Topix.net really fucked up...

And tries to blame google...

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How Search-Engine Rules
Cause Sites to Go Missing
By KEVIN J. DELANEY
March 13, 2007; Page B1

Some entrepreneurs have built thriving businesses largely by getting
search engines such as Google Inc.'s to direct customers to their Web
sites. But what happens when the search engines suddenly start
pointing consumers somewhere else?

That is a possibility with which Topix.net Chief Executive Rich
Skrenta is struggling this month. The news site, which is majority
owned by media giants Gannett Co., McClatchy Co. and Tribune Co., paid
a Canadian company $1 million for the Web address Topix.com in
January. Mr. Skrenta intends to switch his site over to the more
popular .com Web address from .net soon to help eliminate confusion
and increase credibility with consumers.
[Chart]

Such a simple change, Mr. Skrenta has discovered, could have
disastrous short-term results. About 50% of visits to his news site
come through a search engine -- and about 90% of the time, that is
Google. Some companies say their sites have disappeared from top
search results for weeks or months after making address switches, due
to quirky rules Google and other search engines have adopted. So the
same user who typed "Anna Nicole Smith news" into Google last week and
saw Topix.net as a top result might not see it at all after the change
to Topix.com.

Even if traffic to Topix, which gets about 10 million visitors a
month, dropped just 10%, that would essentially be a 10% loss in ad
revenue, Mr. Skrenta says. "Because of this little mechanical issue,
it could be a catastrophe for us," he says.

Further frustrating him is that Google's response to Topix's plea for
help was an email recommending that, if the switchover were to go
badly, the company should post a message on an online user-support
forum; a Google engineer might come along to help out. "This can't be
the process," Mr. Skrenta says. "You're cast into this amusing,
Kafkaesque world to run your business."

He's among a growing group of businesspeople whose fortunes are
buffeted or burnished by the invisible, constantly evolving
mathematical formulas at the heart of Web search engines. The
influence of search engines has only grown in recent years, as they
have become the de facto gateways for many of the more than 180
million American Internet users to anything they might do online.They
also have become a crucial tool for businesses that depend on those
users finding them.

But as a way to lure customers to a site, search rankings often aren't
dependable. Overnight, sites can disappear from top results for any
given search term -- say, "Miami hotels" -- and cause the sites'
revenues plummet as potential customers go elsewhere.
[Screen Shot]
Topix.net is moving to Topix.com, which could drop it in Google's
results.

Among the most common reasons for unpredictable changes in rankings
are frequent updates to search engines' algorithms. These mathematical
formulas analyze billions of Web pages for dozens of factors, such as
the most prominent words on the pages and what other sites link to the
pages, in order to determine how to rank them for relevance to a
query. Search companies change algorithms partly to frustrate people
who try to inappropriately boost their sites in the results, but
legitimate businesses sometimes feel they're caught in the crossfire.

Google, of Mountain View, Calif., says it offers online tools for
companies to get the best, most consistent, treatment from its search
engine. It also counsels that sites shouldn't become overly reliant on
traffic from searches and should find other ways to get visitors, such
as by setting up user forums. "We have to keep improving our
algorithms and giving the best search results," says Google software
engineer Matt Cutts. "We can't promise that if you're No. 1 today,
you'll be No. 1 tomorrow."

The importance of appearing at the top of the results is undisputed. A
JupiterResearch study sponsored by search marketing firm iProspect
concluded last year that 62% of search-engine users generally clicked
on a link to a site on the first page of results. That has fueled the
emergence of an industry of search-engine "optimization" specialists
who help businesses try to find ways for their sites to rise in the
rankings, such as using more-explanitory page titles.

Companies always have the option of paying for the search
advertisements that usually appear above and alongside the
search-engine results, but non-advertising results can be more
significant. JupiterResearch estimates that when consumers are looking
for products and services, they click on non-advertising results
almost 80% of the time.

While a business changing its Web address could predictably have
search repercussions, unannounced changes in a search engine's
algorithm can have outsized impact on a business. Marchex Inc., a
Seattle company that operates more than 200,000 Web sites, says it
sometimes gets snared by seemingly arbitrary shifts.

One Marchex site, bayareahotels.com, now generally ranks among the
top-10 Google results for the search "Bay Area hotels." Marchex
executives say the site recently disappeared without warning from the
first page of Google's results, then reappeared a few weeks
later. Marchex says traffic and revenue from the site fell when it
dropped out of the top results (it didn't specify how much).

Peter Christothoulou, Marchex's chief strategy officer, says although
changes in rankings are unpredictable, "they do a pretty fair job." He
says the best way for a business to weather shifts is to have a Web
site with strong content. "If you have a good site, you end up where
you should be even if you [occasionally] fall out of listings," he
says.

VLSI Research Inc. ran into a different problem. The Santa Clara,
Calif., research company recently started a social-networking site for
technical workers in semiconductor manufacturing and related
industries. Chief Executive Dan Hutcheson was dismayed to find Google
wasn't including the site in its search results two weeks after it
launched. He says VLSI called Google to ask that it include the new
site, and it bought Google search ads in the hope it would help. After
VLSI contacted Google repeatedly about the issue, a Google employee
threatened to blacklist VLSI sites from its results, Mr. Hutcheson
says. The blacklisting never happened, and the site began showing up
in Google results two weeks after it started.

"Our intent is to represent the content of the Internet fairly and
accurately," Google said in a statement responding to VLSI's
allegation. Google says it provides guidelines and online tools to
help sites be found quickly. For example, it recommends that companies
use its Webmaster Tools site to tell it which pages are most important
and how often they change, so Google can more effectively find it.

Then there's the issue Topix and others have wrestled with. After
closely held HomeStars.ca changed its name from HomeDirection.ca about
18 months ago to better connect with users, search-engine ranking for
the site for consumer reviews of home renovators and suppliers
plummeted, says Andrew Goodman, chief content producer at the
Toronto-based company. For about six months, HomeStars lost roughly
60% of the visits it through search engines, about 80% of which came
through Google. "I don't think anyone has ever had a changeover where
they don't lose traffic for a little while," Mr. Goodman said.

When HomeStars moved its site, it placed a computer code on its old
HomeDirection site to tell search engines and Web browser software to
skip to its new HomeStars address. That's the equivalent of a
business's forwarding its mail and putting up a sign with its new
address when it moves its store.

But search engines can be skeptical of such notices, because they're
wary of people buying Web addresses and forwarding the traffic to
other sites that aren't as relevant to the search results.

Concerned about that strategy, Topix has run its site at both
Topix.net and Topix.com for awhile. One danger with that approach is
that it is unpredictable; Google will see two versions of the same
page and could choose to show the Topix.net page most pr
ominently.

Google's Mr. Cutts says the search engine should ultimately understand
what is going on when a site changes its Web address. He says the best
strategy is to move one section of the site to the new address and see
what happens before switching the whole thing.

The Internet company is open to providing businesses with online tools
to explicitly signal such a change, but in the meantime, Mr. Cutts
says, posting in a Google support forum and hoping for a Google
engineer to take sympathy, as Topix was counseled, is more reliable
than it sounds.

Mr. Skrenta is crossing his fingers as the changeover approaches, and
he says he has no animosity toward Google. "It's not that they're bad
guys," he says. "It's just that they didn't set out to wield this
level of influence over the Net."

Write to Kevin J. Delaney at kevin.delaney@ w s j.com
.