A recent patent application from Yahoo explores ways that a search engine might consider the amount of time it takes different types of pages to render and other issues involving how quickly pages respond to a visits in ranking, classifying and crawling those pages.

Latency is a big fancy word that simply means the amount of time between when something was started and when you can see its effects. It’s a word that shows up very frequently in the Yahoo patent filing. It’s a word worth learning a little more about, especially when it comes to web sites, how people use them, and how a search engine might track that use.

A search engine may look at a wide range of information to make decisions about whether or not it will visit and index pages on the Web, how it might rank those pages in search results, and how it may classify those pages.

It’s likely that a search engine will consider at a wide range of informational signals. Those can include the content that appears on web pages, links and the text within links that point to and from pages, information about how people use specific web pages, and other information about pages and the sites that they appear upon.

A search engine might also look at how quickly pages load and render in a browser, how much people might tolerate when pages load slowly, and how good an experience web sites might deliver to their visitors.

When a search engine ranks pages in search results, it will explore signals that indicate how relevant those pages are to queries that might be used to find them, such as the use of words upon those pages that appear in those queries. A search engine may also look at signals that indicate the quality of the web pages that it might list within those search results.

A measure like PageRank is supposed to be an indication of quality rather than relevance, because it looks at the number and “importance” of links pointing to a page to try to determine how important a page might be. There are other quality signals that a search engine may use. Some examples might include things such as the amount of text upon a page, how readable that text is, if the page contains broken links, and possibly hundreds of other factors.

A search engine wants to return pages in search results that are both relevant and high quality.

Another set of signals or factors that a search engine may use involves how people interact with pages that they find on the web. These can include which pages people select in search results when they see them in search results for a specific query, how much time people might spend on a page they’ve selected before they return to the search engine, how far down a page they might scroll, whether they bookmark or save a page, and others.

User Experience Characteristics

The patent filing considers much more than just how quickly pages load into a browser, and it may influence more than just the rankings of pages.

It tells us about an information integration system that can be used with search engines, job portals, shopping search sites, travel search sites, RSS applications, and other types of pages, and how it might look at those in at least three different ways:

Access – How quickly it takes to access a page or other kind of document when sending a request to retrieve a page or document. Measuring access might mean looking at performance characteristics associated with a page such as server performance, and file performance. It might consider how quickly a page might load for visitors at different connection speeds, such as broadband and dialup. A search engine crawling program might simulate connections at different speeds to measure how quickly a page loads for visitors coming to a page through dialup or broadband connections.

Rendering – How quickly a page starts showing up within a browser (and it might emulate a number of different types of browsers), how a page loads in a browser, and how long it might take for the full page, or at least the part of the page above the fold to load in a browser. It contemplates that on some sites, some large pages might be set up so that even though they contain a lot of content, the content at the top of the page renders quickly so that a visitor doesn’t have to wait very long to start reading and viewing the content on the page.

It may also consider such things as “differences in complexity, size, number of files, user interface mechanisms, embedded sections (e.g., advertisements, audio content, video content, security features, etc), and/or the like,” to understand how a page renders, and how good of a user experience that might be.

User Experience – How do people actually use web sites, and how do they react to different access and rendering issues on different sites?

Different people might have different levels of patience in waiting for a site to load and render in a browser, and they might be willing to wait longer for some types of sites to load and render than others. For example, someone might be willing to wait longer for a page to show up that is associated with their bank account, than a for a “more generic” type of page.

Examples of other “user related performance characteristics” could include how visitors to pages react to things such as:

• Pages that fail to download or render within an acceptable period of time,
• Pages that automatically play video or audio content,
• Pages that include pop-up or pop-under advertisements,
• Pages that in some other way add further delays due to additional file downloading, additional processing, etc. These might include things such as Javascript, Flash, Embedded or externally links objects, and Plugins

How Measuring Latency and User Experience Might be Used

The inventors behind the patent application point to at least three uses that a search engine may have for measuring the performance of a web site based upon access, rendering, and user experience. They are ranking, classification, and crawling.

Ranking – The information collected about user experience characteristics could be used to possibly filter, promote, or demote web documents to improved desired user experiences.

