March 2004 Archives

When Google released their new design this week, one thing we noticed is the Google now highlights keyword phrases even when they are not separated with a hyphen or space. For example, I did a search on mens shirts in Google and look at how Google was able to decipher "mensshirts.htm" as "mens" plus "shirts".

First time I mentioned this at the roundtable was during my coverage of the Search Engines & Web Server Issues during the SES NYC conference. When one of the speakers was complaining that he couldn't get the new design (this was before the new design was out) off his screen and he noticed that Google was able to pick up keywords in a single string.

Jill Whalen in here High Rankings Advisor: Contextual Search - Issue No. 092 email, she does this Q&A thing. One of the questions asked, and I quote:

I just noticed that Google search results now highlight the searched criteria in the file/document name. Does this mean they are giving more weight to this than in the past? I always use relevant file names as a part of my optimization process, but understood it only carried weight at a few places.

Jill's response was:

Nobody really knows what it means except for Google. However, it's my
opinion that it doesn't mean anything other than the fact that their
new highlighter sees all the search words on the page, even words that
are not parsed by a hyphen, etc.

It's doubtful that this has anything to do with Google's algorithm.
They recently changed their look, and this is just a manifestation of
that.

I am doubtful that Google would put any additional weight on file
names or domain names in their ranking algorithm. If anything, I
would imagine they'd be moving further and further away from giving
those fields any weight.

This is a perfectly honest answer. In fact, one person at the SES said it is way to easy for Google to raise a red flag on a site if the URLs were stuffed with keywords and hyphens. However, I personally use the mod_rewrite to change the extensions of the URLs to keyword rich text. When it comes to the domain name, I would not go beyond two hyphens.

I could not find much forum coverage on this topic, so I used a newsletter. :)

There has always been news on companies/people suing others for documents and information they found on search engines. Today, I received a phone call from Symantec (I would link to their site but I am mad at them so, no PR for you). Before I go into the nature of the call, let me give you some historical background.

We purchased the Symantec VPN 200R device, I have been very happy with it. Problem was that the VPN was not supported by Symantec. So some of my guys at my company put their heads together and figured out a solution. We worked with Symantec a bit over the phone but then ultimately got the VaporSec software working with the Symantec VPN 200R device. So I published the method at the RustyBrick Technology Blog (which I admit needs to be updated more often) for all those to see. I then sent my findings to the technician who gave us a hand early on at Symantec. Who then wrote back to us with a more formal method of setting it up. What I posted at the blog is under the title of Setting up Symantec VPN 200R On Mac OS 10.3 with VaporSec. It was my original verbiage. I even had images with screen shots of how to set up the screens. He used my screen shots in his document and then added more content, above of what I had.

I get a phone call today from that technician saying that Symantec might sue me for copyright infringement. He said someone at Symantec 'Googled' and found this information. I told him - I wrote it and not you. I showed him the text and said this is my copy. I then said, I linked to your document. So I told him I would remove the link to his document. He didn't care either way, he just said he wanted to warn me that its a possibility.

This is the thanks I get from Symantec. Now they can support Apple platforms and they want to sue me. Google, you did it again! ;)

A while back, I posted a topic on Sunbeam Water Cooler Sprung a Leak, well I finally have an update.

Sunbeam asked me to send them the three knobs on the cooler, the drain plug, the UL sticker, a letter and the original receipt. When they receive it they will send me a check, a full refund.

I already purchased the new cooler from Deer Park. I probably should have rented but this one has a 2 year warranty too. I purchased the Contemporary Black Dispenser for $159. Looks like the picture below, matches better in black.

Interesting thread over at IHelpYou Forums. The thread discusses an individual's findings based on action he took. The scenario... His site was not ranking well. He linked to "expert" sites from his page. His site began to rank well.

The question this thread tries to answer is wether linking to "expert" sites played the role of the site beginning to rank well OR is it just by adding external links on the page itself that played the role of the site beginning to rank well. It is obviously hard to determine the real answer to the question without more detail and history on the page, nevertheless, it is still an interesting topic.

Visit Linking to 'expert' documents?

Yesterday Google launched a new design, part of that new design was the removal of the "directory tab". DigitalPoint's forum, which has been doing just great, discussed Google's new design. That thread went off on a slight tangent, delving into the usefulness of the ODP or other directories.

I gave an example of its use when buying a new sign for my office. I think I first tried search at Google for the right company, but I couldn't find much for this niche. So I went to ODP's Signage Listings and Yahoo's Signage Listings. I then browsed a few dozen sites listed and sent an email with a spec to those I thought were up to the job.

