Well, we're back from PubCon so here we are with some spankin' new Whiteboard Friday content for ya. This week, Microsoft Live's new Webmaster Tools honcho, Nathan Buggia, joins Rand to discuss what's up at Live, the perils of life in the engine race, how they deal with paid links, and what they're doing to win market share.
Nathan is to Live what Vanessa Fox was to Google, so you can expect to see quite a bit of him around the search-o-sphere. He's also making quite an effort to pop up like a whack-a-mole at every conference in the Northern Hemisphere, so keep an eye out for him and give him a warm welcome, he's bound to be an important engine ambassador and he's a heckuva nice guy to boot.
For those who haven't yet tried it - check out Live's Webmaster Tools here.
By: Scott Willoughby
Whiteboard Friday - "Hey! New Guy!"
Whiteboard Friday
The author's views are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.
Hey all, thanks for the kind words and constructive feedback. It is refreshing to read these comments, I think SEOmoz may be the classiest seo community on the web. I’ve tried to address all the comments from above, please keep posting if there’s something else you’d like to know.
Can Microsoft innovate in the SEO space?
I have tremendous respect for the work that Vanessa, Matt and Google have done in this space, but we have no intention of cloning their tools – that wouldn’t help us or the industry. My goal is to ship at least one "new to industry" feature in every future release, and not ship features that have been done elsewhere unless we can add value. I'll let you guys be the judge of how well we do.
When does viral marketing go wrong?
Don’t get me wrong, I love viral marketing. But like all forms of marketing before it, there are some positive and not-so-positive ways of going about it. I spent sometime this weekend trying to pin down exactly where the line is between viral marketing and media manipulation and if you’re doing these, than I think (IMHO) you’ve crossed it:
Conversely, this is what makes good viral content: (i) Entertaining (ii) Engages users (iii) Different tone than your normal corporate voice.
A classic example of viral marketing done well are the “Will it blend?” videos. Where Tom Dickson shows off his commercial blenders by blending fun items inside, and posting the videos on YouTube. It is definitely amusing, and he engages users by allowing them to suggest items to blend, giving them items they can try at home and blending things that people actually care about. The impact of this campaign in his own words:
Within just a few short days, we had millions of views. The campaign took off almost instantly. We have definitely felt an impact in sales. Will it Blend has had an amazing impact to our commercial and our retail products.
So, before anyone gets defensive about their own viral campaigns, please note that these statements are simply my thoughts on viral marketing and do not represent what Live Search thinks of as SPAM, nor does it represent any of our ranking policies.
And, we generally don’t go after people or IP addresses. That said, please don’t come up to me at conferences and ask me why your huge link farm, blatant spam site, or evil social media cartel isn’t ranking high in our results.
Interested in giving Live Search a(nother) try?
Fall was a big milestone for us, and I expect we’ll make another quality jump in our next release sometime this spring. For the folks interested in giving us another try, here are my favorite features:
Vista & IE
It can’t be a conversation about Microsoft without mentioning these two J I love vista, but I understand how people could have a bad experience with it. Before I installed it, my company bought me a new laptop with (2GB ram) to run vista on, and as soon as I got the laptop I wiped the OEM software and installed a clean copy of vista. No toolbars or OEM junk on my laptop. It is fast, stable, great battery life and I love the desktop search. This is how I recommend experiencing vista. My understanding is that experiences vary widely based on your hardware, and how much your OEM loves you.
IE on the other hand… well let’s just say I love firefox (firebug, spell checking and privacy). Seriously though, IE6 has been very painful for web developers, we know that now and deep down inside we’re sorry. We heard your feedback loud and clear on this. IE7 took big steps forward, and we’re continuing to get better with the forthcoming IE8. (Again, please note that these are my thoughts, and in no way represent Microsoft official position on vista, IE, or anything else)
The secret to ranking well in Live Search
I didn’t want to give up the secret, but Rand called me after the interview and said that I needed to give a least a little hint on ranking well in Live. So here it is, everything you need to know: just add “nathan buggia rocks” to your title tags and you’ll automatically float to the top of all our search results on Live Search for every query term. You’ll also get a raise and I believe win the lotto, but I’m not sure on that last part.
