The Sphere “Related Content” widget appears on a number of news sites and blogs, having gained appeal as far up the media ladder as the venerable New York Times. Sphere’s utility made it a desirable takeover target, with AOL announcing today it had acquired the company.

“Not only will it let us enhance content on our own sites, it will let us distribute our content across Sphere

So, let’s compare blog search engines and see how they are doing.

Google Blog Search for Seagate (note, this is different than the “main” Google engine – also, you have to click “sorted by date” to get the latest stuff).

IceRocket for Seagate.
Sphere for Seagate.
Technorati for Seagate.
Ask for Seagate.

Sorry guys. Google is just trouncing you here. Not only did it have my article first, but it had Jon Fortt’s article on DAVE first too.

Google’s blog search also has less noise. My second favorite? It’s Ask. It had both my article and Gizmodo’s mention of it last night.

Technorati? Dave Sifry, what’s going on? Your engine is looking worse and worse as time goes along. I find that I’m using Technorati less and less as time goes along too. Nothing about DAVE is up on Technorati yet. In fact, I wonder if Technorati is even indexing my blog anymore?

Not a good performance at all for Technorati. If a big company (two, actually) are already beating a startup on speed and quality (they are) then the startup is toast.

Why are blog search engines important? Because it’s how everyone from political campaigns to corporate officers inside places like Seagate listen to what the bloggers are saying about them.

If a blog search engine isn’t up to the minute then the people who use that engine are at a disadvantage to people who are using another engine. It’s why I can link out to interesting stuff about Seagate before other bloggers wake up.

Oh, and it’s also a way I can keep track of who’s linking or not.

One thing I don’t like about Google’s blog search is that it defaults to “sort by relevance.” I far prefer the “Sorted by date” option (you have to click that on the top right side of the page to get it to show you the newest stuff it found).

How long does it take your blog about Seagate to get into the blog search engines?

UPDATE: It’s now 6:12 a.m. – more than two hours since announcement – and Technorati still doesn’t have a single mention of DAVE. It doesn’t even have Gizmodo’s mention of Seagate that was posted last night. If Technorati isn’t getting Gizmodo into its index, what hope does any other blogger have of getting into Technorati. Google actually has improved over the past two hours, while Technorati has gotten worse. And people wonder why I’m a Google fan

Comments

Add to Del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit | Furl

Bookmark WebProNews:

Robert Scoble is the founder of the Scobleizer blog. He works as PodTech.net’s Vice President of Media Development.

Go to Scobleizer …

The idea behind linkbait is to create something people will want to link too. With the explosion of the Web 2.0 user-created content generation, a group that actively links out, social media outlets (Digg, Reddit, Sphere) have become primary targets. In fact, social media optimization (SMO) has become so popular, over at the Yahoo Search Marketing blog; Edwin Wong has posted an entry explaining how to leverage this phenomenon.

The main focus of the post is to inform readers about brand advocates and how they can help with the promotion process. This point was bolstered by a story explaining how user-generated content (a blog) influenced the purchase of Casio digital camera, a brand not necessarily recognized in this particular industry. The blog in question spoke of the quality of these cameras and because of that, Casio now has a new customer where they might not have before.

Wong’s story illustrates the impact of social media can have on the consumption process. Word-of-mouth directly affected the outcome of this sale. Because of that, you can see why Yahoo is so supportive of SMO, especially when it comes to marketing your goods online.

However, can these same social media sites be used to harm potential competitors? Yes, absolutely they can and a post from Graywolf shows you how.

Essentially, (if you’d like to know the specifics, check out his post) the process involved creating fake accounts and spamming Digg and it’s users so much they ban the URL from appearing on the site. Of course, the URL you are conducting this spam attack with is that of your competitor’s, especially if they add new content. Be sure and have your friends bury the story if it makes any of the Digg pages.

This will, in all likelihood, get your competitor’s blog or site banned from Digg, something they’ll certainly be happy with when they try to submit a legitimate story. The malicious methods being described here are similar to the techniques used by search engine spammers in the past, something Graywolf acknowledges in his post:

Of course, all of the ideas discussed above – good and bad – may all become moot if search engines start devaluing social media links; a point discussed by Barry Schwartz earlier today.

Add to Del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit | Furl

Chris Richardson is a search engine writer and editor for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest search news.

