Search Engine Usage

The Search Engine Journal recently collected some interesting numbers about search engine usage - http://www.searchenginejournal.com/index.php?p=2545. For those of us in the search engine positioning business, it is no surprise. Search engine usage is up.

According to comScore, average daily search engine usage was up from 49.3 million users in September 2004 to 60 million users in September 2005. Similarly, the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that among the people who regularly use the Internet, daily use of search engines had grown from 30% to 41% (59 million users).

ComScore's search market-share data showed some interesting results too:

Google —89.8 million unique searches
Yahoo! Search—68 million unique searches
MSN Search—49.7 million unique searches
Ask Jeeves—43.7 million unique searches
AOL Search—36.1 million unique searches

It obviously pays to have a presence on all of the search engines.

Recent Page 1 Successes

One of the great things about Page 1 is that we are always finding new ways to win the battle. Obviously, in the last few years, getting to the top of the search engines has been getting harder and harder. It is hardest with brand new websites in competitive markets. Nonetheless, our optimization team finds ways to do it every day.

One recent challenge has been with a LASIK practice in Denver. They had a single goal in mind from the beginning - to get to the first page of free listings on Google for the search phrases "Denver LASIK" and "LASIK Denver". We have been working on this for months. We would get listed on page 1 of the Google results for one term and then just when the other term would get onto page 1, the first term would drop back to the top of page 2. Our optimizer - Jeremy - tried everything.

Well, guess what, all that hard work finally paid off - now the website is listed on page 1 for both terms - but not just for Google - for MSN and Yahoo too. Great work Jeremy! Our other LASIK client in Denver is also on Page 1. Now, the goal is to make them one two on top of the free listings. Oh, and we just signed up a third client for the Denver market - so we are full. Now we need to put him on page 1 too....

We are in the middle of another challenge. This time with a cosmetic dentist in the San Francisco Bay area. This client has been on page 1 of the Google results for a while. Our current challenge is to see if we can get Google to list his website #1 on the free listings for his four most important search phrases. We pushed one of them into the top position in the last week. Now we're working on the other three. We will win because we won't stop fighting until we get there!

Account Management at Page 1

Well, we're hiring a new account manager at Page 1 Solutions, or rather we're on the hunt. I'm excited to meet the new member of our team, whoever that ends up being, but I'm even more excited for this person because he or she is in for a treat.

Working at Page 1 is really challenging, and it also offers great opportunities for learning and growth, but even beyond that personal gain, the job is truly rewarding. Our clients come first at our company. I know other companies make this same claim, but at Page 1, it's really true. We take care of our own, and make sure that the company is stable and on track to continue to be successful, but the key is that our success is tied into our clients' success. At other companies, an "account manager" is just another name for "sales rep". Not so at Page 1. An account manager's job is to be the client's advocate within the company. Figure out what's in the client's best interest, and then make that happen. It's a great job. I know the new guy or girl is going to love it.

Mick Jagger

Given the fact that all of us at Page 1 have been working through the various Jagger updates that have been going on at Google for the last month or so, it was ironic that we ran into Mick Jagger on Thursday night.

No Joke!

Bill and I were eating dinner with Bob Weiss and his wife Tracy at the SW Steakhouse (at the Wynn Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas). They have this incredible waterfall outside the restaurant and every hour after dark they put on an incredible animated light show. The shows change every hour. Anyway, we were watching the 7:00 show when two men stepped in front of us to watch. I asked them politely to move. One of them apologized and they did move forward out of the way.

Immediately, one of the waiters came over and whispered at me that "That is Mr. Wynn. You shouldn't ask him to move." Well, what was done was done and I wasn't too worried about it since they were polite and quietly moved out of our way.

The light show ended and the waterfall went back to its normal beautiful state. The two men walked back to their table - on the way stopping to apologize again. They were gentlemen.

Anyway, I looked over at their table, and they were sitting with Mick Jagger. Wow! The Rolling Stones were playing at the MGM on Friday night.

Habitat for Humanity

Today, about 10-15 Page 1 staffers are spending the day in Arvada to help build another house for Habitat for Humanity. This is the second year in a row that we have made this kind of commitment. Last year was a lot of hard work - roofing, painting and building the inside the house. We all left tired and sore, but felt really good about what we had accomplished.

This year we anticipate an even better turnout. Hopefully, it will be a warm day....

Page 1 News

Wow, we have been having a lot of fun lately and more to come. On Friday, we celebrated our best month ever by a company-wide outing to Dave & Busters. This follows our last outing in September where we all played paintball. I never realized how much our staff enjoyed shooting one another. Fortunately, it was all in good fun and we finished by downing a few beers together.

In early December, we will have our annual Holiday party - this time at The Fort. A little more formal than in the past, but should be lots of fun. Good food. Good people.

A lot has been happening in our business too. Our clients' results have been helped a lot with the latest Google updates - Jagger. We now have a fulltime SEO R&D specialist. He has been an exceptional addition to the team and we expect to see continued improvement in our clients' results based on the results of our own research. The design team is cranking out quality websites like never before. Last month they blew away their alltime record and the quality continues to improve. We also have exceptional databases programming as part of our offerings.

In short - life is good.

We will finish off the year strong and continue with great results next year as well.

Great Job Page 1 Team!