1. It has been a long time since a search engine representative has made me chuckle out loud. I think I might just include "nathan buggia rocks" in a page title somewhere now.
2. As Dug said last month, what Blendtec have achieved with 'Will it blend?' and, in particular, the iPod Nano episode, should be compulsory viewing for any on-line marketing manager. The low tech, low budget approach has a huge amount of appeal, is product orientated and is surprisingly good fun. I, for one, know where I would go for a quality blender and it has earned its links.
3. On the subject of your goal to ship 'at least one "new to industry" feature in every future release', I can see the appeal of avoiding shipping clone features which do not have an additional value add but, assuming that Live will have a comprehensive suite of features and applications, some of them will have been done pretty much as well as they ever need to be already. Sticking too rigidly to this at the expense of inclusion of useful tools or at the risk of adding extra features which are far from value add might prove interesting.
4. Nice post, nice video and, once again, may I reiterate how much I like the Live image search model.
Hi Nathan. Thanks for stopping back past and picking up this conversation. I love the R&D advances you talk about - it's going to be interesting to see what everyone does in this space over the coming months.
Glad you rock Firefox too.
I see you picked up the domain name as well. You can thank me when we meet at a conference. You don't want to know what DaveN would have done with that...
Ok... Now I think I have more trust in MSN. Thumb up!
Keep posting like that and you will fast become more popular than Matt.....
lol... don't worry Matt we still love you too
Yes, I am interested in trying Live Search and generally levelling the field a bit. But as a SEO consultant, as long as 95% of people are using Google, I need to be using that too otherwise I lose touch with reality. Sorry, it's not your fault but for me it's the simple truth.
Looking good there Nathan. Have you registered nathanbuggianude.com yet?
Nice interview - didn't realise MSFT were behind that video - that's brilliant. Nice corporate sense of humour :)
Hope we see more of your thoughts as things develop.
Scott: nice work on the editing - I like the new intro and nameplates etc.
I'm going to have to agree with seanmag on this one.
I don't see how you can algorithmically determine "the difference between viral marketing and a more orchestrated push." I don't even know how I can logically see that happening, let alone mathematically.
What I anticipate this will mean is that Live will attempt to identify social media "cartels," if you will, or rings of social media optimizers who bully content to the top as long as that content is coming from someone "inside the family."
The problem: If you mark social media users this way and assume that "if these guys are involved, it's spam" you're going to penalize a lot of great content that I think, and I think plenty of mozzers will agree, people want to find when they're searching.
I think the reason Google loves social media is because it takes content visibility back to the "democratic quality" of the web that links used to be (before us bastard SEOs monetized them). There is something of a bar of entry into getting your content to do well on Digg and the rest of them, but that's a natural and organic process in most cases. Unless you're going to track social media user IP addresses and determine that "hey, these guys are all operating from within one abandoned downtown warehouse" I don't see how you're going to pull this off.
Beyond that, looking simply at the content itself and trying to determine whether it "shot up to page one too fast" or just "seems spammy" is more than just difficult - I'd say it's algorithmically impossible to do this without throwing lots of beautiful babies out with the bathwater.
I have to completely agree with Rands point about blog links to manipulated content counting.
However a piece of content gets to the top of digg surely the editorially given links to that content as should count? These are given by people who have no idea the content is at the top of digg due to "foul play".
If the quality of the "manipulated" content isn't good enough they won't get any links, the fact that the links come should be indication enough.
In this case, by all means remove any juice passed by links from digg, since they are "manipulative and spammy", but the links that came because the content is good, surely they have to count?
First of all, thank you Nathan and Rand for an interesting discussion. I'd like to see and hear a bunch more about those social media manipulation techniques that Live and the others for that matter, would consider as inappropriately gaming the system.
