One Word Queries, Wikipedia Appears on Page One About 10 Percent More Often On Google vs. Bing

Looking at page one appearances by number of words in the query, both Google and Bing have Wikipedia appearing for a majority of one word queries: Google with 79 percent of queries and Bing with 54 percent—and drop off significantly from there.  Overall, excluding one-word queries, Wikipedia appears in the SERPs approximately 10 percent more for Google than for Bing.

What do you think about this new research compared to our previous post on Wikipedia in Google SERPs? Let us know in the comments.

This research was covered by Search Engine Land on May 7th, 2012.

However, marketers are not from Mars, and are supposed to care about ‘data’ – they are highly familiar with the statistics that point to search’s place at the top of the purchase funnel such as Marketing Sherpa that states 81% of online adults use search engines to research Products–so why has the media been so successful in distracting Marketers from the data-driven, core marketing tactics that drive the lion’s share of traffic?

Organic Search Drives 5x More Traffic Than All Social Combined

An overwhelming example of this is a recent TechCrunch article covering a Shareaholic study on the growth rates of Pinterest – ‘Pinterest Overtakes Twitter on Referring Traffic’.  Reading the headline of the post, you may be left thinking you need to shift serious online marketing effort to Pinterest.  I have no doubt many marketers forwarded this to their teams asking, “should we be doing more on Pinterest?”

Organic search is not be the inbound channel that gets the most ink in media coverage, but the latest data with a non-trivial sample size tells us it remains, by far, the largest driver of inbound web traffic. Organic search is also the best channel for converting customers; it has the best lead-to-customer close percentage of all inbound channels.

What was not mentioned, however, was the glaring discrepancy between the traffic Pinterest is driving, even at its current growth rates, and what tried-and-true channels such as organic search continue to generate (see chart below).  Using a sample size of 270 million visits, Pinterest is now 1.05% of all visits, beating Twitter at less than 1% (.82%) of all visits.  Google organic traffic is nearly half (48.81%) of all visits – almost 50x Pinterest’s traffic, and 5x more then all social sites combined.  In our example, the Marketing VP wants to know when his team is going to ramp up their Pinterest strategy – yet he probably does not have a comprehensive SEO strategy, has not spent a lot of time thinking about how his company can build a competency in SEO, and is working himself into a lather about the less-than-1% of Pinterest traffic potential.  It seems short sided to focus on the latest hype when a major opportunity is in front of us and by fracturing our focus, we  put our core channels at risk (remember when marketers were going crazy over URL shorteners?)

I do not want to discredit putting effort into Pinterest as a new source of customer acquisition and influence – but suggest marketers look at the data and be formulaic about determining their strategic priorities.

One way of examining your priorities is to build a formula that looks at:

• Size of the Opportunity: How much potential is there, and what is your current penetration rate against this opportunity
• Risk: If you do nothing, what will you lose, what will you gain?
• Execution Viability: How much will it cost you (cost can be a measure of dollars, political dollars, engineering resources, etc) to execute against the opportunity?

Going after the organic search opportunity is not an easy challenge and is likely the reason why a majority of major brands are barely reaching their potential. Unlike other channels such as paid search, SEO requires a holistic approach to marketing where people must collaborate and work together – something that becomes increasingly difficult the larger you are, especially across departments. This is exactly why we started Conductor, to make this easier and more tangible – but it’s still no doubt difficult.

Let’s take a look at some the numbers to help you with your business case for SEO.

SEO Has the Best Lead-to-Customer Rate of All Inbound Marketing Channels

It may not be surprising for longtime online marketers to be reminded that Google organic search is the largest driver of online traffic. However, being the biggest driver of traffic is not enough for us to draw conclusions about its value relative to other channels as a driver of leads – marketers also want conversions. A recent Hubspot study shows the highest percentage of leads end up as customers from SEO, a higher conversion percentage than both paid search and social media.

SEO Becomes Increasingly Important to Marketers As a Conversion Generator

When we dive deeper into the Hubspot study and look at trends of how Marketers view their Marketing channels, more than half say SEO has become increasingly important as a source of leads over the last six months. Interestingly, fully one quarter of respondents state PPC has become less important to them over the last six months – this may be because it is moving closer to being on auto-pilot versus something they can throw more strategy at to make a huge impact.

