April 2004 Archives

This morning I went to my favorite bagel store to pick up breakfast. The guy who serves me saw me walk in the shop and yelled to the chef in the back, "two eggs on a bagel". I thought to myself, well that was nice - he knows what I wanted and ordered it for me. But then I thought, am I that predictable? maybe next time I should order something different. Being so predictable bothered me.

Let me relate this to search engines...

Search engines on one hand try to provide a level of consistency to their results in order to comfort the searcher. So if I search for "search engine roundtable" in Google, I want to find that this site listed number one every time and then find results that are relevant to the search engine roundtable under it. Relevancy and accuracy provides that level of comfort needed.

But on the other hand, search engines need to remove any level of predictibility in its search engine results. By that I mean, search engines can not and should not provide a schematic on how to ensure ones site is listed number 1, 2, or 3 for a selected keyword. If search engines were so predictable in terms of a person knowing he or she can guarantee a #1 spot for a specific keyword then it would be a joke. Same with the bagel story, if I walk in there and order the same thing each time, don't you think it might get a bit funny? It would be a problem if search engines were so predictable.

Consistency is comforting, predictability is problematic. My philosophical post for the month. :)

This is the first of many weekly or bi-monthly entries to sum up what has been posted here at the Search Engine Roundtable. We currently have enough people signed up to the list to warrant this entry. Only problem is, I do not know how to send out email notifications, without publishing a blog entry on it. So this entry will be live, categorized under Weekly Email Updates and be sent to the notification list.

The Cre8asite people asked me to do something similar at their blog, so I figured I would just reuse most of it here. So here it is.

Google had its own update on April 7th, which was a bit of a surprise for many. In fact, the day after, I reported on how Google can't even control its own search engine - now that is a real shocker. Yahoo! went soul searching only to find itself as Life Engine, something which kind of scares me. That not all that scares me, ISPs began blocking GMail emails, which drummed up a lot more controversy between O'Reilly and Yahoo!, plus the US government even joined in.

Besides for all the talks about PageRank and links, there was discussion on trademark issues and fraud issues with Google AdWords & AdSense.

Finally there were several brand new packages that came out over the past week or so. First is the launch of Amazon's A9 Search Engine, a 3-D Search Engine, a paper on named Web Spam Taxonomy, and a new design for the Search Engine Roundtable.

I must say, Danny Sullivan was quick to respond on my one critical post on the SES conference.

To be fair, I have quoted his response below:

Yes, suffice to say, we don't want you overwhelmed with notices. For any show, we might typically send out two or three emails. Usually, it something like the show is coming, then the agenda is up, then hey, the deadline for a discount is approaching. The content should be slightly different, and always with a reason to keep in touch with you.

We honestly get few complaints about this. Seriously, I could count them on my fingers, that few. And of those few, it's usually, "why did I get so many in one day." That happens because despite deduping attempts, occasionally people are indeed on more than one list and not spotted.

For example, I'm on several different Jupiter lists, ClickZ, ClickZ Stats, SEReport, SEUpdate and SearchDay to name the ones I can remember. I got one email sent to me today as part of being one of those lists. The deduping seemed to have worked.

I'm also on a separate list just for people who expressly want to get notified about SES shows. That caused me to get a second email. It would be nice if that was also deduped, but at least I understood it more.

If any of your readers feel like they are getting too many emails, or have gotten duplicates on the same day, feel free to have them get in touch via our feedback page and I'll forward the information so the SES staff can look into the problem.

cheers,
danny

There has been some discussion in some of the private forums around the Internet and some of the public forums on the topic of the performance on newly launched Web sites and rankings in Google.

What seems to be happening is that new sites begin to rank well the first week or two for the keyword phrases those pages are targeting and then a month or two in, the rankings drop off. There is a lot of speculation that Google is penalizing new sites.

I have seen examples of this exact pattern occurring on new sites. If it is a penalty or some "hold" on new sites rankings, is still to be determined.

