December 2003 Archives

Google Dances 2003 (dates from Webmaster World). I was not able to include every forum, I also did not always find the best thread for each dance. In addition, there is a gap of official Google Dances which you will notice.

Happy New Year!

January 1, 2003 - No Name
Webmaster World, Webmasters Forum, JimWorld and SEO Chat.

January 25, 2003 - No Name
Webmaster World, Webmasters Forum, Cre8asiteforums, JimWorld and SEO Chat.

March 6, 2003 - Boston
Webmaster World, Webmasters Forum, Cre8asiteforums, JimWorld and SEO Chat.

April 11, 2003 - Cassandra
Webmaster World, Webmasters Forum, Cre8asiteforums, JimWorld and SEO Chat.

May 2003 - Dominic
Webmaster World, Webmasters Forum, Cre8asiteforums, JimWorld and SEO Chat.

June, 15 2003 - Esmeralda
Webmaster World, Webmasters Forum, Cre8asiteforums, JimWorld and SEO Chat.

November, 15 2003 - Florida
Webmaster World, Webmasters Forum, Cre8asiteforums, JimWorld and SEO Chat.

Someone contacted me today to ask me why they had been kicked out of Google, A quick investigation revealed a link that simply redirected back to the page, using
-script language="JavaScript">
-
window.location.replace('http://www.domain.com');
//---

-script> I asked for the source code of the actual page and was sent a complete BS spam page called a "Smart page" If anyone here uses these pages or is thinking about it DONT! This particular person was kicked out of Google and you will be too,

Here is an example of code you should never have on your server (A smart page? Whats so smart about it?)

Continue reading "Smart Page - Spam still alive"

Phil Craven, owner of WebWorkshop, one of the most unique and independent content sites on SEO on the Web, started out as learning to program in Basic, he then learned to do it in machine code and, after that, he took the computer apart, drew its circuit from the printed circuit board and learned how it all worked. Phil then began developing his own sites and learned about SEO soon after.

Because of Phil's occasional involvement in SEO forums and because of the WebWorkshop website, Phil has become quite well-known in the world of webmasters and search engine optimization. He is known as someone who thinks independently and not a person who accepts what others say just because they say it. Because he is seen as a person with firm and well thought out opinions, his views have been sought by such significant organizations as The Wall Street Journal.

Phil will be providing his views on SEO from an angle that others might not agree with or like. I feel his views should be heard and available to the SEO community and I am proud that he has accepted my invitation to join as the "SEO/Coder Author" at the Search Engine Roundtable Weblog.

I can not believe the number of prospects that come into my office and show me sites that were designed by "Web designers" that do absolutely nothing for the customer. You know what I am talking about. Site that have ZERO real text on the page. Sites that have ZERO "Call to Actions." Sites that make zero dollars or generate zero leads. Sites that just take up cyber-space.

Today I had a prospect come in and show me their site. After taking one look - I said to them, you get almost zero traffic, no orders and this site only costs you money. They said I was right. Of course I was right. The site's homepage had zero text, zero product and gave no impression of what the site was selling. The site was designed in frames, the title of each page was exactly the same and there was almost zero search engine friendly navigation.

Who do you blame? The prospect; should they know better? The Web designer; not all designers know about search engine optimization, there is no certification to become a Web designer. The prospect spent $X and X hours on this site and they have nothing to show for it.

I think I am done raving, I am sure I am not the only one who feels this way. Any ideas on what we can do? SEMPO is here to educate the public. But do we need more? Certification?

I'd like you to meet Sally Falkow of falcoWeb is one of the moderators at Cre8asiteForums, in the Usability topic forum.

Shortly after accepting her moderator role at Cre8asiteForums, Sally was involved in a serious auto accident that nearly took her life. To my amazement she's managed to not only recover from her injuries, but she's worked to bring her career and business back into full swing. In addition to her falkoWeb newsletter, she's also launched a usability oriented blog called Websense.

In her blog Sally writes, on Tuesday, December 23, 2003, The Ten Top Mistakes on Websites.

"Statistics show that over 80 percent of websites are frustrating to use and that over 90 percent of corporate websites have technology on them that prevents them from being seen by search engines.

