June 2004 Archives

A thread over at the Search Engine Watch Forums named The word I hate the most is..., got me thinking. The word is organic. Organic search results or natural search results.

Some really good responses in that thread on the meaning and feelings of the words.

I personally take the stand that organic and natural words are something that we might have to worry about. It is amazing how an algorithm can be considered organic or natural. An algorithm is a mathematical representation of a human response. In our case of search, humans programmed this algorithm to present search results that us as humans would have selected manually as a good representation of sites on the Web that related to the search query specified. Of course a human can not bring up hundreds or thousands of relevant results from across the world wide web in under a second. That is where the algorithm comes in.

To name the results that are not pay for placement driven as organic or natural, in reality are not 100% organic or natural. They are a mathematical representation of organic and natural results. In my post at this thread, I mentioned AI (artificial intelligence) as something that scares me a bit. I compared naming organic results (a stretch of course) similar to the Terminator movie. In this movie, man builds super computers based on AI that ultimately take over the world (in the most part). They build them so well that they are more human then us humans.

By naming the search results organic or natural, we are getting to be one more step towards the terminator movie. I know it is extreme but I thought I let this fly. Does it really worry me? No. But it makes me think.

At least that is was Google is saying. Google sent out an email notification to their Google AdWords customers yesterday informing them of changes to be made to their Google AdWords ad relevancy algorithms. The email touched on the following points:

• Our ad quality improvements will help us be more precise in identifying the most relevant ads for a particular query.
  
• You may start to see a change in your website traffic and ad performance metrics, such as your clickthrough rate (CTR), cost-per-click, or ad ranking.
  
• We recommend that you monitor your performance metrics and optimise your account as necessary.

Forum coverage at Search Engine Watch and WebmasterWorld.

Weekly, I log in to my Orkut account with the intention of deleting all the spam in my inbox. I expect it, it is waiting for me and then destroy them. I am actually thinking of emailing Orkut's developers for a feature request. The requested feature would be an easier way to delete the messages in the Orkut inbox. Currently they display 5 messages on one screen. I can then click "check all" and then delete the messages. It would be much more efficient, if I can see 50 messages on one page and then check all and delete that way. What I do now is repeat the process of deleting mail 5 pieces at a time, it takes too much time.

In fact, I received a spam message asking people not to spam. The subject of the message was "Gosh Stop Spamming!!!!". Now how funny is that. This is like pre-school.

Here is a screen image of me half way through my deletion process, including the spam message to stop spamming.

The debate, should I link out or not? Back in mid March, I wrote an entry named Share the PageRank Wealth or Else! which discusses the possibility of being penalized to some degree if you are found to be hoarding your pagerank. This new topic is different in the fact that people believe that you can see immediate positive results in ranking by simply linking to your competitors.

According to a thread over at WebmasterWorld, several members are reporting that soon after they linked out to their competitors, their rankings have improved. As one member says, "I linked to a site that was doing better than mine [in the rankings] using my keywords in the anchor text and what happens, I'm back in the top 5."

Ross a full member at WebmasterWorld deserves to be quoted here, "Thirdly, it helps even more if you own the other related site you are linking to." So if you have a network of sites, of course link to it. What this means is that Google really isn't looking for you to link out to your competitors but rather link to other sites in your industry. This does not mean you should run out and build new sites, but feel free to send a link to one of your biggest rival sites on the Web.

There have been reports at WebmasterWorld, that I can personally verify, that Google has approved payment for AdSense publishers for the same dollar amounts less then 10 days apart.

Normally, one will see a payment approved date once a month (less if your balance does not reach $100 for a particular month). Here, people are seeing (I am also) two payments approved in the same month for the same exact dollar amount.

One person said they emailed Google and the response was we are "working to resolve the issue". But yet, they have not received the payment for two as of yet.

Seems like all AdSense publishers are seeing this, so I would just chalk it up to being a glitch. Someone at Google hit that Pay Button one too many times. :)

SEO Chat has announced the launch of a blog that is live and across all of its network (Developer Shed) for any body to participate in. Anyone can register, write an entry and submit it for review. If accepted, your blog entry will be posted on across the Dev Shed network.