Public Forum Coverage at:

• WebmasterWorld
  
• JimWorld
  

I think at one point most of us have probably wondered what it would be like to query a search engine that returns 3D results. Nothing beats actually being able to see the contours, shapes, colors, textures of something. Words are so boring sometimes, and in reality how much do they actually tell about an image. Google at best can only highlight and index the words around the image or those words in the file name. But actually being able to scan an images itself and return results based on its properties is something new. The researchers and scientists at Princeton University have created "have put a 3-D search engine on the Web that lets anyone sketch an object using a computer mouse, add a textual description, then search for similar models in design databases."
I drew and tried a search for "star" that brought back some interesting results.

Its definately worth a quick peak here: Princeton 3D Model Search Engine

I have attended a couple Search Engine Strategies Conferences in the past, so of course I expect one or two email notifications about the up and coming Toronto show. But I have to say, I must have received 10 emails about this Toronto show already. And I expect to get a few more before it the show takes place.

I think it might be because I am on several lists. One as a conference attendee, one as a newsletter member, one as a paid member of SearchEngineWatch and one as an advertiser at one of the events. This is not really an excuse to receive so many notifications about the same event. I am sure Danny Sullivan would agree with this and maybe send Jupiter a note on this, but I do not expect changes soon. It all depends on the number of people who complain.

I like Danny, Search Engine Watch and the Search Engine Strategies conferences. I just don't like all the email notifications about them.

As you can see, the new Search Engine Roundtable design is up and out there for the public. This has been a few week process to come to this point and I am very happy with the way it turned out. The design and navigational elements of this blog represent the blog, its authors and most importantly you, the reader. As you know, the purpose behind the blog is to report on the most interesting threads taking place at the SEM forums. By enlisting some of the most recognized names at those forums, the Roundtable is able to not only report on these outstanding threads but also provide a synopsis that provides greater detail into those threads. More on the purpose in the about us section, which I still need to complete.

Now more about the movabletype blog designer - (deserves the anchor text)...

Eris, from ErisFree was the blog designer I selected. Not because of her outstanding prices but because of her talent. I reviewed her portfolio and sent several emails back and forth, then decided to give it a go. I can not tell you how great this person is. She drew up not 1 or 2 designs for me to choose from, but a total of 7, yes, 7 designs! When I told her that the design is "good enough", she came back to me asking for more details as to what was missing in my mind. "Good enough" was not acceptable to her, and you are looking at the perfect representation in design and layout for the roundtable in the eyes of the authors, readers and my eyes.

I can not stress how incredible it was to work with Eris. I have worked with many design firms and I have to say that Eris beat them all in every single way. If you are looking for an honest, skilled and professional designer, please contact Eris. It is too bad she lives in Texas, I might make her an offer to work for my company. ;)

Note: There are several sections on this site that need content, including all of the top navigation. I will update them shortly and add a comment when everything is done. Please feel free to comment on the design. Please tell me what you think works and does not work. Feel free to tell me you hate the ads on the right, I tried to make them as unobtrusive as possible by blending them in. In addition there are several components of the site that are still being worked on, including the comments text box. Feel free to comment and any issues, there is a very good chance we missed them.

The GMail topic just is not cooling down, besides for all the forum debate that is still taking place at:

• SEO Chat
  
• Cre8asite
  
• WebmasterWorld
  
• JimWorld
  
• HighRankings
  
• IHelpYou
  
• DigitalPoint
  
• SitePoint
  

The debate is still hot amongst some of the most popular blogs. Recently, Tim O'Reilly, the founder of O'Reilly Books, posted in his personal blog an entry named The Fuss About Gmail and Privacy: Nine Reasons Why It's Bogus. Where he gives his opinion on why the GMail controversy is really not such a big deal and people should really give Google a break about it.