Bill Gates said that soon there will be only two kinds of businesses – those with an effective website and those with no business at all!

There is real marketing power in a website – use these insights to tap into that power."

Checking her archives, you'll see other writings and helpful links. One in particular is from Sunday, December 21, 2003, called Getting the most from your website in which she writes,

"The Web has moved from being a new information medium to a sales channel. Studies show that lead generation has overtaken e-commerce as the main reason to have a website. Your marketing department should be intimately involved with your website and they need to know exactly who is coming to the site and why."

and

"66% of all sales are lost right on the home page."

Wow! And some people wonder why I keep harping on website usability issues!

John Scott has accepted the position as the "marketing" author for the search engine roundtable weblog. John has years of experience in the Web arena, he contributes his time and money towards his very successful information site and forum, Internet Marketing Research, formerly known as "Webmaster forums". John also runs a success business that can be found at http://www.v7inc.com/.

John will be representing the views from his forum, IMR Forum, and the views of a marketing as it relates to search engines industry.

This Christmas, I received a stocking full of coal, with The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr. and E. B. White buried among the coal.
It is one of the best presents I've ever received, and has inspired me to make a special plea to all of you to go out and buy it. This book, initially composed sometime in the first or second decade of the last century (in use by 1919 at least), is more utterly necessary now than it ever has been. Due to the explosion of the Web, and especially because of the search engines' love for content, people of many backgrounds are taking up writing to convey their messages to the world. Most of these people, sad to say, are not writers by nature, and it shows. Worse still are those who think they are writers, by nature or often by profession, and who still do not possess a firm grasp of the proper usage of the English language-- to say nothing of other languages, which I will not address here.

Continue reading "A Post-Christmas Thought: On Writing"

I wrote a new article today, I know its Christmas but I am Jewish so I had some free time.

One search engine that really caught my attention at the search engine strategies conference in Chicago was Teoma. Teoma is the search engine that powers Ask Jeeves, also knows as the ask.com search site. Teoma has made several improvements to its engine over the past year or so that has drastically increased its index and the quality of results generated. They have a unique method of ranking sites that Teoma likes to call "authority". In addition, they have a Teoma toolbar and many of the advanced search features that other search engine have.

In the upcoming paragraphs I will cover the following:

- Teoma's History and Background
- Teoma's Search Technology
- Teoma's Features and Advanced Search Functions

Read the full Teoma - The Superior Search Engine? article here

A collection of happy holiday headers from the search engines that bring us good news and bad, make us laugh and frown, assist us with purchases and sales, and help us get through each and every day. Happy Holidays and a Health New Year to the Search Engines and You!

We all know Google runs the show for anything search related. Google currently runs about 80% of all organic searches conducted today. They provide the organic results for Yahoo!, AOL, and Netscape. This fact makes it easy for search engine optimization specialists. SEOs really only have to worry about optimizing for one engine, Google. But Google will not be the only player in town in the upcoming months.

Yahoo! is soon going to switch over to Inktomi results, possibly some AltaVista results will mix in (who knows exactly how Yahoo! will handle on a political and technology level both search services). MSN will become a larger factor in the years to come, Microsoft is spending a bundle on developing its own search engine and they should not be underestimated. I have recently become a fan of Teoma, the technology behind Ask Jeeves, which I hope to pick up some steam. And we have FastSearch, the technology that powers AllTheWeb and Lycos. For a complete and fully interactive chart of search engine relationships today, please visit Bruce Clay’s Search Engine Relationship Chart.

So where does this all leave Google over the next year? I believe Google’s market share will greatly be reduced when Yahoo! switched its organic results. I also believe MSN, Teoma and FastSearch, in that order, will have an impact on Google’s market share. As searchers understand the search options available to them, they will seek them out. Ask Jeeves said that the average searcher uses 2.5 search engines during a week (or something like that, the numbers might be skewed based on who they researched). But I do feel that searchers will be more educated and start using what is available to search.

