Today, Google announced the addition of OneBox functionality to their Google Search Appliance. For any of you not regularly dealing with Google’s enterprise offerings, it may be important to know that the Google Search Appliance offers in depth search for secured intranets and corporate databases. The appliance is outfitted with the ability to search hundred of file formats and, most importantly, has built-in security features to make sure that employees only see what THEY have access to. This means that it can also be used as a full-scale public search engine, where public documents are given free access.
Adding OneBox functionality is a big change from the normal corporate portal interface concept. This simply shows that Google is continuing to develop and refine their predictive search pattern technology. That is, their ability to successfully identify what the most relevant document or information by first selecting the most appropriate database to search. In a way, this is what vertical creep is - a way of predicting the type of data the searcher really desired, despite their having not selected a particular search database.
It seems to me that the addition of the OneBox search metaphor to Google’s enterprise offerings demonstrates a growing confidence in Google’s ability to correctly select the appropriate data in a predictive manner.
At the moment, Google’s post on this new offering contains a number of dead links - hopefully, once these links are fixed, there’ll be a bit more to say on this subject.
Today, in a relatively generic redux of current blog news, Rand at SEOmoz.org made sideways mention of a company called Internet Advancement. Specifically, in talking about a Search Engine Watch post concerning brand loyalty in search, he mentioned that he had dropped in search rankings for the brand "Internet Advancement". Naturally, I became curious.
After reading Internet Advancement Fuels My Rage, I was bound to try and learn something about the company, independently. Rand had talked to the company’s sales staff and gotten their spiel - which was already enough to make me quite suspicious of the company - but I decided to give a quick examination to one of the sites which Internet Advancement themselves used for their testimonials page. (It would be more scientific to do more, but I don’t have the time for that!)
I’m starting with a couple of assumptions, here - first, that the sites used as testimonials were actually worked on by Internet Advancement. Let’s be frank - I’m already suspicious of the company, and there’s no reason to be absolutely certain that these testimonials have any actual grounds to be on the site. Second, I am assuming that Internet Advancement is the only company which has worked on the relevant sites. Tougher to tell - other companies may also leave telltale signs, but we’ll just have to see.
Regardless, many of the testimonials did not actually include URL’s. The site I’m choosing to look at is Arizonahomes4less.com. Now, obviously, having written this article, this site now has one additional link - which could certainly change the results I’m about to report on. Oh well!
Arizona Homes 4 Less: SEO by Internet Advancement
First things first, I note that the site is absolutely hideous in Firefox. I’m not looking at design issues here, so I’m not going to check it out in Internet Explorer, however I feel that any respectable internet marketing company should take the look of a site into consideration! Bad mark against Internet Advancement already.
Second is a perusal of the page code. Title tag: heavily populated with keywords, but with a distinctly spam-like feel. This doesn’t describe the page or provide me with useful information. It is merely a home for keywords. Next: headings. The site does contain one heading, an H1 heading. It contains useful terms at a much more specific level than the title information. The body text contains randomly bolded text, primarily for the words buyers and sellers.
The site really falls down on canonical URL issues, however - the site can also be accessed at DenverJohnson.com, and at JoycePaule.com. So far nothing really horrible has turned up, but certainly nothing worth paying for, either!
Now, one of the points to search engine optimization, of course, is to influence search engine results. So it’s off to Google to see how Arizona Homes does. And, to be frank, it’s not too spectacular. They do not appear in the top 30 results for any of the keywords in their title tag nor for the keywords in their top level header. Ouch! Finally, on a search for their URL., arizonahomes4less, they only managed to rank 4th. Now that’s rather odd, wouldn’t you say? This is a reasonable unique url - I’d expect it to do a little better. The third result was the Google Directory. The second result? Internet Advancements client testimonials page (which, by the way, does NOT provide links to the clients page.)
And the first page? An odd site containing a large number of real-estate related links in no particular order with a search engine which seaches a different site and footer links which all head strangely back to the index page. The site which the engine searches is called 4GreatBuys.com. A teensy little bit of internet sleuthing unearthed this forum thread from I help you. Apparently, this individual had received an invitation to join 4GreatBuys.com from somebody with an Internet Advancement reference address.
Now, I’m not the most suspicious/paranoid person in the world. However, my first inclination here is to suspect that Internet Advancement is operating in concert with 4GreatBuys.com to a) dupe people into paying them money for so-called directory listings and b) using that listing to dupe other people into paying them money for SEO. Link spam city!
So I see little reason to search any further - I’m satisfied that Rand’s rage is fueled with complete justification. This hereby serves as my condemnation of Internet Advancement and the principles for which they stand - cheating and deception.
On a side note, the top of Internet Advancement’s testimonial page includes a set of client graphics which provide access to some very interesting information. I would have expected these links to provide access to the client sites themselves, but apparently Internet Advancement has little interest in providing links to their clients. Instead, they link to reports on the SEO progress that Internet Advancement has achieved. Very revealing of the work process of the company, perhaps?
Update, 2007-07: very interesting and revealing post from a work at home mother who was, unfortunately, taken in by this scam.
Having been in correspondence with the creator of Mojeek.com, it’s only natural that he’d get back to me with his responses to my article. In general, it seems he found my comments to be salient and useful. Always gratifying to be useful! At any rate, I’m including his comments with the relevant quotes from my own article, unedited:
However, it would be very valuable if Mojeek could add a Lushe-like bookmarklet to add sites to your site search.
Marc: I’ve not come across Lushe.net before but will check it out properly later. Having a bookmarklet like they do is a great idea and I will look into that definitely.
I’m also concerned by the fact that you can’t add unindexed sites to your list - as I commented in my previous article, the Mojeek index was far from being the most current available, and one site I tried to add (this one) was not yet indexed.
Marc: The ability to add unindexed sites will be available soon! Also, which will not be immediately noticeable, sites listed within personal search accounts will get crawled and refreshed more often, hopefully making the feature even more useful.
Finally, it would be very useful to be able to establish more than one personalized search. At the moment, it appears that one user is associated with one personalized search - but I would consider it quite reasonable that I would want more than one personalized group of sites.
Marc: You can have multiple accounts if you like but adding multiple groups to the same account is more complicated but I will take note and look into it as that’s a good idea.
Marc: The phrase "Edit Listed Sites" isn’t crystal clear to me, as it doesn’t specify the purpose for the listing - perhaps "Edit Personal Search" would be more clear. However, it’s far from being a major point of concern.
The one thing I would want to change about the interface is that you cannot access your personal search from the main Mojeek home page.
Marc: Both points taken and I’ll consider changing the phrases to something more obvious and adding a link to the home page, although the idea was that people would use their own personal search page rather than the main Mojeek page.
It’s also worth noting that one advantage of the Mojeek personal search is the ability to use it as a site search tool. If you selected only your own site as the selected site, it will act effectively to search your site. However, this tool will only becoming truly useful if the indexing rate speeds up sufficiently to keep a current index.
Marc: You can also do site searches by appending &r=site.com to the search url (or using the advanced search page), once searching a site the search boxes will have the option to search that site again..
http://www.mojeek.com/search?q=search&r=www.mojeek.com
Although the advantage of having it listed in a personal search is that the site will be refreshed more often.