Jeremy Zawodny, the Yahoo! guy, posted an entry in his blog in response to Tim's post. Jeremy named his blog entry, Blinded by Gmail's Gigabyte?, where he discusses his objections to Tim's view. Tim then later posted a comment at Jeremy Zawodny's blog stating.

Jeremy, maybe you didn't read Rich Skrenta's blog, which captures the reasons for my enthusiasm. Gmail is an example of what you might call a "tipping point innovation." That is, it's been possible for some time, and there are a number of players (your employer, Yahoo! included) who could have pulled it off. But someone finally did it, and it happened to be Google. Giving 100 to 250 times the free storage provided by other services and making it work with Google-level search capabilities means that webmail can be more than a secondary convenience, or the email of choice for home users. More significantly to me (because I'm interested in understanding long term trends and their impact on what becomes possible as time and technology advance), it makes a bold statement about where both storage and the network are going...

For the full comment scroll down to the comments section about 70% down the page, where it reads On or around April 17, 2004 08:47 AM Tim O'Reilly wrote this:.

The debate goes on...So you think Google expected this? You know what they say, no PR is bad PR.

Sunday we will be putting up our new design. Please feel free to comment on the new design. In addition, please excuse any empty sections. I will be adding content to any new/empty section shortly.

Thank you.

Well not me, but many people. Every since Google started serving up local results in mid March, people have been complaining about lost traffic, lost revenue.

Over at WebmasterWorld, one reports a traffic drop of "10% after Google Local came about".

The discussion then moves on to how this will affect AdWords and Brett Tabke, the owner of WebmasterWorld, says "Let's cut to thet bottom line: if you want to survive, then you are going to have to compete with the locals. To do that, you probably going to have to appear as if you are "local" in nature."

Is Google Local Affecting you? Join the discussion.

About a week ago Yahoo! Search in conjunction with The Onion launched Yahoo! Soul Search.

For example, do a search on what is my destiny in Yahoo! Search. Results will come back that look similar to the following screen shot.

Forum coverage at WebmasterWorld.

One thing - this proves Yahoo has a sense of humor.

Ammon Johns said here:

There are no hats.

There are three forms of SEO tactics:
1. Techniques currently rated as 'safe'.
2. Techniques rated as risky.
3. Risk balanced and risk managed techniques.

This black hat versus white hat SEO thread at Cre8asite Forums is not the average thread. Risk management is discussed, by bringing to light the pros and cons of each tactic. Check out the thread.

It seems that these days everyone and their dog is running link auction or has a link selling site. My question is: Will this make google fight even harder against the link mongers? I think not! I think all this sensatialization of link buying and selling will only wreck a good thing and place an extemely diminished return on link popularity.

I seem to post once a week on this social networking topic but here is one more. Lisa from Trylon Communications emailed me about this article over at BusinessWeek Online named Tim Koogle's Connection at Friendster. This quote give me confidence in my last posts on this subject, Social Networking is going to be a tough sell financially.

"the business opportunities in social networking appear cloudy, at best. If sites charge visitors to create a profile, it would curtail the number of people joining the network, squelching the potency of these services. Although Friendster has been exploring ways around this, such as including ads on its site, it still lacks a firm business plan. That challenge is right up Koogle's alley. He joined Yahoo in 1995, when it boasted just a handful of employees and no business plan. By 2000, he had helped build the portal to over $1 billion in revenues. Whether from his perch on Friendster's board or as CEO, Koogle is betting he'll match that success.”

So your lazy or you don't have the time to email or call people asking to exchange links. Or maybe, you just don't feel comfortable exchanging links because of the taboo associated with it in the industry (please don't jump on me for saying that). So how can one easy, and cost effectively build links to ones pages?

This is the exact topic over at DigitalPoint's forum, The lazy man's way to get links.... DigitalPoint is well known for his contribution of free software to the SEM community. He has built several Web based tools to help an SEO and SEM manage the day to day business activities of their site. Check out his tools here.