Google’s market share by Q1 of 2005 will be at about 30%, if AOL and Netscape stick with Google. Yahoo! will be about 30%, MSN 25% and the rest will even out amongst the rest. These are my feelings and predictions, I am not a prophet and I have no special magic ball – simply my own feelings. Feel free to comment on them.

I laughed out loud when I saw Jakob Nielsen's latest Top 10 Web Design Mistakes list from the latest Alertbox. He STILL harps on pages that link to themselves.

While I think it's confusing to click a link that doesn't take me anywhere, but instead just refreshes the page - I'm in the minority. A look at this Cre8asiteForums thread (When Not To Phone Home ) shows that most people opt for consistency and if that means leaving in a page link that links to itself, so be it. In fact, some people think it's a helpful tactic that improves user interface usability.

Jakob Nielsen's new list has many things that I also see in my work and heartily agree with, especially regarding confusing navigation and poor organization. He has some interesting things to say about the abuse of Alt tags.

You can view the list here >>> Top Ten Web Design Mistakes of 2003. It never hurts to inspect your site(s) to find ways for improvements.

Not mentioned in his list but something I like to remind clients is the value of communication with your online customers. When I ordered something for Christmas from a small business, and they ran into a snag with the order, they immediately contacted me to try and work out a solution. I had the option of cancelling the order but chose not to because of their thoughtfulness on my behalf. Amazon, too, has sent me emails nearly every day regarding tracking a large order I placed with them. I always know the status of my packages.

Overall, Mr. Nielsen was pleased and conveyed this message: "Many of this year's top design mistakes actually indicate a happy phenomenon: we are making progress in Web usability."

To which I say congratulations on the good work and may we continue to learn, improve and have fun with our sites next year!

Quick note to let everyone know I put together a free tool real quick that basically combines the Wordtracker and Overture suggestion tools into one interface (and makes it a little easier to understand).

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/

Check out the DATA on http://www-in.google.com not sure what the boys over at Google are doing but I like it. The serps are very remnisant of pre-florida, lets see if this propogates :-)
Cheers

The Search Engine Strategies Conference Chicago 2003 Reviewed article is now live on my search engine articles page. It will also be sent to the Developer Shed network from SEO Chat.

Here is the introduction:

Search Engine Strategies Conference and Expo is an event that brings together most talented and famous Search Engine Marketing professionals in the world. This event is held several times a year all over the world, and is hosted by JupiterMedia and SearchEngineWatch.com. Danny Sullivan is the name behind the show, but people come to this event for many reasons including to learn about search engine optimization and marketing, to hear about advancements in the search engine industry, to meet prospects and attract new business, and simply to meet people in the industry face to face and have a good time.

I was privileged to be able to attend the full three-day conference in Chicago that took place from December 9, 2003 through December 11, 2003. I have compiled a detailed review of each day of the Search Engine Strategies (SES) conference at The Search Engine Roundtable Weblog; but I promised SEO Chat forum members to write an abbreviated and well-organized review of the conference. Overall, I recommend the conference to all those in the Web design, Internet marketing, advertising field, search engine optimization and search engine marketing field.

In the upcoming paragraphs I will cover the following:

- Overview of the Search Engine Strategies Conference
- Topics at the Search Engine Strategies Conference: What you can expect to learn?
- Advances in the Search Engine Industry and the RustyBrick Perspective
- Networking Opportunities and Exhibitors at Chicago
- The Search Engine Elite and Sometimes Wacky
- Search Engine Strategies Chicago Conference Wrap-Up

Continue to Overview of the Search Engine Strategies Conference »

One of the things I hope to accomplish here is to showcase the many faces of usability, the work being done and why. There are so many more people tooting the usability horn besides Jared Spool and Jakob Nielsen, or the funny author Steve Krug who wrote "Don't Make Me Think!"

Here's a site called WebCredibility.org, by Stanford University.

From this site you'll find more research, meet the people doing this research and learn some of the trends. I like sites like this and articles written by researchers because they get into the heads of website users. Since this is whom we're ultimately building for, it helps to know what they want.

