There are new search engines coming out every day using different algorithms to serve web surfers. Among them, a new breed of search engines is emerging, using so-called “natural language inputs” to activate searches.

The latest one noted is a search engine called Powerset (not an exciting name) developed at Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Its purpose: “to build a search engine that could someday rival Google.”

Having typed in the URL of this search engine (http://www.powerset.com), my Firefox browser brings me to its entry page. A first glance of my Google Toolbar shows that its page rank is six. Not bad, eh?!

I decided to put the natural language search to the test, and typed in “I don’t know Albert Einstein.” It returned a list of related Wikipedia articles related to Albert Einstein. It seems that the search results ignored the words “I don’t know” in my search query and directly returned the “answers” to my “question.”

I tried the same search sentence in Google, and the search results were quite different. It returned many results containing the words “Albert Einstein”as well as “don’t know” trying to match what I was looking for. Essentially it returned “contextual” search results.

So which one is better?

Before we answer that question, let’s understand the working mechanism behind natural language technology. Natural language technology comes from a branch of computer science called Artificial Intelligence (AI) study.

I first became acquainted with AI while in college studying information engineering twenty years ago. At that time, we were very optimistic about the development of AI as we had the perception that the computer would replace every possible activity done by humans sooner or later by incorporating better information processing capability in programming. We studied neural network, voice recognition, word recognition, and robotic technology, hoping that one day we could build a computer that talks and thinks and acts like a human being.

Twenty years have passed, and computing scientists have made nothing similar to this hope, and are not even closer to the goal. Why? In my opinion, it’s because the basic computer architecture has not changed, and this is a great hindrance to making computers think like a human being.

Computers, from the time of their invention to now, inherit a basic architecture of memory, input, output, and a central processing unit. The central processing unit is designed to receive programming instructions and execute them linearly, one by one. It is not “thinking”, it is just “executing” a set of instructions.

A normal human being, having a brain containing more than 100 billion brain cells (neurons), each of them forming complex networks with each other with their dendrites, is much more powerful than even the most advanced computers in the world.

The brain’s complex network can function non-linearly in thinking. It allows us to have the intellectual processing power of imagination, association, feeling, emotion, and every kind of complex cognitive behaviour that is difficult for computers to imitate.

Among these capabilities, the power to associate things in order to build new knowledge is unprecedented. We humans don’t process information linearly, as a computer does. We process information non-linearly, by considering many inputs at the same time using our five senses and all the possible associations of knowledge and memory. If you have ever daydreamed before (and I’m quite sure you have), you will understand what I mean here. A tiny little trigger such as a special smell or a particular visual sight could propel your thoughts far from where you are or what you are doing.

Without this complex processing network we can hardly recognize a human face instantly, understand the subtle meaning of languages, or express a high level of emotional responses.

Unless a computer can totally revolutionalize its basic architecture to be more like a human brain, it can never approach these high-level cognitive activities that we humans are doing every day.

We do have research in this area, such as biological computer study - the study dealing with building a computer that can “learn” by using RNA duplication in micro-biology. Some newer studies also mention the use of nanotechnology to aid in this process. But we hardly have anything close to that reality now.

So I believe that, owing to the limitation of present computer architecture, we can hardly build a machine that can “talk” and “listen” like a three-year-old boy does. That means the aim to incorporate natural language capability in search queries is likely to fail.

If you try more search questions in Powerset, you will find that the results are not impressive at all. The fundamental drawback is the search results are rather unpredictable. We do not know what will be returned, and therefore cannot trust it to be consistent.

Unlike contextual search results, when you type in “I don’t know Albert Einstein”, you are quite sure the search engine will return search results containing these keywords. After all, the contextual search results are based on database technology, in which, within the past twenty years, we have gained a lot of improvement. And database technology is much more scalable in terms of capability to handle large volumes of data, whereas I am not sure if the natural language technology of Powerset is scalable or not. What will happen if it needs to process more and more data in the front end (natural language web surfers) and the back end (more and more data that it needs to use natural language technology to “understand”)? This is still unknown.

Google acquired Applied Semantics in 2003 to introduce the capability of handling better “interpretation”of what a webpage is about. I think this is a more straightforward approach, bringing in the natural language processing capability on the back-end to process with the indexed web pages in a search engine’s database. As I said in one of my 2006 posts about Applied Semantics (http://www.imarketings.net/internetmarketing/41), this acquisition brings a revolutionary enhancement to a search engine’s web page ranking capability.

As for front-end, I think search engines should let the users decide the search words, and return what users are looking for. Perhaps this a more guaranteed and predictable way of serving web searchers.

