Internet privacy is an increasing concern (ex: the recent Facebook privacy settings fiasco) and Google has just released a beta feature that uses SSL to allow “end-to-end encrypted search solutions”. SSL is an abbreviation for Secure Sockets Layer, and this is the same protocol used to keep sensitive internet and data transfers protected. Google is beta testing this feature under the pretense that if a person searches using the SSL feature, it will help to keep their searches private.

A couple of points need clarification here: first and foremost, if you use the new SSL enabled search, Google will still collect your data just like it does in its current version (and has been for years). The difference is your search information will be encrypted so that third parties (employers, Internet Service Providers, hackers, etc.) can’t get access to your search information; so even though your search becomes protected it certainly is not anonymous. This is an important distinction. Your searches will be just “private” between you and Google. 

Furthermore, even though SSL will prevent third parties from knowing what precise search term you typed in, third parties could still see what websites you visited and could thus come up with a reasonable guess concerning your encrypted search term. For example, I could type in a mysterious encrypted search term and this could be my results page:

Search Results Page Using SSL

If I clicked on any of those websites I would no longer be in encrypted search mode and a third party could gather information about my visit. It wouldn’t be difficult to accurately deduct what my mystery search term was…

Miami Dolphins

Google’s new SSL feature is also only available for its web searches, although Google claims they are working on ways to encompass all of its features (images, maps, etc). Google also says its searches in SSL are slower due to the encryption process (although it’s barely noticeable on my computer) and that it’s working to improve the speed.

Google’s SSL is not a default feature. It is in beta testing, however, and you can try this new feature now. It’s incredibly simple.

Google’s url is:

Normal Google url

 If you want to search using SSL, you need to add an “s” behind the http:

Google Search with SSL Feature Enabled

You can then search in encrypted search mode.

My computer hasn’t experienced any issues using the SSL feature, but apparently some computers may display error messages. If you receive an error message, or if you want to learn more about SSL feature, read Google’s official blog post.

When you search for a niche using Micro Niche Finder, you will notice that there are two features called Local Search Count and Global Search Count.

Local Search Count and Global Search Count

These two features, although similar in name, actually display totally different values that can help determine the success of your potential niche by taking into account its local search amounts and its global search amounts.

The Local Search Count is the approximate number of search queries that match your keyword/potential niche. It’s called local because it focuses on traffic based from your country – the default Google Server settings are for America, so if you do not change these settings Local Search Count will display traffic coming from America. If you have changed your Google Server settings to a different country, such as Sweden for example, your Local Search Count will be pertaining to Sweden (or whatever country your Google Server is set to). Local Search Count compiles search data performed in the most recent month. Sometimes you may see “Not Enough Data” – this means the Search Count is so low it simply doesn’t register. Ideally, you want high Local Search Counts, so any keyword that returns “not enough data” may not be the easiest keyword to generate money from.

Unlike the Local Search Count which only shows figures for the most recent month, the Global Search Count displays the average monthly search data from a recent 12 month period. Obviously, people in different countries (using different servers) will search for different things and keywords – some keywords transcend state boundaries and are popular the world over while other keywords are very country-specific. Since Global Search Count is averaging from a much bigger pool of information, it explains why Global Search figures can be much higher, lower, or about the same as your Local Search results.

For example, look at the difference between Local Search Count and Global Search Count for the keyword “Electric Scooter”:

Local Search Count vs. Global Search Count Results

As you can see, less people search for this term in America (which is the default Google Server, by the way) than people using other international servers worldwide. The Global Search Count is higher, therefore telling me that it is a popular term beyond America. It is safe to deduct that if I were to successfully make a profit from this keyword, it would not come as a surprise if a portion of my sales came from outside the USA because this keyword is popular throughout the world.

The Global Search Count gathers its information from search traffic from all countries – not just your local country and default Google Server. However, if there isn’t a lot of data you may see “Not Enough Data” appear and you may want to reconsider pursuing this keyword.

Have you ever wondered how users interact with a list of search results? In the world of internet marketing and SEO we know some aspects of a webpage are important (page rank, title, keywords) mostly through repeated, real experiences and intuition. A study from Cornell University gives scientific facts and figures to support tenets of SEO that we (as in, internet marketers) already knew to be true.