Classification – The user experience information might be used to classify pages in some way. The layout of a page might indicate that a site might contain certain types of content related to certain types of sites. The patent application tells us:

For example, finance-related websites often display streaming data of the stock market, news websites also often stream content, and certain types of web pages might use frames or tables which may be useful in classifying the web document.

Crawling – When a search engine has a list of URLs to visit that it hasn’t seen before, or that it might revisit to check for new content, it might consider a number of different things in determining which to look at first. The user experience information might help making some decisions to look at certain content on pages that a search engine might not have considered before.

A search engine may simulate the amount of time it takes to connect to a page, the way and amount of time a page renders in a browser, and how people react to those times to influence how a page is ranked, classified, and how much of the page is crawled and indexed – including embedded material on a page such as javascript or flash content.

from MediaPost Search Insider

Flatter and more-responsive organizations. Working on SEO is like taking your Web site to the doctor: a good SEO consultant will tell you what you have to do, but the hard work is up to you. Companies that listen and respond will do better than companies that justify, finger-point and go on the defensive. Healthy companies look for ways to improve; dysfunctional companies offer reasons why improvement is impossible. Companies that refuse to do the heavy lifting required to whip their site into shape generally are equally negligent in other areas of their business.

Better communication channels. SEO is by nature a cross-functional exercise. It involves many different departments, all working together toward a common goal. This approach is well within the comfort zone of healthy organizations, but totally foreign to dysfunctional ones. An SEO initiative severely tests the communication and cooperative capabilities of an organization. It requires marketing, IT, product managers and often legal to all work together, and the faster they can do this, the more positive the results will be. SEO is not a one-shot tactic. In the most competitive categories, it’s a full-out and ongoing war. The companies that can respond and adapt quickly will win that war. The ones mired in bureaucracy and butt-covering will inevitably sink in the rankings.

Healthy community connections. The new era of digital communications requires companies to be engaged in an ongoing dialogue with their community of customers. Great companies do this instinctively. Bad companies put up huge corporate communication barricades, keeping the angry hordes at bay. Because much of this dialogue happens online, these dialogues tend to generate reams of content and links. Raving customers generate link love; angry customers generate link hate and reputation management problems. A company that can effectively engage in conversations with customers will find a natural lift in organic rankings is often the result.

Efficient execution habits. Companies that keep a clean house do better organically than companies that keep skeletons in the closet. Both approaches are symptomatic of the company’s overall approach to business. Highly effective companies constantly upgrade systems and infrastructure, both in their organizations and their online presence. They invest in best of breed tools and technology. And they are able to quickly prioritize and executive as the landscape shifts. Again, a clean technical online infrastructure makes SEO much, much easier.

Executives that “get it.” C-level executives who make SEO a priority realize that the marketing landscape is shifting quickly. They’ve been paying attention to customer behavioral trends and have committed to being proactive rather than reactive. This usually indicates well-placed intelligence gathering “antennae” and feedback loops. It also indicates an executive who isn’t hopelessly mired in “old-boy” thinking and outdated command and control management models.

Corporate pride. Content might not be the sole king anymore (SEO is more of an oligarchy now) but it’s still part of the ruling class. Great cultures tend to engender pride that naturally precipitates an explosion of content. People blog about where they work, people tweet and product managers enthuse verbosely about what they’re working on. All of this generates great, searchable content online.

Companies get the SEO rankings they deserve. I’m guessing that if you asked any SEO consultant in the world, they’ll tell you their favorite clients are the ones that are the easiest to work with: clients who listen, are proactive and for whom continual improvement is a religion. Based on what I’ve seen in the past decade, this attitude extends beyond the SEO team (indeed, it has to) and permeates the entire culture. There are those who game the system and gain undeserved rankings, but more and more, “organic” rankings are just that: rankings that come from the very nature of the company and how they conduct themselves in the marketplace.

this was originally posted by econsultancy

As the buzz around social media gets even noisier, it has been fascinating to watch search agencies stake a claim to this territory and reposition themselves accordingly. But how closely do SEO and social media really fit together? We spoke to several leading search agency figures to get their perspective.

Agencies like  bigmouthmedia, iCrossing and Guava promoting the integration of social media and SEO, and running campaigns for their clients, it was interesting to hear Warren Cowan, CEO of Greenlight, another leading search agency, give his perspective.