Tags: AI, Natural Language Search Engine, Contextual Search Engine, human brain structure, neural network

If you run a blog or other type of website using content management software like I do, chances are you are using RSS to syndicate your updated data for your site visitors.

In the past, you’ve probably had a hard time tracking how many people have subscribed to your RSS feed, simply because there is no way you can do this easily. Visitors who have interest in your site can use the URL of your RSS feed and subscribe directly using their favorite feed management software. And you don’t have the slightest idea when they do this. Without them actively notifying you, there is no way you can collect subscription information to analyze the popularity of your feed.

If you have this headache, try the service offered by Feedburner here:

http://www.feedburner.com

Feedburner, which was acquired by Google last year, offers many enhancements to the original RSS Feed technology. My favorite feature is that it offers a way for RSS subscribers to receive your updated web content using email instead of the RSS feed. In this way, you can now allow site visitors to get updates of your website automatically via email when your website software registers a new piece of information on your website.

Take my blog as an example. At the right-hand side of this webpage, find the subscription box with heading “Get This Blog via Email.” This is the subscription box powered by Feedburner. If you enter your email address in the textbox there and press the subscribe button, your email address will be registered in the Feedburner for my website. You will immediately be sent a confirmation email to your email inbox. Upon clicking the confirmation link in that email, you are in!

From now on, whenever there is new update about this website, you will get a notification email. Of course, as in other common email subscription services, you can unsubscribe from this blog any time you want by clicking the subscription management link at the end of the notification emails. (By the way, if you haven’t already, why not take this chance to subscribe to this blog now? )

If you’re keen on managing the subscription status like me, you can replace your RSS Feed URL with the one offered by Feedburner. (For example, for this blog, my Feedburner RSS is http://feeds.feedburner.com/InternetMarketingJournal). When visitors subscribe to your RSS Feed using your particular Feedburner feed URL, this allows Feebburner to track your subscription status. It also helps to optimize your feed output to suit various RSS aggregators such as MY Yahoo!, MY AOL, Newsgator, Google Homepage, Google Reader, and others.

If you run your blog using WordPress or another popular content management software or service such as Blogger, Typepad, or MySpace, there is a quicker way to replace your original RSS Feed with Feedburner’s using various tailor-made plugins. You can find more information here:

http://www.google.com/support/feedburner/bin/topic.py?topic=13055

Tags: RSS Feed Management, RSS Subscription by email

The term keyword has become very popular in the world of Internet marketing. But what exactly is a keyword? At least in the Internet marketing context, the term refers to the words, phrases, or even sentences that you use on your website to describe your website, services, and/or products that you offer.

Why are keywords important? Because people are constantly looking for information when they surf the web by typing words or phrases into various search engines, ebook directories, download directories, and other search tools. These words and phrases are what you want to choose for your keywords, since this is how those search tools list you in their search results. The careful selection of keywords for your targeted services/products can be crucial to you on-line business.

For example, if you are setting up a website to sell scuba diving equipment (one of my favorite sports), how should you consider your competition? And how should you structure your website so that you can attract customers looking for scuba diving information on web?

I have found out a tool is very useful when I am choosing my keywords for scuba diving. You can find this tool at: http://www.imarketings.net/cgi-bin/c/click.cgi?id=10
Use this tool to generate helpful information about keywords you’re considering, and also to find highly effective niche keywords you might not have thought of on your own.

To use the information generated by this tool to its best advantage, let’s consider keywords from two aspects: the demand side and the supply side.

The Demand Side of the keywords

Here is a typical list generated by the tool when researching scuba diving:

You see? We have a list of 500 variations of the keywords!

Let me explain what all the numbers mean. The first number is the index, the second one is the number of times the keywords are searched in the search engines, and the third one is the predicted number of times the keywords would be searched for in a 24-hour period in all search engines.

So now you can get a good idea of what keywords regarding "scuba diving" you should target if you submit your websites to search engines, or what titles/names of the publication you should take for your newsletter, e-books and services. Choose keywords that are frequently searched by surfers and your chance of winning top positioning in search results will be higher. This takes into account the demand side of the keywords.

The Supply Side of the Keywords

But don't forget the competition. We have to look at whether those keywords are frequently used by other competitors. This is the supply aspect of choosing keywords.

By looking at the tool used above, the competition aspect shows up like this:

The first number is the index, the second one is the KEI Factor (explained later), the third one is the predicted number of searches in all search engines within a 24-hour period, and the fourth one is the number of sites that match this keyword description (where the competition is).