Organic Search Not Hot New Thing, But Biggest Driver, Best Converting of All Channels

Organic search is not the inbound channel that gets the most ink in media coverage, but the latest data with a non-trivial sample size tells us it remains, by far, the largest driver of inbound web traffic.  Organic search is also the best channel for converting customers – it has the best lead-to-customer close percentage of all inbound channels.
There is little question that there is value for online marketers in leveraging hot trends that have the potential to drive traffic and create buzz for their online property. But acquisition marketing is supposed to be data-driven, not hype-driven; for many Marketers in the trenches this might mean continuously pulling out data like the above when an excited executive wants to divert substantial resources and budget to the latest new thing.

Data is not just for campaign optimization – use it to set your priorities.

A Holistic View of Political Online Landscape

As we wind our way towards a clear Republican candidate, and ultimately to the November election, search and social visibility online continues to shape voter opinion. Given how critical the online sphere is to the fight for the White House, Conductor decided to take a holistic view of the digital political landscape. With our distinctive technology in Searchlight, our enterprise SEO platform, we are uniquely positioned to report online search trends and search/social visibility of Republican primary candidates relative to each other, and relative to Presidential incumbent Barack Obama, providing us with a preview of what they can expect to face online as November draws closer.

Executive Summary: Romney Faces Online Challenges Against Obama

With Mitt Romney’s head start for the Republican nomination and deeper pockets to draw on, he is winning the battle for online mindshare, and with Santorum recently dropping out of the race he has all but locked up the Republican nomination. Although America searched for information about Santorum more often than other candidates and he made a recent surge online, increasing his social community, Google advertising spend, and search visibility at rates far greater than other candidates, Romney has done a better job of controlling his message online. In the end, Santorum’s recent last ditch efforts were not enough to overcome Romney’s lead in the delegate vote, but Romney will have a steep climb to beat Obama in the 2012 election for President, as Obama’s social following, search visibility and Google advertising spend dwarf that of Romney, Santorum, Gingrich and Paul combined.

Key Takeaways

• Obama proves a tough challenge in the online general election season for likely Republican nominee Mitt Romney. Obama spends 2x as much on Google Advertising, has 8x more Facebook likes, and 5x more Twitter followers than all the Republican candidates combined.

• Mitt Romney has done the best job of the Republican candidates in controlling his online message; his official website appears on page one of the search results for online searches about him almost half the time, more often than the other candidates, and he has several times the Facebook ‘Likes’ of the other candidates.

• Although Rick Santorum recently dropped out of the race, he provoked more Google searches (51% more searches than Romney, and 79% more than Gingrich) and received the largest share of online news coverage in March at 35%.

Click the image below for the full-size infographic, and download the full study here.

Note: This study was covered by Mediapost on April 17th.

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Central to extrapolating the terms and search position for which the URL should rank, the Google algorithm looks at the anchor text contained within links. For example, numerous links to http://www.buy.com/iphone with ‘iphone’ in the anchor text signal to search engines that the page should probably be ranking for the query ‘iphone’.

Optimizing anchor text remains a central part of SEO. In SEOMoz’s annual ranking factors survey, SEO professionals put page level link metrics as the most important ranking factor (together with domain level link authority features) used by search algorithms.

How Websites Implement Anchor Text

Given how important anchor text remains in determining search rankings to the present day, we were curious to see how a broad selection of websites and implemented anchor text across their websites. We looked at more than 100,000 inbound links across more than 650 e-commerce and non-ecommerce domains, ultimately analyzing more than 4.2 million links and their anchor text using Conductor’s Searchlight SEO platform.

We first looked at how websites deploy anchor text by looking at a distribution of anchor text by number of keywords. We found more than half (53 percent) of all anchor text were short and fairly non-specific, containing between 1-3 keywords. The percentage of anchor text peaked at 2 words, declined steadily until 7 words, and then shot up to 14 percent for 8 or more words.

