Search Engine Solutions Blog

Please provide us with your biography. Tell us about your background and your role in the company?

I have been the CEO of Acroterion since 2001.  Prior to that I spent twenty years doing academic research and worked directly with search engines and software architecture methodologies. I am an internationally-acclaimed expert known to the world as “The Search Engine Doctor.”  I am also the author of a university thesis about search methodologies that was used to develop the first search engine frameworks.  Presently, I am doing research with doctoral students at the University of Alberta, the University of Michigan and the Department of Mathematics at Bar-Ilan University.

Since July of 2006 I have been a member of the SEMPO Research Committee. I won second prize in the IT contest for outstanding system analysis using object-oriented methodologies.  I was also awarded for my research at the Weizmann Institute of Science www.weizmann.ac.il.

What are your main services?

·     Search Engine Solutions (number #1 out of 75 million in Google)

·     Publishing e-commerce and CMS sites as Static HTML pages (a product we developed)

·     Spider Bots Developer

·     Morphological Analysis

·     Solving Search Engine Problems (like banning)

·     Mathematics and Algorithms of Search Engines

·     Search Engines Engineering

·     Search Engines Laws and Patents

What makes your firm different from other companies competing in your industry?

How many SEO firms really know how spiderbots function or how the Google algorithm was built?  The difference between our company and other SEO firms is that we truly understand how search engines work.

Furthermore, we do not take on clients unless we believe that they will be 100% successful.  That is what sets us apart from the competition: not everyone can become one of our clients.

We have a 100% success rate and all of our clients have at least doubled their sales!  Our clients tend to stick with us for a minimum of five years because they don’t want to halt their success.

Another advantage of working with my company is that clients can speak directly with me, the CEO of the company, rather than having to speak through an “account manager” or “seo specialist.”

Tell us more about your firm’s success story?

The first thing I did after establishing the company was build a better spiderbot. I sent it into a few major domains and sold them the reports the spider generated. The benefits of buying the reports were the fact that they did not violate privacy and they increased search engine indexability.

Since 2001, we have been working with some of the world’s top companies including 3M, Ice.com, Overstock and more. Many of them contact us after having failed with other SEO firms. Here is the type of letter we typically receive from clients:

“We contacted several companies and spent money for nothing. Those ‘optimization’ or ’submission’ services did not diagnose our search problems and therefore they failed Definitely Mr. Rotstain is “the search-engines master”, I guarantee that any company working with Acroterion will not be disappointed..”

According to you, what are the most important questions a potential customer should ask a company before choosing a vendor like you?

1.  Are you a web designer or webmaster that “did it once by mistake,” or do you really understand how search engines work?

2.  Will my SEO/SEM project be done right the first time around or will I have to get it redone later?

3.  Can you assure me that I will not be banned by Google?

What are some of the myths in your field?

Myth #1 – “Find the cheapest SEO services possible.” – Many clients call us after they have failed or been banned because they put their livelihoods in the hands of unprofessional SEOs.  In SEO, the mantra is that you get what you pay for so if the price sounds too good to be true, it is.

Myth #2 – “Search engine formulas are secret.” – Wrong. If you involve yourself in developing search engine algorithms and keep up with the patents they publish, you can understand search engine formulas much better.

How do you develop your skills in this continuously changing environment?

At Acroterion, we’re always busy training our employees to teach them new technologies, break complex formulas, and patents texts to applied actions.

What do you see as the future of the industry? What will be the challenges; do you anticipate any drastic changes?

Yes, there will be drastic changes in the future of the search industry. Search engines will be more social and more personalized. Our development team is already working on a new social version of the “site wizard” product to cope with these changes. We’re also developing a new spiderbot that will be the answer to personalization issues.

Where do you see your firm in the next 5 years? What about you personally?

I have good reason to believe that one of the major search engines will acquire my company (two years ago we refused an offer) and take advantage of the spiderbot we built. I see myself serving as a research or application architect rather than busying myself with the daily tasks of running a company.

Google has made a powerful push towards becoming the leader in local search. In the past year, Google has implemented a great concentration of changes and testing in Google Maps. Furthermore, Google will acquired leading local players like Yelp. Last month, Google published new Business Listing Quality Guidelines that make it very clear what is and isn’t acceptable for Google Maps listings. The new guidelines have set the stage for aggressive spam scouring within local business listings on Google Maps. This major shift wiped out thousands of innocent business listings that did not meet Google’s new quality guidelines.

In the last few weeks, I have had a few conversations about these changes with *** a manager at Google, Inc. I told him that it reminds me of something that happened before I was married, when I lived close to the downtown area, and a city contractor put up “no parking” signs on the streets without prior notice. At 7 am, while everyone was still sleeping, all of the cars in the neighborhood were towed.

The following was ***’s response:

Hello Dr. Rotstain,

Unfortunately, our teams are not staffed to provide individualized support for this product. Support is primarily handled through [...] when an account is suspended, all listings in that account are deleted. Business owners, of course, are welcome to recreate their listings, so long as they follow the listing guidelines.
Again, I understand this must be frustrating, and I apologize for [...]

Regards,
***

I strongly recommend that you read the new Business Listing Quality Guidelines very carefully and update your listings accordingly. The new guidelines can be found here:
http://maps.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107528

Search3w’s changes to service terms

As of 2010, owing to Google’s new Business Listing Quality Guidelines, Search3w will provide Google Maps setup and consulting services for clients, but will not provide monthly monitoring or optimization until further notice.