So you know that the keywords "Scuba diving" and "SCUBA DIVING" are predicted to be searched 11 times, but with 894000 competing sites. The chances are low for you to get high placement with this keyword since you’d have to struggle with those competing sites for top ranking.

But take a look at the first one in the list: "Nude Scuba Diving Pics." Notice that there are quite a number of searches for this phrase, but with no competing sites! (Although it should be related to adult content, and if you have no nude scuba diving pictures at your website, choosing this one might greatly disappoint people who come to your site looking for them!). How about "Scuba Diving Problems" on index eight? This could be a good keyword to target because it is predicted to be searched 18 times with a few sites competing.

So taking the time to go through this exercise will give you more ideas on what keywords to target. Target at least 30 keywords that have frequent searches, but with few competing sites. Then you can plan your search engine optimization strategy and the content building of your site, offering related services, books, forums, and more on your targeted business.

Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI)

KEI stands for Keyword Effectiveness Index. It is a measure of how effective a keyword is "predicted" to be for your site, measured against three factors. First, let’s look at two of those factors:

1.  Popularity (P) of the Keyword, measures how many searches occur for the keyword, as previously discussed in the demand side above.

2. Competitions (C) of the Keywords, measures how many sites are competing using the same keyword, as discussed in the supply side above.

Based on the above two considerations, the KEI is calculated as follows:

P divided by C = P/C = KEI
where P = popularity, and C = competition as stated above.

However, there is one more factor to take into consideration: 

3.  If both the popularity and the number of competitions increase at the same rate, the P/C ratio should remain the same. However, a more popular keyword should be more preferred if we assume that the increase in the difficulty of gaining top positioning in a keyword list is compensated by a higher number of people searching for that keyword.

Therefore, we multiply the ratio P / C by P again, to create the new formula:

P x P / C = KEI

putting more weight on the popularity of the keywords. The final formula is expressed as:

"The Square of P divided by C"
or
P² / C = KEI

You might be asking, why not "The cube of P divided by C?” Why not use an even higher order of P divided by C? Yes, you can customize your own KEI factor calculation by varying the power of P. The higher power of P indicates even more emphasis on the popularity of the keyword. If you are especially confident that you can achieve a higher position in the search ranking despite high competition among the keywords chosen because of the keyword’s very high popularity, then a higher power of P may be justified.

However, in the tool we discussed previously, as a rule they use the generally accepted Square of P for their results.

So now you should have a good idea of how to choose keywords with a high KEI. It is recommended to use keywords with KEI greater than 10, and the very best are those with a KEI above 100.

Let’s consider again the list shown previously:

You can see that you should choose those keywords such as:"pro gear scuba diving mask",
"Pictures Of People Scuba Diving"
Ones that catch my eye are "scuba diving clipart," "scuba diving jobs," and "scuba diving pictures."

The KEI was invented by Sumantra Roy. Subscribe to his "The 1st Search Ranking Newsletter" by going to http://www.1stSearchRanking.com/newsletter.htm

The Concept of Keyword Density

Keyword density is the ratio of the number of times keywords appear in your webpage to the total number of words in your webpage.

Most search engines consider the keyword density in determining each website’s ranking in search results. So if two web pages are competing with the same keywords in a search engine ranking, the one with higher keyword density is likely to have added advantages.

Of course, there are many other factors affecting the ranking results. But at least when creating your "doorway" pages, consider this factor. Try to repeat your keywords often throughout your content.

So are you getting a better idea of how to use keywords in your website content? Here are some on-line resources that you can use to check the keyword density in your webpage:

http://www.webjectives.com/keyword.htm
http://www.keyworddensity.com/

You can also find out more by searching for "keyword density" using Google.

By the way, don’t miss out on this relevant post about keyword semantics here: http://www.imarketings.net/internetmarketing/41/

And this one about keyword density: http://www.imarketings.net/internetmarketing/31

Tags: Keyword Research SEO On-page Optimisation

In Internet marketing, conversion rate refers to the ratio of the number of visitors completing a certain action at your website (such as subscribing to your e-newsletter or purchasing products you promote on the web) to visitors who visit without completing that action.

It is a very important measurement because it reflects the ROI of your marketing effort. For example, if it costs you $100 to acquire 1000 visitors to your website, and out of those visitors 30 purchase your product, the conversion rate is 3%. Suppose you know the profit of each product sold is $10, then you can calculate that for every $100 (marketing cost) spent, you have a return of $300 (revenue), making your net profit $200. This seems like a good deal, doesn’t it?