I personally disagree with Nathan's take on the example Rand brought up in the interview and see nothing wrong with using that tactic, as the end result essentially requires one to independently "vote" for the content. The fact that it may have been given a push to get there, well, in my opinion, that's just good, aggressive marketing.
Nathan's quote:
"There's a difference between viral marketing and a more orchestrated push".
Nathan, you made this statement, but then you couldn't think of an example in the moment. Can you share one now?
Are you suggesting that viral content that was started with an orchestrated push is an inappropriate means of gaining popularity? I don't get it. Isn't it a common marketing best practice to orchestrate (i.e. execute), an effective plan to have something go hot?
Every Friday, another WhiteBoard Friday, and I tell myself this will be the weekend that I buy some headphones for the new office so I can actually listen & watch while at work instead of having to do it on the weekends. This will be the weekend, I swear :D
Interesting... I tend to hear Live follows the Google's steps. They have already included site links (doesn't Google have patent for them?) and now webmaster tools (and this is only beginning). I really hope Live guys will invent something innovative of their own (or have Google already invented everything that can be invented?).
I doubt they are going to invent anything that hasn't been thought of before, but they could expand the usuability of similar tools.
Do you think they are doing that now? (I am asking because I don't know, maybe I need to give them a try to judge) Google too can enhance usability by the way. What I like about the latter is that they are really constantly innovative.
But I do sincerely wish Live Good Luck, as it will be great if we have an alternative (even if that will be the second Google). That will prompt both to compete and to improve.
I think that the local.live approach to mapping is perhaps better suited to a lot of users and I believe that the Live image search outperforms that of the other major engines.
Here are two problems which MSN faces:
Where Yahoo! is targeting social networking media (and this is still a weak point for Google) Live has relied too long on user loyalty and seem to have left it too long to stem the flow of migrating users.
I think that, for the end user, this competition is likely to be positive for search, but given how long Live has been, well, live, the sheer number of even Search professionals who have yet to really play with their offerings suggests that Live has a lot of work on its hands.
I also wish them luck.
Does anybody else find it somewhat ironic that here we find ourselves discussing Microsoft as the underdog/littleguy/etc?
Never would have guessed 10 years ago they'd be the underdog at anything.
That was the best whiteboard Friday yet for me - a great intro to Nathan Buggia for all of us who don't have the time to keep ahead of all the search blogs and news.
Now for the past 5 years or so I have been a growing advocate of Google - Google Earth absolutely made me giddy with excitement!, and due to my experience with Microsoft my confidence in them is well into the negatives (DRM, Vista, hundreds of missing DLLs, aggressive advertising on MSN etc.) But recently I've been coming around to the idea that the massive Google monopoly on search isn't healthy no matter what their intentions, and it's an accident waiting to happen for those of us who make an honest living from second guessing an algorithm.
Sorry G, I really am sorry...
This interview with Nathan is just what I needed to give MS another chance - it's like I have this vivid image of a tragic and messy ex-relationship, and now I'm wondering if she's changed and is willing to give it another try.
MS and Yahoo need to take back some share imho (Hakia too if it manages to finally answer the question of "what does Hakia mean?")
I'm off to play with MS Live's tools now... I just hope Google doesn't find out and throw my clothes out on to street.
I don't know about others, but in my mind the Microsoft that does Vista and IE isn't the same Microsoft that does the search stuff.
I find it much easy to justify liking the search side of things if I don't associate the two!
"I just hope Google doesn't find out and throw my clothes out on to street."
Lol! Nice one!
My thoughts exactly! I still can't stand MS windows. IE7 locks up in Vista constantly on my new Sony VIAO laptop, and my taskbar disappears on a regular basis with my XP machine (although some say it's caused by Google desktop). So is the story of MS. I truly hope they continue to make their search better as does Yahoo. It's essential for the balance of the universe.
Ahem.
I'm standing right here!
And looking marvelous as always. :)
Does MG allow you to flirt so publicly.... she is such the catch.
And yes Vanessa looking good!
