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Nielsen Online has released data showing that Wikipedia’s 8,000% growth in the past 5 years is attributed to search. Really? Is that what happens when Google ranks all of your pages as #1? I had no idea.

Breaking down the not-at-all suprising data:

Google sent the most search traffic to en.wikipedia.org with 61% of searches on home computers and 66% of work computers. Yahoo came in second at 19% home, 16% work. The main www.Wikipedia.org came in third, beating out MSN and AOL at home and search.MSN.com and search.Live.com at work.

Wikipedia’s growth is slowing, however. Here’s data for unique visitors in the month of April for the past six years with the year-over-year growth percentages:

2003 700,000, n/a
2004 2,082,000, 197%
2005 6,753,000, 224%
2006 25,970,000, 285%
2007 45,934,000 77%
2008 55,820,000 17%

Related Reading:
Powerset Launches Piggybackipedia: Wikipedia Search Engine
Wikipedia External Links Now “Nofollow”
Ten Reasons Marketers Should Pay Attention to Wikipedia

IAC-owned Ask.com has agreed to acquire Lexico Publishing Group, the owner of Dictionary.com, Thesaurus.com, and Reference.com.

The move will help Ask.com fulfill its recent strategy to focus on reference and providing answers to questions. More than half a billion monthly worldwide searches consist of dictionary, thesaurus, and encyclopedia queries, according to comScore.

The acquisition brings to Ask.com 15.6 million monthly unique users, growing 29% year-over-year, giving the combined entity more than 145 million unduplicated users worldwide, making Ask.com the ninth-largest Web property in the world. A full 88 percent of Lexico sites’ traffic comes from direct navigation, where users type in “dictionary.com” or other site names in their browser.

“We think it fits in very nicely with what we have at Ask.com,” Doug Leeds, chief strategy officer at Ask.com, told Search Engine Watch. “We’re going to take some of the things that make Ask.com great, like related search and binoculars, and bring them to Dictionary.com.”

The Lexico sites will also be redesigned to include the three-paneled Ask3D functionality for its search results, he said.

For dictionary.com, the move brings users closer to their next or previous destinations, which quite often is a search engine, Leeds said. The addition of Lexico’s reference sites will improve Ask.com users’ experience as well, since more than 30 percent of all searches conducted on Ask.com are in the reference category.

Terms of the all-cash transaction were not disclosed. Once the deal closes, the 16 employees of privately held Lexico are expected to join Ask.com’s team.

Barack Obama needs internet marketers to win the Presidential Election. So his campaign wisely advertised on the Search Engine Watch Jobs Board.

You know Obama Rocks the Youth Vote but he’s not stopping at the primaries. Here are the first two requirements for joining the Obama internet revolution:

We’re looking for internet experts who strongly support Barack Obama for President and have expertise in one or more of:

* Search Engine Marketing
* Search Engine Optimization

You can check out the full requirements for the Obama For America internet marketing gigs here. Note: This is a short-term gig. There’s no guarantee this will turn into a Cabinet-level position.

But wouldn’t it be great if the new President named a couple Joint Chiefs of the Internet? After all, Secretary of the World Wide Web doesn’t sound like much fun.

Or how about Internet General?

Yeah, we like the sound of that.

What are your kids searching for during the school day? netTrekker d.i. has released data about the Top 15 In-School searches for the first quarter of 2008. And here they are:

1. Games
2. Dogs
3. Animals
4. Civil War
5. George Washington
6. Holocaust
7. Abraham Lincoln
8. Multiplication
9. Math Games
10. Weather
11. Frogs
12. Fractions
13. Planets
14. Sharks
15. Plants

The results were tracked by Thinkronize, the developers behind netTrekker d.i., which is a safe educational search engine.

“Search engines like Google(TM) and Yahoo® pull together lists of the most popular keyword queries, underscoring our nation’s interests and fixations and showcasing trends and patterns,” said Thinkronize CEO Randy Wilhelm. “Our report offers a different view — a real-time school-based mirror of what our children are searching for — both for academic purposes and out of genuine curiosity.”

Related Reading:
Yahoo Releases Safe Search Product into Beta
The New Multitaskers: Kids Split Attention Between TV, Internet
Quintura For Kids: Another Search Engine For Kids
A Look at the Top Searches of 2007

Chris Boggs, manager, Search Engine Optimization for Brulant has joined Search Engine Watch Forums as Associate Editor. Chris is a highly sought after speaker on the circuit. He’s presented at Search Engine Strategies (SES), PubCon and SMX among others.

Chris will be teaming up with Search Engine Watch Forums Editor, Frank Watson, founder of Kangamurra Media.

Chris and Frank write the weekly SEM Crossfire column for SEW Experts: debating, arguing, and discussing the hottest search engine marketing and SEO issues in the industry.

So what can you expect from Chris in the Forums? The best example may be found here.

I also asked Chris to warn me about what kind of trouble he plans getting me into:

“I am very excited to become more involved with SEW Forums. I can really say that I learned a lot from the forums when it they first started, and I have continued to benefit from community participation. I have unfortunately had less time to participate at SEW forums as I used to, but I plan on ramping back up during the off-hours. One thing I am tied of seeing at SEW and other forums is so-called experts coming in and making absurd or non-factual statements.”

