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Dear all:<br>
<br>
In his talk at the Search Engine Strategies 2009 conference in Chicago
this week, Jay Myers, Lead Web Development Engineer for Best Buy, Co.,
Inc., reported very surprising effects of adding GoodRelations and RDFa
to their products pages:<br>
<br>
<b>1. GoodRelations + RDFa improved the rank of the respective pages in
Google tremendously. </b><br>
<br>
In fact, if you try the query "BestBuy Ferris Bueller" on Google, then
the page<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://products.semweb.bestbuy.com/y/products/7590289/">http://products.semweb.bestbuy.com/y/products/7590289/</a> <br>
<br>
comes on rank # 1 ahead of the much more established page<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Ferris+Bueller%27s+Day+Off+-+DVD/7590289.p?skuId=7590289&id=47476">http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Ferris+Bueller%27s+Day+Off+-+DVD/7590289.p?skuId=7590289&id=47476</a><br>
<br>
This indicates a strong effect of GoodRelations + RDFa on Google's
appreciation of a page. It is particularly surprising since the age of
a domain has now a huge influence on ranking in Google (older ones get
a much higher ranking), and the semantically augmented one is only
something like eight weeks old.<br>
<br>
<b>2. Jay also reported a 30 % percent (!) increase in traffic </b>on
the BestBuy stores pages, e.g.<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://stores.bestbuy.com/1895">http://stores.bestbuy.com/1895</a><br>
<br>
since they have been augmented by GoodRelations + RDFa rich mark-up. <br>
<br>
<b>3. Yahoo observes a 15% increase in the Click-through-Rate (CTR). </b><br>
<br>
Nick Cox from Yahoo also recently reported that augmented search
results, e.g. those with GoodRelations / RDFa in Yahoo get a <b>15 %
higher Click-through-Rate (CTR).<br>
<br>
So in short: </b>While better visibility in traditional search engines
is of course not the main intended effect by adding GoodRelations &
RDFa rich mark-up, <br>
I think these findings are so substantial that any SEO / SEM consultant
should apply it - now!<br>
<br>
Patterns for simple copy-and-paste are here:<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/wiki/Rdfa4google">http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/wiki/Rdfa4google</a><br>
<br>
A full cookbook of mark-up recipes is being maintained at<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://tr.im/cookbook">http://tr.im/cookbook</a><br>
<br>
All developer resources are at<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/wiki/GoodRelations">http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/wiki/GoodRelations</a><br>
<br>
Best wishes<br>
<br>
Martin Hepp<br>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
--------------------------------------------------------------
martin hepp
e-business & web science research group
universitaet der bundeswehr muenchen
e-mail: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:hepp@ebusiness-unibw.org">hepp@ebusiness-unibw.org</a>
phone: +49-(0)89-6004-4217
fax: +49-(0)89-6004-4620
www: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.unibw.de/ebusiness/">http://www.unibw.de/ebusiness/</a> (group)
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.heppnetz.de/">http://www.heppnetz.de/</a> (personal)
skype: mfhepp
twitter: mfhepp
Check out GoodRelations for E-Commerce on the Web of Linked Data!
=================================================================
Project page:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://purl.org/goodrelations/">http://purl.org/goodrelations/</a>
Resources for developers:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/wiki/GoodRelations">http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/wiki/GoodRelations</a>
Webcasts:
Overview - <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.heppnetz.de/projects/goodrelations/webcast/">http://www.heppnetz.de/projects/goodrelations/webcast/</a>
How-to - <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://vimeo.com/7583816">http://vimeo.com/7583816</a>
Recipe for Yahoo SearchMonkey:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/wiki/GoodRelations_and_Yahoo_SearchMonkey">http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/wiki/GoodRelations_and_Yahoo_SearchMonkey</a>
Talk at the Semantic Technology Conference 2009:
"Semantic Web-based E-Commerce: The GoodRelations Ontology"
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.slideshare.net/mhepp/semantic-webbased-ecommerce-the-goodrelations-ontology-1535287">http://www.slideshare.net/mhepp/semantic-webbased-ecommerce-the-goodrelations-ontology-1535287</a>
Overview article on Semantic Universe:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.semanticuniverse.com/articles-semantic-web-based-e-commerce-webmasters-get-ready.html">http://www.semanticuniverse.com/articles-semantic-web-based-e-commerce-webmasters-get-ready.html</a>
Tutorial materials:
ISWC 2009 Tutorial: The Web of Data for E-Commerce in Brief: A Hands-on Introduction to the GoodRelations Ontology, RDFa, and Yahoo! SearchMonkey
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/wiki/Web_of_Data_for_E-Commerce_Tutorial_ISWC2009">http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/wiki/Web_of_Data_for_E-Commerce_Tutorial_ISWC2009</a>
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