For more information on how to participate, please visit the thread on this topic at SEO Chat's Forum.

Looks like both Yahoo and Google can read vCards (defined by Microsoft as "The Internet standard for creating and sharing virtual business cards.")

Conduct a search in the format of allinurl:vcard.asp at both Yahoo! and Google and you will find vCards that come up.

Google now has a "view as HTML" version of the vCard. For example, here is someone's HTML version of the vCard format. Please do not call them. :) So Google is now reading these vCard formats. Here is one example where the exclusion protocol in the robot.txt file comes in handy.

Forum coverage at WebmasterWorld.

Now one can see the text only version of their Web pages in the Google cache. I think this is brand new, I as well as many others, have never seen google offer this option. Take a look at the Google Cache of one of my pages. You will notice a new line that reads "This cached page may reference images which are no longer available. Click here for the cached text only." If you click on the cached text link, you will go here.

Ok so what does this mean? As Marcia and Danny Sullivan both point out in this thread at Search Engine Watch's Forum, the question of does alternative text now play a role in rankings? Alt text was known, at least for the past few months, to not have any impact on Google's ranking. But in this text only cache version, we see that Google is interpreting the alternative text and displaying it on the screen. As Marcia points out, there can be several problematic areas for an SEO with this new information (please see the thread for that information).

Does Google consider alternative text when ranking a site. Danny Sullivan says no. Danny said: "Now when I do this, site:www.cnn.com "powered by Yahoo!", I get no matches. If any ALT text was being indexed, then the home page would have shown up. But this particular ALT text only appears in a graphic, not a graphical link." There is only occurrences of "powered by Yahoo!" in the alternative text on the pages at CNN. So currently, we do not have to worry about Marcia's questions.

Anyway, how nice is this new text only cache version? :)

I have asked John Scott, the owner of BlueFind to send me some information on how his directory differs over the others. Here was his response:

Since launching BlueFind not even three months ago, it has become the main focus on my daily activities. The directory started off with a high PageRank – PR8, and it has attracted a lot of attention because of it. Good attention and bad. I’d like to address a few issues here.

Continue reading "The BlueFind Directory by John Scott"

Conducting a search at Ask Jeeves on Web design some of the results returned have the new Binoculars(TM) Site Preview Tool feature. Of course you need to be a on a PC running Internet Explorer to see them.

So I switched over to my PC and took a look.

I saved and published this screen capture at the highest JPG resolution available, it looks identical to how I saw it on the screen. Besides for the understandably poor quality of the thumbnail, the title (contextual yellow box) hovers over the top portion of the screen thumbnail. This covers up a relatively large portion of the thumbnail. This disturbs me a little, can't they just remove the "title=Binoculars Site Preview" from the tag?

So you don't have access to the server that runs your Web sites in order to code a 301 redirect on the Apache level. What is the best alternative to a 301 redirect in a search engine standpoint. A thread at WebmasterWorld discusses just that.

The best alternative is no redirect at all, or at least no automatic redirect.

"Where that isn't possible, the tag along with normal human-clickable <a href="http://www.thenewdomain.com/" title="go to our new site"> type links also works well" says g1smd a senior member at WebmasterWorld.

I personally have used a 10 second redirect with a link saying something to the affect of, if you don't want to wait, please click here...

Three more gmail invites to give away. You must be the first three to respond correctly by emailing me at barry.schwartz@gmail.com. If your not correct or if your not the first three correct responses then you do not get an invite. Please make sure to check if this contest is still valid.

Question is:

Which month and year (not asking for the date, just the month and year) did Google begin using the Open Directory Project (www.dmoz.org) in the Google directory?

READ FIRST: Contest Over - Please Check Back Later This Week for a New Contest!

In the pursuit to be number one in the PPC arena, Overture launches Local Match, which "enables businesses to increase sales by precisely targeting customers searching on the Internet for local products and services whether your business has a Web site or not."