Hey, me too, Chris. But what do you plan to do about it?

“Those types of participants can take my new position announcement as notice that I’m tired of being nice. I and other Moderators plan on urging people to back up their statements with proof, or suffer public ridicule. Those people that are newer to the industry and openly want to learn (and do not claim falsely to be experts) will hopefully be less likely to be derailed by advice based on zero sum experience.”

Wow. You heard it here first.

Hello Chris, goodbye B.S.

photo credit: SearchEvangelist on Flickr

There’s been a lot of talk recently about how SEO is dead, and branding will rise out of its ashes. I have to disagree. If anything, branding is the marketing technique on its way out–a victim of how search has changed the way people think and shop, online and offline.

Once upon a time, a consumer had to juggle a lot of information just to make a relative intelligent purchase. In 1991, if you wanted to buy a portable compact disc player, you had to know:
1. What you wanted to buy (portable compact disc player)
2. What brand you wanted to buy (Sony)
3. What product you wanted to buy (Discman)
4. What store to buy it at (The Wiz)
5. Where to find that store (Menlo Park Mall)

Aside from Step 1, every other piece of information came to you from branding. Sony did an amazing job branding the Discman, to the point where it was synonymous with “portable CD player.” The Wiz was also an obvious choice based on branding; after all, no one beat it. And Menlo Park Mall was close to my house and it was the mall from Mallrats. If you wanted to research prices, you either had to go store to store (and presumably know which stores to go to) or compare Sunday circulars. To compare products, you needed a copy of Consumer Reports. All that knowledge, or the ways to access it, was put into your head through branding.

Today, it’s quite different. Looking to buy a new MP3 player in 2008? With a search engine, that’s about all you need to know. A search in Google for “mp3 player” brings up C|Net’s MP3 Buying Guide. After reading some reviews, you decide on a flash memory player and then on the Creative Zen 16GB. You might then check out the prices quoted on C|Net, or search for “Creative Zen 16GB” in Google, or in a price comparison engine like Google Product Search or Shopping.com. And you’ll likely end up getting the Zen from whichever store has the best price and seems trustworthy.

Branding still matters somewhat. After all, you might recognize the names “C|Net,” “Creative” and “Zen.” But you didn’t find them based on their brand; you found them via search. In fact, the branding that matters the most were those of the tools you used: Google, Google Product Search and Shopping.com.

Search drives the sale; branding only validates it. We’ve been conditioned by search not to be brand loyal. We may check out Amazon.com for the MP3 Player, but we have no qualms about buying it elsewhere. We have a world of information at our fingertips, and we only need the barest bit of data to access it. Why remember a brand when you can so easily find it again? Even when branding works on us, we validate that branding by searching for the brand in a search engine instead of going straight to the brand’s web site. If that branding fully worked, the lucrative field of reputation management would disappear.

So branding isn’t exactly dead yet, but in a world where we’ve been conditioned to use brands as–at most–a secondary measure of a company’s worth, and to validate branding through search, it’s importance continues to wane. In that world, a world where search still leads the way in driving revenue, SEO cannot die.

SEW Expert Eric Enge published a terrific interview on his Stone Temple blog with Yahoo Chief Scientist Andrew Tomkins, who keynoted SES New York. What makes it a great read? Eric asks spot-on questions that cut to the heart of the matter.

Eric Enge: In New York you talked about the future of search, but the thing that really struck me in the conversation was the notion of “webmaster supplied content” communicated essentially directly to the search engine. Maybe you can tell me whether that notion resonates with you in just your general thoughts on the concepts that you laid out in the presentation?

Andrew Tomkins: I’ll start by saying that characterization of webmasters and publishers sharing more structured representation of their content is exactly what we are talking about. I guess it’s easy to think of it as sharing it with a search engine.

The exchange that really impressed me was late in the interview when Eric and Andrew discuss a site’s authority:

Andrew Tomkins: Understanding how authoritative a site is, then specifically for each part of the site; what they are about, how much you should trust them and how much people tend to believe them. How deep they go; all of this is very valuable from the ranking standpoint.

photo credit: Marc_Smith in Flickr

Eric Enge: You could have a site that has a million links, and that has many sections like I talked about, but the tennis section for some reason has very few inbound links from third party sites. Whereas, the camping section has half a million links, where you would actually allocate trust differently by site section.

Andrew Tomkins: That’s a great example of a good cue that you would want to pay attention to.

If you care about how search enignes work and where they’re headed in the future, this interview is a must-read.

There are a few firms that I might believe do a good job of both Web design and SEO. Most Web design companies have no business claiming to “do” SEO. In today’s Organic Search Engine Optimization column, “Don’t Hire a Butcher to do a Baker’s Job,” Mark Jackson explains why Web designers and IT teams that claim to be handling SEO are probably not doing enough for your site.

The PowerPoint Your CEO Must See” comes courtesy of the tremendous response we’ve received from the SEO community about the Matt Cutts SEO video we published from the Web 2.0 conference.

