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?"

This is the second contest. First three people to email me at barry.schwartz@gmail.com with the correct answer to the following question gets a free Gmail invite. Again, I am not legally obligated by this post, so if you do not get an invite, I am sorry. I am willing to give away 3 gmail invites to the first 3 CORRECT responses to the following question:

When was the Google Toolbar first publicly made available?

The answer needs to be in the format of Month, Day, Year. The first three correct responses will be sent an invite to the email address they answered the question with. This entry is closed for comments.

Contest is complete - Please check back later this week for a new contest. I do have more gmail invites to give out, and I will be running contests a couple times a week. Please check back often.

Last March I posted an entry here named Google Definitions Help with Rankings and they did. I was ranking very well for very popular keyword phrases in the form of "what is keyword". I still do rank well for the same keyword phrases in that format, however, traffic is now a small fraction of what it was in the past.

The main link to the definition was a direct link to the first definition that came up. So if someone clicked on that main link, it would go directly to the page with the definition (i.e. my page). Now the main link goes to the "other definitions".

Old screen shot:

Now what you will see is that it reads "Web definitions for keyword" and then shows the first definition and then has an other smaller link to "Definition in context" which links to the first result. Traffic from Google definitions has dropped dramatically ever since this change has been put in place.

New screen shot:

AskJeeves is making some noise early this week. Already three entries on them and its not even 9am (EST). On June 10th, Andy Beal reported seeing little binoculars in the search results at Ask.com. Then yesterday he announces before anyone else that Ask will be making this public. Today, I just received an email from Ask with this press release named Ask Jeeves Adds New SmartSearch(TM) Features; Upgrades Site with Binoculars(TM) Site Preview Tool. Over at SearchEngineWatch, Gary Price writes on how Ask Jeeves Sharpens Its Focus. Forum coverage on this topic has been taking place since June 10th at Search Engine Watch Forums.

Here are some interesting quotes from the press release:
"Binoculars reduced the number of results pages needed to be reviewed before finding the most relevant result by 50%"
"85.3% of users who tried Binoculars on Ask Jeeves said they would recommend the site to a friend"

Sounds interesting to me.

There has been reports that ineedhits.com has sent out an email informing customers that AskJeeves will be making major changes to its Paid Inclusion Program. I have not seen any real confirmation of this from AskJeeves but it seems as if they will be closing down this program.

Here is the quote from Warren who posted this information at several forums:

We have been advised that as of September 30th 2004, Ask Jeeves will be no longer accepting new submissions to the Site Submit Paid Inclusion program.

We understand this strategic decision will allow Ask Jeeves to provide additional focus on building their traffic whilst integrating the various companies’ products that they have acquired recently into their product mix. This potentially includes integrating the Teoma results into the Interactive Search Holdings network. This will make Ask Jeeves the 7th largest American website by terms of unique visitors and should see their market share increase from approximate 3% to around 7%.

Customers who currently have URLs in Ask Jeeves Site Submit managed by ineedhits.com will continue to receive the full benefits of their current subscription until such time as their subscription expires. This includes click thru reporting, regular refreshes and access to customer service.

New customers have a window of opportunity to guarantee their place in the Ask Jeeves index, up until September 30th 2004 and receive a full 12 months subscription with all the benefits provided by Site Submit.

Ineedhits.com CEO Jackie Shervington said “Ineedhits.com is proud to have been associated with the Ask Jeeves Site Submit service for nearly 3 years, including launching the product to the market in February 2002. We are naturally disappointed with the news but will be working hard over the next few months to communicate with all our clients to ensure they can take full advantage of this window of opportunity before September 30th.”

• WebmasterWorld
  
• SEO Chat Forums
  
• HighRankings Forum
  

One of the largest complaints about AskJeeves search results is that they frame the results in a Ask window. It looks something like this:

But many do not know that you can turn off this default option within the User Preferences section. Just make sure the "Frame results" option is not checked off and your set.

How was your Father's Day? Did you get or give presents that were purchased online? If so, was a search engine used to find the product? Anyway, Happy Father's Day from the Search Engines!

LookSmart

MSN Search

Vivisimo

Yahoo! Search

This is the first time I have ever heard of someone using Google as a method of providing a logical explanation for a unsupported statement. What am I talking about? In Danny Sullivan's post he discussed a conversation he had with Fox news where a reporter asked him his thoughts on using Google's "total results" figure to determine whether or not the BBC is anti-american.

His logic was that by typing in to Google bbc anti-american a total results of 51,300 came up.

Shocking that people would use Google as a means to provide support to an argumentative statement. Danny's response was (not quoting here) that Fox news was more anti-american because they had 54,000 for fox anti-american. They are 2,700 more results anti-american then the BBC. This is too funny.