Let me tell you, I am really happy with the final product. I would have never been able to find this company with a search engine.

Update: Just found out they made AskJeeves Sign.

New tool for analyzing a page's keywords has been released by McDar.net.

They are discussing it at SEO Chat.

One of the newest blogs to hit the net that is sure to take on quickly is the Peabody's Cre8tive Flow Blog. The Peabody blog is here to cover a wide spectrum of topics including web design, development, site promotion, industry news. There will be some Cre8asite forum coverage but a lot of original thought over at this blog.

They have asked me to contribute a weekly entry to summarize the activities over here, at the Search Engine Roundtable. Its just amazing how much we cover here at the Roundtable, check out Week In Review: Search Engine Shuffle over at the Peabody blog.

This article fell into my little world today and it's a keeper. It's about the high cost of NOT finding information.

The high cost of not finding information by Susan Feldman of International Data Corporation (IDC)

     "We know that roughly 50% of most Web searches are abandoned. That translates into 50% fewer online sales, 50% more frustrated customers trying to solve a problem or get information, and 50% more phone calls that must be handled by a person rather than by automatic systems. At an average cost of $5 per phone call as opposed to less than $1 per automated call or mere pennies for finding an answer online, that is expensive."

This is just scary.

     "Finally, there is the increasing problem of too much information. In the case of the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant disaster, for instance, operators had so many error messages thrown at them that they couldn’t identify the main cause of the problem. With disastrous results. One wonders whether the recent Northeast blackout can also be attributed to that cause.

Some search companies are mentioned in the article and it discusses intranet usage.

     "Information disasters are caused not by lack of information, but rather by not connecting the right information to the right people at the right time. People use information within the context of what they are doing. They need to have access to the right information, but only when they need it. And they need to be assured that the access is guaranteed, easy, fast and reliable."

The real kick in the pants is nowhere in the entire article does it mention Google.

Many SEO's try to get as many links from the ODP as possible in an effort to increase a site's PR. How much are ODP worth?

The question was raised at WebmasterWorld and GoogleGuy responded. "We can process the RDF file and count the number of listings just as well as someone's CGI script can. I'd concentrate more on getting quality links and not obsess about trying to lots and lots of ODP links."

If you've been by the Cre8asite Forums over the past couple of days, you probably noticed how unbelievably slowwwwww it's been over there. I just wanted to give folks a quick heads up because of the fact that the forums are so slow, folks might not be able to even get in there to see that we've put up a status page at this location.

We hope to have the situation resolved soon and the link above will let you know how our progress is going. Thanks to everyone for your patience and understanding in this matter.

Google released at http://labs.google.com/personalized its first real attempt at personalized search results. I strongly believe they will not bring this feature into the main stream engine, it is something they will continue to offer as an option but not as a requirement.

Check out the Google Personalized Web Search: Frequently Asked Questions.

Forum coverage at:
SitePoint Forum
ABAKUS Forum
IHelpYou

Last night Google launched a new design. The design contains everything from a new slimmer bar, distracting "new!" text near the Froogle tab (we all know about Danny Sullivan's invisible tabs), a static definitions tab at the top right of the keyword, news snuggled in at the top and the sponsored listing pushed off to the right side.

Forum coverage at:
WebmasterWorld
SEO Chat
IHelpYou
HighRankings
JimWorld
Cre8asite Forum
Webmaster Forum
ABAKUS Forum

Excellent thread was started over at WebmasterWorld on AdSense's new channels. Webmaster's there discuss what they were able to learn with the added reporting functionality. Some of the results are surprising.

Join in the discussion on What have you learned from your channels?

Comparing ones Web traffic to an other's Web traffic when those two sites/servers run different Web analytical tools is like comparing Apples to Oranges. It is just not possible to accurately compare the two.

For example, around November and December of 2003 I upgraded to Urchin 5.5 Web analytics from Urchin 3 Web analytics. The way those two software looked at traffic was drastically different. My traffic server wide dropped about 75% due to the enhanced technology in the new Urchin 5.5 to more accurately track a visitor. See the chart below. The traffic on the left was from Urchin 3.0 versus the traffic on the right which is when the new Urchin 5.5 was installed on my server.

From the SEMPO homepage:

SEMPO today issued two new press releases announcing the availability of new search engine briefings from two leading research firms.

CEO of eMarketer Presents Latest Search Engine Research to SEMPO

Jupiter Analyst Discusses Search Engine Industry with SEMPO

We all know about Digital Points Keyword Tracking Tool, the one that competes with my Keyword Tracking Tool. Well, it was recently reported at his forum that the Google API account set up system has been down.