The Sphere blog search engine emerged from beta as a new option for searching posts made in blogs. They have entered a deal with Time to provide a quick link to blog postings in Sphere’s index related to an article’s topics, the TechCrunch blog reported.

Visiting the Time.com website and clicking on an article, like the piece on the No Child Left Behind Act, shows the Sphere button above the main body of the article’s content. Clicking the link brings up the Sphere results for that story, showing 239 blog results from the last week, sorted by relevance.

Rolling out the Sphere feature appears to be proceeding at a measured pace. Stories on Marines in Iraq and the forthcoming hurricane season predictions did not contain a Sphere link, but an article on Ray Nagin’s reelection in New Orleans did (474 blog results from Sphere.)

Anyone who is used to the brisk speediness of Google will be tempted to hit the Sphere button a couple of times. Although Sphere only takes a few seconds to return results, the attention-addled web user of today may find his patience tried by the wait.

TechCrunch writer Michael Arrington described the difference between the Sphere It feature and the Technorati This bookmarklet provided by that blog search engine:

Sphere CEO Tony Conrad illustrated the difference between the two approaches in a blog post. In his example, the Sphere It tool returned 464 blog posts regarding a Time.com story about Tony Blair. Technorati This and its link-based approach showed 4 blog post results, all duplicates.

Sphere does have work to do on its algorithms. Just in the first two pages of results of the Sphere It query for the Time.com Ray Nagin story were a few duplicates posts. Paging from page one to page two proved noticeably slower than the initial query.

It would be nice to see Sphere get a much-needed speed boost and a grouping feature to cluster duplicate posts together so its results are not inflated by those dupes. Sphere may not be listed in beta now, but its performance feels like a work in progress.

—
Tag:

Add to Del.icio.us | DiggThis | Yahoo! My Web | Furl

Bookmark WebProNews:

David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

I’ll point to Jason Schramm, who has more experience with using the site, but I will give my first impressions.

Blog search is a tough one, since no one seems to know what people are looking for when they use it. If I search for “Google”, so I want the latest news on Google? The best blogs on Google? The most linked articles on Google? Hopefully, Sphere has some unique ideas on managing differing expectations, something we’ll learn as we get more experience using it.

I do like the way they have different pages with different ways of looking at a query. They’ve got:

• Standard search, ordered by relevance over a recent period of time or by date
• Major blogs on the topic
• Related items on the query, like mainstream media news, photos, books and podcasts

The coolest thing has to be the custom range slider. When viewing results by relevance, you can choose a date range (so they are relevant, but not ancient), and you can choose predetermined ranges, or use a slider to make your own on the fly. This is very reminiscint of Google Finances stock chart/news slider.

There’s also a bookmarklet that will take you to a search for items related to whatever you are reading and a TypePad widget. All in all, it looks like they’ve got their stuff together, and I hope the obvious hard work pays off.

——————————————————————————–

As an aside, here’s a quote from Jason:

It’s a shame that people posted about the launch before the small team behind Sphere could be awake to solve any problems that may occur. It was more of a common courtesy thing, which no longer matters since the cat is out of the bag and doesn’t want to go back in.

From what I’ve heard, Sphere emailed their beta testers and asked them not to post on this till 7 am in the morning, hours from now. Considering Michael Arrington and Om Malik posted on this first near-simultaneously (and TechCrunch with a well-prepared in-depth review), I have to wonder if Mike A. and Om just got the news a tad earlier from tipsters and posted it, or if Sphere sent out the email to testers, knowing full well that it would be on TechCrunch hours earlier. Ah, the story behind the story; always equally fascinating.

Add to | DiggThis | Yahoo! My Web

Technorati:

Nathan Weinberg writes the popular InsideGoogle blog, offering the latest news and insights about Google and search engines.

Visit the InsideGoogle blog.

Sphere Launches Blog Search

…Sphere opened its virtual doors to the rest of the Internet this morning.

Hardware constraints during the beta period kept it limited to those early testers. Along with a new logo, the latest version of Sphere contains several new features.

On the home page, a quick view of top searches this hour and this week appear under the main search box. Also, search results can be subscribed to as a RSS feed for a user’s feedreader.

Sphere also touted its Featured Blogs beta. Those can be found for 12,000+ keyword search terms covering over 500 broad topics, Sphere said.

