SEO Blog

I started compiling links for this piece eight hours two days ago and have since been on a interesting journey through my own memories of 2007. The online marketing industry is in one of its greatest periods of transition as enormous sums of ad-spend pour into the sector looking for places to be spent.

Many small to medium sized search marketing firms catapulted into the big leagues seemingly overnight this year as advertising firms found greater value in online and digital media than in traditional television, print and radio.

The major search engines understand where the money is going. Each acquired its own online advertising network this year in order to contextually serve content-rich advertising across as many subscribing websites as possible. The moment Google initiated the slow process of spending $3.1billion to buy DoubleClick, Yahoo and MSN had to have ad-networks too. Not having one would be like not having a paid-search advertising platform…

2007 was also the year of the Facebook. Perhaps the fastest growing social network in 2007, Facebook received a great deal of attention in the mainstream media and from online marketers. Adding two or three hundred thousands new users per month, Facebook ranks among the most popular networks online. The company faced a setback late in the year when privacy concerns forced it to withdraw and redesign its social advertising platform, Facebook Beacon.

So back in mid-November MSN launched their own Webmaster Center Blog. As with the Google Blog this should provide a peek into some of the inner workings of the their own team of Engineer/PR/Evangelicals as they parade new MSNbot nuances to the throngs of awaiting enthusiasts. After sniffing around the blogroll today I noticed that one particular items was just put to bed. Having threatened to post about this ages ago, my procrastinating ways have lead me to the end of the saga without having weighed in until now.

The ‘Question’ related to the rash of bizarre search referrals that MSN was spreading around earlier this year.

The question was pretty much ‘where the heck is all of this search traffic coming from suddenly?’. Okay, suddenly meaning towards the end of August of this year, just like everyone else. So for an SEO Firm getting hits for the keyword ’search’, this could appear pretty flattering. Did I do something magical to suddenly send the MSNLive Bot into heat? Did someone hijack a PPC campain and we’re going to get a nasty bill from the folks at MSN Adcenter? After playing with those ideas for three to four seconds, it became brutally obvious that this was just bogus bot traffic masking itself with a search referral, thus triggering an entry into our Search Metrics. If I didn’t know any better I could possibly call that cloaking… The plot thickens. After spending some time reflecting on our Enquisite data a few items still didn’t ad up.