Before delving into what Cornell’s study reveals, it should be noted that this study was done with a limited amount of participants (26 people in total) so the results should not be taken as an immutable law. This study, besides being interesting, is really just a foundation for more scientific analysis to come.

Let’s pretend we are looking up the term “Moroccan furniture”. The Google result will be as such:

Moroccan Furniture - Search Results

This is the entire first page of the search results. The Cornell study illustrates what users will do when presented with the information provided by the first page. They developed a “heatmap” that shows what links were most likely to get clicked and what links people would spend the longest amount of time on. Here is their sample:

Heatmap

The heatmap shows that on average, more than half (56%) of all people will click on the first link, and these people will spend more than a quarter of their allotted time on that website. For internet marketers this is important to know! The next tier, still hot but not on “fire” so to speak, only gets a click through rate of about 13%! That is a tremendous difference in the sheer volume of clicks and visitors, but once clicked through, the link in the second tier still retains visitors for almost as long as the top ranked (25% as opposed to 28%). As the heatmap goes down the list, the percentage of people who click on a link and the amount of time spent on that link decreases with each tier.

If we combine the principle of the heatmap to our Google query about Moroccan furniture, the result would be thus:

Moroccan Furniture - Search Results Combined With Heatmap

According to this study, the higher ranked your website, the more visitors you will receive and the longer they will spend perusing the website. This is certainly a good rule to follow, but understand there are variations. For example, I personally have a “root for the underdog” mentality so I’m more likely than most to give the lower ranked links a fair try. Another example of a variation: sometimes the title on link number 3 is more compelling than the (better optimized) title found in link number 1, so the third link will receive more visitors than would be typical of other examples. There are many variations so don’t fret if your website isn’t the top ranked search result!

Also, this study did not take into account the “Shopping Results” and so its effects on the heatmap are not known. This is also why in the above example there are no colors surrounding it.

Interesting things gleamed from the heatmap – the top two links get more than half the traffic. Position number 7 actually gets the lowest amount of clicks (check the Cornell Google heatmap – .36% of all people clicked on 7^th place link, but 8^th, 9^th, and 10^th place links all received more clicks – 2.91%, 1.45%, and 2.55% respectively). Why is the 7^th place link receiving so few visitors compared to the rest of the page? Well, the answer is unclear for certain, but it seems like because it is located right at the point where users must scroll down to see the rest of the results it gets lost in the shuffle. In fact, only one person out of the study even clicked the 7^th place link. If this holds true after more tests, it will be safe to say that although  being on the first page of Google is great, being the 7^th link is not so good after all!

The 7^th position is even more interesting when you take into account the scanning process, as illustrated in this map

Scan Results

The black line in the middle denotes the rank of the link. So for link #1, the black line is that place value…that’s why there is no gray bar above it, because nothing can be ranked above #1. This is also the same reason why link #10 has no gray bar beneath it – because nothing is ranked lower than #10 on the first page. #10 has a high gray bar above it because all links are ranked above it. Understand?

So when looking at this graph, it becomes clear that being ranked #7 is not entirely beneficial. The first 5 listings are clicked after browsing through 1 to 2.68 listings above and below it, while the 7th listing is clicked after the entire page is examined! This is probably due to the need of the user to scan down and #7 getting lost in the shuffle. You can also see that the number of listings scanned above the clicked result is much bigger than the number of listings below. This indicates that users browse the list from top to bottom, but this is something internet marketers have been fairly confident about for a long time – I don’t know anyone who scans search results from bottom to top.

While this is an interesting study, it’s not concrete so don’t fret if you are ranked the (un)lucky #7 in the search results. While it’s definitely best to be ranked really high (as in, first or second) on the search results, there are all sorts of variables that come into effect that will determine how successful your website is, no matter where you are ranked.

The entire findings are available at: http://www.cs.cornell.edu/People/tj/publications/granka_etal_04a.pdf

As we already know, Micro Niche Finder sorts through mountains of data to help you find potential niches to make a profit. Suppose you find a niche that appeals to you – its stats are great, there are affiliate programs (should you choose to go that route), it’s easy to write about (for article submission and blog posts), and you feel that this niche is good enough to develop. Once you decide to go ahead with the niche, you may want to make a website about this niche and so you need a good search engine optimized domain name!