Time magazine article on Google

"The Internet is swiftly becoming the primary repository of the bulk of human information. Search is the way we get at that information, and companies like Google wield enormous power. They reflect our common interests and shape how we learn about the world with their rapid-fire search results. This isn't just about dotcom juggernauts duking it out for stock options and bragging rights. Whoever wins the search wars owns the keys to the kingdom of knowledge. That's a big responsibility. Are search engines up to it? "

I wanted to post a quick preview of my article on the Search Engine Strategies Conference which you can expect to be released early next week.

Here is the introduction:

Search Engine Strategies Conference Chicago 2003 Reviewed

Search Engine Strategies Conference and Expo is an event that is comprised of the most talented and famous Search Engine Marketing professional in the world. This event is held several times a year all over the world and is hosted by JupiterMedia and SearchEngineWatch.com. Danny Sullivan is the name behind the show but people come to this event for many reason including to learn about search engine optimization and marketing, to hear about advancements in the search engine industry, to meet prospects and attract new business, and simply to meet people in the industry face to face and have a good time.

I was privileged to be able to attend the full three-day conference in Chicago that took place on December 9, 2003 through December 11, 2003. I have compiled a detailed review of each day of the Search Engine Strategies (SES) conference at The Search Engine Roundtable Weblog but I have promised SEO Chat forum members to write an abbreviated and well-organized review of the conference. Overall, I recommend the conference to all those that are in the Web design, Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing field.

- Overview of the Search Engine Strategies Conference
- Topics at the Search Engine Strategies Conference: What you can expect to learn?
- Advancements in the Search Engine Industry and the RustyBrick Perspective
- Networking Opportunities and Exhibitors at Chicago
- The Search Engine Elite and Sometimes Wacky
- Search Engine Strategies Chicago Conference Wrap-Up

Three things hit me today that made me ask myself, "Why bother then?"

The first is the incredible news from the US (where I'm from) about the so-called anti-spam Bill signed yesterday by President George Bush. Called the "Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act" (CAN-SPAM), it's nothing more than nonsense that won't decrease the amount of spam email in my in-box. Says an article from Silicon Valley.com:

"(It) imposes an opt-out standard instead of an opt-in requirement, which gives businesses the right to send unsolicited marketing e-mails until you opt out. It also allows businesses to broadcast as much spam as they like - as long as the messages are obviously advertisements with a valid U.S. postal address or P.O. box. David Sorkin, an associate professor at the John Marshall Law School in Chicago and an expert on spam laws, said the bill will do nothing to block junk e-mail and could increase it."

When I read further, I come to understand why Nigerian spam won't cease, I'll still have to mess around with email filters and now, in addition to deleting email, I must now take even more time to opt-out.

Why bother to get excited over this?

The next "Why Bother Then" mind-feed came in the form of data released by Jupiter Research, in a Businesswire write-up called Jupiter Research Reports That One in Seven Consumer-Facing Web Sites Has an Error on Their Home Page Severe Enough to Cause Visitor Defection

Continue reading "Why Bother?"

In a post on High Rankings Forum, member ProjectPHP takes complainers about Google's SERPS to task, chiding them for misusing the word relevance. I'd argue he's not using the word quite correctly either, but he certainly raises an interesting point.
As SEOs, we spend so much time staring at the various search engines' results pages, and reading about all the underlying technology, and keeping up to date with the latest changes, and analyzing every change in the rankings of the keyphrases we care about, that it's very difficult to understand what the average search engine user is thinking.
Later in the same thread on High Rankings, user Randy comments that three of his relatives have emailed him to ask why Google's not working. I have to point out that I was asked the same thing two weeks ago by a co-worker, who confessed he'd switched to using Dogpile.
So, perhaps some users are unhappy with the new Google, like many webmasters. But we've got to be careful not to be too quick to seize triumphantly on these users and brandish them as an example of how we're right and Google's wrong.
Because what, after all, is relevance?

It's not necessarily for the webmaster to decide, is what Google is telling us. But time will quickly tell whether the searchers feel Google's deciding properly on their behalf.

