InsureMe Affiliate Blog

Google Caffeine Increases Search Quality

kralph — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 21:46:59 +0000

Recently, Google has undergone a behind the scenes upgrade to improve their infrastructure being referred to as “Caffeine.” The goals behind this change are to make searches faster, more accurate, and increase the relevance of results. In the early stages of what should take months to fully develop, the faster speed is most notable, but the number of search results offers the biggest clues into what is to come.

Using the tool www.CompareCaffeine.com, you can look at side-by-side results for both regular Google, and the new “Caffeine” version. To unravel what the impact of the upgrade could be, I tried a number of searches to compare both speed and number of results. In each case I ran the search three times and recorded the differences. My searches were for “insurance,” “car insurance,” and “cheap car insurance for ford mustang.”

Search Term(s)		Google”Standard”	(vs.)	Google “Caffeine”
“insurance”	Average Speed	.14 sec		.08 sec
	# of Results	421,000,000		490,000,000

“car insurance”	Average Speed	.2 sec		.08 sec
	# of Results	106,000,000		44,700,000

“cheap car insurance for ford mustang”	Average Speed	.23 sec		.12 sec
	# of Results	616,000		596,000

From the above results, the most noticeable difference is the speed. “Caffeine” returned results in about half the time in all three tests. As for volume, it appears that the longer the keyword the more relevant the results became based on the number of listings returned. While “Caffeine” returns more results than regular Google for a generic search on “insurance,” when I refine what I’m looking for, they produce less results.

What does this mean for affiliates?
It appears that the space for long-tail keywords will become smaller, but more targeted. Displaying in the first few pages has always been important, but if the focus is going to be on relevance, make sure you are adding unique value to an insurance shopper’s visit. There has been an increase in penalties for simple redirect sites recently, and it may be time to develop your content to add value and justify being ranked higher.

So what can you do?
InsureMe offers a product for affiliates in our top two tiers allowing them to host the form on their site to avoid such penalties. If interested, talk to your affiliate manager about ways you can increase lead volume to enjoy the benefits of being in this group.

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Google- Yahoo Partnership Coming True?

Brittany Heidtke — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 13:23:26 +0000

So have you heard the news? Microsoft has completely taken their offer off the table with Yahoo and now Yahoo and Google are going to team up–eventually.

No need to go crazy now with trying to figure out what you are going to do if/when Google and Yahoo combine their paid search ads, personally I don’t see the government allowing it (but that’s just my opinion)…monopoly anyone??
Anyways, from the reports yesterday, nothing is supposed to go into effect until September so we all have time to figure things out.
If you’d like to read more on it, Yahoo news has given some insight into it, as well as Search Engine Land.

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Ethics? Spelled backwards, it’s Scihte!

April Hartmeister — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 16:41:43 +0000

Does that mean you CAN bid on trademark terms?
Ethics are icky and sticky when it comes to online marketing and advertising. We still haven’t reached the true outline of what that means, or when there is a serious violation of privacy whether it be personal or business information and names. Seriously, folks, here we are in another long drawn out election year, where we, as our American duty, have to pick out who the truth teller is. I can hear some politicians state the following quote from Darby Conley:
“Ethics are so annoying. I avoid them on principle.”

Where do we, as internet marketers stand with the so called “ethics”? Sometimes, because we stand on the cutting edge of marketing and advertising, some ideas that seem good could turn out to be “unethical”. There are loose definitions, such as Google’s take on trademark terms.

And if you want to read s’more stuff about trademark bidding, here are Yahoo’s stipulations.
The AMA has a code of their own set ethics.

And I’ll bet the candidates running for president are bidding on eachother’s names. When I looked up Obama on Google, I saw at the bottom, on searches related to Obama, Hillary shows up there as well as John Edwards.
Seems like money and ethics are always tied together, so shouldn’t MONEY be ETHICS spelled backwards? Would it be a violation of the trademarked term “ethics” if “money” bid on it?

You are so MONEY, you dont even know it.

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Go Colloquial–and Go Global

Penny Hagerman — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 18:06:51 +0000

Most affiliates dont have a lot of cash to spare when theyre just starting out. (After all, thats why they become affiliates, right?) Whether paid search is their game of choice or they prefer experimenting with SEO, tips that help them enter the arena without spending an arm and a leg are always welcome.

Well, if youre a new affiliate–or even a seasoned pro looking to cut costs–heres a suggestion you might not have thought of: try using colloquialisms. Thats right, if you can find and use more informal terms (or those same terms in another language) and substitute them for terms more difficult to rank on or more expensive to bid on, you might just find yourself a profitable niche!

If youre wondering what Im talking about, or you think Im speaking another language, check out this recent post over at the SEOmoz blog on the subject. Itll explain things in more detail–and put a new twist on the long tail!

