SEO Industry Clear and Ethical for the New Year
March 15, 2013
Whenever the SEO starts talking business tactics this usually stirs up controversy and critics quickly bring up Google and their business motives. However, the Search Engine Journal article “Let’s Make the SEO Industry Crystal Clear and Ethical in the Year Ahead!” points out that SEO firms are actually misunderstood and that regardless of Google’s motives that the actual ethics and transparency of the industry has nothing to do with Google but more with reputation and ultimately survival as a business.
The article goes onto describe some key tactics or skills that can be used to tackle SEO ethically. One of the simplest rules is to remember that the client is part of the strategy. Which means that instead of trying to be the expert and keep information from your client engage them and make sure they are involved because just like you know your job your clients knows their proprietary data. Bad ethics equals bad reputation which ultimately means bad for business. Transparency is key. You need to be able to be comfortable talking to your client and vice versa. Each needs to be able to call on the other and talk if necessary. The author makes an important correlation in the conclusion.
“SEO has become an online branding effort with an emphasis on search, requiring many of the general marketing skills that other online marketers take advantage of. Unlike, say, PPC, we don’t have the option of specializing on a small and specific set of skills. Link building, social media, keyword research, branding, conversions, content production, relationship building, viral marketing, and rich snippets: it’s all a part of SEO. This is the year to let our clients know that we are comprehensive internet marketing experts with the skills to bring them long term success and opportunities!”
Though it won’t happen overnight hopefully this year SEO firms can show they can be trusted and they are the key to growth in the future but as with any new friendship it’s going to be a bumpy ride.
April Holmes, March 15, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Is Search a Thing of the Past
March 15, 2013
It seems that search companies are no longer the big man on campus. Instead tech, social media and other industries are now the leaders in the pack. The CB Insights blog article “2012 Tech M&A Activity Report-Private Company Acquisitions” talks about the private tech companies that were acquired in 2012. According to the article
“2012 saw 2277 private technology companies acquired globally. Acquirers paid $46.8B for targets (in deals with disclosed valuations) with 30% of deals accounting for 80% of the value.”
It really doesn’t come as a big surprise but two of the biggest active acquirers were Google and Facebook. The two tech companies did 12 private tech company acquisitions in 2012. Out of all of those acquisitions none of them were for search companies. The MIT Technology Review article “50 Disruptive Companies 2013” lists 50 companies to pay attention to in 2013. Companies such as Google, Apple, Samsung and Amazon come as no surprise as they are some of the biggest names in the business world. However what is interesting is that not one search company made the list. A car company and even a chemical company made the list but there is no sign of search. To some this may not seem like a big deal and most people probably wouldn’t even notice but for the search community this is a big deal. In a world where people are scrambling to keep up with the latest technology has search lost its place? Are the days of big search deals gone? Maybe, maybe not but one thing is clear, right now search is not where the action is.
April Holmes, March 15, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Autonomy in the Spotlight
March 13, 2013
Keep in mind that I don’t have a dog in the fight or a horse in the race. I am struck by the flurry of interest in the Hewlett Packard dust up.
The most recent excitement concerns the Serious Fraud Office’s looking into the sale by Autonomy to Hewlett Packard. HP precipitated the situation because it bought Autonomy. The Board of Directors kicked tires and wrote a check with some help from their bankers for $8 to $11 billion. The number keeps changing.
The most recent twist is that the Guardian newspaper in London reported on March 12, 2013, that the UK’s Serious Fraud Office may have a conflict of interest. Ah, only in merrie old Englande. You will want to read the story “Conflict of Interest May Prevent SFO Investigating Autonomy.”
The UK’s corruption agency, dubbed the “Seriously Flawed Office” after being forced to abandon its high-profile case against financier Robert Tchenguiz, announced on Tuesday morning that it may have a conflict of interest preventing it from pursuing Autonomy directors for alleged accounting irregularities. The SFO has a £4m contract, with annual payments of £664,098, to use Autonomy’s software.