I categorized this entry under the usability section of this site because (1) Cre8asite's forum has the thread growing in their Usability Forum and (2) by improving the usability of your Web site, I feel, he "engagability" of your site is improved.

So what is "Engagability"? Let me pull out a few quotes from the thread at Cre8asite.

The first attempt in the forum was "Desirability = Engageability?", well that response made it clear that you need to place the term within some context in order to define its true meaning. So that is what they did.

Then they pulled out the dictionary and defined "engage" as "To attract and hold the attention of; engross." So let's say "Engageability" in the context of Web design is the ability a page has to hold one's attention. I would classify the Subservient Chicken campaign as a 'high' level of Engageability. (I will follow this entry up with an other entry on measuring Engageability next week.)

The thread then moves on to cover "how engagability can be used ethically." There are just so many goodies in Engagability? thread at Cre8asite. It's a must read!

If you haven't heard then listen up, Google has released new features to the AdSense feature set. Here is an overview of the features as they can be found at https://www.google.com/adsense/new:
- WebSearch plus AdSense for search
- AdSense preview tool
- New languages available
- Other improvements

Forum Coverage:

• SEO Chat Forums
  
• Search Engine Watch Forums
  
• WebmasterWorld
  
• HighRankings Forum
  
• IHelpYou Forums
  
• Webmaster Forum
  
• SitePoint Forums
  

Google has also released a new tool at Google Labs named Site-Flavored Google Search.

The first three people who answered the question to the contest won a Gmail account. I have more Gmail account invites so I will be running a similar contest weekly until I have no more left. So please check back!

The answer to the question was easy to find. Conduct a search on Google Dance Syndrome and the first result takes you to an article written by Danny Sullivan. In the article it reads:

Fair credit notice -- after writing this story offline while traveling, I thought I'd better check to see if anyone had already suggested Google Dance Syndrome as a term already before publishing. Not exactly, in terms of rank suffering. But as a physical ailment, a similar Google Syndrome was coined by WebmasterWorld member NGene in March to describe what happens to those who worry about Google so much. And on an adult webmaster board, there was a reference to Pre-mature Google Dance Syndrome for apparently worrying about when the Google Dance was about to begin, also in March. I don't want to link directly to that adult board, but the curious can follow this Google search to reach it. ).

The proper response would have been that the member "NGene" from WebmasterWorld came up with the phrase Google Dance Syndrome over at http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/10329.htm.

Congratulations to the winners and check back next week for a new chance to win a Gmail account. :)

One of the reasons i enjoy visiting, reading and posting at Cre8asite Forums is because of its coverage of a wide range of Web marketing topics. I was always wondering when they would be adding a forum that discusses the hottest topic in SEM these days, measuring success. They have now done that with the new forum named Measuring Your Success.

Ammon Johns in his forum introduction post explains the forums goals and objectives.

We want to get people thinking about measuring all kinds of success, from successful design (which may cover user feedback and split-run-testing methods), usability issues (so can discuss how to measure usability, including surveying users and using study-groups) as well as the obvious commercial issues, (which won't just be about tracking stuff, but also in how to get data and test ideas too).

For me personally, finding ways to count the uncountable, or at least, to measure and weigh things that have traditionally gone unmetered, is exactly what I'd like the mission statement of the new forum to be.

Make sure to stop by and visit the Measuring Your Success forum at Cre8asite.

Excellent post over at HighRankings Forum on the topic of how to dynamically create image based headers for pages and have the search engines read it as text. Let me quote some of the thread and then do my best to explain it to the best of my abilities.

"Sticking with the traditional typefaces is smart for body text, but when it comes to our headings — short, attention-grabbing blocks of text — it would be nice to have some choice in the matter. We've become accustomed to this problem and we cope with it either by making the most of the few fonts we have, or by entirely replacing our heading-text with images."

For example, Mercedes-Benz uses a font called Corporate (by Kurt Weidemann) in all its branding materials. To implement this font on the web, we create hand-made image text headings in Photoshop and include the images on the site with image tags. But with Stewart’s tutorial as a guide, developers can generate these text images on the fly. Smart.

Let me explain. What you can do is set a style sheet, javascript and a server side include to access graphics and replace the letter A with a graphic A. So what this does is, if you include an header tag for example and tell it to use the graphics it will, so the end user will see a graphical header and the search engines will see plain text.

An example always helps. Check out http://www.stewartspeak.com/dtr/demo/, what you will see are graphical headers that looks like this to the end user:

Now view the source of that page and it will look like:
<h2>Fight Font-Ache: Control Your Typeface</h2>

Smart and simple. For more information visit the HighRankings Forum.