Throughout the site, Sphere provides “community buttons” where users can suggest bloggers for content, or recommend photos, books, or podcasts related to a query from the Related Media link on the search results page.

Previously suggested items for those categories appear in those Related Media results. Those include news from a number of organizations like the New York Times, CNN, and Fox among over 50 mainstream news sources.

Some of Sphere’s accomplishments have come with the help of Yahoo Web Services. Yahoo’s available APIs allow developers to tap the various Yahoo content resources to build new applications.

Sphere prefaced its opening with a round of venture capital totaling $3.75 million. Business 2.0 senior writer Om Malik posted the new money came from Hearst Publishing, Trident Capital and About.com founder Scott Kurnit.

—
Tag:

Add to | DiggThis | Yahoo! My Web | PreFound.com

Bookmark WebProNews:

David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

Sphere, developed by an all-star team that gave us Oddpost and WordPress, is expected to re-launch its public beta later this week.

Sphere is already a few months late arriving on the Web. High profile search and e-business commentators like John Battelle, Jeremy Zawodny, Michael Arrington, and Om Malik all prophesied its impressive entry last October.

What makes Sphere different than other blog search engines? Search Engine Watch executive editor Chris Sherman explains:

“Sphere takes a new approach to blog search, looking at three critical variables to understand both individual blog posts and the nature of the blog they appear onwho’s linking to whom, and what are the quality of the linkswho’s starting or leading discussions who are simply commenting on existing conversations.”

Combining algorithms capable of “semantic analysis” and various meta-data, Sphere is generating a lot of buzz for spam filtering, even before its launched, because exactly the right people are talking about it.

“In short, spam falls to the bottom of the rankings, and that’s a great thing. Tony forwarded me early research his company has done which shows his results are markedly better than any other blog search engine out there.

From my initial use of the system, I can say it most certainly is. This is not to knock Technorati or Feedster, but I calls em as I sees em,” writes John Battelle.

“They have pronoun checker,” writes Om Malik. “Too many I’s could mean a personal blog, with less focused information. That has an impact on how the results show up on the page.”

We’ll see what the rest of the world thinks once Sphere (eventually) launches.

Tag: |

Drag this to your Bookmarks.

Add to DiggThis Yahoo My Web

The Edge of the World is a high cliff near the hundredth meridian, the place where the expansive flatlands, the prairies are said to begin. It marks the point where the Canadian Shield gives way to the endless grasslands and presents a vista that stretches as far as the eye can see.

From where I was standing, about two hundred meters (500′) above the cliff base, eternity was a forest full of uniquely distinct trees. What is not apparent to observers standing hundreds of feet above the great forest is the action happening below the canopy. Underneath the treetops, the forest is full of life. It is an intricate network of sustentation that grows and germinates itself season after season after season.

The search engine optimization and marketing sector is rapidly approaching a similar place where the forest has become an infinite collection of pre-tagged trees. It is relatively easy to find relevant information in the first ten results at MSN, Yahoo, Ask or Google but there are often thousands of advertisers competing for the same keyword targets, each of which expect tangible guarantees their dollars will produce positive results. The rules of survival in the forest are changing quickly. There are a lot more creatures looking for food but at the same time, there are several new ways to find it, or even better, have it find you.

Many SEOs risk losing sight of the forest by only seeing the trees and not changing their outlook and expanding their skill-sets. The same can be said for small to medium advertisers who have become dependent on the paid search medium. The cutting edge of online advertising has moved well beyond the cliff face at the Edge of the World and has discovered that the world is suddenly much bigger and more connected.

The role of the search engine optimizer has changed dramatically in a very short period of time. The changes to the profession are so overwhelming I think a new chapter in the collective meme of SEO tradition is being written, the emergence of the NeoSEO.

Traditionally, search engine optimizers have operated much like hired hunter-gatherers. The professional SEO ventured into the forest on behalf of his or her clients, tracking and nailing Top10 results across all the major hunting grounds. With less competition, larger available keyword inventories and fewer options for searchers, positive results were very easy to achieve.

Today, the one-person SEO shop is a rarity as there are literally hundreds of minute tasks and several different skill-sets associated with the success of a strategic search marketing campaign. As the margins for most SEO shops are so low, they need to take on a number of clients in order to expand, thus necessitating the separation of administration, sales and actual technical production. Real business requires the diligence of corporate bureaucracy and the expansion of the search sphere necessitates specialization in specific forms of search engine marketing.