But if the software doesn’t work what then? Perhaps an IT person from SFO could be called to provide some information. The HP money was for the UK’s leading software company. How eager will those in the UK be to discuss the intricacies of enterprise software in a forum which is not exactly information technology savvy.
I assume that a government entity in the UK not using Autonomy’s software will pick up the investigation. Given the broad market penetration of Autonomy, candidates for the investigation may be asked to volunteer their services. Norway has an experienced team in place with some experience in search related probes as well.
Last time I was in Slough, I thought I saw a city office which had an investigative team.
Stephen E Arnold, March 13, 2013
LucidWorks Sees Multiple Solutions for Enterprise Search Future
March 12, 2013
Mark Bennett of LucidWorks recently granted an exclusive interview to Steven E. Arnold, of the influential Beyond Search blog. The focus is on meeting the coming challenges in the trajectory of search in 2013. LucidWorks has always been a major player, and the informative interview is summarized in the Virtual Strategy article, “LucidWorks Addresses Multiple Solutions for the Future of Enterprise Search.”
After discussing the content of the interview, Arnold makes a strong recommendation for LucidWorks amidst its open source competitors:
“Stephen E. Arnold, Managing Director of Arnold Information Technology and publisher of the influential search industry blog Beyond Search, said, ‘In my analysis of open source search, I rated LucidWorks as one of the leading vendors in enterprise search. Other firms with open source components have not yet achieved the technical critical mass of LucidWorks. Proprietary search vendors are integrating open source search technology into their systems in an effort to reduce their technology costs. At this time, LucidWorks is one of the leading vendors of enterprise and Web-centric search.’”
For someone with such experience in the search field, an endorsement from Arnold is a strong one. LucidWorks continues to receive positive press for its cutting edge technology and professional team. For organizations in the market for a value-added open source solution, LucidWorks should get the first look.
Emily Rae Aldridge, March 12, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
A 60 Second Snapshot: Cebit 2013 Search
March 8, 2013
Just got off a wonderful flight from Hannover, Germany. You can check out a 60 second snapshot of the search challenges I addressed in my invited lecture. Click here for the YouTube video. An audio abstract of the talk is available as well. Click here for the MP3.
Stephen E Arnold, March 9, 2013
SEO Pro Suggests Peers Try Ethics
March 8, 2013
Transparency and ethics in the search engine optimization field? Interesting. Writer Pratik Dholakiya at the Search Engine Journal has some advice for his colleagues in, “Let’s Make the SEO Industry Crystal Clear and Ethical in the Year Ahead!”
The article opens with this acknowledgement: in SEO circles, “ethics” and “transparency” have become dirty words, connected to Google‘s highly-resented efforts to impose quality control onto its search results. Dholakiya seems to understand he is swimming against the tide with his fifteen suggestions, most of which focus on ways to embrace, rather than reflexively reject, such principles. For example, he suggests his peers resist the urge to protect secrets from their clients and, instead, involve them in their planning. He may get more traction with entry number two, which attempts to position “ethics” as a question of smart strategy rather than morals.
See the article if you are curious about Dholakiya’s advice. The Panda and Penguin make an appearance, of course, as do radical concepts like building strong relationships and emphasizing the long view over short-term thinking. His conclusions give us a clue about why he feels now is the time to implore his colleagues to change their tune:
“We are entering an age when SEO can’t be considered separate from online marketing in general. Instead, SEO has become an online branding effort with an emphasis on search, requiring many of the general marketing skills that other online marketers take advantage of.
“Unlike, say, PPC [Pay Per Click], we don’t have the option of specializing on a small and specific set of skills. Link building, social media, keyword research, branding, conversions, content production, relationship building, viral marketing, and rich snippets: it’s all a part of SEO. This is the year to let our clients know that we are comprehensive internet marketing experts with the skills to bring them long term success and opportunities!”
So, he suggests that behaving ethically might better serve these consultants in an evolving landscape. What a novel concept.