Teoma uses something they call "Subject Specific" and "Communities" to rank their sites. Basically, a well ranked site needs to be within some type of subject specific category and part of a community. (I am still a bit foggy on the subject specific concept) But as Paul Gardi explained, everything in the world can be broken down into a community. He gave an example at the conference, people wearing blue shirts and have brown hair - that is a community. Anyway... Within those concepts is an other concept of hubs. Each community might have one hub or many hub. A hub is basically a site that links to other smaller sites, so a hub can link to an other hub or not. A site can link to a site and then link back to a hub.

The more a site is linked to within a community and (more importantly) the more authoritative a site linking to an other site is, the more weight that site is given. They are trying to figure out what the "expert sites" are and based on those experts sites, decide on what other sites for keywords within that community rank.

I wanted to wait until today to write my debut post because I didn't want to steal the thunder away from Barry's reporting from the Chicago SEO conference. Those of us who couldn't attend hang on every word you know! (Especially with what's going on with Google these days.)

Usability is many things. For the purposes here, I'll focus on website usability and help you find ways to make your web pages more user friendly. Many times the same logic applies to both humans, search engine robots and directory web page reviewers. Each wants to learn what a web page is about and they want this information quickly.

Sometimes it's a simple matter of being able to read a page. There's some new CSS tricks that allow your visitors to change the font face or font size of the web page to make it easier to read. If you're interested in Typography, The new typography by Clagnut has a good writeup on CSS, font families and their own "Switch Typeface widget".

What's cool about this article are the references to Linux fonts - not just Microsoft.

Don't know what fonts are on your system, or the standard in other computers? Try VisiBone Automated Font Survey

Content is often unreadable because it's been color coded and placed against a colored background. There's not enough contrast between them, making it quite difficult for your content to be read. How silly is it to write a product description your potential online customer can't see? I have a lot of color tools that tell me quickly what colors go together well, and what their HEX or RGB code is. Here's a new one, called the 4096 Color Wheel

Of course, website usability covers way more than fonts and colors. But, you'd be amazed at how many people struggle with websites because of these two basic things.

If your target market has eyes, consider what they need to use your website with ease and add these requirements to your website's design objectives.

If you haven't seen Danny Sullivan's post in response to one of my critiques on a track that took place at the SES Conference on Day Three, then check it out. This post is actually not in response to that but does discuss the points from that track.

Web analytics can be crucial in understanding how your users get to your site but then, more importantly, what they do once they get to your site. We all know that traffic can be good and can be bad. We do not want to optimize for keywords and drive traffic to our sites that have nothing to do with our site or what it is selling, that just wastes server resources and costs money. We do however want to optimize for the best keywords, by best keywords I mean - keywords that have a high conversion rate. A conversion rate can be a purchase, someone filling out a contact form, someone calling for more information or even someone adding a comment to your blog post. Many of the famous speakers are the SES conference call this a "call to action" and I am pretty sure that Shari Thurow came up with that term, or at least made it what it is today.

Many Web analytics programs give you the ability to track these call to actions from the search engine or entry point to the final conversion point. This funnel is an important criteria when it comes to tracking your success and an SEO/SEM. As Danny Sullivan said, it is not totally about how well you rank for keyword A or keyword phrase B, its more important if your keywords are converting into what you want them to convert to (call to action).

Continue reading "Web Analytics - SEO/SEMs Best Friend"

Not really all that useful, but noticed DMOZ has a red button in it's categories now (bottom right), which shows thumbnails of the websites in the category.

It also looks like some coder over at Amazon or Alexa (same company, so whatever...) got bored and added a few minor things:

• Shows average time it takes to load a page
  
• Reviews were wiped out (although "star" ranking remains), and new reviews are now "Amazon" reviews instead of Alexa reviews
  
• Shows what percentage of sessions show popups
  
• Sccreenshot update form works now on non IE for Windows (now it's simply a link instead of a form)
  
• 3 month average traffic ranking seems to be updating more frequently than once a week on Monday
  

Speaking of Alexa... I got bored the other day and busted out the packet sniffer to see what it's actually doing when sending/receiving data to the Alexa servers, and it doesn't have a checksum (like the Google toolbar uses for getting PageRank). It does have a cookie which seems to be embedded, but it the lack of the cookie doesn't prevent you from getting data, which you can see by clicking here (you will need to view the source since it's XML... unless of course your browser supports XML natively).

