Look at the below example for the Super Lawyers lawyer directory.

Internet users would not need to go to the Super Lawyers website to search for a lawyer. If I'm looking for an environmental lawyer in New York who went to Harvard, I just enter 'environmental lawyer New York Harvard' in the 'search superlawyers.com' box at Google.

Here's the first three results displayed - right in the Google interface without going to Super Lawyers - and in a fraction of a second. When I click on the result I go directly to the lawyer's page in the directory, skipping the website home page and any interim search pages.

Expect the Martindale-Hubbell, Avvo, and FindLaw lawyer directories to be next in line for the Google treatment.

What's the implication? For Internet users, there may be advantages. No limited text fields or 'drop-downs' for search such as by practice area and location, the type of things Martindale-Hubbell requires.

Google's search will allow us to do a search for exactly what we want - like I just did for the Harvard environmental lawyer in New York. I could have added an association or two that I wanted the lawyer to belong to limiting my results further. I'm not sure searches at lawyer directory sites themselves would allow me to do that level of search.

For lawyers, it may be great. People can search for someone matching my background and find me immediately. That's impossible if I'm displayed in a Martindale-like directory as one of 165 lawyers in an area of practice in a locale.

For lawyer directories? I think they'll be uneasy allowing Internet users to search their data without going to the directory's website. No adds displayed. No fancy user interfaces with pictures and the like. No branding of the directory. Lots of confusion with lawyers asking directory salespeople questions.

Where do you see this headed? See advantages for people looking for lawyers? See advantages for lawyers?

For you readers employed at legal directories - Martindale-Hubbell, FindLaw, Avvo, & Super Lawyers - what do you think of the development?

Citing first comScore's report at the Search Engine Strategies conference in New York.

Of some 1.2 billion search queries on Google during a one-week period in January 2008, universal results were presented about 17 percent of the time, according to research released by James Lamberti, comScore's SVP, search and media. 'The search result page is beginning to operate as a destination,' observed Lamberti. 'The consumers are a priority. Not the marketers.' Plus, Google sent nearly 400 million search referrals to their own multi-media properties, such as YouTube, over six months. That includes 148 million referrals to YouTube and 173 million to Google Images, the comScore data show.

And then search expert and author, John Battelle:

To pretend otherwise is to ignore the reality of YouTube, Google News, Google Maps, Google Local, the onebox interface, Knol, and everything else Google owns that represent the chance for them to make money the way every other media company in the world makes money - by competing for your attention and monetizing it with advertising.

Consumers, business exec's, in-house counsel, and reporters, all targets of your law firm's attention are spending time at Google. Every sort of digital marketing your firm conducts must take into account Google.

Points to keep in mind:

• Any legal directory, Martindale-Hubbell, Avvo, Martindale's lawyers.com, Super Lawyers or whomever, will need to do an effective job indexing at Google all lawyer bio's, firm profiles, and in the case of larger law firms, their practice groups.
• Question the value of a directory that's preaching we're a portal drawing large traffic, as opposed to showing how well your bio appears at Google on a search.
• Any law firm website or blog needs to be search engine optimized from the get go. Begins with the development of the site or blog, it's not an after the fact thing.
• Make sure your firm is registered in Google local search for ease of all clients who may be looking for you.
• Use YouTube for all of your video. Descriptions of videos and their tags are already indexed at Google. Expect consumer use of YouTube to grow to the point where people will begin to search it for subject matter video, as opposed to just for entertainment.
• Use Google Site Map technology and Google's Feedburner for effective indexing of content and RSS feeds.
• Any content, whether articles stored on a website or distributed in email newsletters or alerts needs to be published on software generating an RSS feed (blogs are the easiest way to generate RSS) in order to have the content indexed at Google Blog Search, where thought leaders and reporters subscribe to keyword feed searches.

Fortunately Google and its tools are free. Some expense will be incurred by law firms in hiring people who understand how Google works. But the greatest cost to a firm would be to continue down the present course not understanding the true impact of Google.

Rick, who since FeedBurner's sale to Google has been a part of Google's content acquisition team, answered a few questions via e-mail last week about his views on RSS, the role the Internet has played on the 2008 presidential campaign trail and more.

1. Rob La Gatta: Do you remember when you were first exposed to RSS? What were your impressions of it at the time, and where did you expect it to go?

Rick Klau: I started a blog in December of 2001. Radio Userland (the product I used at the time) had an aggregator built in, and I started realizing that the ability to subscribe to sites I liked was fundamentally changing how I used the web. I was more consistently informed on subjects I cared about, and spent less time looking for information that mattered. Best of all, I was building relationships with people I hadn't met - based on the strength of their writing and our shared interests.