You no longer need to purchase keywords with a geographic keyword in mind. For example, in the past, if you wanted to target New York, you needed to purchase the keyword "New York Keyword". Now all you need to do is purchase the keyword and specify "geographic area (0.5-to 100-mile radius around your location) in which your ad will be seen." Plus you do not even need to have a Web site to participate, instead the searcher will be directed to a phone book like entry with information on how to contact your physical store front.

Forum coverage at WebmasterWorld and Search Engine Watch.

These thumbnail's next to the search results are becoming popular. There were several smaller engines that used them in the past. Recently Ask Jeeves launched its Binoculars(TM) Site Preview Tool and now AOL has launched a view that allows its French Netscape users see a snap shot of the screen. This view is much like how Alexa's screen capture works. Take a look at Netscape France's results for SearchEngineWatch. You will notice that there are three little boxes on the far right of the thing blue bar. Those are the different views you can choose from. I personally like the option to select one of these three views.

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Forum coverage at Search Engine Watch.

Google's PageRank has been a mysterious and sought after value by SEOs for a really long time now. One of the ways Google secured the value (1 through 10) was through something called a checksum. Without the checksum, you are unable to check your PageRank, requiring you to use the Google toolbar. Now that this is out for the public, I am sure Google will be changing it around a bit.

I first found this by way of a comment left at this site by a reader. The person left a link to a thread over at mobileread.com, where the member try to break the checksum. It seems as if they don't understand how valuable this code is to SEOs until after they broke it.

The PHP source code can be found at this post. And now SEO Chat just began discussing this.

Is it just me, or does Yahoo appear to be using Google results again? "Magically" some of their technical deficiencies were fixed overnight, and the results seem to be Google's.

I posted some details about it over here.

Google is constantly combatting search engine spammers (I know some to do not like to be called this, so sorry). This past update, they began blocking an other type of spam named onmouseover JavaScript page redirects.

My understanding of how this spam tactic works is that when a searcher visits a page the second the mouse hovers over the page contents or background, the page redirects to a new page. So the first page (the one that initiates the redirect) contains keyword stuffed content that is not meant for the end user. Search engines rank this page high in the rankings and then when a searcher goes to it, they are automatically redirected.

Now Google is filtering out this type of spam tactic according to jimh009 at WebmasterWorld. GoogleGuy offers some support for those that were tricked into using this spam tactic by an unscrupulous SEO.

I know that we pulled the plug on some specific spam pages recently. If you paid an SEO and they somehow convinced you to put spam like sneaky redirects using an obfuscated JavaScript onMouseOver on the body tag on your pages, or other stuff like links to their doorway domains or their other clients, please make sure that you read http://www.google.com/webmasters/seo.html and http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html#quality before contacting Google. First, you need to make sure that you've removed any redirecting/spammy pages that were on your site. Make sure that every junky page like that is completely gone before you write, then you can send an email to webmaster [at] google.com with the subject line "reinclusion request" as give us as much detail as possible about the situation.

I believe that one SEO had convinced clients either to put spammy Javascript mouseover redirects, doorway pages that link to other sites, or both on their clients' sites. That can lead to clients' sites being flagged as spam in addition to the doorway domains that the SEO set up.

Again, make sure you completely remove any doorway pages or links to spam that an SEO convinced you to put on your site before you write to Google about reinclusion. It reflects badly on your site if you write about reinclusion and then we check and the spam pages are still live on your site.

Good move Google - makes for happy searchers.

Right out of the Google Bible, under the Quality Guidelines section:

Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.

So why do we see ads served up by Google's AdWords program, with content in the language of "Buy High PR Links:" "We have a huge selection of high ranking relevant sites" asks one member at WebmasterWorld. In fact this question has been asked several dozen times at forums all over this industry. Here is a snap shot of what one ad looks like (it is not clickable):

But at WebmasterWorld, a Google AdWords representative, under the username "AdWordsAdvisor" gives the official Google response:

So, advertising to assist with PageRank isn't a problem. Selling PageRank, however, is another thing - and ads/sites are reviewed on a case-by-case basis along these guidelines.

If you're seeing ads promoting the sale of PageRank, then it's possible that those ads have not yet been reviewed/disapproved. At least let's hope that's it. ;)

He then is asked for further clarification:

* Ok to assist folks in understanding PageRank - and how to improve it.