The bump in percentage of anchor text with 8+ words was likely due to inbound links pointing directly to specific products. The analysis showed many inbound URLs with 8+ anchor text were highly specific product descriptions, such as ‘celestial seasonings lemon zinger herb tea 20 tea bags’.

21% of 1-3 Word Anchor Text Links is Garbage or Contains no Text

Our further analysis of anchor text with between one and three words shows one out of five were likely not helping sites to rank. 21 percent of links were either URLs and did not contain any anchor text at all, or were ‘garbage’ text such as ‘gfh5bhfryu’. Despite it being an ‘SEO 101 no-no’ many sites are still committing the anchor text sin of ‘click here’ or some variation thereof—a non-trivial percentage of the ‘garbage’ anchor text were ‘click here’.

Anchor Text Best Practices

Given how significant anchor text remains in determining relevancy for search engine algorithms, and knowing a significant part of inbound links with anchor text is outside of our control, it’s important that SEOs take steps to influence the elements that they can control.

Here are some best practices to keep in mind when working with inbound links:

• First Find Out Where Your Inbound Links are Coming From: Today, technology solutions, from full featured SEO platforms to free link analysis software can tell you how where your inbound links are coming from. You can then go after low hanging fruit of instances where linkers may be willing to tweak non-descriptive anchor text to better reflect the page they are ranking to thus helping you to rank for relevant terms.
• First Impressions Matter: The first instance of linking to the same page is often the text used in determining search ranking factors. This factor often occurs in internal linking situations when linking to pages within your own domain, e.g. having a sidebar link to your homepage, and another link to the homepage in the body of your text so keep that in mind as you are developing a linking strategy for your keywords.
• An Image is Worth (Almost) 1,000 Words: The search engines use the ALT tag of an image link to determine relevancy for ranking images. Don’t forget to optimize your images as they are another opportunity to show up in search for your keywords. Research has shown that universal search results (including images) have become increasingly prevalent: one study showed 8 out of 10 high volume searches now have universal results of some kind.

Don’t Forget our Old Friend, Anchor Text

With all of the ongoing changes in the SERPs these days it’s easy to lose sight of the fundamentals of SEO that remain the core of increasing natural search visibility. SEO professionals believe anchor text is still the number one ranking factor, but our analysis of inbound links shows given the way anchor text is used across many sites, there may be opportunity for marketers to optimize their own internal links and target low hanging fruit of non-optimized inbound links from high-value targets.

A version of this article appeared in Search Engine Watch on March 27th, 2012.

‘It’s a Bad Thing’ Does Not A Google Logout Make

In thinking about these results and considering the possible answers to the above question that were available to respondents (e.g. asking respondents to label personalized search as a ‘good thing’ or ‘bad thing’) it’s not a great distance to draw conclusions about how users will log in to Google while surfing the web based on their declared feelings about personalized search.

But, I think it’s important to remember that 65% of respondents labeling personalized search a ‘bad thing’ does not necessarily translate to droves of users who will now log out from Google services while surfing the web. (More on that in a moment.)

Half of all Users Logged-In to Google 3/4 of the Time or More They Surf the Web

In advance of the SMX West conference in late February, Conductor surveyed 750 online users about their Google logged-in behavior while surfing the web. We also asked them about their plans to reduce time logged-in due to privacy concerns, but before we get to that, let’s take a look at how users are logged-in to Google services while surfing the web.

We asked users to estimate the percentage of time they spend surfing the web while logged-in to Google. If we use 50% of the time as a dividing line and bucket users based on that line, we end up with half of users who are logged-in half the time or less they surf the web and half of users who are logged-in 3/4 of the time or more.

Six out of Ten Users Will Not Change Logged-in Behavior Due to Privacy Concerns

Returning to users’ plans to reduce time spent logged-in due to privacy concerns, 1/3rd of users state they intend to reduce time spent logged-in due to privacy concerns. That is one way to read the data (see graph below).

However, I think the right way to read this is that six out of ten users do not plan on reducing the time they spend surfing the web while logged-in, suggesting Google’s services add value in users’ eyes and are particularly sticky despite ongoing privacy concerns. This seems particularly true given the ominous way the question was phrased: “…With their recent launch, Google announced their intention to merge user data across their products and services. How, if at all, will this change impact your being logged-in to Google services?” (emphasis added).