Based on Shawn's estimations, he feels that the API account set up has been down for at least three to four full days. Shawn emailed Google's API team as soon as he found the problem and 15 minutes later it was fixed. Was it his email that brought Google to realize the problem? We won't know.

"Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer conceded Thursday that one big Microsoft misstep over the past few years is that the company did not put resources toward in-house research and development of search technology." This article by CNN tells the story well.

Discuss this topic at Digital Point's Forum.

I have been meaning to discuss the power of the Google dictionary and how it can help your rankings. I simply have been putting it off until now. Everyone knows about the method of entering in Google "define: term" or "definition of term" and it brings back an entry at the top of Google SERPs with a definition pulled from an other site. It can look as follows:

What not everyone knows about (only those that rank well for popular definitions) is that Google brings a single definition back when you use the query "what is google", or what is term. So if your in the first slot for this definition, you will get a nice amount of traffic to your site.

At the SES conference in NY, I told everyone about this operator in the Q&A session of What is Content?. Or I think it was that session, I forgot - I jumped into that session only for the Q&A part. I was surprised to find out that only a few people in that room really knew about the "what is XYZ" query back then.

Now the secret is out, the news hit a forum based on viggin's careful eye. It might have been covered in other forums as well, but I now expect the news to hit the mainstream. But I did make sure to tell the SEO chatters back in November.

In Yahoo!'s last act, it striped AllTheWeb of its search technology and assimilated its own search technology into the core of the AllTheWeb search query box. Can we expect the same for Inktomi?

Forum coverage at:
WebmasterWorld
SEO Chat
ABAKUS Forum

After readings Kim's Cre8pc Blog, I found Andy Beal's blog entry MSN Launches New Look in July, Not New Search Engine. Andy's blog lead me to Danny Sullivan's article at Search Engine Watch, which explained "The change being implemented on July 1 will not coincide with the launch of MSN's own search technology. A crawler-based MSN search engine has been in development since last year, but there remains no announced launch date for this."

Then I see this article at Yahoo named Microsoft Set to Launch Web Search Engine. Which says "Speaking at an online advertiser conference sponsored by Microsoft's MSN Internet division, Ballmer said the Redmond, Washington-based software giant will begin rolling out its own Internet search technology within 12 months."

So this is what they mean by the World Wide Web. My travels through the Web in just minutes. See you soon MSN search.

I have come up with a tool that estimates your future PageRank and it can be found at Future Google PageRank Predictor page.

:)

Shawn helped out with some of the formulas, props to DigitalPoint.

There were whispers at the recent search engine strategies conference on possible penalities Inktomi has been issuing in the past few months. Yes, there have been outbreaks too. One in particular was the penalization of sites that contained footer navigation with a certain amount of cross-linking going on between sites and also internally. Now, while footer navigation is a good method for search engines, Inktomi seems persistant on the "pages need to be designed for the users, not the engines" ideology. What interests me, is if this particular penalty is a manual editorial review or incorporated into the algo as a temporary ranking penalty. If you have been penalized by Inktomi, this might be worth checking out. Several members of SEOchat have also posted other penalities that have arisen recently, and their thoughts about this possible reasons.

Check out Inktomi Penalizing Footer Navigation here.

I was chatting with one of the blog authors here, not sure if I should mention which one, about how to add AdSense ads to emails. I am not sure if it is in accordance with the Google AdSense Terms and Conditions. So please read that and obtain approval from Google before trying this out. This is just for educational purposes.

In theory, you can do some form of AdSense cloaking, whereby you serve content from an HTML page and dynamically include the ads generated based on the content of that HTML page within the emails.

So if you have HTML emails on computer manufacturing, you might want to create static pages with the exact copy of the email. Then serve up those Google AdSense ads as if they were from the Web but in the email.

Very simple to do, but again, not sure if its in accordance with the AdSense terms. I personally won't be giving this one a shot. If you want to chat with others on the legalities of serving AdSense ads in your email, please visit DigitalPoints Forum - AdSense In Email.

How long should I make my domain name? Common answer from a usability expert is, the shorter the better. Make sure the site name is easy to remember and can easily be related to your services. Some SEO's want to take that one step further by putting keyword text in the domain name itself. To what extent should keyword rich text with hyphens be used. A thread was started on this topic at HighRankings but it has not yet been fully developed.

The rule of thumb when it comes to using keyword text in the domain name is to not go beyond two hyphens. For example a site selling blue small widgets does not want to have a domain name that looks like www.cheap-blue-small-widgets.com. Many would say not to even go with a domain name in the format of www.blue-small-widgets.com.