We knew it was inevitable, and this year it has finally become a reality: Google has integrated real-time search into its search results. Google’s real-time search feature posts updates as things happen around the web. Live tweets, Yahoo Answers, news articles, and web pages now stream into search engine results pages for search queries. Google’s real-time search also works on mobile smartphones, such as the iPhone and the Android.

That’s not all, though. Google has announced that they’ve partnered up with both Facebook and MySpace to pull data into real-time search. As a result, updates on public Facebook pages and any streaming data that is available publicly on Myspace will show up in real-time search. This deal with Myspace and Facebook is on top of the deal with Twitter that Google announced back in October.

Welcoming the inevitable

It’s been clear for some time that search would move towards real-time, but until now, Google seemed to be falling behind Twitter, and perhaps even Bing, which made its own search deals with Twitter and Facebook earlier this year. Now, in one sweeping stroke, Google has grabbed the lead in the real-time search space, and both Facebook and Twitter have conceded that they aren’t going to try to outdo Google when it comes to search. These are significant strategic decisions for all parties involved because they dictate which direction these companies will take in the years to come.

The Cyber Crime Stopper and Security Check is a new Search3w product that uses the Search3w spiders to find vulnerabilities and security holes, such as Google hacking, in the websites it scans. This product is the latest version of Search3w’s famous CheckIT product, which was introduced in 2001.

Hackers are now concentrating their efforts on web-based applications, such as shopping carts, forms, and log-in pages.

Since these web-based applications are often tailor made, they are tested less and are more vulnerable to cyber attacks than off-the-shelf software. The Cyber Crime Stopper and Security Check determines if your website is hackable by automatically checking web applications Scripts, Login Forms, XSS, SQL Injection, and other web vulnerabilities.

If you want to give the Cyber Crime Stopper and Security Check a trial run, contact Rick Nielsen here >>

“The future is now” for web marketing search-ability & usability. Search3w’s OBS site search product improves your site’s search-ability and usability, enabling you to capture and convert website visitors more effectively. For many companies, a 1% increase in visitor conversions can result in millions of dollars more in revenue each year.

As a website owner/manager, your biggest challenge in 2010 will be to find the most effective search and usability products, and then utilize them to stay ahead of the competition.

Our answer to this challenge is the OBS site search product.

The following are some features of the OBS site search product:

• To the point results
• Aggregates data from trusted sites
• Intuitive (e.g. understands that AdWords means PPC)
• Converts searchers into buyers – you can easily generate tactical visitor conversions by driving visitors to the actions/pages/places you choose
• Adaptive & intuitive learning system – OBS is an innovative solution based on artificial intelligence techniques. It self-configures its database and responds to visitors’ activities in accordance with their previous behavior.
• Built-in SEO (OBS improves SEO results by indexing keywords/phrases that match popular site searches)

To TRY OBS or learn more about this powerful site search and usability product, contact Rick Nielsen here >>

The New Year is upon us, and many of us have already begun preparing for what is to come in 2010. Here at Search3w, we’re helping online businesses prepare for their biggest year yet. What better time than now to look into the crystal ball and see what 2010 has in store for search marketing and the internet? Below are some of my predictions for the New Year…

• The moment we were all waiting for this year has come and gone: Microsoft swallowed Yahoo Search and established the new search engine, Bing. Microhoo’s Bing will undoubtedly give Google serious competition in the search marketplace. My prediction is that in about a year from now, Bing will have approximately 28% of the market share. As such, make optimizing for Bing your next priority after optimizing for Google.
• Recently, we welcomed a new baby to internet marketing: CRO, or Conversion Rate Optimization. CRO consists of building processes that help to improve conversion rates over time. Online businesses have the potential to generate significant revenue from CRO, yet few have invested in it. CRO enables companies to assess where they spend money and where they derive the most value. 2010 will undoubtedly be a big year for CRO.
• Mobile search took off in 2009, and in 2010, I believe that mobile search will reach its Acroterion (i.e. pinnacle). According to comScore, the use of touch screen mobile smartphones like Palm, Rim, HTC and iPhone increased by over 150 percent in 2009. With the continual increase in the usage of easy-to-surf smartphones, we will inevitably see a rise in mobile search adoption. It’s pretty safe to assume that in the next few years, we’ll see mobile search volume overtake that of desktop computer search. Search3w’s D2S product automatically generates mobile WAP-enabled content and submits it to the mobile search engines.
• The duplicate content detector robot and semantic search retrieval are two patents that were recently issued by Google and will be available in 2010. Search3w’s D2S product is our answer to the first patent, and OBS site search is our answer to the second one. You’ll want these two guys on your side next year!
• Lately, Google has been emphasizing site speed as a ranking factor. Search3w clients are hooked to big brother monitoring software that checks their site speed 24×7. If you’re not a Search3w client, remember not to let slow server speed lower your site’s ranking!
  This is how Google’s new interface will look in 2010 (click to zoom):

  

In 2010, Search3w will introduce a new sister product to D2S and OBS called “Links3w.” Similarly to how D2S and OBS do a great job with on-page optimization, Links3w will give our clients peace of mind when it comes to off-page optimization.

Happy New Year!

From: Elchanan Rotstain, Rick Nielsen, Aida Jerez, James and Nick.