Fortunately for the traditional SEO shop, everything begins and ends with the basic rules of search engine optimization. In other words, the skill-sets developed for organic SEO are the same ones needed to form the new knowledge base, which is the product we offer our clients. Though the search sphere has expanded enormously over the past year, a number of basic SEO tenets apply to every search marketing platform. Words and word association will continue to be the basis of search but, (and it’s a pretty big but), the tools people use find information, the variety of information they can access, the ways in which they use words to describe their queries, and the ways in which search datacenters relate to those words, have changed.

Searchers are approaching the Internet with a more sophisticated set of skills and options to choose from. As the mass culture begins to understand and demystify the Internet, search and information retrieval has become a multi-faceted sector no longer dominated by just Google alone.

While Google itself remains the dominant search engine, Internet users are starting to migrate to online communities such as those found at MySpace, craigslist, Orkut, Myweb and ezboard. Each of these emerging community networks provides search options for users and each offers forms of online advertising. With MySpace seeing nearly twice the daily traffic Google does, it is obvious the search sphere is no longer the exclusive domain of the search engines. Search engine optimizers need to be able to help their clients establish accounts, set profiles and manage advertising in these emerging areas. Words and word association are the essential skills needed, along with knowledge relevant to local search.

Regardless of how the searchers try to access it, they are all looking for the same thing, information. The major search engines and a number of smaller vertical search tools are capable of sorting and ranking information expressed in multiple formats. The variety of information available to the searching public is unprecedented rivaled only by the number of multimedia editing tools available for content creators. Information, or content, is being expressed and received in the form of text messages, video, audio, and still-imagery.

For SEOs, making that information available to the various search engines, spiders and bots trying to find it requires learning about tagging, linking, and blogging. It is also important to know enough about the content-creation process to understand what your clients are dealing with at any given stage of your relationship. Barry Schwartz from Search Engine Round Table provides a good, point-form coverage of today’s SES session, ” SEM Via Communities, Wikipedia & Tagging “. There’s a lot of interesting information in those points.

One of the most important, basic SEO skills is keyword research and by extension, word association. Knowing what words searchers are most likely to use when looking for your client’s product or service, and then being able to find a few dozen other keyword combinations describing those products or services, is the mark of a brilliant SEO. Oddly enough, search queries appear to be going three ways, short, long, and multilingual.

In an online world increasingly influenced by micro-devices such as Blackberrys or cell-phone text messaging, a number of people are using a form of shorthand writing that often cuts out vowels, or replaces word-sounds with numbers. Search engine optimizers should expect and plan for increased use of abbreviated forms of language.

On the opposite end of the scale, search engine users are starting to be a little more specific in their queries. One of the old-school SEO techniques is the use of multiple two-keyword phrases placed judiciously throughout the titles, metas, text and links. If done properly, these two-word phrases could be mixed and matched to produce several combinations of relevant phrases that searchers might use.

Today, searchers are being far more precise when describing the information they are looking for. Instead of entering a simple query such as “artificial turf”, a groundskeeper might enter “artificial turf for high school baseball”. Similarly, instead of entering “wholesale notions”, a quilting store might look for specific supplies by entering, “wholesale notions, markers, pens, pencils”. Starting with two word phrases, three to five word strings can be extrapolated and optimized for.

SEOs should also be aware of the advances in natural language search and be able to provide multilingual optimization services directly or by reference. The Internet reaches around the world and while English remains the most-used language, business and connections can be made in many languages.

Words are just words, or so they might say, but words carry meanings that vary and they might mean something one day and nothing the next, and figuring it out is what Google does best. Well, maybe not best but, along with competitors Ask, MSN and Yahoo, they do a pretty good job of figuring out what each of their hundreds of millions of daily users are looking for.

As the Internet and its users have grown and become more sophisticated, so to have the search engine algorithms, especially at Yahoo and Google. The major search engines track every word that moves across their datacenters, looking for relationships between queries, words found in documents, and the ways those queries evolve over time. When a spider examines one document, it also examines everything linked to that document. It’s rather like a hall of mirrors with each successive document leading to more links for the spider to follow.