At the Search Engine Strategies conference, the question was brought up and some of the expert panelists said that this is something that search engine can pick up on very easily. If your whole page is focused on selling blue small widgets and your domain name has that name in it clearly to the extent as above, then this looks a tad "spammy".

The search engines (in the future) pick up on this and serve up a penalty. They currently do not, as far as I know but they can.

There is an interesting thread over at WebmasterWorld on the topic of link building. One of the members there said he has totally stopped obtaining inbound links due to believing they will not benefit his site.

In response to that some senior members over at WMW responded:

The general rule is to link for the benefit of users, not for the benefit of PR.

I don't believe that the restrictions are as tight as some imply.

Basically, an inbound link in and of itself cannot hurt you. Once the inbound is reciprocated, issues can arise, depending upon the nature of the other site/page, and the nature of your site/page.

Check out the thread for more detail.

I have been finding YAhoo is really eating up backlinks "themed by anchor only" as a ranking source. Recently I added a few thousand backlinks with the KW "SEO" in it and what do you know, Im ranking #1 for SEO and didnt do any real onpage modification at all. With webrank coming out, I think the link mongers are going to destroy all that is left of the copywriting SEO dinosaurs

Given the popularity of Googlerankings I decided to program a ranking tool that reported ranks in Yahoo, right now I guess I'll call it the Yahoo Ranking tool anyways this should tide us over until such time as we get a Yahoo API thats free, just like googles, and why not? The beta toolbar I ahve of theirs looks "just like googles"
Enjoy

There are a couple threads at the forums that discuss how Yahoo differs from Google. Some of those threads point out that it is easier to "spam" Yahoo with simple "on-page seo elements" then it is to with Google.

Check out both these threads:
--> Yahoo Is More Spammable Then Google?
--> A Yahoo! Search Ranking Observation...

The adult only version of Yahoo! Search, Yasexhoo.com, has been closed. The message on the site reads:

Site Closed for Lacking Sense of Humour from certain individuals.
Mr Dill Dough Will Be Back, but without ANY SHOUTING! :-)
I was given an ultimatum by yours truly and instead of making my great great grand kids
pay long after I have gone, I gave in to HUGE Corporate pressure.
Anyhow, my point was proven and my school thesis can now be completed.
"You" can keep the yasexhoo.com domain as you politely requested.
Thanks, DD
If you reached here by mistake go here for the best site in the world!!!!!

I guess someone had a problem with the site.

Forum coverage at SEO Chat.

Fathom (Rodney Brown) Spherica, President/CEO, is an eMarketing Consultant, and accomplished strategic planner who brings 24-years of experience in information technology and data analysis interpretation. fathom has 14 years experience in the fields of project management, electronics, adult facilitation, and marketing in tourism and culture, forestry and agriculture and education sectors.

• Active member of the discussion forum WebProWorld and forum moderator (the fastest growing eBusiness forum – username: fathom
• Active member of the discussion forum SEOChat and forum moderator ( dedicated SEO discussion forum – username: fathom
• Active member of the discussion forum WebmasterWorld (the world’s largest aggregation of web professionals – username: fathom
• Active member of the discussion forum Digital Enterprise (an eLearning forum at North Carolina State University for BComm students entering the digital divide – username: fathom
• Active member in numerous other discussion forums including SEO World, SEO Forum, Web Lamp, High Rankings, Cre&asite, Digital Point, WebWorkshop, and WebWorldGeeks - username: fathom

Fathom will be acting as the WebProNews Author at the Search Engine Roundtable by bringing you the hot topics over there.

For those of you following the Orkut fanfare and network, it seems that Orkut's popularity and evident following has raised a few more eyebrows over at Google. Google's Eric Schmidt, made a statement saying that they "'absolutely'" have plans to integrate Orkut into Google's search engine". It appears that Google is trying to target "people search" more effectively, and if you are in Orkut you may find yourself appearing in the Google results for you name. Forget "Googling" someone, you might able in the future to "Orkuting" information on that special someone, blind date, competitor, boss, or favorite cartoon character. Now I realized that this technology opens up more possibilities for integration into Google search...there might be a "People" tab coming soon, something like "News, Images, and so on." Pretty neat stuff, and a big advantage in comparison to other social networks out there.

Check out the article on Google including Orkut into search here.

Some of you know I am a moderator over at the SEO Chat forums. Since all authors here are moderators at the various forums on the Internet, I wanted to post my course of action when deleting and editing a thread.

In the past, when I deleted a thread, I always took the time to send a PM (private message) to the individual who posted the thread. This way I can explain the problems with the post and the reason it was deleted. I can honestly say that I have never received a response back that was angry in nature. Most were understanding and the ones that did not respond, knew that they were wrong in posting whatever they posted.