One could even make the case that with the phrasing of the question, we (unintentionally) led the respondent down a path of responding “Wow. Of course I’m going to reduce the time I spend logged-in!” Yet, despite the ominous tone of the question,  six of ten users still say they will not reduce the time they spend logged-in while online.

Conclusion: Welcome to the Post SPYW Era

So what’s it all mean? My read on the Pew Internet and Conductor survey data is that while users are concerned with online privacy, they are not so concerned as to be running to log themselves out of Google while surfing the web. For online marketers, this means learning to live in a post-SPYW [not provided] world. A good starting point is to fully understand the extent to which your site/vertical is impacted. See our last post for data on the prevalence of [not provided] by industry and download the presentation on Life in a Not Provided World for more data on the [not provided] landscape.

A Study on Wikipedia, and an Alternative Approach

Last month Danny Goodwin at Search Engine Watch and Matt McGee over at Search Engine Land each wrote about a study from Intelligent Positioning that found Wikipedia ranks on Google UK for 99 percent of searches. The study looked at Wikipedia’s appearances in the search results for 1,000 keywords.

From Search Engine Land on the methodology:

As Intelligent Position explains, the company used a couple random noun generators to come up with a list of 1,000 nouns — words like “ashtray” and “volcano,” “snowflake” and “melody.” It then did 1,000 unique searches on Google UK and charted if and where Wikipedia showed up in the first page of results.

Many in the comments on the Search Engine Watch article raised questions about the methodology used, and over on Search Engine Land, McGee expressed his own reservations while suggesting an alternative approach:

Most search queries are longer than one word nouns. Chitika recently pegged queries at between 4.07 and 4.81 words on average, depending on the search engine. A couple months ago, Hitwise reported that 27 percent of searches that produced clicks were one word – leaving 73 percent of searches not represented in this study.

What I’d love to see someone do is this: Do a thousand searches (or more) that represent actual search engine behavior. Make 27 percent of those random searches be a single word (like “tortoise” or “liquid”); make 24 percent be two words (like “buy laptop” or “ankle pain”); make 19 percent be three words (like “u2 song lyrics” or “funny Valentine’s cards”), and so forth up to seven or eight words.

And then, using a variety of search terms that mimics actual search behavior, show how often Wikipedia appears in the first page of results. I’m pretty sure it’ll still be very high, but it won’t be 99 percent of the results.

With no disrespect to the authors of the original study (in fact, a thank you for sparking the discussion on the subject is in order) we followed McGee’s suggestions for expanding the study methodology, to incorporate a broader range of queries and reflect searcher behavior.

Based on Search Engine Land columnist Shari Thurow’s comment on the writeup -

“Searcher goals are currently classified as informational, navigational, and transactional…”

- we gathered a total of 2,000 keywords: 1,000 keywords each for informational and transactional queries (an analysis of a subset of navigational keywords showed Wikipedia was largely not visible for these kinds of queries, so we did not complete a full analysis of these terms.) In breaking out results by informational vs. transactional queries, we felt that Shari made a good point– a more complete view of Wikipedia in the SERPs should include an analysis of how its visibility differs based on query type.

Using the Hitwise breakout of queries by keyword length cited by McGee, our distribution of keywords looked like this:

Keywords were gathered using a combination of Google Suggest, keyword research website Soovle (which queries multiple search engine for search suggestions simultaneously), including a sampling from their ‘top internet keywords’ list, and the Google Adwords tool. Care was taken to mix high volume searches with lower-volume, self-generated queries to produce a balanced keyword list that is reflective of what actual searcher activity might look like.

Examples of each keyword type:

In the beginning of February, we entered the keywords in Searchlight, Conductor’s enterprise SEO platform, which then gathered ranks on Google.

Significant Differences Between Informational and Transactional Queries

Our analysis of the keyword rankings showed Wikipedia appears on page one of the search results for six out of ten (60%) informational keywords. It was far less visible for transactional keywords, appearing on page one 34 percent of the time. These findings line up with Wikipedia as an online encyclopedia, highly visible for searches for information, less so for transaction-based queries.