Finding a way to mentally or automatically track how words relate to each other from document to document in a series of links is already an important skill for high-level SEOs and link brokers. As content on the web becomes more connected (think about the MP3 files found on MySpace profiles or podcasts embedded in personal or professional blogs), SEOs will need to advise and guide their clients through the forest of words, finding trails that lead to the roots, the canopy and the other flora and fauna surrounding them.

There are other skill sets necessary to speak the new language of SEO. While having well developed website design skills has always been a pre-requisite, an understanding of web analytics and site-user tracking is needed to inform decisions made during the SEO process. Making the site accessible and usable is important for moving visitors and spiders through the site efficiently. SEOs should also continue to learn as much as they possibly can about how their clients’ Internet Service Providers set up their servers.

If the traditional SEO acted much like a hunter-gatherer, today’s NeoSEO acts more as an advisor, often performing along side other site contributors. There are often many participants involved with an active website, most of which rarely think about the marketing end of things. As the numbers of file types and search venues increase, SEO consultancy, and the provision of direct services recommended during the consultancy has to work efficiently with the other active site contributors. StepForth’s CEO, Ross Dunn spends much of his time communicating between various arms of our client’s online businesses, acting as coach and sometimes as quarterback to move the team towards the goals he and the client articulate.

Today’s SEO is far different from those of yesteryear. Those still standing on the cliff, facing the Edge of the World need to think about their descent into the living forest. While the view from above is breathtaking for all the trees, the real action is in the forest itself.

Add to | DiggThis | Yahoo! My Web

Technorati:

Jim Hedger is the SEO Manager of StepForth Search Engine Placement Inc. Based in Victoria, BC, Canada, StepForth is the result of the consolidation of BraveArt Website Management, Promotion Experts, and Phoenix Creative Works, and has provided professional search engine placement and management services since 1997. http://www.stepforth.com/ Tel – 250-385-1190 Toll Free – 877-385-5526 Fax – 250-385-1198

He got a contract to write a book unrelated to his blog (congrats!) and has asked for a one-year unpaid leave from BusinessWeek, starting next month. I suggested Steve start a new book blog and also continue lightly on Blogspotting – plan A. No go. Then I offered a plan B where Steve could recruit guest bloggers to join Heather Greeen on Blogspotting. He’s doubtful.

Blogspotting has been one of my favorite blogs since it launched a year ago. Part of the reason I like it is that Steve and Heather are so different and the blog really brings out their personalities. (I got to know both of them as last year’s BusinessWeek cover story on blogs was being written.) Unfortunately, no matter who joins, the blog’s voice is going to change with Steve on leave. Blogspotting will continue to be a force to be reckoned with if they just add another strong co-writer to actively join Heather.

This seems like a terrific opportunity for someone to jump from journalism’s “minor leagues” – the b’sphere – to the majors. Steve, I bet there is a really strong writer out there who would die to give up his/her blog for a year to join Blogspotting. In other words, you need your own version of a Kelly Ripa to replace you!

Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Senior Vice President with Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.

He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog, which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice.

1. Fewer sales opportunities unless your top of mind: Although the deal value of each sale is high, there will be simply fewer opportunities as compared to more transactional selling environments. More attention therefore must be paid to proactively identifying those relatively few and valuable opportunities and nurturing them early.

2. Commoditization will continue and will be more difficult to overcome: Marketers must work much more diligently and creatively to differentiate their organizations against increasing competition. Exposure is not enough; there must be a value proposition that resonates with prospects.

3. Increased selling at the executive level: There must be a more intelligent and varied approach to reaching and converting executives who are more often the economic buyers for complex solutions.

4. More outreach required to the sphere of influence: Buying processes frequently involve a team approach. Enlisting the support of one decision maker is rarely enough. The sphere of influence must be identified and a targeted multipronged approach taken to reach as many as possible.

5. Less selling time: Because of longer sales cycles (and they’ll get longer), sales people cannot afford to spend time on unqualified leads. They must focus attention on opportunities that have the greatest likelihood of closing. Marketing must fill the void and nurture early stage opportunities.

6. Return on investment measurement difficulty: Direct return from lead generation activity takes time to surface. A solid plan for reporting and measuring reliable indicators must be in place to justify continued investment.

Brian Carroll is the CEO of InTouch Inc. InTouch is a 50-person company focused on delivering effective lead generation solutions for “the complex sale.”

Brian authors the very interesting B2B Lead Generation Blog which focuses on B2B lead generation, sales leads, and marketing for the complex sale.