Cowan, with some carefully considered arguments, plays down the importance of social media for search engine optimization, and makes it clear that his agency will stay focused on what might be termed “traditional SEO”.

He is dubious as to whether, as many other search agencies claim, social media can currently make more than a negligible difference in improving natural search visibility (and, more crucially, driving high volumes of traffic and more sales at a lower cost) for Greenlight clients.

“I do think social sites have some shoulder-brushing with SEO,” he says. “But they are part of a mix of social and non-social elements that help make up a search strategy; they’re not a search strategy in themselves. On that basis I suggest social media’s ability to drive SEO should not be a topic of excitement. We should not all down tools and get behind social media as the next best way to achieve killer SEO.”

Contrast this approach with Guava, who currently promote social media services as part of SEO, or iCrossing and bigmouthmedia, who also now push a more integrated approach to digital marketing which includes paid search, SEO and social media.

Andrew Girdwood, head of search at bigmouthmedia, says: “Search and social are joined at the hip. They represent two of the main fuel cells in a digital campaign. Search and Social aid one another, boosting one another, while each being an independent entity in its own right. It’s a healthy relationship.”

Teddie Cowell, SEO director at Guava, adds: “There is a very strong relationship between search engine marketing and social media. Anything that raises awareness of a brand or particular website, such that it encourages people to search specifically for the brand or website, or increases the probability that a searcher might select that brand or particular website over another within a search engine results page (SERP), is always good for search engine marketing.

“There is also a very positive effect in terms of reaching large numbers of people and therefore gaining more links, which is one of the key factors search engines such as Google look at when ranking web pages.”

As Cowan points out, it is important to identify two areas where social media impact SEO in order to understand properly how the former might drive the latter.

The first, says Cowan, relates to Google’s “universal search” updates which means that there is increased prominence in the SERPs (search engine results pages) for “non-core” listings such as images, blogs, news, maps and shopping listings.

Some of these elements fit into the “social” category and some do not. Blogging, for example, is very much in the realms of social media but influencing bloggers is more the domain of online PR rather than traditional SEO, argues Cowan.

(Of course, the lines between SEO and online PR are increasingly blurred. According to the recent Econsultancy / Guava UK Search Engine Marketing Benchmark Report, two thirds (64%) of search agencies are now offering “online PR” services.)

A second pillar of the SEO and social media marriage is how activity on social media sites can help drive an improvement in the core search listings (i.e. excluding the universal search listings such as images, blogs and maps).

Asked about the importance of social media for improving natural search visibility, bigmouthmedia’s Girdwood is in no doubt: “Trust and authority are key attributes sites need to earn in Google’s eyes before they will begin to perform well in natural search. A social media campaign can help encourage both those attributes. As a result elements of social media are essential for a natural search campaign.”

As with Guava, this prevailing wisdom has impacted how bigmouthmedia manage their client activity: “Bigmouthmedia’s most basic search engine optimisation campaigns for clients include degrees of social media. Advanced campaigns involve managers from Search and Social departments.”

But Cowan is not convinced that social media activity really does significantly help with SEO, primarily because of doubts about whether it can drive valuable link equity. He cites the difficulty in getting people in the social media arena to link en masse to a site in the first place, the random nature of such links and the difficulty in systematically driving links to the right page on a website.

He also points out that the shortened URLs which are prevalent on Twitter undermine the anchor text benefit of a link and reduce the ability to rank for anything specific. Moreover, he says, many social media websites are not spidered by search engine bots or only partially spider-able.

His final argument against the value of social media for search engine optimisation is the ephemeral nature of this kind of visibility.

“Twittering (or any other form of social media activity) happens so fast and with such regularity that posts are pushed down and off the page often in a matter of days. Most of the time this means Google doesn’t even get a chance to index the entry, giving it even less value.”

But, beyond driving traditional SEO, I asked Cowan about the inherent value of being very visible on Twitter and similar sites. I pointed out that Econsultancy now gets a not inconsiderable proportion of its traffic from its extended reach on Twitter via its 6,000+ followers. Should Twitter be seen as a search engine and therefore part of the SEO strategy per se?

In summary, Cowan readily agrees that Twitter and social media generally have an important role for Greenlight’s clients across a range of sectors including travel and financial services, and that such campaigns can help drive awareness. But he doesn’t think such social media activity is as intertwined with SEO as others maintain.