And to answer the question on a lot of your minds, no... you can't spoof Alexa traffic by simply pulling the URL (I tested it already). Maybe it's the missing cookie data or something... and I'm sure if someone wanted to do it badly enough they could figure out how to, but I didn't really care about that part of it... I was mostly just curious about how it worked.

As we move closer and closer into an innevitable clash of titans (GYM) "Google Yahoo MSN" evidence of profit model emulation is starting to appear. An SEO Chat member pointed out the existance of Froogle Ads at the bottom of "Every" serp.

"Shopping? Try Froogle - Google's product search service. Shameless Self-Promotion" Is what it reads. I jokingly commented about Google actually having a sense of humor, but in all sincerity I think its a sign of things to come.

Kim Krause launched Cre8pc.com (http://www.cre8pc.com/) in 1996 as her "personal online database" of search engine optimization and web design resources which she needed while working as Webmaster for a technical magazine publishing company. She was in charge of web design and also getting 13 web sites ranked in search engines. As she moved forward in her career, she freelanced from home in seach engine optimization (SEO) and web site building under the Cre8pc domain.

In 1998 she started the Cre8pc Website Promotion Club in Yahoo! and co-moderated the Home and Small Business Club, where she gained a reputation for helping people and making SEO and Marketing easy to understand. Hired by such companies as Unisys and Verticalnet, Kim worked as a User Interface Engineer and eventually moved into the Quality Assurance Software Testing field, where it was her job to test and develop the methodology for in-house web site usability. During this time, she continued to freelance in SEO and help out in her Yahoo! clubs and other forums.

During the dot-com crash of 2001, Kim was laid off and within 6 hours was hired by a company seeking a sub-contractor to test and project manage their proprietary Internet application for a large firm. This allowed her to expand Cre8pc services and work from a home office full-time. In August 2002 the old Cre8pc club was changed to Cre8asiteForums, where it quickly became one of the leading web design forums on the Internet and the first to begin spreading the importance of web site usability.

Today, Kim is focused solely on usability and user interface web site testing using the cognitive walkthrough and heuristic evaluation methodologies. Her background in SEO makes it easy for her to understand the connection between the two fields and how to make them work together for a united role in developing traffic, rank, and steady to increased sales. Both as a partner or supplier, Kim provides affordable usability reports for SEO Company clients as well as those that come to her via Cre8pc.

Kim expects to roll out her new UsabilityEffect.com website in May 2004.

Kim's articles have been published in HighRankings Advisor (http://www.highrankings.com/advisor.htm), SearchEngineGuide (http://www.searchengineguide.com/) and ISEDB.com (http://www.isedb.com/news/index.php?t=editor_list&user_id=15). She's a contributing author for Successful-Sites ( http://www.successful-sites.com/) and the Search Engine Roundtable (http://www.seroundtable.com/). She helped found the network of website properties called Cre8asite Network, which features a Resource Library (http://www.cre8asite.net/) and Cre8tive Flow Blog (http://blog.cre8asite.net/).

She expresses herself in a more casual environment via her own Cre8pc SEO and Usability Blog (http://www.cre8pc.com/blog/) and remains a dedicated member of The Creative Enterprises Network (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/OurCEcommunity/), an online merchants' association made up of owners of small or home-based businesses.

Search Engine Strategies (SES) December conference is hosted by Danny Sullivan from SearchEngineWatch.com. I will be providing my view of the speakers and courses I attend and report them at the end of the day. I missed the last session because I had to catch my flight back to New York. Its amazing how the place emptied out the last day. I bet that 75% of the people from day one was already gone by session two of the last day.

For day three please read on.

Continue reading "Search Engines Strategies – Chicago December 11th – Day Three"

If you do not know about SEMPO, The Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization is all about education and awareness to influence increased budgets towards the SEM industry. “SEMPO is a non-profit professional association working to increase awareness and promote the value of Search Engine Marketing worldwide.” If you were wondering, these guys are for real. I recommend that anyone who is in the SEM/SEO field either in your own firm or in a division in a large organization to join as some level member.