Now SEO Chat allows moderators to delete or edit threads and publicly detail the reason behind the modification to the post. So no more PMs needed.

If your a moderator, please let me know what you do in these cases?

I would just like to clarify an article published at WebProNews that is named Jewish Groups Concerned Over Google Results. It falsely states that "the search engine has now plans to manually change the listing." I think "now" was a typo and should say "no".

The Jewish Journal, which WebProNews links to, states "that Google has no plans to manually alter the results of their ranking system to knock Jew Watch from its top spot." Google responded saying "No, we don’t do that. Google merely reflects what is on the Web and does its best to algorithmically rank pages. Unless [a Web page] violates a country or local law, we don’t make any tweaks."

I have started a thread at SEO Chat on this topic.

This is not about privacy issues. This is about how to make the most of your traffic. In a recent blog entry by Kim (Cre8pc) at Cre8asite's New Blog, she discusses Fredrick Marckini most recent article. I am not going to get into the details of the article, if you haven't read it - I will tell you its worth while reading.

Bill Slawski, from the Cre8asite Network, added a nice comment to Kim's post. Which inspired this post about why it is important to gather data on how and where your Web visitors are traveling through your site. Then making the necessary usability and navigational adjustments to your site to get them to where they (you) want them to go. This of course brought me back to my most recent article, which was a review on Urchin's Web Analytics software and how funnel based goal analysis would be the dream analytic for SEMs.

Do you know where you can or can not put your Google AdSense ads? If not, there is a thread over at WebmasterWorld that discusses this exact topic. There is currently a bit confusion in the thread if one is allowed to put the ads on search, login and register pages. Check the thread out here.

Testing...

Pop-up ads are now somewhat accepted by Web users. In an article released today at AdWeek.com, mentions a study that finds "that two-thirds of consumers are willing to tolerate two intrusive ads per hour in exchange for free content."

But still 70% of those surveyed "believe there are too many intrusive ads on the Web."

And we thought Search Engine Marketing with text based ads was the only way to go...

Not much else to say about this one, but it's pretty funny if you ask me...

http://news.com.com/2100-1032_3-5176670.html

I even saw the guy posting in forums offering to sell the software...

Quote: Google even called me to thier office, I flew up, met with them, and lets just say, they are scared and don't want this software to get out, bottom line, I don't care anymore.

Hey dummy, too bad they called you there because they wanted to get the extortion attempt on tape. hehe

Of course, his website www.myhq.info is down now.

Situation is as follows; company A is involved in lawsuit. Lawsuit is publicized on law firms Web site. Few weeks later, when you do a search on Company A's name, law suit information comes up in rankings.

The topic was brought up at WebmasterWorld with the thread name Client wants record of old lawsuit moved down in rank.

I have had large clients that asked me to do the same because of Web sites by customers who are dissatisfied with their product/services.

This is an interesting thread. Two courses of action. First thing one can try is to call Google, but they will only take pages down that are illegal in some fashion. Second, rank multiple site's above the site you want to move down in the rankings. That is a big task and would take a lot of resources.

SEO Guy put out a very nice tool for everyone that obsesses with PageRank (unfortunately that includes myself)...

http://www.seo-guy.com/seo-tools/google-pr.php

You enter a phrase, and it shows you the PageRank (with the ability to set a minimum PageRank) for the results returned by Google (up to the top 100).

During my visit to Wired.com, I saw this banner ad at the top of the page.

The banner ad was served up by DoubleClick. Are these small, text like banners more appealing to advertisers then the large, flashy, annoying banners?

Yesterday I received an invitation to be someone's Orkut friend. That invitation persuaded me to spend some time in the Orkut network. While doing so, I saw some familiar faces at the forums I attend on a regular basis. So I went to add a few as a friend. However, back in early March Orkut upgraded their friend's module to allow for five categories of friends.

- haven't met - acquaintance - friend - good friend - best friend -

Now, this might be considered a good upgrade but to me, it makes things a bit more confusing. Most my "orkut friends" I have never met in real life. Would they go under the "haven't met" category of friends? If I put those friend's under the haven't met category, will they be insulted? For now, everyone goes under "friend" - in order to be neutral. The "best friend" category will probably not be used by me for a long time. None of my real best friends would join this network, or not at least within a years time.

This just adds more to the dynamics of social communication on the Internet. All those that are in the Orkut network know about the other methods of categorizing friends (with stars, hearts, cool, etc.). Those are just my thoughts on this complex social community technology.