Interestingly, and perhaps contrary to how many might think about Wikipedia in the SERPs, not appearing on page one of the search results did not mean it did not appear at all: for one-quarter of the combined set of keywords Wikipedia appears on page two or higher.

Most of Wikipedia Page One Appearances in Top Visibility Positions

When Wikipedia did appear on page one of the search results, it appeared in top-visibility positions. For 66% of informational keywords Wikipedia was in position 1-3 of the search results, where studies show up to 58 percent of all clicks occur.

8 out of 10 Single Word Queries Appear on Page One for Wikipedia

Analysis of page one appearances by query length shows Google treats Wikipedia as a particularly relevant result for one word queries: Wikipedia appeared on page one of the search results for 85 percent of informational queries.  73 percent of one word transactional queries were on page one, but that may have more to do with the fact that one-word queries are difficult to convey searcher intent.  For example, searching for the term ‘headphones’ might have transactional intent, but absent elaborative keywords, Google likely treats it, and queries like it, as an informational query and therefore presents Wikipedia as a search result.  A drop to Wikipedia appearing for 19 percent of two word informational queries supports this assertion, with longer string searches expressing user intent more clearly.

Conclusion: Wikipedia is Visible, but Not 99% Visible

Wikipedia has long been a thorn in the SEO professional’s side. Our analysis at Conductor shows when it does appear in the SERPs, it is high up on the search results and is extremely visible for broad, one-word queries. But in looking at a holistic keyword set that more closely represents actual searcher behavior it is clear that Wikipedia is not appearing quite as frequently as earlier research has suggested.

Update: This study was covered on March 20th by Search Engine Land, “Wikipedia Appears On Google’s Page One Only 46% Of Time, Study Shows” and on March 26th by Search Engine Watch, “3 More Studies Examine Wikipedia’s Page 1 Google Rankings“

Considerable attention has recently been paid in the search industry to Google’s Search Plus Your World’. The release, which went live January 10^th, has shaken up the SERPs, as Google has begun mixing in Google + results with greater frequency.  If much of the coverage is to be taken at face value, brand queries (both corporate and personal) have been among those most impacted by the change, presumably because Google has ‘deeper Google+ knowledge’ of brands than it does for other queries.

The discussion around the increased emphasis of Google+ in the SERPs has also brought with it some controversy around other social networks in the SERPs (such as Twitter and Facebook), and questions as to what Google does and does not have crawler access to.

To get a better sense of how Google treats all social networks in the SERPs for personal brand queries, we analyzed the search rankings for Robert Scoble’s five hundred most influential technology blog writers.  And, let’s be honest, we were also curious to see how social networks appear in the SERPs for a group of well-known writers in the tech community.

For those not familiar with Robert Scoble, he is the Startup Liaison Officer at hosting and cloud computing provider, Rackspace.  His job entails closely following the startup tech industry, as he has vociferously done – since his time as a blogger and then as Microsoft’s Technology Evangelist from 2003-2006. Scoble is widely considered to be an authoritative voice in the technology industry.  If you are interested in the goings-on in the startup world, follow him on Google+.

Social Network Appearances in the SERPs Tracked

In February of 2012, we extracted Scoble’s list from Twitter and entered 465 names into Conductor’s SEO platform, Searchlight. The balance did not have their real name listed on their Twitter account and we could not determine their identity from their Twitter handle.  (A cautionary tale for personal brand development—if you are a tech personality who benefits from having your name out there, make sure your social media accounts are clearly identifiable.)

We asked two things of Searchlight.   First, using the tech blogger names as keywords, we measured the appearance of social networks in the search results.

We looked at the following social networks:

• Facebook
• Google+
• LinkedIn
• Myspace
• Pinterest
• Quora
• Twitter
• Youtube

We then tracked the tech blogger names in terms of appearances in the SERPs, looking for domains that appear most often.

