Sunil, I did.

Laura, Did you go to the link and read why I started Project World's Wosrt Call Center Worker?

interesing... I guess somebody's gotta be!

Laura, I had started Project World's Worst Call Center on 6th January, 2006. http://newnimproved.blogspot.com/200... As of today, I am happy to announce that Google ranks me as the world's worst call center worker. http://www.google.co.in/search?hs=f9... Q.E.D.

On top of measuring the immediate ROI of a user retained from a search engine referral, you'd want to consider the lifetime value of that customer. Do they come back and purchase again? If you targeted them well, chances are yes. ut the answer still, unless you're target market is not using search engines, is not to eclude your site from search engines. Organic SEO is free, and in cases like subservientchicken - you may not need SEO, but why remove yourself from free search results? That is what? A year or two old? And it is still an active search term today.

Sunil - I'm not sure what you're getting at with how often an ad agency can update their portfolio. Freshness of a site as one of the considerations in ranking algorithm? On the subservientchicken point, some algorithms do seem to favor older domains over newer ones. But there are over 100 things that can be considered in an algorithmic ranking of a single page. A few of those things have to do with the popularity of a site - how many clicks a page gets in search results, how long people stay, how often people come back, how much traffic a page is getting, etc. Whether your site is brand new or 10 years old, if a search engine can tell that it is popular, lots of people are visiting and often, it may see value in that site/page, and it may rank high very quickly. Jakob's article is fuzzy as to whether or not he is talking about only paid search or paid and organic search results. He says that paid search results are going to become more and more expensive. Possibly. There are studies out there that point in both directions. But up until now, paid search has been one of the most inexpensive ways to get exposure. When I was a consultant starting out on my own, I was able to afford buying ads on Google, the largest search engine, with top 3 listings. Or take the case of Mazda and Pontiac. Pontiac ran a tv ad saying the Solstice is great, just search for it on Google and see! So you do your Google search and Pontiac's Soltice was the first paid listing. Mazda jumped on this, and bought a sponsored listing for pontiac terms with a listing saying to compare the two. They spent $8K in paid search and undoubtedly had an incredible ROI. SE advertising can be cheap if you have a company that can do it right. Unfortunate thing is that there are just tons of companies who dont know how to optimize their campaigns.

Laura, Take the case of ad agencies. They have to showcase their good work. How often can a design or an ad agency "update" its site with a great logo or ad? Next most people are quite frustrated with the information overload. The first page of Google and Yahoo does not always give you what you are looking for. It takes about a year to go up the ranks in terms of organic listing. How many people would open a store then wait a year for customers to walk in? Off hand, I can name two sites that have done well without SEO. http://www.subservientchicken....

All in all, you should have a good marketing mix - reach out and touch all channels where your target market might be. If your target market is not online, you dont really care about search engines. And coming from my own personal angle - make sure you're digging into your analytics to know what IS working for you and what's not. ;)

Sure - I build reporting tools for Yahoo, working with visibilty data for internal sites. But I could make the same case with Google. In fact, you can double the amount of searches done in Google, since they have more of the search market share.

Interesting insights, Laura. If you work for Yahoo though, shouldn't you disclose this information?

On the point of social bookmarking - definitely value in user-generated opinions! Because Yahoo! owns del.icio.us, you know there's some interest in dissecting the value in algorithm-ranked search results, and community-ranked websites. Will be interesting to see if any convergence in the two concepts emerges.

Hi Laura, There are many sites that have done well without SEO. SEO has its place but it is overhyped. There is an offline world. The real world. I have found that something as simple as printing the URL on your business card works wonders.

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Chris, You are right on the money! SEO is a big scam in my opnion. You cannot be subservient to bots and spiders. The reader rules and often website owners sacrifice quality content and design because to get the attention of sercah engines. IMO, viral, word of mouth and nicristes are nice ways to circumvent search engines.