By building and giving away these tools, DigitalPoint was able to obtain many many links. Helping him rank higher for those tools and then increase the chances of him even building more, free and unreciprocated links. Not bad, ehh?

A lot of forum talk has been encourages by the recent news about how Google allows trademarked names to be purchased. In one of the latest threads on this topic over at Cre8asite Forums, this trademark issue hits home.

The trademark at hand is "juno". Juno to most American's is a popular low cost Internet Service Provider. But in the UK, Juno is a popular records store. The trademark issue here is not really applicable because both are valid trademarks. So when you do a Google Juno Search, they Juno (The ISP) has a right to buy the AdWords.

The thread gets deep inside the still hazy area of online keyword purchasing and trademark infringement. Check out the thread named Adwords and Company Names.

The Wall Street Journal today reported on how Amazon has begun testing its new search engine, named A9.

"Where A9 seems to take a more distinctive approach to searching is with a feature that displays a users' history of searches on the site so that they can quickly resume prior hunts for information."

Just a new face to all the other personalized search services with Book Results as well. So when you do a search on Web design you can click on open book results and A9 will find matches within books. In addition, A9 will show "your search history, which keeps track of which searches you have done in the past, and what search results you have seen and clicked on."

Interesting thread over at HighRankings named A Hypothetical Question, What would you do with a 10K Budget?.

Ian, a moderator there responded with

1-2k for a website usability touchup (and possibly content added)
2-3k for optimisation
2k for paid inclusion in top directories and sites
3k for PPC, spread over 3 months

But others pitched in as well. Check out the thread.

What would I do? Really hard to say, depends on the site and requirements.

There is a topic over at WebmasterWorld named Thrown out-any right of appeal? This is about a story of a publisher who was removed from the Google AdSense program because Google believed click-fraud was going on.

Of course the individual completely denies any wrongdoing. He has tried to appeal and is awaiting a response from Google.

This actually brings up an interesting discussion on how Google should treat its ad publishers. The bigger the publisher the more personal touch...

Also, the discussion gets a bit into how one can be a victim of fraud.

If a rival company wants to take down it's competitor one of the best ways to do it is to make them leave internet advertising. To do this they use spam software not to click on ads to generate cash, but to drain their competitors advertising budget.
If they use crawler software to scour several on-topic sites for their competitor's ads and click on them repeatedly then their competitor loses money and faith in Google Adwords. Obviously a few sites lose their account with Google because of it but what do the rival care? You can bet that even though you were kicked off for fraudulent clicks, the advertisers that were 'de-frauded' won't get their money refunded.

I was going to post on this before I took off for two days, but decided to wait for more forum coverage. Now that WebmasterWorld has about 4 pages on this topic, which they coin Google Abandons Accessiblity.

I saw this when I tried to login using my Apple Safari Browser, which works well with almost every other real Web site on the Internet.

GMail is in beta, so we can't officially complain or can we? Isn't most of Google's features in beta? examples: Froogle, Local, News, Catalogs and others. Not bad, 5 of about 12 are still in beta and Froogle, Local, News and Gmail are not tools that are rarely used. Don't forget the Google API which is still in beta....

Researchers at Stanford have produced a paper on search engine spam or as they define it web spam.
You can read the paper here...
Some extracts raised my eyebrows such as...

"... Please note that according to our definition, all types of actions intended to boost ranking, without improving the true value of a page, are considered spamming."

Does that mean removing session ids or changing a company name in the title tag to include a keyword is spam by their definition?

There are various techniques left out (hopefully intentionally as it is a spammers guide as it is). Their suggestions for search engines to better their algorithm make sense. I believe however Google already implements at least two of their suggestions.

Hi All,

I wanted to let you all know that I will be out and unable to post for most of Monday and Tuesday. I hope the other blog authors will be contributing during this time.

Make sure to check out the top SEM forums on the left side of this page.

Thanks and hope I don't miss anything too exciting!