* Not OK to sell it, or sell it while calling it something else.

Quoting from the footer of the AdSense "Search Performance" report (you have to be logged into your AdSense account and have the Search option turned on). "Revenue from WebSearch ads may be offset at the end of the month by fees applicable to WebSearch." Now what does that mean?

I posted this question over at the SearchEngineWatch Forums and soon after received my answer.

Polarmate, an SEW Forum member and moderator over at IHelpYou Forums, responded with a quote from an email he received from Google's AdSense department.

The WebSearch fees that are referenced in the AdSense Terms and Conditions will not be applied to all publishers. Google incurs a cost for each search that is performed through WebSearch, and generally we cover this cost through our portion of the earnings from advertiser clicks. However, publishers with very high numbers of searches in relation to their revenue may have an amount deducted from their final WebSearch earnings. We expect the number of publishers to be impacted by this to be very small.

The WebSearch fees will never be greater than the publisher's WebSearch earnings, so no publisher will owe Google at the end of the month as a result of these fees. Earnings from AdSense for content clicks will not be affected. The adjustment will take place at the end of each month, when earnings are calculated.

What is the cost per query for Google? Every time someone clicks on the search button at Google.com, what does it cost them? Do they have a figure for this?

Alright, so you want to always be the first result on Google and Teoma? Ok, no problem. For Google add &num=1 to the end of the URL and then click to your placement. You'll be the first result on the page (your ranking can be 1000) for that keyword.

According to DigitalPoint's Shawn Hogan, this comes in handy to see what Google really determines as #1 and #2 placement. For example, a normal search on Search Engine Roundtable brings up two matches for www.seroundtable.com, one at the 1st position and the other indented at the 2nd position. But when you do a search in single mode for Search Engine Roundtable, you see the first result and then you click to page 2 which has the second result. The true second result is not from www.seroundtable.com but rather from www.highrankings.com.

And for Teoma you add &u=1 to the end of the URL.

Here is a neat new tool named Comparison Engine. Danny Sullivan posted this at the Search Engine Watch Forums stating, "Got a message today about a pretty neat tool to visually see how pages are ranked across a variety of search engines."

This tool is indeed very neat. Give it a try.

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A little self-promotion here, and some for Wiley the publishing company for those Dummies books. They quotes a bunch of us SEO/SEM guys in Chapter 17 named "Ten SEM and SEO Tips from the Pros".

Check out the yellow book if you like.

I did not know many people who truly liked the pricing structure of Yahoo/Overture's SiteMatch program. A pay for inclusion and pay per click fee just did not like it would take off. The program was first announced back in March at the NYC SES conference where people at the Paid Inclusion & Trusted Feeds erupted in the room. Then to ease people's worries, Tim from Yahoo began answering questions in the WebmasterWorld Forum. Unfortunately, Tim is just one man, constant complains about Yahoo!'s poor customer service was spreading at the forums.

So now we see that Yahoo is one of the search engines that are rethinking their price structure. Ask Jeeves just announced something similar a few days ago. I posted this over at the Search Engine Watch Forums to discuss.

Over at WebmasterWorld some are reporting seeing the old Google design. Remember the one with the directory link at the top? Could it be a caching issue or a cookie issue? Or maybe its Google messing with us. :)

For several hours, I've seen both the Directory tab back on the google homepage (as well as listed below each serp listing), and the older "colored in" adwords boxes.

Is this perhaps the end of a limited test to the new format they changed to?

This gets more interesting. Over at IHelpYou Forums there is a post on someone "Not seeing the category displayed for sites in the G directory." It seems as if this individual has always been seeing the directory tab and all of a sudden it is gone. Hmm...

From CNet: "The upgrade will increase Hotmail's free e-mail storage limits from 2 megabytes to 250MB and its paid e-mail service, which costs $19.95 a year, from 10MB to 2 gigabytes. The changes will begin in early July."

Interesting enough, this was first reported at WebmasterWorld which quoted the Washington Post as saying "Microsoft, meanwhile, has quietly been expanding the storage it offers to at least some users of its free Hotmail service to 25 megabytes, up from the 2 that were available before."

