D*ar Bill Gates, You Clever Fox

D*ar Bill Gates.


You did it. You casually left a live grenade at the Grand Charity Gala and walked out of the room to see if anybody, especially Google, will notice.


Once again, you have created an innovation in marketing that is poised to take the world by storm. What I love about it is how you have just tossed it out into the publicfor all to see, and yet nobody seems to be noticing it.


Flitting from forum to forum, everyone is talking about yournew MSN beta search engine ( http://beta.search.msn.com/ ),but nobody seems to have discovered the sec*ret marketingbomb you left ticking there.


Google sure was clever with its PageRank gimmick.In fairness, PageRank is not just a gimmick, but it wasmarketed as much more than it is -- the big ka-boom thatsets Google apart, despite being only a small part of itsalgorithm.


But your ka-boom will be big*ger. You have actually given searchers like me control over my own rankings. While other search engines are talking about "personalized search",you've given us the levers to incrementally change rankings in searches themselves.


You are probably aware that webmasters are kicking thetires on your new search engine to see how high they rank.Those who are more adventuresome or who earn their livingunderstanding (or trying to understand) search engines are taking some of your special features for a spin. Most of those features are fairly mundane. Like "links to" (although it might just be the most comprehensivelisting on the Internet - hint to webmasters) and "language".


But what's this at the very bottom, almost falling offmy screen?


Results Ranking.


Hey, this is cool. I can control the results myself. I cangive more we*ght to recently-updated sites, which is greatwhen I am following a breaking story (After the America'sCup, I do not want to find all the pre-race predictions, forexample.).  Or I can we*ght the results in favor of staticpages if I am trying to find again the health information I had read last time my daug*hter broke out in blue and greensplotches all over her body.


And you let me decide whether to weigh heavily exactmatches, if I know exactly what I am looking for,or approximate matches if I know only that the itchysplotches come from some rare Polar virus transmitted by stampeding trans-Atlantic penguins.


I even get to choose to boost rankings for popular sites or, if I'm feeling like a rebel, for less popular sites.Yes, you have even appealed to my deepest psychologicalmood swings. This is really cool. 


But what really counts is this: I control MSN!


I can just imagine the TV ads you have already planned: The ad character (a student, a construction worker, a nurse?) says, "Move over Bill Gates, I'm in charge n*w."The voiceover says, "Search MSN" PageRank will taste likeyesterday's chewing gum.


I decided to find out if I really do control MSN, usingone of my client sites.  I chose Dotcom-Monitor Web SiteMonitoring ( http://www.dotcom-monitor.com ) and the search term "website monitoring". As I write, the sitesits at #3 for that search term.


I turbo charged the popularity lever to 100%. Whoa. Dotcom-Monitor lost a spot. What does that mean? Somebody who doesnot rank as highly as my client got a boost by weighing link popularity higher (and, by extension, on-page contentlower). 


This tells me that my client's on-page content is in goodshape. It also tells me which competitor has the bestbacklinks to ch*ck out.


PageRank was an effective gimmick for wrapping webmastersand SEO consultants around Google's fingers. But thisresults ranking thingy could wrap both the public andwebmasters around MSN's fingers.


Just one word of advice, Bill. Results Ranking? Is thatthe catchiest moniker you could give it?


Bill, you are to be congratulated for devising such a clever marketing tool, and for purposefully leaving it right out in the open like a live grenade without even a hint that it is there. 


That is what you did, isn't it? You did do it on purpose,didn't you?


If not, please let me know, so I can send you my invoicefor your next great marketing idea.





About The Author:


David Leonhardt is an SEO consultantand a  website marketing consultant:Pick  up a copy of his SEO e-book:


http://www.thehappyguy.com/SEO.htmlDavid LeonhardtThe Happy GuyInfo@TheHappyGuy.com


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