Cynthia Murrell, March 08, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Sinequa Making an Impact In Enterprise Information Access
March 8, 2013
Our team at Beyond Search has maintained a continued interest in Sinequa, an enterprise information access firm based in Paris, for many years. This innovative company has made an impact in the information retrieval realm with the primary mission of empowering users. According to ArnoldIT’s newest Search Wizards Speak interview, “Sinequa: An Interview with Luc Manigot” by Beyond Search’s Stephen Arnold, Sinequa is doing this with real-time, intuitive, business-focused access to information.
The company stands out in this competitive field by tackling information in a range of file types, sources, and systems in what the company calls “unified information access.” In the interview, Sinequa Chief Operating Officer Luc Manigot expands on the benefits of the company:
“Today we do think that our solution offers a real advantage over others, and customers stand to gain by replacing other solutions by ours. We have a growing business in replacing legacy search systems from other companies. Siemens, for example, has found that Sinequa provides its employees with information access, not headaches.”
The company serves hundreds of thousands of people in more than 250 organizations with unique search-based applications. We find Sinequa’s problem-solving approach refreshing and strongly encourage you to learn more about the system at http://www.sinequa.com.
Andrea Hayden, March 08, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Google Is Big: Another Breathless Description
March 6, 2013
I read with some fatigue “Return of the Borg: How Twitter Rebuilt Google’s Secret Weapon.” The main idea is that Twitter like Google has some metasoftware which allows wonderfully efficient processing to happen in a really wonderful way. Here’s the snippet which I noted:
These systems span a worldwide network of data centers, responding to billions of online requests with each passing second, and when Wilkes first saw them in action, he felt like Neo as he downs the red pill, leaves the virtual reality of the Matrix, and suddenly lays eyes on the vast network of machinery that actually runs the thing. He was gobsmacked at the size of it all — and this was a man who had spent more than 25 years as a researcher at HP Labs, working to push the boundaries of modern computing. “I’m an old guy. Megabytes were big things,” Wilkes says, in describing the experience. “But when I came to Google, I had to add another three zeros to all my numbers.” Google is a place, he explains, where someone might receive an emergency alert because a system that stores data is down to its last few petabytes of space. In other words, billions of megabytes can flood a fleet of Google machines in a matter of hours.
Yep, a motion picture analogy. Forget old school science fiction. The Googles and Twitters are like the movies.
Yesterday in the discussion which followed my Cebit talk, one of the people in the audience asked, “Isn’t Google too big?”
The question underscores the real concern of some folks. Google defines search and quite a few other online experiences. In Europe, Google is the big dog referrer in some countries. Russia seems to be up for grabs. But in Denmark, France, Germany, and Spain, Google reigns supreme.
Behind the question is a sense at least in the mind of one person at my lecture, that Google is a little too big.
My comment to the questioner was, “Isn’t it a little late to be worrying about Google. Where were you in 1998?”
The audience fell silent, presumably reflecting on the fact that Google has shifted search and retrieval from old fashioned metrics of precision and recall to “good enough” from statistical and advertising methods of determining what one gets from a query.
One of the folks at the session was deep into a study of what “good enough” means. Why not ask Google and replicate a breathless list of astounding technical achievements. That works for Wired. Won’t the method work for those who want to understand the brave old worlds of Google, Twitter, and other modern information systems?
Excellence is good enough when it produces big revenues, convenience, and the doubt about where to go for information. Maybe that’s why Google is headed toward $1,000 a share and “regular” search vendors are struggling to stay afloat? Autonomy’s value heads south. Google surges upwards. I think there is a message there.
Stephen E Arnold, March 6, 2013
Exclusive Interview: Mark Bennett of LucidWorks
March 5, 2013
Engineer Mark Bennett says it’s the tools that matter. Beyond Search agrees. Having tools and talking about tools are two very different things.
Mr. Bennett, co-founder of New Idea Engineering, recently brought more than twenty years’ enterprise search experience to LucidWorks, along with knowledge across major commercial search platforms, superior mathematics and physics-related disciplinary training, and a history in the search industry, including an early tenure at Verity, one of the pioneers in enterprise and large-scale information retrieval back in the 1990s.