Forum coverage at WebmasterWorld and SEO Chat Forums.

These contests are popular and as promised, I am running an other contest right now!

First three people to email me at barry.schwartz@gmail.com with the correct response to the following question wins an invite. If you lose, you can check back next week for an other chance to win. You also only get one chance at this contest, so please make sure you have the correct answer before emailing me.

What date was the acquisition of HotJobs by Yahoo! finalized? In other words, when was the merger completed between Yahoo and HotJobs? Hint, it was a Tuesday.

Good luck!

Contest is over - Please Check Back Soon for an other chance to Win.

How much would it be worth to you if you can have the Google PageRank checksum algorithm? Currently you can bid on the source code, written in PHP, that has claimed to break the checksum. Basically, the checksum is what allows you to build a tool like this.

Check out the auction at eBay.

Forum discussion at SEO Chat.

Kim Krause did it again...She has launched the Usability Effect which "focuses on what companies should know about web site usability – from testing to pioneering thinking such as engability and desirability. Kim partners with Search Engine Optimization and Marketing companies concerned with client sites that, even when ranked well, may not have what it takes to convert visitors to customers, or clicks to sales. Web design companies benefit by having someone review web sites for usability during the planning or build stages."

Read the official press release at PRWeb.com and discuss this at the Cre8asite Forums.

So how does one build a search engine marketing forum? Why do some forums take off while others fail? What causes forums to split and what makes them stick? I have been an active member of many of the SEM forums on the Web for a couple years. I have spoken with most of the owners of the forums and participated in decision making for several of the online forums. I feel I might have some insight into search related forum dynamics.

New forums are launched daily, most are using the the technology provided by either phpBB Group or vBulletin. A forum can be put in place in less then 10 minutes, its that easy. But what does it take to build a successful forum?

I have a list of some of the more popular SEM forums in The Forums section of this site. While some are very small, they do have a faithful and loyal following. The large forums like WebmasterWorld, SEO Chat and SitePoint attract new members every hour or less. SitePoint and SEO Chat have a huge network of sister sites that they play off of to increase the value of the other sister sites. WebmasterWorld does some great work with public relations to bring in new members and have experienced members stay.

Then we have forums like JimWorld that is one of the oldest Internet forums. JimWorld has a rich history and with the passing of its founder, the forums declined in value. This past year, there has been major strides taken to revamp the forums at JimWorld and bring back its old time flair.

The new Search Engine Watch Forums, in my opinion, is destined for success. Danny Sullivan is able to attract the biggest names in this industry to join and participate in the forums. The information site's current reach is huge and expanding it to a forum will ensure large visibility and signup rates. In addition, JupiterMedia is no small company. :)

Forums like Cre8asite stand out because of the moderators and administrators. They have well known people running the boards who care about each posts quality. Everything is kept very tidy and neat. All posts are responded to quickly and in a detailed fashion. The admins and moderators make this forum run.

Other forums like HighRankings (not so small) DigitalPoints, SEO Guys, ABAKUS and others drive a smaller but loyal crowd of dedicated members. I find it very funny, the members are kind of little fan clubs for the owners. But they work well and normally are more advanced then some of the larger forums.

All these types of forums have succeeded to some level. Either because of their corporate backings, the owner's personalities and achievements, the moderators and history. Often you will find forums break up because of petty arguments between high profile members. Sometimes the split of a forum makes for two better forums and some times not. It is all about how the forum is managed and what type of support they have.

The Google PageRank and backlink update happened last night around 8:30PM. Hope you all did well!

Forum Coverage:

• SEO Chat Forums
  
• WebmasterWorld
  
• Cre8asite Forums
  
• SearchEngineWatch Forums
  
• JimWorld Forums
  
• Webmaster Forums
  
• IHelpYou Forums
  
• LilEngine Forums
  
• SitePoint Forums
  
• SEO Guy Forums
  
• DigitalPoint Forums
  
• ABAKUS Forums
  
• WebProWorld
  

Wow there are a lot of forums. :)

Mikkel deMib Svendsen, you know the guy from MarketLeap who wears that red jacket - oh, he is also know for SEO in the dynamic arena, started an interesting thread at the Search Engine Watch Forums named The Google domination factor (GDF).