I don't think I gave it a lot of thought to try and actually predict where it would end up, but I do recall telling friends that RSS felt as significant to me as the browser felt when I first used Mosaic.

2. Rob La Gatta: In your opinion, has the world - and by that I mean the general, news-reading public - embraced RSS technology to the extent you would have expected when you started at FeedBurner?

Rick Klau: Absolutely.

Watching the growth curve of audience adoption was a very gratifying part of my time at FeedBurner. When I joined, aggregate subscribers to all the feeds we managed was measured in tens of thousands. Today that number is close to 100 million.

Perhaps best of all, many people who have "embraced" RSS have done so without really recognizing it. They just add headlines to iGoogle, or have their favorite blogs e-mailed to them, using FeedBurner's feed-to-e-mail service...they don't know that they're "using" RSS, and they shouldn't have to. (How many people using e-mail know that they're using SMTP or POP3? Not many, and that's how it should be.)

3. Rob La Gatta: What about the professional community: do you believe that businesses are utilizing RSS and blogging as much as they could/should be?

Rick Klau: There's always room for improvement. The last time I looked at a number of law firm websites, few were distributing information to clients via RSS. With the mass-market adoption of RSS and the ease with which firms can produce RSS feeds, they should see this as a simple way to embrace a convenient medium that gets them closer to their clients. Whether that's to distribute client alerts, podcasts (great for clients who commute!) or to summarize interesting and useful info found on the web, law firms can greatly increase their influence by embracing this medium.

4. Rob La Gatta: I saw you wrote about the Obama Facebook application, which is in many ways indicative of the way politics has taken on a new face for the digital age. How important do you see Internet-based tools in determining the outcome of the 2008 election?

Rick Klau: I'm not sure we're at the point where we can say conclusively that Internet-based tools are determining the outcome of the 2008 election. What they are doing is ensuring that more people can participate in the process - as volunteers, donors and even advisors. Savvy candidates are using the tools to more effectively organize their volunteers and leverage their input, which means that the tools are making the volunteers more effective.

Ultimately, the candidate still has to be able to sell people on their ideas. I was very involved in the Dean campaign, and watched as MeetUp and blogs emerged as tools that connected supporters offline as well as online. In this cycle, Facebook and even the campaign's own sites (my.barackobama.com is spectacular in this regard) are going further, giving me the ability to organize my precinct, recruit volunteers, and reach out to other voters by phone or by knocking on doors.

Back to your question - I don't think we want the technology to determine the outcome of the election. But if we can get more people involved and active in the process, we'll get the government we deserve. And that will be a good outcome all around. Particularly if Barack wins. :)

5. Rob La Gatta: Your blog is very personal. You have a disclaimer present, but some might still argue that you're walking a fine line (as we've all read about professionals whose personal blogs came back to bite them).

Do you have any concerns that being so personal out in the open could impact your professional reputation? Or do you think that developing a personality and a voice that people come to know - as you've done with your blog - is necessary for business professionals today?

Rick Klau: I've never worried that my blog would negatively impact my professional reputation, because what I write on the blog is what I say to friends, family members and co-workers. Writing on the blog is how I think, how I refine my opinions and how I challenge assumptions. I don't hide my personal opinions, but I also see the blog as a place to think out loud. It's not an outlet to take aim at others, and I don't think I've ever said something I'd be embarrassed by if a co-worker, competitor or friend were to read it.

Without any qualifications, the blog has had a dramatic, positive impact on my career. It's led directly to my last two jobs. Once I landed at Google, I met several senior people here who knew me because they'd read my blog in the past. It's produced speaking invitations at conferences as far away as Prague, resulted in inclusion in a number of high profile news publications, and opened doors with political campaigns where I've chosen to get involved. (It even got me a mention in Joe Trippi's book about the Dean campaign!) I've reconnected with classmates from high school, college and law school, and I've developed strong friendships with people I've never met personally - yet we exchange Christmas cards and chat frequently.

Do I have any concerns? Sure. I'm particularly sensitive to the fact that I'm now at Google, so I'm careful not to venture into territory where it might look like I'm speaking on behalf of Google. I stick to what I know, try to exercise common sense, and enjoy the process of writing about what I feel strongly about.

You talk about situations where a personal blog has come back to bite them - in most cases I've seen, that's been where the personal blog hasn't matched the professional appearance and it's caused embarrassment (or worse). My blog, as I mentioned above, *is* me. So far, it's working out pretty well.