Google+ on Page One 1/3rd of the Time, Rarely in Prime Visibility Positions

Twitter showed up on page one of the search results most often, appearing there for 91 percent of the tech writers we analyzed.  The caveat is that Scoble published the top 500 tech writers as a Twitter list of usernames, suggesting that those that made his top 500 list had a Twitter account.  Yet, despite something of a self-selection bias for our sample group, its members having a Twitter account is no guarantor of where in the SERPs we can expect to see Twitter appear.

Our analysis showed Twitter held prime visibility positions for our group with 6 out of 10 (62%) of Twitter’s page one showings were prime visibility positions (position 1-3), the most of any of the social networks analyzed.

When it came to Google+, while we cannot say for certain what percentage of the group did or did not have a Google+ account, Google’s fledgling social network appeared on page one for one-third (33%) of writers analyzed, yet only 5 percent of those appearances were in position 1-3. (Our data was collected as a ‘logged out Google user’.  Searchers who are logged-in may, of course,  see different results tailored to their own social networks, but based on industry reports of visits that are ‘[not provided]’  ~75% of users are still surfing the web while logged out.)

Interestingly, and perhaps surprisingly for some readers, while not a pure social network, question-answer site Quora had more page one appearances than Google + (37%) and far more of their appearances were in position 1-3 (36%). While 52 percent of authors had a Facebook result on page one, only a slightly greater percentage than Google + (8%) were in position 1-3

Readers may also be surprised to discover despite its lack of social media mindshare, if our group is any indicator, MySpace is still hanging on in the search results for personal brand queries, appearing on page one for nearly 20 percent of tech writers analyzed.

Despite the considerable editorial ink many of the writers have themselves given to Pinterest, few are using it, or Google is not surfacing it to page one as our analysis showed it does not appear on page one at all.

No Sites Dominate the SERPs, New York Times and Tech News Sites Appear Most Often

When we remove social networks from the equation and analyze the tech writers’ appearances in the top five search positions, no one site or group of sites dominated the search results: there was no site that appeared in the top five positions more than 10 percent of the time.  Analysis of the sites shows the New York Times leading, with 8 percent of tech writer names in which they are in the top five, and the remainder of the sites comprised of tech sites we’d expect to see rank consistently for top tech writers – such as Techcrunch, ZDnet and Mashable.

(Note: Not shown: Wikipedia 33%)

Conclusion: Twitter and LinkedIn Highly Visible for Personal Brand Queries; Google + Moderate Visibility

If our sample group of today’s top tech writers is any indication, Twitter and LinkedIn are the social networks grabbing the most visibility in the SERPs when it comes to personal brand queries—both in terms of page one appearances and in terms of top visibility positions on the page.  While we don’t know for certain what percentage of our group have signed up for a Google+ account, the data suggests that for non-logged-in users, Google+ results are not dominating the SERPs for personal brand queries both in terms of frequency and position on page one.  It will be interesting to see if, over time, other social networks such as Google + and the white-hot Pinterest become increasingly visible for personal brand searches in the SERPs.

The energy was great and there were a number of excellent sessions on search and social related topics. The most difficult part was choosing between sessions running at the same time. Danny Sullivan and co. did a great job with this year’s conference.

While there were no magic bullets [at SMX West] for recouping the keyword data that has been lost, a starting point for dealing with the situation is understanding the landscape in which it is occurring. Over the next week or so, we’re going to share some of the analysis we did in advance of SMX West and presented in the “Life in a [Not Provided] World” session.

Despite the great energy and the knowledge dropping at the conference, there was an unmistakable air of concern both in-person and on Twitter about many of Google’s recent machinations. Given that the conference is called the Search Marketing Conference and the attendees therefore seemed to be primarily comprised of Search Marketing practitioners, much of that concern was understandably focused on the loss of keyword data due to Google’s encrypted search. It was the topic of more than one session and came up repeatedly in conversation.

While there were no magic bullets for recouping the keyword data that has been lost, the point was made more than once that a starting point for dealing with the situation is understanding the landscape in which it is occurring. To that end, over the next week or so, we’re going to share some of the analysis we did in advance of SMX West and presented in the Life in a [Not Provided] World session. And, we’ll add some additional color that we did not share at the conference.