So when does that 1,000 Google API query limit reset itself? I have emailed Google's API team asking them myself, but they would not give me the answer. People over at DigitalPoint's Forum decided to run some tests for themselves.

You would think the answer would be straight forward, but its not.

The study found that the API query limit resets itself between 0306-0453GMT.

Check out the thread here.

Hello,

We're writing to inform you that we're changing our trademark
complaint procedure. This change may affect how we handle
the trademark complaint you currently have on file with us.

If you've requested in your complaint letter that we prevent
advertisers from using certain trademark terms anywhere in
their ad text, we will continue our efforts to support your request.

However, within the coming weeks, our trademark complaint
investigations will no longer result in Google monitoring or
restricting keywords for ads served to users in the US and
Canada. Complaints received after today will be processed
under our revised procedure.

You do not need to file your trademark complaint with us again
unless you would like to amend it based on the new guidelines.

For more detailed information regarding our trademark complaint
procedure, we invite you to review our revised complaint procedure,
posted online at: http://www.google.com/tm_complaint.html.

Sincerely,

The Google Trademark Policy Team

Found over at SEO Chat.

What this means is someone can purchase the keyword "RustyBrick" but can not use the keyword "RustyBrick" in the Ad text. RustyBrick is a trademark, we do Web development. So if RustyBrick was a household name for Web development, like Kleenex is for Tissues, and the advertiser used Web Development in the ad text, then there is no problem.

Curious if one can buy the keyword "Google". :)

Question arose at DigitalPoint's up and coming forum, which asked

I'm not expecting to get much traffic from Froogle but am hoping to get a gain in PR from the link.

So does Google pass PR from its own pages?

NO

DP points out the Froogle robot.txt file. OldWelshGuy reconfirms it with an email he received from Google. Check the thread out at DigitalPoint Forum.

If you haven't seen it yet, WebmasterWorld has a thread named My email automatically rejected, which discusses how some ISPs are blocking emails from gmail addresses.

The emails are being blocked because of all the privacy issues surrounding the GMail service.

One of my favorite quotes in this thread is:

And please don't make the "it's the same as running a spam filter" argument. Filtering spam doesn't put an ad for a competitor on content I created.

However, I am of the type that only uses Webmail for junk mail. My real email is owned, powered and hosted by myself. I have junk accounts with Yahoo, hotmail and others - Yahoo being my primary. So in my mind, its no big deal at all to have these emails read by Google's Ad servers. However, there are thousands of people who use free, Web based email services for their real email accounts. I can see the problems with that.

ISPs have the power to block Gmail, so some are. Join the discussion at WebmasterWorld.

I would like to announce the first annual Emoticons / Smilies SEM Forum Contest. This contest is where I judge the forum solely based on the creativity of the selection of emoticons and/or smilies available to the poster.

This years winner of Emoticons / Smilies SEM Forum Contest is:
HighRankings Forum for having the most creative and unique set of Emoticons of all SEM forums.

This years loser, although they are one of the largest SEM forums on the Internet, is WebmasterWorld for allowing simple text based smilies. :) ;)

Now for the music after the event, compliments of HighRankings

An interesting thread over at WebmasterWorld named How Many Matches Indicate High Competition?, discusses how someone defines the competitiveness of a keyword phrase.

John_Caius provides three classifications to determine the level of competition for a keyword phrase.

My general rule-of-thumb definition of low competition would be where the top ten returning results haven't been SEOed. Medium competition would be where the top ten returning results have been SEOed. High competition would be where the top hundred results have been SEOed. Really high competition would be where a major site, like Amazon, Yahoo or WW is targeting that keyphrase. That's a better guide than number of results, because it tells you about how hard everyone else is also trying to be number one.

Finding the keyword phrase that is not SEOed but is a big bread-winner is where it is at, but I will leave that to Dan Thies to talk about. I had a law client that was paying a fortune for a few targeted keywords with AdWords. They were very competitive PPC campaigns but to my surprise, no one was optimizing for those keywords organically. So we quickly changed some title tags around and presto, free traffic. Soon enough the competition caught on, but it was fun to see. Many SEMs/SEOs have stories like this to tell.