Interested in hearing more? Recent LexBlog Q & A posts:

• Dan Harris, Seattle international law lawyer & publisher of the China Law Blog [1.28.08]
• Daniel Schuman of the American Constitution Society's ACS Blog [1.25.08]
• Tim Titolo, Las Vegas personal injury lawyer & publisher of the Brain & Spine Injury Law Blog [1.24.08]
• Eugene Volokh, UCLA School of Law professor & founder of The Volokh Conspiracy [1.23.08]
• Dan Clement, New York family law attorney & publisher of the New York Divorce Report [1.22.08]

Lawyers are repeatedly seduced and marketers are constantly aggravated to take space in law firm directories.' Which one to choose? How much to pay? Should you pay?' I can make the decision easy for you. There is only one directory you need to worry about: Google......Clients use Google to look up phone numbers and addresses, so law firms can cancel their yellow pages ads. When clients want to check out your firm, they are not going to call up to get your printed brochure, they will look you up online.

I have heard Larry speak and he's speaking of the importance of Google for all sized law firms, from solos to the very largest.

Other search engines aren't all that important for lawyers either. New research from Compete.com, indicates Google's share of Web searches in September 2007 was 67%, up from 54% in 2006. Yahoo is at 19%, down from 29% in 2006, with MSN at 9%.

I agree with Larry. Though it may still be worth my while, I never look at Yahoo or MSN when examining the search engine performance of my sites or LexBlog client blog sites.

As for directories such as FindLaw, Martindale-Hubbell, Super Lawyers, Avvo, and the like, the most important function they can play is getting the biographical information of your firm and its lawyers indexed at Google. The days of a lawyer directory portal site where Internet users go to look up lawyers are coming to an end.

Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. From Forbes today:

It could diminish Internet traffic to newspaper and broadcast companies' Web sites where those stories and photos are also found - a development that could reduce those companies' revenue from online advertising.

Prior to this change, Google linked to AP news stories. When a user of Google News clicked on an AP story they were sent to one of the hundreds of news Web sites that had the right to post the same article on their online editions. As Forbes explains, "That helped drive more traffic to the Web sites of newspapers and broadcasters who pay annual fees to help finance the AP, a 161-year-old cooperative owned by news organizations."

Now, Google visitors interested in reading an AP story will remain on Google's Web site. Any advertisng would be displayed on Google. There's a real risk that this move will result in more traffic for Google and less traffic for the vast majority of AP's customers whose only area of increased revenues is online advertising.

I'm sure news services have other reasons for their action. But I see it as not wanting Google to index their content without Google paying for it. You know - we worked hard to produce our content and we're not giving it away.

As Jeff Jarvis says, these guys don't get it.

I think this all displays a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of Google in the new news architecture and the way to take advantage of that. Rather than getting Google to pay for and display full content, wouldn't it have been better for the industry -- and, by extension, original journalism -- to encourage it instead to find more ways to link to reporting at its source?

Same thing is going on with the LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell lawyer directory. Rather than making sure all of their customers' lawyer bios and law firm profiles are in a web architecture that Google can index for high search engine performance, Martindale appears to want to limit the indexing of their content.

Martindale appears to want those selecting a lawyer to come directly to their martindale.com site. Wouldn't it serve Martindale's customers better to get their information indexed at Google so Internet users would follow links at Google to the lawyer bios and firm profiles at martindale.com?

Like it or not, the business of news and publishing has changed. Links to your content are key. The more links, the more traffic, the more in advertising revenues. In Martindale's case, the more law firms will pay to be in their directory.

Saw his presentation in Seattle a couple weeks ago. And Larry was nice enough to buy dinner at Etta's.

Anyhow, Larry calls blogs among the hottest trends in marketing:

Blogs, of course. There are about 2,000 law-related blogs and it's still a wide-open field. Run a search on your state on www.Blawgsearch.com and find out who else has a blog online in your area. Blogs bring in new business and turn associates into partners.

I'll let you read the full post at Larry's blog to see the other 9. Will tell you that Larry takes a strong swing at legal directories like at Martindale-Hubbell, saying that the only directory that matters is Google.

Larry says a number of the AmLaw 100 have already bailed out of Martindale-Hubbell. While on the other hand Google is now the 'the first choice for business execs researching a purchase for their company -- including legal services.'

As way of full disclosure, Larry is on a LexBlog blog.

Do a Google search for Austin divorce lawyer. Google provides names and a map with a listing of organic search results below it. The Lawyers.com and FindLaw directories are no where to be found.

Like Scoble, who was impressed with his Palo Alto Notary search, says "Google is so far ahead of the others it isn’t even funny."

As Google delivers better and better results, the number of people using Google is only going to increase. And do we really think my kids, who use Google to find everything (taught this in school), are going to look in the Yellow pages or lawyers.com when looking for a lawyer?

...[T]his question is a real core issue for any business in the 21st century. In a nutshell, more and more people are moving online to find just about every product and service imaginable. They do that primarily through search engines like Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO) and Microsoft Live (Nasdaq: MSFT).