To see if the niche domain name is available for purchase, simply click on the keyword phrase that caught your attention. A list of options will appear – click on the one that says “DomainTools Lookup”

DomainTools Lookup on Micro Niche Finder

When you click on it, a new window will appear  on your internet browser, bringing you automatically to domaintools.com and checking your phrase to see if a domain name is available for it. In this example, the phrase we checked was “Billiard Balls” – not a good niche, competition is way too stiff and the niche is saturated, but I checked to see if the domain name was available all the same (on the off chance it is available, it’s possible to make a good resale profit from it!)

Of course, upon clicking on the DomainTools Lookup feature, it’s quickly realized that billiardballs.com is not available. If your phrase isn’t available, it will look similar to the picture below, but in greater detail. If it is available, feel free to purchase!

DomainTools Lookup

If your phrase is unavailable: to the far right corner of the screen, you should see a search bar next to a button that says “Whois”. Type a different phrase into that box to see if it’s available. In this case, we typed in “Unique Billiard Balls” (but with no spaces, like a proper domain name would be).

Whois Lookup

What a surprise, uniquebilliardballs.com is available!

DomainTools Lookup

That’s intriguing. We could now go back to my Micro Niche Finder and search the term “unique billiard balls” (or whatever phrase you want to use) and see what sorts of stats or other keywords and niches arise. Spoiler alert: “unique billiard balls” has no competition, very high OCI (91%) but not many people are searching for that exact phrase – if you like a challenge, go for it. We’re too busy with other Micro Niche Finder related developments right now, so we’re going to take a pass on this niche…although now that we posted it, we can’t promise it will stay available for long.

This DomainTools Lookup is a very convenient feature if you are looking for domain names. Sometimes it’s easy to find a domain name, other times it takes a bit of ingenuity and wordplay to find a workable domain name. Remember, no matter what niche and keyword you are working on, it’s a creative developing process, so take action and have fun with your discoveries!

On Micro Niche Finder’s version 4.5.1 release, a new feature called search options can be utilized. If you haven’t already done so, please update your software now in order to use this feature.

The search bar now looks like this:

Search Bar on Micro Niche Finder

As you can see, there is text under the search bar that says, “Click Here to Show Search Options”.

Click on that and our new expandable search bar appears. This contains options that allow you to tailor your searches to your needs.

Expandable Search Bar on Micro Niche Finder

For instance, the Google Server selections are now featured here. Micro Niche Finder uses the default Google (American) settings, but you can change these settings to whatever country you wish by clicking on the drop bar and finding the country of your choice.

You can also choose to use or disable synonyms in your search, include relevant results only, include adult content in results, not to return results of ‘not enough data’, and not to show new ideas for keywords. What features you want to use is completely up to you and you can change them easily anytime you want!

Besides using the LSI feature on your Micro Niche Finder, you may find it interesting to check out Google’s Wonder Wheel. Making its debut earlier this year, Google’s Wonder Wheel is a visual and graphical way to examine niches (or search terms and keywords in a broader sense) and see related topics that stem from the original term.

When entering your niche (for our example, let’s make it ‘hamster cages’) into Google, click the search button. A list of results will come up, as is usual, but if you look carefully in the blue line above your first query result you will see a link that says “show options”. Click on that and the left side of your screen will reveal a navigation board. Under the topic “standard view” click on “Wonder Wheel” .

You should see an image that looks like this:

Google Wonder Wheel

As you can see, the center of the wheel is our original niche “hamster cages”. The spokes of the wheel represent related offshoots that are relevant to our topic.

Now, if you were to click on the smaller circle titled “Teddy Bear Hamster Cage”, a new wheel is derived from the old wheel. Your image should look akin to this:

Google Wonder Wheel

Teddy Bear Hamster Cage, which is still related to your original niche Hamster Cages, now shows niche topics related to it. This chain can go on and on, and each topic you click on begets another topic with its own micro niches. While looking at this second wheel, the term “teddy bear hamster food” may just grab your attention – check its statistics using Micro Niche Finder (ex: strength of competition, OCI, etc.) and voila! You may have found another niche; perhaps you click on “teddy bear hamster food”, and see what sort of wheel develops from that term.

But even if you don’t find another niche this way, it certainly can help you find new ideas for blogs, articles, emails, tweets, etc.  Just enter your idea or topic in the search, and examine the ideas the Wonder Wheel brings. Ideally you would want to write about a topic that isn’t completely saturated, and the Wonder Wheel does not provide stats. If you see a term that you want to investigate further, it doesn’t hurt to check it on your Micro Niche Finder.

