by Reid Kanaley

YvesRocherUSA.com, an Exton-based Web site selling makeup, perfume and antiaging cream, had trouble getting face time with consumers on the Internet until it opted for the sometimes-controversial practice called "Search Engine Optimization."

The site hired a Bala Cynwyd company, Unreal Marketing Solutions Inc., 18 months ago to tinker with its Web pages to make them appear higher in the lists of results at Google and other Internet search sites.

Through Unreal Marketing, it also began to buy enhanced visibility on search sites such as Overture.com, a pay-for-placement Search engine that openly "sells" keywords to the highest bidders.

The measures worked, said Stephan Dechaux, the Yves Rocher e-commerce director. Instead of being listed below hundreds or even thousands of other sites, as it once was, "on some keywords we are number three, number four," he said. "It's important for every company to venture into Search Engine Optimization."

Earlier this week, typing the word "wrinkle" or "cosmetics" into the search box at Overture.com produced links to Yves Rocher on the first page of results.

But the cottage industry in Search Engine Optimization is no darling among many of the Search engines themselves. Companies such as Google, whose www.google.com is one of the Net's most popular search sites, and Inktomi Corp., which operates the MSN Search site at http://search.msn.com, say they work hard to protect the purity of their results.

"We make our pages as objective as we can. We consider our search results editorial content," Matt Cutts, a Google software engineer, said.

Search engines typically use software that explores millions or even billions of Web pages on a regular basis, then indexes those pages based on criteria such as keywords or popularity (based on links to the page from other sites).

Some Search engines routinely put links sponsored by advertisers at the top of their results; the Federal Trade Commission last month criticized a handful of search sites for not making it clear enough which links were paid for and which appeared because they best matched the searcher's keywords.

Still, operators of many Search engines say they do not want their results corrupted by unscrupulous operators who, for example, might overload a Web page selling computers with irrelevant references to Britney Spears just to move the page up higher on the list of search results.

Another optimization tactic, which the Search engines say is now readily detectable, involves setting up Web pages full of hyperlinks meant to make a site seem more popular than it really is.

A more recent technique involves "cloaking," which takes advantage of the fact that a Web site often can detect when a Search engine is "crawling" its servers. The Web site may then present the Search engine with a Web page that is different from - and perhaps totally unrelated to - the Web page humans see when they click to visit the same site.

"It could be just someone who wants to come up number one for sneakers, and they're really a porn site," Cutts said.

"People in general aren't aware that there's this whole group of people out there trying to game the results," said Chris Sherman, editor of SearchDay, a daily newsletter about search engines.

Search engines say they have now amassed years of experience and sophisticated software for weeding out bad results and will ban Web sites and optimizers who engage in practices they consider shady.

"We are very aggressive in ejecting folks like that," Vishal Makhijani, general manager of Inktomi Web Search, said.

Yet the optimizers - hundreds of companies offer the service - say their business sometimes gets a bad rap. They say they help enhance consumers' online experiences by pushing relevant Web pages to the fore.

Optimization tactics regarded by the search engines as legitimate include actively submitting Web pages to the search engines for inclusion, making sure sites have uncomplicated pages that can be easily read by search engines' automated software, and sprinkling relevant keywords in titles, headings and lists.

The search engines "really don't mind, if what you're doing is enhancing the chances of really good content being found," said Sherman, who divided the optimizing companies into "white hats" and "black hats."

There is "a lot of ethics involved in the industry," insisted Michael Stalbaum, chief executive at Unreal Marketing Solutions. "People have to be aware that even the Yellow Pages is advertising."

His 3-year-old company has 16 employees and counts Wells Fargo, the Franklin Mint and Priceline.com among its clients.

"Every single one of our clients does Search Engine Optimization," Stalbaum said. "If you're not in the first 20 listings [on a Search engine], there's no value to being on the Web."

Search Engine Optimization is simply "tinkering with the algorithms," or fine-tuning Web sites to gain the best possible ranking from each engine, said Mark Naples, spokesman for 24/7 Real Media, a New York search-based marketing company with offices in Fort Washington.

Naples said 24/7 Real Media has been doubling its Search Engine Optimization business for at least the last two quarters. The company now has a separate division to handle that business.

Contact Reid Kanaley at 215-854-5026 or rkanaley@phillynews.com.

Posted 10/10/02

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