Landscape Analysis Week-over-Week in Five Industries

Our first view of the [Not Provided] landscape is through the lens of web analytics. In a nod to how the industry seems to be measuring the extent of the issue, we looked at the % of google organic traffic that is [Not Provided]. The highlights of our research included a week-over-week analysis from October 19th, 2011 through February 7th, 2012:

25 Major Sites, 5 per Industry:

• Education
• Online Retail
• Banking
• Enterprise Technology
• Travel

All told, more than 51 Million natural search visits were analyzed.

[Not Provided] Averaging 16%-17% Across All Industries

Our analysis showed in the trailing four weeks from Jan. 7- Feb 7, across all industries [not provided visits] ranged, on average from 16%-17%.

The analysis further showed:

• [Not Provided] Mostly Leveled Out in mid-Nov: [Not Provided] traffic worked its way up from launch in mid-October to a peak in mid-November, when, for the most part, it leveled off.
• Differences Across Industries : A key question we had going into the analysis was whether there would be significant variances in [not provided] percentages across industries, or if we would see industries clustered within a few percentage points of each other. We found that things varied significantly from industry to industry, ranging from 10%-13% in online retail to 22%-24% for the banking industry. This suggests it will be important for Marketers to understand the specifics of what is occurring in their own space before formulating a go-forward plan.
• High Traffic Industry in the Middle of the Spectrum: Another key question we had was where on the [not provided] spectrum high traffic industries would fall. Would the high volume of traffic result in a higher percentage of [not provided]traffic? Less than other industries?
  The travel industry had several hundred percentage points more traffic than the other industries we studied, but the percentage of [not provided] traffic was in the mid-range of all industries at 14%-16%.

In our next post, we’ll take a look at the [not provided] landscape from a different perspective. We’ll analyze what we can expect to see going forward in terms of [not provided] traffic by examining results from a survey of online users Google logged-in behavior we fielded in February.

If you don’t want to wait to find out how frequently users are logged-in to Google when they surf online or if want more color around the [not provided] landscape, download the full SMX West presentation here.

In the early days of ‘Mad Men’ marketing, half of all Marketing spend was famously wasted – the Marketer just didn’t know which half. Many a Marketer’s sleepless night was spent wondering what levers of their Marketing spend to push forward and which to dial back. Then, along came the Internet, and with it a new kind of marketing. Marketing online brought with it ‘cause-and-effect marketing’ and a greater ability to measure the effectiveness of marketing effort. New metrics such as click-through rates, bounce rates and page views made its way into our lexicon and marketing gradually became a discipline rooted in data, with Excel the primary tool of choice.

The Era Of Big Data Arrives

As the ways for online users to interact online grew, methods of marketing to online users grew with it. Marketers could soon choose from a broad spectrum of ways to spend their marketing dollar ranging from SEO, to PPC, to display, to social and email marketing.

Along with it came a torrent of digital data – multiple data sets from disparate sources and ushered in an era of ‘big data’ — large sets of data that, when mined, could reveal insight about online marketing efforts. This includes data such as search rankings, site visits, SERPs and click-data. In the SEO realm alone at Conductor, for example, we collect tens of terabytes of search data for enterprise search marketers every month.

How Prevalent Is This ‘Big Data’ Thing?

Big data is not a trend that has been limited to online marketing. As I sat down to write this piece, I came across several recently published articles on the trend in the New York Times and Read Write Web.

In one section of the New York Times article, titled Welcome to the Age of Big Data, the author describes how the online industry is leveraging big data and that it is a topic on the minds of many, including economists gathered in Davos:

The new megarich of Silicon Valley, first at Google and now Facebook, are masters at harnessing the data of the Web — online searches, posts and messages — with Internet advertising. At the World Economic Forum last month in Davos, Switzerland, Big Data was a marquee topic. A report by the forum, "Big Data, Big Impact," declared data a new class of economic asset, like currency or gold.

A check of Google Trends shows ‘big data’ is a term whose searched volume has skyrocketed in 2011, going into 2012. Even a cursory check of the news articles that accompany the Google Trends graph show a recent commitment by some of the world’s largest companies to big data.

Assuming we may not all be able to develop our Excel skills to the point we can cash in on the riches available to big data gurus in silicon valley, what are implications of the big data trend for the online marketer?