For the details with the meeting read on.

Continue reading "SEMPO – First Official Membership Meeting"

Search Engine Strategies (SES) December conference is hosted by Danny Sullivan from SearchEngineWatch.com. I have more accurate numbers as to the turn out from Jupitermedia (not sure if I should disclose my contact or not) – there were actually ~900 attendees for the conference sessions and an additional ~300 exhibitor only on hand. That is an awesome turn out for a conference of this nature being held in Chicago in mid-December. I will be providing my view of the speakers and courses I attend and report them at the end of the day. Day two really got me thinking about the future of search and where we will be in a year or so from now. I had to break in into two parts because the blog limited me to how much I can post.

For day two part two please read on...

Continue reading "Search Engines Strategies – Chicago December 10th – Day Two (Part II)"

Search Engine Strategies (SES) December conference is hosted by Danny Sullivan from SearchEngineWatch.com. I have more accurate numbers as to the turn out from Jupitermedia (not sure if I should disclose my contact or not) – there were actually ~900 attendees for the conference sessions and an additional ~300 exhibitor only on hand. That is an awesome turn out for a conference of this nature being held in Chicago in mid-December. I will be providing my view of the speakers and courses I attend and report them at the end of the day. Day two really got me thinking about the future of search and where we will be in a year or so from now. I had to break in into two parts because the blog limited me to how much I can post.

For day two part two please read on...

Continue reading "Search Engines Strategies – Chicago December 10th – Day Two (Part I)"

Noticed that the www-lm data center is filtering out all the nifty unicode characters from the results this morning (stars, arrows, etc.) They aren't removing the entries altogether, just removing the specific characters from the results.

Maybe they are testing it on a single data center, or maybe they are already deploying it and will show up across all data centers shortly.

Ok another SEO test is in the books, does it prove anything? You decide.
I am testing the title="" attribute as it applies to text links. (For any unnaware this causes a dropdown text box utilized by some visually impared software aids.
Many SEO's use this technique regularly so I decided to test it in what I refer to as the "Articese test" Our new SEO copywriter will be rolling her eyes at me on this one.
Anyways, the results of the test were, the pages that contained the kw in "just" the attribute do not get listed in google, although i know the pages have been spidered. Conclusion, they arent a ranking factor.
Thoughts?

Search Engine Strategies (SES) December conference is hosted by Danny Sullivan from SearchEngineWatch.com. This is the first time that the SES conference is in Chicago and it spans 3 days (many SES conferences span 2 days but the largest (in NY and CA) span 4 days). There are probably 750 – 1000 people attending this conference, this includes exhibitor only attendees. This being my first attendance of the SES conference, I cannot compare from past to present conferences, individual tracks and speakers. I will be providing my view of the speakers and courses I attend and report them at the end of the day. In the future, I hope to provide a historical perspective of the conference. As a side note, I am really tired and I hope this reads well.

Please continue reading for the extended entry...

Continue reading "Search Engines Strategies – Chicago December 9th – Day One"

Hi everyone-- I'm honored to be a part of this little adventure and hope to have some good discussions here.

For my inaugural post I'd like to mention a little gem from a post on High Rankings Forum's Florida update thread. (Seems every forum has one or ten.) The moderator Old Welsh Guy, in his normal brilliantly funny fashion, has composed a verse for a Christmas card to Google.

Your Algo sucks
times are now hard
here's your XXXXXX
Christmas card

He's kidding, of course (he did fine in the update), but it's pretty amusing.

The upshot of this (long, of course) thread, and the related (very long) threads on the other forums I frequent, is that:
1) Florida's been really hard on a lot of people. The jury's still out on the conspiracy theories, and there's currently a lot of debate among those who chose to make changes to their sites to recover rankings and those who made no changes-- it seems ranking are returning to many, and they're returning to both those who changed and those who didn't.
2) Content sites have fared well. Content seems to be as important as ever, if not more so. Which is a premise from which I will be making a lot more posts in the future: if content is king, how do I get some good content?