Ever since Google launched Adsense, advertisers have complained that they're getting ripped off, and publishers have tried to figure out ways to game the system.

Over at SEW, the usual discussion may be turning toward ways to use content-based advertising effectively. In a world where ethics-challenged publishers outsource click fraud overseas, disguise ads as site navigation, etc. the best approach, IMO, is to fly under the radar.

A simple approach is to segment the high priced search terms from the low priced search terms on Adwords with separate campaigns, and disable content advertising on the high-dollar campaigns. Since the low priced search terms are a less attractive target for thieves, fraud is reduced, and it's one of the best ways to get more traffic out of what would otherwise be a low-volume campaign.

I have a few Gmail invites to give out and based on the number of comments in this blog asking for Gmail accounts, I have decided to give a three invites away to the first three to email me the correct answer to the following question.

Rules:
(1) There is no legal standing to this contest, if I choose not to give you an invite, that is my choice. Even if you win, I have the final say as to who gets the invite. (I don't want a law suit over a Gmail account).

(2) First three people to email the CORRECT answer to the question at barry.schwartz@gmail.com

(3) The original source must be provided to prove the answer is correct.

(4) Any disputes can be solved by a 3rd party expert.

Here is the question.

Who came up with the term "Google Dance Syndrome"? Please provide the source to the answer when emailing me at barry.schwartz@gmail.com.

The results will be posted tomorrow morning.

Good luck!

A thought provoking thread recently was created at WebmasterWorld under the title of Oh, I hate anchor text importance so much. Interesting enough, someone just emailed me a question on this topic as I began typing this entry. Here are my thoughts and some of the thoughts in the thread.

The thread discusses how its "unfair" that Google puts so much weight on the anchor text pointing to your Web site. As the thread creator said, normal people who link to external sites link in the format of "url only or "click here" anchors". I am all for this logic but we know why Google uses anchor text. If I link to site A with the anchor text "keyword phrase", this text implies the site is on the topic of "keyword phrase." The more links with the keyword phrase pointing to the site, the more, in Google eyes, this page is about keyword phrase. But like anything, if someone finds out about this then it will be abused.

So some tips on how to encourage people to link to you with the keyword phrase of your choice?

- Have a link to me page describing how you want the person to link to you.
- Make sure to use the proper title tag so that people might use that when linking to you
- Keyword rich domain names, kind of enforce quality links
- Simply ask people to change your link from abc.com to keyword phrase

"Starting at around 8:30 am EDT (12:30 UTC), a number of sources started to report a widespread Akamai DNS issue. Large web sites, which use Akamai for its DNS service, did no longer resolve. Effected sites are Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, Fedex, Xerox, Apple and likely many others.

Some effected domains have removed the Akamai DNS servers and are reachable again using their own DNS servers.

Typically, the domain itself (e.g. 'google.com') still resolves, but popular hostnames, like 'www.google.com' will not resolve. As a result, the web site is no longer reachable.

The effect appears to be world wide. Some of the Akamai servers do respond to pings, but do not respond to DNS queries."

I wasn't going to post this here but its covered at all the major SEM forums.

• WebmasterWorld
• Search Engine Watch Forums
• Cre8asite Forums
• SEO Chat Forums
• HighRankings Forum
• and others...

I would like to apologize for the less frequent updates here the past few days. I hacker from China has been attacking my local network affecting the Internet and productivity at my company. We have successfully installed and configured a Cisco PIX to block the hacker and everything seems to we working well now. I will be away for the remainder of the day at meetings.

The question as to what is PageRank's real value comes up at the forums constantly. In order to drop a link to a forum, I'll choose the Search Engine Watch Forums. So what is the real value of PageRank?

PageRank is part of Google's search ranking algorithm. So having a high PageRank does have an affect on your rankings. But what is the actual weight of PageRank in the algorithm is locked up and secured at Google HQ. It would be safe to say that if two sites are completely equal, that the one with a higher PageRank would out rank the one with less of a PageRank.

What other values does PageRank have? There is a strong emotional pride in having a high PageRank. I know that when SEO Chat rose to a PageRank 8, all the members and even the owners were extremely proud of this accomplishment. Its a status symbol as the thread above mentioned.

Also mentioned in the thread is that having a high PageRank helps link traders trade links. In my opinion, trading based on PageRank is old school link trading. Many link traders do not allow PageRank to determine the value of a link. Many now look at the number of links and if those pages actually pass link equity (there are many that do not).

PageRank has a minimal affect on ranking. People now look at PageRank as more of a status symbol like they would for one's Alexa rankings. And Link traders are placing less value on PageRank figures when determining an equitable link trade.