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Social Networks? Good? Bad? Money?

April Hartmeister — Thu, 29 May 2008 19:00:38 +0000

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Flip That Switch: Landing Pages Gone Bad

Penny Hagerman — Wed, 28 May 2008 19:44:02 +0000

Writing for the web may not be your cup of tea. After all, who but a seasoned web writer can craft SEO-friendly text, insert a phenomenal call to action, and convince visitors they simply have to have whatever you have to offer–especially when its as boring as insurance?

You can! Whether you enjoy writing on the side or you can barely construct an understandable sentence, knowing what NOT to do when writing landing pages is just as important as knowing what TO do. The premise? If you can avoid making mistakes up front, youll save yourself a lot of time and frustration on the back end–no matter what your level of experience.

To find out what makes landing pages go wrong, check out this handy-dandy article I ran across. If youll take its pointers seriously and avoid common missteps, even you can write landing pages that rock!

So flip the switch, shed some light on the subject–and start writing great landing pages now. You really can do it!

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Changes Are In the Air…

Brittany Heidtke — Tue, 27 May 2008 19:05:52 +0000

So as you’ve already read James (the traitor–just kidding we still love you James!) decided to leave last Friday and we’ve decided to keep the blog up and running.
It’s going to sound a little different than what it did when he wrote because we are going to have multiple people writing through out the week so get ready for some variety!
With that being said, you should check out our newly updated blogger profiles and read a little bit about our new bloggers.
We were also thinking that it would be great if we could get some input for you, our readers, as to what you needed help with and what type of stuff you wanted to read about. So here’s what we’re asking of you–if you have any ideas please send them our way. Would you like to know more about PPC? More about SEO stuff? Or just general affiliate goings on? (We’re also up for giving updates on the Colorado weather…but that’s probably not all that interesting)
Let us know what you want in the comments and we’ll give it to you!

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On To The Next…

James Omdahl — Tue, 13 May 2008 19:14:42 +0000

As some of you may already know (if you follow me on Twitter), Friday is my last day here at InsureMe. I’ve had an amazing, life changing, and exciting 5 years with InsureMe and deciding to leave wasn’t an easy choice. I’ve been given a new opportunity with a start-up in Europe, and at this point in my life it feels like time to take a chance and step out of my comfort zone.

Actually, one of my favorite quotes, which I’ve mentioned on this blog before, seems to apply well in this situation:

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. - Mark Twain

One of my greatest joys over the last two and a half years has been writing this blog for all of you. It truly was a labor of love, and all of the feedback, comments, and relationships that have grown from the blog have made the process of writing almost 700 post worthwhile.

Hopefully over the years you’ve read at least one thing here that has helped you be more successful as an affiliate marketer…if that’s the case, I consider this blog a success.

The good news is that InsureMe plans to continue posting to this blog going forward. While post might not be as frequent as they currently are, InsureMe has a team of talented online marketers here that will continue to add tips, tools and news to the blog to help you succeed in your affiliate adventure. So make sure you subscribe via RSS and keep an eye out for future posts.

If you’d like to stay in touch, or follow me on my next adventure, track down my personal blog and website, which is easily found by searching for “James Omdahl” on Google. You can find my contact info there if you want it.

Thanks so much for reading and stay tuned…more InsureMe Affiliate Blog goodness is on the way…

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Yahoo! Calling Out Spammer in the Results?

James Omdahl — Mon, 12 May 2008 20:00:16 +0000

For the first time I have spotted an instance where Yahoo! is calling out an email spammer right in their search results. Let’s look at the screen grabs.

At the top of the search results, Yahoo! shows this message:

And then in the results they show this:

And when you hover over that, Yahoo! pops up this:

You can see the whole screenshot here.

Looks like Yahoo! might be trying to differentiate themselves as the company that protects users from spammers. The real question is, if a company is so bad that they flag them, why show them in the results at all?

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Adam Audette’s SEO Guide to Information Architecture

James Omdahl — Fri, 09 May 2008 14:31:03 +0000

If yesterday’s post about the SEOmoz Web Developer’s SEO Cheat Sheet got you looking for more information on SEO standards and best practices, then the subject of today’s post will knock your socks off.

Today I ran across Adam Audette’s SEO Guide to Information Architecture and was blown away by all of the great information and practical advice all wrapped up into a single document.

The guide includes the following sections:

Domains
Sections & Categories
Pages
Internal Linking
Final Considerations

As someone who has underestimated the importance of information architecture and on-page optimization for SEO in the past, I can attest that modifications to code, design, and internal linking can truly boost your site’s SEO performance in meaningful ways. So take some time today and read Adam’s guide…you can thank me later.

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