Mark Bennett of LucidWorks, a member of their core enterprise search engineering team, recently granted an exclusive interview to the Arnold Information Technology Search Wizards Speak series to discuss the trajectory of search in 2013. LucidWorks is the leading developer of search, discovery, and analytics software based on Apache Lucene and Apache Solr technology. The full text of the interview is available at http://goo.gl/eoeuz.
He told Beyond Search:
“In a nutshell: search, analytics, and content processing vendors have to recognize that what is needed to allow developers to use the product is different from what is required to sell the product and deliver software which users embrace,” Bennett said about the immediate future of search products. “The challenge that keeps search specialists engaged is the problem of dealing with outliers—bizarre business requirements that every project seems to unearth. Outliers are the new norm.”
Bennett recalls a talk with a vendor ten years about a particularly tough search problem. Then, the vendor “ticked off a half dozen reasons why it was really very hard to solve and not worth the effort.” Years later, open source people visited the same problem, came up with a similar list, and diligently worked through those items. “LucidWorks, for instance, delivers facets, suggestions, advanced file storage, and high performance without the punishing costs of proprietary solution,” Bennett explained.
Stephen E. Arnold, Managing Director of Arnold Information Technology and publisher of the influential search industry blog Beyond Search, said:
“In my analysis of open source search, I rated LucidWorks as one of the leading vendors in enterprise search. Other firms with open source components have not yet achieved the technical critical mass of LucidWorks. Proprietary search vendors are integrating open source search technology into their systems in an effort to reduce their technology costs. At this time, LucidWorks is one of the leading vendors of enterprise and Web-centric search. Firms like Attivio (http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=236514#.US9fGzBcgug) and ElasticSearch (http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=237410) ElasticSearch are racing to catch up with LucidWorks’ robust technology, engineering and consulting services, and training programs.”
Bennett commented on the differences between LucidWorks and other retrieval solutions companies. “Despite all the comparisons done lately, the target audiences for most open source solutions are very different,” he explained. “If you spin up a copy of Solr you’ve got a very powerful Web user interface, and LucidWorks gives you even more of an administrative user interface. But when you fire up ElasticSearch, you’ve got a REST API.”
Bennett still often works from the Unix command prompt. “But when I watch a Windows or Mac power user for a day, and then watch a Unix command prompt guru—both get a lot of work done. My point is that each is a different type of power user. By the way, I work from the Unix command prompt myself.”
His point is that vendors need to be able to address the user interface preferences. “I do wonder what happens when an ElasticSearch developer hands off an application to a busy information technology person or an operations team to manage. Either those new owners are will need to know the ‘Web command line’ (URL and JSON syntax) extremely well, or if not, an administrative framework will be needed.”
LucidWorks is a step beyond more commercial proprietary search systems, in Bennett’s opinion, because it serves both groups of users. “Our professional services team has experience with many of other search engines. Chances are we’ve worked with many of the pieces before and know how to crack tough problems quickly. If an issue is a first time event, I am confident we can develop a solution.” He added:
“LucidWorks has delivered an open source enterprise search solution which accomplishes two things,” Arnold said. “First, it is an excellent alternative to many proprietary information retrieval systems. Second, the system takes the rough edges off some open source search solutions which add to an organization’s costs, not keeping them within budget allocations.”
Search is not a “one size fits all” solution, Bennett confirmed. “So while some engines drop features that ‘only three percent of people will ever use’, other groups realize that it’s the tools that matter.”
Visit the LucidWorks website at http://www.lucidworks.com.
Donald Anderson, March 5, 2013
Sponsored by Mediscripts, the world leader in prescription solutions for health professionals worldwide
Arnold Lecture Cebit 2013
March 5, 2013
An abbreviated version of Stephen E Arnold’s lecture about enterprise search challenges at the 2013 Cebit Conference is now available. To listen to the eight minute talk, navigate to the audio archive. You can find additional information on the ArnoldIT portal page at www.xenky.com.
Stuart Schram, March 1, 2013
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