Can it be? Does Yahoo think? Our lives now revolve, depend, require search and the Yahoo portal for us to sustain ourselves?

If you haven't seen it yet, go to the Yahoo! home page. See that ad in the middle about

Scary thought. Check it out here.

Do I have a high PR 6 or a low PR 6? How many times have you seen a post like this in a forum or have been asked this over the telephone? Over at SEO Chat there is a post that just got started that discusses this exact topic, fractional pagerank.

DigitalPoint suggests that by looking at your inner pages PR, you can somewhat determine if you have a high PR or a low PR. For example, if your pagerank is currently a 6 and your main four inner pages are a pagerank of 5 then it is safe to bet that your homepage's PR 6 is a low PR 6. However , PR (as DigitalPoint knows) not always works this way. If you have any incoming external links to those sub pages from a high PR page, then this might not be true.

For a page that has not had a large number of increased incoming external links over the past months you can determine if you have a high or low pagerank by watching your PR changes over the PR updates. For example, I know my main corporate site, www.rustybrick.com, fluctuates between a PR 6 and PR 5. It has been doing so for over a year now. So I am pretty sure that the index page has a high PR 5 and a low PR 6.

There are millions of Web based forums that range on topics from math to soccer. Many of these forums have strict policies on where you can link to externally and what you can or can not have in your signature file.

At DigitalPoint's forum, there is a thread that discusses the value of a sig link.

There is no doubt that signature links on some forums count. Depending on the forum's policy, (1) the forum might allow clean links to external sites, (2) the forum might run an external link through a redirection script, or (3) a forum might not allow for any or a very limited type of external links. This entry is not about which SEM forum allows for which type of links, I am not looking to make enemies.

I would just like to point out that after this week's Google PR and backlinks update, SEO Chat Forums finally reached a PR8. I spend most my time posting over at SEO Chat, since I am a moderator over there. Google had some sort of penalty on SEO Chat, the reason was unknown. It seems that penalty has been lifted about two updates ago and now Google finally crawled the forum threads. The sites in my signature file at SEO Chat have gained about 350 links each. The PR of those sites went up slightly but the number of links increased dramatically.

So what is the value of the links at your favorite forum?

declaimer: I am not advocating joining a forum just to increase your link popularity. Join a forum to get the best advice possible from people you like. Each forum has its own culture, make your own decision.

We have Frienster, Orkut and soon to come a Yahoo Social Networking site? This blog does not cover much news related topics, but my obsession with the obsessions over these social networking sites influenced this post. Over at C-Net, they report on Yahoo hints at social networking service. I certainly had enough of these types on online services.

Also read my last post on Orkut.

Interesting thread over at WebmasterWorld on a subject I posted here on March 23, 2004. The article discussed how a anti Semitic hate site ranked number one for the keyword "Jew". The topic of interest at WebmasterWorld is not about the hate site but about the quote from a Google rep in this article that says:

"Google's search results are solely determined by computer algorithms that essentially reflect the popular opinion of the Web," he said. "Our search results are not manipulated by hand. We're not able to make any manual changes to the results."

Hi, I am back and I see that Google has updated your PageRank.

Forum Coverage at:
SEO Chat
SitePoint
JimWorld
IHelpYou
ABAKUS
DigitalPoint

Cre8asite Moderator Barry Welford is covering this year's International Markering Conference in Montreal at his new BPWrap blog (a subsection of the Cre8asite Cre8tive Flow Blog).

If you are interested in Internet Marketing his journal will surely be worth checking out. He's also going to be putting up more detailed information on some of the things he picked up at the conference once he's back home and has more time to put everything together.