3) Don't take free traffic for granted. We're all looking forward to the day when Google has some decent competitors.
But, again, see #2: they all like good, quality content.

I'm probably biased, as a professional content creator, but I think that's a good thing. As pointed out in the Cre8asite thread by member NorthStar, " a large content heavy site with unique content that people want to link to is very tough to fake."

As things settle, I'm planning on posting a bit about good ideas for content creation that I've come across recently. I'll leave the algorithm analyses to those who understand them better-- content can never hurt your site if it's decent, so decent content we shall pursue.

Bridget, also known as Dragonlady7, is the moderator of the Copy and Content forum of http://www.cre8asiteforums.com/, and is also a participant at Webmasterworld, High Rankings Forum, and Best Practices Forum.

Dragonlady7 is a freelance writer. She specializes in website content creation and SEO copywriting, but also writes pretty much anything else that can be written, from text ads to short fiction. More about her, and other articles by her, can be found at her website: http://www.bridget.kelly.name/.

As posted by Scroogle's developer (Kackle on SEOChat)

"The entire Class C that Scroogle is on has been blocked by Google as of about 90 minutes ago. All of Google's data centers now return a 403 "Forbidden," which prevents us from screen scraping Google SERPs from our Class C.

We were up for 11 days and handled 97,343 searches comparing pre-filter and post-filter results. The information we provided is information that Google doesn't want you to have.

The latest hit list of nearly 5,000 terms and an essay on the filter fiasco are still available on the site.

Fortunately, you can still search privately for pre- and post- filter results using the exclusion term trick described in the essay. Almost all of you already know about this. It's just that it won't be easy to get the big picture of what's happening regarding the filter, without that constant data feed of search terms that was collected and sorted by Scroogle."

The developer is working on keeping it up by using multiple ip addresses, see the SEO Chat thread on this over here.

Danny Sullivan's Florida Google Dance Resources page has been completed as of late December 7th, 2003.

The information posted there is really nothing new, he just does a good job summing everything up.

Take a look by clicking here.

I first found this at Alan Webb's forum. It is basically a word for word dialog between Daniel Dulitz, a Google engineer and UK's Mike Grehan.

I am not sure of how recent it is, so if someone knows - please add a comment.

Mike Grehan and Daniel Dulitz discuss the following topics in this phone interview:

• Daniel Dulitz Background and how he joined Google
  
• The importance of PageRank and what it really means
  
• Google's ability to crawl dynamic content and what GoogleBot likes and dislikes in relation to that
  
• Flash and other Multimedia Content in relation to GoogleBot and Google's visitors
  
• Paid Inclusion Possibilities at Google
  
• What Google considers Cloaking
  
• Keyword "themes" in relation to SEO
  
• What Can get you banned from Google (not much)
  
• Automated Querying of Google Server - A No No
  
• Search Engine Industry dynamics and what it means to Google
  
• And Yahoo!'s relationship with Google (Past, Present and Future)
  

I like this quote ""Utility" and "depth" really should be measured by a site's users."

Here is a link to the interview.

Continue reading "Daniel Dulitz, Google Engineer Interviewed by Mike Grehan"

According to Alexa the popular buleon search comparer (using the plachinko test) www.scoogle.org has had the highest recent gains of 710% traffic influx. This is another clear concise indication that webmasters are a huge consituence of "search" and that Google should take note.
Surprisingly Google has not taken action on Scroogle as of yet, they are usually quick to jump on infringement issues especially when they involve critiquing of their company.

Wow, not sure if its just Canada but I am noticing another PR update and backlink reporting. SEO Guy has gone to a PR 7 :-)

It seems that PR updates are continuing their trend of higher frequency, does this bode well, I think so especially with preliminary SEO Tests showing backlink value still being quite high.

Interesting post by a member at www.seochat.com about "Froogle" results now showing up atop Google searches see: http://www.google.com/search?q=above+ground+pools At the top is aFroogle listing, this is a very interesting developement in light of all the ecommerce sites that were dropped by the Florida update. I know the 2 may not be related and I am excitedly looking into this as I type (Yes I can multitask :-) but I just couldnt wait to hear comments on this.
Cheers
SEO Guy