A few readers asked for a transcript (not available) — and no, the embedded Flash video is not search engine optimized. So we’re presenting the next best thing: Matt’s “What Google Knows About Spam” Google Docs deck in a slide show.

If your CEO doesn’t have 10 minutes to invest in this SEO deck, you can find a new job here

If there’s one slide your CEO should see, it’s the “SEO Is Good” slide.

Spam? Bad.
SEO? Good.

Last month Search Engine Watch blogger and RankAbove CEO Eli Feldblum created an industry firestorm when we published “SEO Spam is Good” last month. The post was misinterpreted, reviled and bashed by SEOs for implying that SEOs spam search engines. We didn’t have comments enabled then. Now we do.

Matt says in his blog:

I’ve always meant to do a post to say that search engine optimization (SEO) is not spam and that Google doesn’t hate SEO, but I never seem to get around to it. This presentation gave me a chance to slip those facts into the minds of several thousand tech-savvy folks.

[Thanks to Tracy O for cc-licensing the "money" image that I used in the presentation.]

Tracy O has a very cool “Where’s Waldo?” photo of a floppy disk in a landfill. Check it out. But I digress.

On Monday, June 16, 2008, before the start of the Search Engine Strategies conference in Toronto, Canada, there will be four search engine marketing training classes. While each of the half-day SEM training workshops costs CAD 795, if you register for a full day, the cost is CAD 1,395.

That’s a savings of 195 Loonies – which is worth between 97 and 98 Toonies. (SES Toronto Conference Chairman, Andrew Goodman, has been trying to help me translate American into Canadian, but Search Engine Strategies Global Content Director, Kevin Ryan, thinks it’s a lost cause.)

Seriously, why would you want to take a search engine marketing training class or two – independently or in addition to registering for the SES Toronto?

There are three key reasons.

First, you’ll be provided with “guided, hands-on exposure that puts theory into practice in a highly interactive environment,” as it says on the Search Engine Strategies Toronto website. These SEM training workshops will be taught by Debra Mastaler, Todd Malicoat, Adam Goldberg and Liana Evans, and I can personally vouch for three of them. (While I don’t know Adam Goldberg personally, he’s an ex-Google Insider who started Google’s Inside Sales team in NYC in 2003. So, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.)

These search engine marketing experts will provide you with the tools and techniques you need to become (or remain) outstanding in your field. (I know there’s a joke about a guy who is out standing in his field, but I forget the punch line.)

In the end, you’ll not only walk away from the search engine marketing classes with the knowledge and skills you need to be a successful search engine marketer, you may also “jump-start your career and enhance your professional know-how,” as the SES Toronto website puts it.

Second, all four of this year’s SEM training workshops are brand new. Compare them to last’s year’s line up of search engine marketing training classes. There are absolutely no repeats.

In Track 1, Debra Mastaler of Alliance-Link.com is teaching “Link Building Tactics, Tools & Techniques” from 8 a.m. to noon. And Adam Goldberg of ClearSaleing is teaching “Search Engine Marketing Metrics and Myths” from 1 to 5 p.m. (I love the use of alliteration in the titles of their SEM training workshops.)

In Track 2, Todd Malicoat of Stundtdubl is teaching “SEO Tools” from 8 a.m. to noon. And Liana Evans of KeyRelevance is teaching “How to Effectively Use Social Media for Search Marketing Campaigns” from 1 to 5 p.m. (Just because they don’t alliterate their titles doesn’t mean their search engine marketing training classes won’t be fun.)

I interviewed Todd and John Marshall of Market Motive at ad:tech San Francisco a couple of weeks back, when Market Motive announced it has teamed with Search Engine Strategies to provide online classes for training in search marketing, web analytics, and web conversion techniques.

Todd also talked about his SEM training workshop at SES Toronto. Check out the video interview below.

Stundubl’s Todd Malicoat’s Upcoming Session at SES Toronto

There’s a third key reason why you would want to take a search engine marketing training class or two – independently or in addition to registering for the SES Toronto. (There are always three key reasons to do anything. Hang on a second, I’ll remember it.)

You get a lunch break. (No, that’s not it. The lunches are getting better at all of the Search Engine Strategies events, but that’s not a reason to take workshops covering optimization and advertising strategies, analytics, tactics and best practices.)

Oh, now I remember. Whether you’re a consultant, site designer, website owner, or in-house marketing professional, you can’t afford to miss this opportunity to learn firsthand about the latest developments in search engine strategy. (I thought I was having a “senior moment” there.)

No matter where you are on the SEO or SEM learning curve, you’ll leave these intensive workshops with the necessary skills and tools to improve your business results and take your search engine marketing to another level. “Something that never looks bad on your permanent record,” according to Greg Marmalard in Animal House (1978).

See you at the Intercontinental Toronto Centre Hotel, which is a different venue than the main Search Engine Strategies conference, which is being held at the Metro Toronto Convention Center, which is attached to the InterContinental Toronto Centre Hotel. (Was that clear? Check Google Maps.)

See you at SES Toronto.