Business Today

A Challenge to Google?

It has been predicted many times, the engine that will be the downfall of Google, but this time the pundits are saying that there is just a chance that the day has come. What is this "pretenders" name? Cuil.com (pronounced "cool"), but why could it be so dangerous to Google's top dawg position??

Apparently, the database that Cuil uses is three times the size of Googles and ten times the size of MSN's, which should of course mean that the results could be more comprehensive

Then there is the issue about user privacy, Google as we know collects data (via the Google Tool bar etc) on what you look for and some people don't like that.

Another thing is that the people who built Cuil also know Google inside out, which means that they know a lot more than the other pretenders to the throne did.

Cuil could too be seen as a better engine for some, as it has several useful features that researchers and the really serious searcher might like, so that could draw users away too.

Perhaps Google will have a fight on its hands after all.

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Keyword Research - The Bedrock of SEM

Much is written about Search Engine Marketing, and all the good advice will start with something about doing your keyword research BEFORE you start to build a Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign or to Optimise (SEO) your site so that the Engines like what they find. By the way, from my point of view, no one should even build a site without doing thorough keyword research, but that is another issue (I'll put the soap box away).

So if Keyword Research is so important, how does one go about it. As with all aspects of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) there are as many answers as there are people to ask in the first place, but one method is mentioned by many, and that is to use Wordtracker.

Wordtracker will not, as some might tell you, provide all the search queries used by everyone for anything, in fact, Wordtracker sees a tiny percentage of the searches made every day, but it, and it is a big but, does keep a database of somewhere near 380million searches, and that makes the data both valuable and statistically viable. Better still due to the sources used, these searches are not polluted by search engine optimisation companies who are typing in keywords to see where the sites they are optimising are in the listings (these are not "true" searches as they just distort what is really being searched for and are thus best avoided).

Carefully (and painstakingly used, it can take 16 hours to do keyword research properly), Wordtracker will provide you with a host of information about what sort of terms people are using, how often, plus it will give you an idea of the competition, and thus using the two, an idea of which ones are worth more effort than others.

Once you have the report however, you are not nearly finished, you still have to apply a fair amount of grey matter to the data to work out how to use it and which variations of the keywords you have found to use, but it does provide you with a firm foundation on which to build your online marketing campaign.

There are other resources too, the Google PPC interface also providing some data on what keywords are being used, plus of course, there are other keyword research engines like, Keyword Discovery and Best Keywords, so as with many things in life, you have to make your choice...

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