GDF, sounds kind of cruel to me. They are by no means as domineering as Microsoft is, but when you think of it and look at the figures, they do have a nice market share. Anyway, this thread goes into the Google's market share in the global arena, such as Denmark, Italy, Germany and others. Please stop by and share your statistics with the thread.

This is really for historical purposes and simple note taking. If you haven't noticed, this site is really my notebook for what I read at the forums and what I see that takes place in our wonderful growing industry.

Yesterday, June 22nd 2004, this site has been added to the Yahoo! Web Directory. Currently, we are snugged up next to the Search Engine Watch and WebmasterWorld *hot* listings in the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) category but that will change in a couple days.

Here is the screen shot for record keeping purposes:

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In an article by the The Age, an Australian paper, titled "Google reveals its caring, sharing side", they write "Search engine giant Google is preparing to publicly release some of its underlying software code."

They quote Wayne Rosen, Google's VP of engineering, as saying the time has come for Google "give something back." Well I doubt they will be giving too much of their secret recipe out to the public. Coca Cola would never give up its secret recipe, so I doubt Google will.

But what was possibly more interesting, and I quote from the article, "He [Rosing] said Google will triple its workforce from, 700 to 2100, during the next 12 months." I guess the IPO is expected to bring in lots of cash, they need to burn it on something. Will "giving back something" and growing this fast be the right move?

Forum coverage at SEO Chat Forums.

We had three winners yesterday. Most of the responses were correct, but many were just too late. I hope to have an other contest either at the end of this week or early next week.

The answer to the past question, "When was the Google Toolbar first publicly made available?" is

The first publicly available version of the Google Toolbar was released December 11, 2000.

The answer can be found at http://toolbar.google.com/whatsnew.php3 at the bottom of the page.

Good luck next time!

To follow up on Aspen's wonderful entry named PageRank Doesn't Matter?, where he accurately says, it matters, I would like to talk about what Search PR is to most people. If your not in the search marketing field and someone says "how is your PR" you are not running to your browser to check your Google PageRank. You are however, discussing your current public relations efforts to earn visibility for your company in non-direct means.

I am by no means a public relations expert, but I would think public relations ranges from sponsoring a non-profit event to being busted in a insiders trading scheme. All of these 'public relations' gets your name out there for better or worse.

Ok, so now how does public relations work in terms of search marketing? In my opinion, public relations in search marketing can be have a very powerful ripple affect. Let me give you a real example and then we can see if it pans out. Yesterday, this site was linked to from the famous Slashdot Web site. The article can be found here, and you will see this little word that says "writes" is a link to this site. Traffic skyrocketed, take a look:

Most of that traffic was from the Slashdot article, but many other sites also linked to this site based on the Slashdot article. I am not certain, but I strongly believe that the reason Slashdot linked to this site was because of a Google search. This site ranks well for a wide rang of "gmail" related keywords. A simple search brought the author here, which earned a link from Slashdot to this site. Then the ripple affect of having so many readers with content sites of their own also finding this site, then publishing their own articles with a link here and to Slashdot.

The free PR (public relations) from slashdot was (IMO) derived from a search, which will impact further searches (that is where that other PR comes in).

I hope this reads well, I am a bit distracted today. :)

It seems to me that the last couple months the idea that PageRank doesn’t matter has been the attitude du jour on forums. I’m not entirely sure why, perhaps a combination of Google mixing things up with Florida and lowering the frequency of toolbar PR updates. What I do know is that this pervasive anti-PR sentiment is a mystery to me.

We have all seen posts where someone wonders why a competitor’s site ranks higher than theirs even though they have more PR. It used to be this person was answered with an explanation that PR is not the only thing that matters, you also need appropriate anchor text with your incoming links and on page content. Now you can’t even say the word PageRank in a post without someone responding that PageRank doesn’t matter and you should waste your time. They usually don’t offer an explanation for this opinion and they treat it as well known fact.

Continue reading "PageRank Doesn't Matter?"