The New Dual-View Of The Modern-Day Online Marketer

The arrival of the era of big data signals to the truly successful online marketer that they must now view the online landscape in their niche from two distinct perspectives:

• The Channel View:

The channel view is one in which the Marketer asks, “What is and is not working in each channel?” This includes the use of tactics such as A/B testing and content optimization, and makes use of technology such as web analytics and PPC bid management software. It encompasses metrics such as bounce rates, click-through curves and conversion rates in order to discern the levers that require adjustment.

Until now, this is the sole view Marketers have taken of their online marketing efforts. In addition to enhancing the cross-channel view, big-data also enables the marketer to go deeper in the channel view. For example, whereas SEO used to be solely about search rankings, now it is about rankings, conversions, traffic etc.

• The Cross-Channel View:

The cross-channel view is one that spans the length and breadth of the online marketer’s channels. It began with attribution, but the era of big data that is now upon us means marketers have the opportunity to take advantage of large data sets from each channel and leverage them for deeper, actionable insight — provided they are looking at their channels through those eyes and have acquired the technology to do so.

How Has Big Data Arrived In The SEO World?

From our vantage point at Conductor, the move to the era of big data has been catalyzed by several distinct occurrences:

• Move to Thousands of Keywords:
  The old days of SEO involved tracking your top fifty keywords. Today, enterprise marketers are tracking up to thousands of keywords as the online landscape becomes increasingly competitive, marketers advance down the maturity spectrum and they work to continuously expand their zone of coverage in search.

• Growing Digital Assets:
  A recent Conductor study showed universal search results are now present in 8 out of 10 high-volume searches. The prevalence of digital media assets (e.g. images, video, maps, shopping, PPC) in the SERPs require marketers to get innovative about their search strategy.

• Multiple Search Engines:
  Early days of SEO involved periodically tracking your rank on Google. Today, marketers want to expand not just to Yahoo and Bing, but also to the dozens of search engines around the world as enterprise marketers expand their view to a global search presence.

All the above factors combined mean there are significant opportunities for an increase in both the breadth and volume of data available to search professionals.

‘Big Data’ Marketing View Brings Us Far Closer To Actual User Behavior

We’ve established that far larger volumes of data are available to the marketer. Next, we’ll illustrate the benefits of leveraging data cross-channel, but before we do, it’s important to note that another reason for marketers to transition to a holistic ‘big data’ view of their marketing channels is because consumers do not operate in channel silos, so neither should the marketer.

Today, online users encounter multiple digital channels together in one place in the search engine results page. They do not experience the channels in a ‘silo’, they experience them as a single fluid experience and that is the way marketers must begin to think about their online marketing.

Examples Of Cross-Channel Big Data

Given the growth in available big data across online marketing channels and the need to look at our marketing channels from the same perspective as the ‘non-silo’-d user, what are some ways marketers are integrating data across marketing channels, and what benefits are they taking away from these integrations?

• SEO and PPC:
  Modern enterprise SEO systems now integrate with enterprise level PPC systems, enabling the marketer to view paid search data alongside natural search data and make paid search bid decisions with natural search data, providing a holistic view of the SERP.

• Social and SEO:
  The marketer can now see social data together with natural search data on the page level in the enterprise SEO platform. This enables the marketer to gain a more complete view of how earned media is driving traffic both on an individual page level, and in a holistic sense to their web properties.

Strategy To Leverage Cross-Functional Data Increasingly Critical For Marketers

The growth in the volume and breadth of data across online marketing channels combined with the maturation of marketing technology to leverage that data cross-functionally means the era of big data is officially upon us.

Now, Marketers must begin to give due attention to plugging the available data into their marketing strategies. For some, this begins with starting to think about their marketing channels in a more holistic fashion. For others, it means taking action on a cross-channel line of thinking already in place by going after the tools and technology that will enable them to make the transition into marketers leveraging cross-channel data.

Either way, the ‘big-data’ writing is on the wall: the new marketer is part CIO, and if you do not have a strategy in your organization to leverage cross-channel data you may soon find yourself with yesterday’s view of your online marketing efforts.