Let’s take another example: If out of those same 1000 visitors, 50 of them subscribe to your newsletter, your conversion rate is 50:1000, or 5%, and the cost of acquiring each subscriber is $2. That is a very important metric if you need to plan the budget for acquiring a certain number of subscribers.

For this reason, Internet marketers like to talk about conversion rate. And they like to show off by claiming how high the conversion rate of their websites is.

However, when we talk about conversation rate, there is one important factor we cannot neglect. It is about the source of traffic.

Let’s say you have a web site focusing on physical fitness. And currently, there are two websites referring new visitors to your website by hyperlink. One of those is about healthy foods. This website consistently refers customers to land at your website, and the conversion rate of those visitors is x%.

The other website is related to computer equipment. And the conversion rate of the visitors from that website is y%. Even if you do not tell me the exact value of x and y, I can be quite sure that x is bigger than y. Why? Because the first website has a theme more closely related to yours, so it is referring potential subscribers who have a higher tendency to feel interest in your website’s information and are more likely to subscribe to your newsletter or buy your products.

Therefore, you can easily have higher conversion rate for your website if you manage to obtain highly relevant sources of traffic. For instance, if you have a joint promotion with another marketer who has a closely related subscriber list that has similar interests to what you offer at your website, chances are you will gain a high conversion rate by the traffic generated from that newsletter owner’s list.

Therefore, without mention of the source type of the traffic, it is meaningless to talk about conversion rate. Next time, if someone tells you about the high conversion rate of his/her website, ask about the source of the traffic. This will give you the information you really need to make sound decisions.

Tags: traffic source

The other day I revisited a book by Mark Joyner titled The Irresistible Offer which talks about how to create product how Mark had impressed me by bringing to life a vivid discussion about an important marketing technique - Viral Marketing.

If you don’t know much about Viral Marketing, check out this link:

http://www.imarketings.net/internetmarketing/35

In his book, Mark cited two distinct types of viral marketing tactics. The first is driven by incentive, which he called “Incentivized Word of Mouth.” In this type, the Word of Mouth is spread by greed - “ the greed of gaining the reward offered for spreading the message.The second type, he named “tag]Inspired Word of Mouth.” In this type, the Word of Mouth is spread by the pure motivation of sharing good information. This type of viral marketing, Mark maintains, is much more powerful.

I both agree and disagree with his words. It is absolutely not an “evil”to use monetary (or other) incentives to motivate someone to spread the word about your products. But let me say that with the caveat that it’s only not “evil” provided that you are not intentionally selling low-grade quality products, and are therefore exclusively relying only on the reward scheme of your affiliates to expand your business. I have seen many network marketing programs use this tactic in a wrong way. And the result you can always bet on: more than 99% of them fail miserably.

Good product motivates people to spread the words about it, and only good product can excite customers. In this, I definitely agree with Mark. As he says in his book, “There is no substitute for an ecstatic customer.”

Therefore, viral marketing motivated purely by greed is doomed to fail.

If you are interested in reading Mark’s book for yourself, visit this link:

Tags: Incentivized Word of Mouth, The Irresistible Offer

As I’ve mentioned in my recent post on Google’s first quarter result in 2008, Google is making changes to its AdWords algorithms to combat click arbitrage and the existence of advertising pages of poor content quality. As a result of these new policies, many of AdWords customers are dropping out of AdWords.

Some people call this “Google Slap”

At first, these changes sound like a bad news for advertisers. But, as always, there is a positive and a negative side to every story. If you look a little deeper, the positive side is that if you know how to manage the Adwords program properly following the new rules, the chances are that you can achieve the same level of traffic as before the changes, but
with a smaller advertising cost.

How?

Basically, this benefit rests on two main techniques:

• Build a quality landing page for your AdWords Program, with content highly relevant to the keywords used in your AdWords account.
• Whenever possible, use keywords for more “niche” sub-categories refined from your niche group. For example, if you are selling shoes, go for sub-categories such as sports shoes, dancing shoes, etc. You should try to make your keywords even more niche by targeting keywords such as “leather dancing shoes”or “marathon sports shoes.” The more niche your keyword is, the less the per-click cost you need to pay for your targeted keywords.

The main idea is to produce much more focused content, and then promote it using Google Adwords with highly focused keywords. Google will reward you by charging you a lower per-click cost.

Ryan Deiss has introduced a successful method for mastering this technique. You can visit his website to watch the video for his techniques here: http://www.wholesaletrafficsystem.com

Tip: I went straight to get the written report because I don’t have the patience to watch the video. You can get the same idea by watching the video or reading the report. It’s your call.

Tags: pay-per-click