Nah, I don't really mind. I mean, I flirt with Vanessa.
lol.... nice one... have a great holiday season and see you two in the new year
Good interview, but you should "press" the guy harder next time. To some extent, unveilling some search secrets could be a question of "not asking NASA" and just ask the "Russians". I hope someone gets this metaphor...
Google is so formal nowadays that even Microsoft can have a more liberal way of talking about the way they engineer their search engine - thus revealing something more. That was the metaphor.
As for relevancy, I think Live kinda sucks, so that's why people don't use it more. Why change for more of the same or even worse? Do some original thinking.
Ps: the sound was kinda low, maybe closer mics would help a bit?
Mics are in the mail...literally.
Anyone see much use in this service?The one thing I did notice is my homepage hadn't been visited by the bot since Thanksgiving, yet I've still got a full 5 block rating (whatever that means), and subpages were visited more recently.
Anyone else have any interesting findings? I've never spent much time trying to cimb the MSN SERPs.
Good interview! And good answers from Nathan... more interesting than the other MSN/Live guy who Rand interviewed some days ago.
well google is a verb and even on this site, it is used widely meaning "the search engines" because it's what we're most commonly referring too.
But yet the search at the top of the page uses yahoo.
And my analytics gets just as much traffic from yahoo, as it does google.
So if Live can play their cards right I don't think they will have a problem nudging itself into the monopoly. There will always be competition in search, since the advertising rammifications are through the roof.
I agree with the above statement that Live will need to invent something unique or it will not meet my expectations. I think it will get more users for loyalty and usability, but it takes a lot to move a tech-savvy surfer. You have to give them something they don't already have.
Great Whiteboard Friday, Rand and Microsoft :)
-Fred
I'm voting for Vanessa on that one.
The tools sound interesting. I'll check them out.
Another great WBF!!!
Thanks guys for putting this together!
Lately I've been noticing that Yahoo and MSN seem to have more relevant results than Google IMO. It's really cool that you are conducting these live interviews, and I hope we see more of them soon! Do your best to get some key information out of the visitors for us SEOmozzers.
What's going to happen with my XBOXLive account? I can't live without Call of Duty 4 and Halo 3. No, but seriously I was most interested to hear that Nathan said that they just remove credit from paid links and that most sites are only penalized if it's excessive. I wonder how MSN would react if competitors started buying tons of paid links from spammy link farms and pointing the links at their competitors?
Enjoyed the interview even though I thought .. just another widget.
Another thing came to mind .. as we sift through all of the search engine mantras and course directions.......
How will "search relevance" ever have true meaning as long as us web maestro's are honing our craft.
By the way, love the take from Carfeu ... Nasa/Russians.
Have a good weekend everybody.
I would use msn more often but I always get an extremely annoying pop-up - "Have you seen our Canadian homepage?" - no matter how many times per day I visit. Does that happen to anyone else here?
Do you really consider yourself cuter than Vanessa?? Them's fightin' words lol.
I get a pop-up asking me to try my local MSN search when visiting MSN, but I have never experienced this with Live.
Yahoo throws annoying on page popups as well asking me to make them my default search engine.
Nathan where's your blog? If you really want to compete you need to provide more specific information and be a bigger force in the SEO community than Matt Cutts.
I'm a little confused by one of the points.
Nathan said that MSN actually created some of the mock videos centered around Zune and other MSN services - which is allowed. Im sure he mentioned that its fine because the demand for the information was there - making it justified.
Say for example I had created a product that I genuinly felt could rival an existing product. If I used social media / bookmarking to get the links to that site - this would actually go against me?
Friday afternoon, long week, appologise if im getting it wrong?
To increase market share they should invest in movies. :) Seems to be a lot of that going on.
Really a good WBF.
So Nathan - where exactly were you last night when you were supposed to be having dinner with us?
And where have you been? I heard you were going to come by the office!
Ask Rand where I was last night!!! Will swing by next time I'm in town :-)
i think it's awesome MS has rolled out their tools, been waiting for this.