This method is called Latent Semantic Indexing. Click on the previous link to read an LSI-centric blog post to learn more about how it functions on Micro Niche Finder.  Using the LSI feature on your Micro Niche Finder is so important to producing high quality writings, and the Google Wonder Wheel uses the same concept in a visually compelling way.

If you want a comprehensive understanding of how Micro Niche Finder works, read through more of the blog postings on this website. However, the following list is a condensed version of the guideline to help you pick a niche!

Market Guidelines:

1.) Exact Search Count:  2000+

2.) Exact Phrase Match <= 30,000

3.) SOC color not red.

4.) If it’s related to a consumer product that can be purchased:
     OCI > 50%

Once again, the best way to use Micro Niche Finder to your advantage is to truly understand how it works and how its features utilize information. This type of information is found throughout this blog, but the list above should definitely help!

Picking a domain name an important aspect of niche success. While perhaps not the MOST important aspect to a successful and profitable website, it is generally the first thing a web surfer sees and we all know the importance of first impressions!

For a brief and effective guideline concerning picking the right domain name, John Jonas has written a terrific blog posting called My Guidelines For Picking A Domain In A Niche Market . In a very succinct and easy to follow manner he details domain-selecting strategies that work for him.

It should be noted however, of one more hint he does not explain in his strategy. It seems trivial until you realize the possible inadvertent consequences, but suppose you had a website and niche focused on coffee – the domain name coffeesecretsexposed.com will be read as a very different website by search engines. Search engines will look at that domain name and they will see it as coffeesecret-s-e-x-posed.com . What you thought was an innocent and optimized domain name about the secrets of coffee will be interpreted as an “adult” website and will not be found in general searches, and your profit potential will not be reached. So in addition to the excellent advice given in the blog, be mindful of how the words blend together!

Special thanks to John Jonas at www.jonasblog.com

It is common knowledge that a webpage will be higher ranked if the domain name of the website contains well optimized keywords pertaining to the subject. Most people assume that the domain name should be one long uninterrupted word in order to be most effective and that hyphens are to be avoided at all costs, but this is not true.

Hyphens help the human eye read a series of words better, and search engines work with this fact. In fact, hyphens do not affect your page rank or your search engine optimization and are perfectly fine to use.

However, hyphens may have a slight effect when it comes to “type in” traffic. This type of traffic, such as when a person types in the search in a toolbar, may give slightly more credence to domain names without hyphens than ones that do.

Regardless of whether or not hyphens are used, the important thing to keep in perspective is that domain names are not the most important aspect to web success. Make sure to have relevant content, find a good niche, use optimized keywords, and have links coming into your website from other sources!

A common question we receive concerns the origin of our search count statistics. It is no secret that Micro Niche Finder pulls its search count directly from the Google Adwords External Tool, and yet, many people find “discrepancies” between the figures Google Adwords External Tool gives and the figures Micro Niche Finder Search Count gives. A quick example will illustrate how these “differences” come to be.

Let’s go on to Micro Niche Finder and search the term “Dog Collars”. When the Search Count is clicked on for this term, the search count number is 90,500.

Now go to Google’s External Tool and type in “Dog Collars” again. This search reveals that this terms search count number is 368,000. Whoa! What a big difference, right?

Actually, no – there isn’t a difference at all here. Here’s the reason these two numbers seem superficially different: Google External Tool defaults to a broad search count while Micro Niche Finder defaults to an exact search count. Micro Niche Finder defaults to the exact search count because it gives a more precise, relevant, and useful answer than a broad search count does.

Now, even though Micro Niche Finder defaults to exact search count, you can change the settings to broad search count. Directly above the “Phrase” column, you should see three smaller and clickable texts titled “broad”, “exact” and “phrase”. The “exact” should already be clicked on since it is the default, but if you click on “broad” (immediately to the left of it) your search count result will change.

Click on Broad Search and….

…viola! The new search number for “Dog Collars” is 368,000. Doesn’t that number seem awfully familiar?

So there you have it – the two “different” numbers are actually not different after all. Micro Niche Finder simply makes it much easier for you to find potential niches by automatically offering you the search results in the exact search count as opposed to a broad search count.