As always, you can keep up with all the latest goings on in respects to Cre8asite's holistic approach to Web Design, Development, and SEO/SEM issues at our Cre8asite Network Hub and Resource Library

You can discuss Barry's reports and ask him questions about the experience at our forums, though Barry may not get a chance to answer them until after the conference has ended.

Hey guys, just programmed a screen scrape for the SE's basically a googlerankings.com but for more engines http://www.seo-guy.com/seo-tools/se-pos.php looking for comments on how to use/ improve the tool
Enjoy
SEO Guy

NetIQ (the makers of WebTrends) has setup a deal to acquire the WebPosition software line from FirstPlace Software. The company itself is not being acquired, just the WebPosition product line.

You can discuss it here.

Hi All,

I wanted to let you all know that I will be out and unable to post for most of Tuesday and Wednesday. I hope the other blog authors will be contributing during this time.

Make sure to check out the top SEM forums on the left side of this page.

Thanks and hope I don't miss anything too exciting!

Chris Beasley, a.k.a. aspen, will be representing the, SitePoint Forums one of the largest technology forums on the Internet.

Chris has been running commercial content sites since 1999. He now runs around 20 content sites and one ecommerce site. Though he occassionally does SEO work for others he mostly just works for himself, promoting money making sites that provide residual income. Chris has been a member of Sitepoint's Forums for almost 5 years, is a senior advisor, and head of their promotion section. Chris has had many articles published on Sitepoint and other sites. He also launched WebsitePublisher.net in 2003. His company is also the creator of Google Watch Watch.

Recently Overture announced it will not longer serve up ads for online gambling sites. Article by NY Times at FT.com.

Forum Coverage at:
SEO Chat
WebmasterWorld - Password Required

The other day, Ammon Jones from Cre8asite Forums directed my attention to his first ever blog entry named The Real Meaning of Links.

In this post, Ammon described the similarities between online and offline referrals. In other words, he brought a human perspective to understanding why a link from site A to site B is so valuable. He did so by giving an analogy of one of his shopping experiences in the past, when a store referral lead him to find the product he was looking for.

The Real Meaning of Links is a must read, so get over to the new Peabody Blog and read it.

Little tool I whipped up today to chart your Google AdSense data in a variety of different ways...

• Impressions
• Impressions (Cumulative)
• Clicks
• Clicks (Cumulative)
• Clickthrough Percentage
• Earnings
• Earnings (Cumulative)
• Earnings Per Click.

Supports both aggregate and channel data.

Sample Earnings chart:

A few days back, I covered the forum news on Google's Free Email Service. Now that its real, there is a lot of talk on the privacy issues involved with this free service. What do you feel of Google reading your email?

Forum coverage:
WebmasterWorld
SEO Chat
Cre8asite Forum
DigitalPoint Forums

I received the following in a spam email today:
"Hello, I am (name deleted), GOOGLE LISTS ME #1 IN THE WORLD FOR:
'PERSONAL SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION ACCOUNT REP'"
There's a greater than zero chance that this post will outrank him in a couple weeks. I hate to be mean to Harry, but any fool can rank if they're the only one trying.

I refer to what (name deleted) is doing here as "straw man SEO" - you can't beat the real SEOs, so you construct a straw man like 'personal search engine optimization account rep.' Do people actually spend money with this guy, or did he resort to spam because he had no chance?

Poke fun in this thread at the Best Practices forums, about the worlds #1 ranked personal search engine optimization account rep.

Another good example of a phrase that is not competitive, would be MONEY BACK SEARCH ENGINE PLACEMENT PROS which is the latest conquest of our "Straw Man SEO of the Year." I wonder how long his #1 on Yahoo for that "gem" will hold up...