What these three search engines have in common is that they analyze every page they find on the Web to automatically figure out both what the page is talking about and what some people call a 'quality score', a quantitative measure of whether the content is unique, where the inbound links are coming from (a link from the NY Times is far more valuable than a link from some spam site, for example), the ratio of content to advertising, and so on.

If you have a site online and you aren't clear about how those sites work and what they're looking for, you are doubtless finding that you can't be found when people are searching for your own product or service. And if they can't find you, they can't hire you or buy your products.

Until now, law firms have looked at websites has a necessity, akin to a listing in Martindale-Hubbell. The focus was design and little attention was paid to making sure the website could be found when people were looking for a lawyer on the net. The result - law firm websites that couldn't be found on the net anywhere near the first page or two of the search engine results pages, the only place net users look.

This is why firms are looking at other alternatives, one of which is blogs. More than one of LexBlog's large law firm clients has turned to a practice area blog to make certain that the firm's content and lawyers could be found by an exec, in-house counsel, or reporter doing an Internet search on the relevant topic.

Google antitrust law firm and you'll find Sheppard Mullin's Antitrust Law Blog in the number one position. Try telecom lawyer at Google. You'll find Davis Wright Tremaine's Telecom Law Blog in the number two position following the Wall Street Journal.

Small firms with one prominent practice area have turned to well designed blogs alone, without a website, to make sure they can be found.

Google Austin criminal defense lawyer. You'll find Jamie Spencer who, without a website is number one at Google. When prospective clients find Jamie on the net, they are more impressed with Jamie's informative criminal defense blog than a law firm web site going on ad finitum about how wonderful the lawyer is.

Google where your law firm is located and what you do. If you can't be found, your law firm is in serious trouble.

Technorati Tags: seo

Businesses, including law firms, can all currently buy sponsored links at Google. But Google is now aggressively pursuing certain markets to increase ad sales.

Lawyer yellow page advertising is a $1 Billion industry. Sponsored links via AdWords is far under utilized by lawyers. Financial services businesses, though much less fragmented than than the legal industry, is often aligned closely with law firms when it comes to Internet advertising. Combine all three and it's not a leap to see Google develop a strategy to aggressively sell sponsored links to lawyers.

Martindale-Hubbell presently sells targeted sponsored links at Google to its small law firm customers. It's possible FindLaw does as well. But these companies' sales people are not the most astute when it comes to Internet marketing. Having Google get involved in the market could make Google a few bucks and better serve lawyers looking for cost effective Internet marketing.

The main reason: because it’s there, and it’s big, and it’s information rich, a perfect market in the cross-hairs of the Google mission.

The factual evidence: check out the sponsors of this conference earlier this month at Yale Law School on ‘Regulating Search: A Symposium on Search Engines, Law, and Public Policy.’ Google did more than sponsor the event, it sent Alan Davidson, its Washington Policy Counsel and leader of the company’s new government affairs office in Washington DC. Microsoft, one of the other sponsors (you may be familiar with their work) sent Jon Zieger, an attorney who provides counsel for the MSN Search business. Surprise!

Looking at the vertical search industry, Wired GC's reasoning is pretty sound. Wired cited Om Malik on the definition of vertical search.

It is a specialized search engine that mines data for one narrow niche of the market place. Say jobs or travel. Or even high end real estate. Because the data sources are so fragmented, there seems to be an opportunity to massage the data and present it in a manner that is simple to use and easy to consume. Sort of meta search for niches.

As Wired pointed out "Google, is showing signs of interest in vertical search. See their tools and services page.

What strikes me is Google's mission: "[T]o organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." Martindale-Hubbell has the information on lawyers and law firms. I question whether Martindale-Hubbell's goal is to make the information more universally accessible and useful.

As I have mentioned before, Martindale-Hubbell does not allow a full body text search or its directory to be indexed by Google. Martindale-Hubbell's refusal or inability to make information about lawyers and law firms more universally accessible and useful is only go to heighten Google's interest.

We're testing a new product that gives you a free and fast way to speak directly to the advertiser you found on a Google search results page – over the phone.

Here's how it works: When you click the phone icon, you can enter your phone number. Once you click 'Connect For Free,' Google calls the number you provided. When you pick up, you hear ringing on the other end as Google connects you to the other party.

We won't share your telephone number with anyone, including the advertiser. When you're connected with the advertiser, your number is blocked so the advertiser can't see it. In addition, we'll delete the number from our servers after a short period of time.

Gary Price, my source for this post, writes at SearchEngineWatch "If you wondered when Google might begin offering pay-per-call ads, or at least click-to-call, it looks like the time is now."

For law firms and professional service businesses, click to call could present some excellent advertising buys - especially for the first movers. Can you hear the sucking noise at Martindale-Hubbell and FindLaw? That's Google sucking law firms into more effective marketing approaches.