One of the biggest gray areas for me and many people out there is how can or can't they use the Google API. Recently, Danny Sullivan wrote (password required), "Google's API service isn't aimed to help people build commercial services. But Google Alert sees a business in using the API for tracking Google results. This story suggests it may have cut a deal with Google to share revenues when paid-for services are offered. Google Alert's Gideon Greenspan tells me this: "Google has agreed and encouraged us to begin charging for a premium service using the high-volume API key that they have supplied, but we haven't signed anything yet. As the premium service grows, the key capacity will need to be increased, and we'll enter discussions about specific business terms."

I know that Google doesn't want anyone to sell the results from the Google API. Where it gets gray is when you don't sell the results, but you sell the services around the results but give the results away for free. See the difference. What are your thoughts?

In this blog, I mentioned Orkut in eight of my blog entries. When I first started with Orkut, I was hooked. But very soon after, I stopped logging in each day. Now I login once per week, just to delete the Orkut spam messages.

Its a neat thing, makes you feel you are part of an exclusive group of friends. But in reality your nothing special. Well, maybe you are special but no one else is.

What is useful about Orkut? A way to organize your friends? Does anyone really need that? I don't get it. Please feel free to share your comments (oh, but not the spammers, I block most of them from sharing comments here).

By now everybody's talking about GMail. A couple months ago it was Orkut. In a couple months, who knows, maybe they'll put out their own instant messaging app like Trillian. Whether they really come out with an IM client or not, isn't the point here. The problem Google faces here is that they can't keep quiet.

Google starts making ready for an IPO, and what happens? Yahoo goes from "Google is a good partner" to rushing out their own web search results. Microsoft/MSN releases a bot into the wild and starts making noise about search, even though they really have nothing but a vaporware search engine. Soon, "expert market analysts" are saying that Google isn't worth a dime, much less the $10 billion where a successful IPO would likely value the company.

I saw more than one company deal with this during the "dot-boom." As soon as you look ready to IPO, your already-public competitors will do anything to make news. Why? Because once you commit to the IPO, you have to deal with a very long "quiet period" and you're basically not allowed to do anything newsworthy. Six months of letting your competition make all the news, do all the product launches, etc.

Google needs to keep launching new services to stay competitive. If GMail is released as described, they'll grab a lot of users from MSN/Hotmail and Yahoo, and advertising $$$ move with them. Google may well be on their way to becoming a portal, a piece at a time.

Given that Google is fighting in 21st century time, for mind share and market share, will they ever get to an IPO? Can Google really keep quiet for six months straight?

Did you get your Google AdSense Update today? The one that talked about the new changes to the pricing structure paid out to the publishers? Well, if you didn't, I included the message in the extended part of this entry, just click on the "Continue reading ..." below, to read it.

The thread is already 4 pages long at WebmasterWorld, so check it out.

Continue reading "Google AdSense's New Update: "Better Ad Relevance" & "Smarter Pricing""

Just wanted to update you guys that the Google PR + rank checker is now working with "/" after the domain

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

There was an error with my checksum algo in the Php where it was adding a "/" after the domain and causing a conflict,
All fixed now
Enjoy

The news is all over the place, Google Launches Gmail, Free Email Service. But many forums say its a big April Fools day hoax.

Over at JimWorld Logan put the rumor of it being a hoax to a halt by placing a link to About Gmail.

We're currently only offering Gmail as part of a preview release and limited test. We don't have details on when Gmail will be made more widely available, as that depends in part on the results of the test. If you're interested in receiving updates on Gmail, submit your email address using the form at the bottom of this page.

Big find for Any Beal of Search Engine Lowdown with Sneak Peak: Google To Launch Search Engine Watch. He has inside information that Google will be releasing a wrist watch that can do Google searches.

Check out his blog for more information.

This rumor is spreading like wild fire all over the SEM forums.

MSN is rumored to be buying Google.

One forum member at IHelpYou said "Yes! The same thing was reported on all three major networks this morning!!"

Here is where the news was posted: http://www.weboptimiser.com/search_engine_marketing_news/2324735.html

Forum coverage:
Cre8asite
SEO Chat
ABAKUS
IHelpYou

April Fools or the Real Deal?