Being that I am the resident Inktomi guy (soon to be the Yahoo dude) here at seroundtable.com. Thought it would be helpful to post some recent Inktomi related discussions about what happened to the long time Inktomi network. What Yahoo's role is in working with the Inktomi distribution. Whether MSN is still powered by Inktomi?

The short answer is that MSN is still powered by Inktomi, and some of its results are getting a little blending of Yahoo/Overture primary results, with the addition of paid ads, and some Looksmart sprinkings. Yahoo's offical work is the Inktomi is part of the Yahoo/Overture Network, and that all search technologies including the "historic Inktomi network" as Danny Sullivan put it, are now part of the "Yahoo Search Technology Index". So its easier now to just lump it all together and brand it Yahoo!, and ask questions later.

The good news is that if you paid for Inktomi before the switch, your urls will still remain in the Inktomi index until they expire. You can no longer purchase inclusion (PFI) into the Inktomi index, and additionally Inktomi Slurp, is now Yahoo Slurp. They may be appear as Yahoo! Slurp or inktomisearch.com in your logs of spider activity but virtually they are the same thing. However, just because you paid for inclusion into the Inktomi network a while back it does not mean you are going to get into the Yahoo! Index. Unfortunate, yes, but I think it was a smart move on Yahoo's part, in that you now have to find other means to get into Yahoo and its distribution network. So that means you have to find a way to get into Yahoo for free (not difficult at all) or pay for Site Match, and have your site reviewed and ranked but pay for it. Be sure to check out the good thread on the topic over at SEW.

Forum coverage at Search Engine Watch forums - MSN Powered by Inktomi?

Over the past few days, I have received several more Gmail invites from Google themselves and also from friends. Note: Please do not request gmail accounts here, if you do, you will not get one. People are reporting the same thing over at WebmasterWorld.

Yahoo recently announced that they will be upgrading its free mail users to 100MB and 2GB of storage to its paid customers. I believe that it is enough for Yahoo to keep its long time Yahoo mail users. Switching email accounts is something no one likes to do, so the 100MB for its free users should be enough to sustain them. WebmasterWorld is currently discussing this topic now.

Will Gmail lose its flair? Yahoo and the other Web based email providers keep adding more in response to Gmail. Gmail invites are being offered left and right. The whole privacy issues with Gmail. I personally will not use Gmail daily, but will others switch?

Think your safe while searching Google? Well the bad news, is that sometimes you maybe not be aware that the Google results you are getting have been altered to benefit the growing adware/spyware industry. If we didn't have anything else to worry about in searching the net, there appears to be a form of adware that is able to hijack google results and insert ads to make them appear as if they were real results. At the last second right before the search is completed it alters the results just slighty. Most would not notice this. Disturbing yes...Relevant no way...A big problem yes for organic results.

This form of spyware was brought to my attention by a friend of mine who was quite perplexed that such bad results came up when she did a search for "boat scotland". While I am taking a trip to Scotland in the next few months, I was interested to see what she found, and too check out some boat trips in Scotland as well. Unfortunately I wasn't able to see the altered results (I didn't have the adware) so I asked her to take a screen shot which is shown below. You will notice the first 2 results are served ads, that serve content from what appears to be tripadvisor and expedia.com. There is no "cached" page, and all that is available is "similar pages". Upon examining the links further, I copied the domain into the address bar, and bamn! an adware company domain where the named company (http://www. webthiswebthat .com/search/validate.php), setups up shop to spread the malicious objects to who ever wants to web this and web that in their spare time.

Now how to remove such adware? I did some research on how this possible searchenginespamware made its way to my friends computer. It appears she picked it up from visiting a site that force loaded this into her browser objects. Either that or she downloaded it without knowing while downloading something else. In any case, it can be removed, but its quite difficult. So to add insult to injury, once you remove the adware, it will come back next time you start up your computer. Ahhhh! Not to fear, here is a list of good programs to start using to help clean up your system from this trash.

Spybot - All around good program

BHOdemon - great program for guarding your Internet Explorer Browser Helper Objects (good details too)

Spyware Blaster 3.1

Ad-aware - classic removal program that works well

Spy Sweeper - Supposedly this is the only program that will remove the above spyware on one cleaning.

As SEO Chat's Forum continues to grow, we continue to have problems with people spamming the forum in order to increase their link popularity. SEO Chat, like many other forums, allow signature links. However, SEO Chat has a fairly attractive PageRank value, which tends to attract link seekers. A forum for SEOs by SEOs with high PR is not always a good match. Since SEO Chat's PageRank rose, link enthusiasts have come by and posted hundreds of "Thank you, great post" with links to their sites. Deleting, pruning and banning those members takes too much time. So we decided to institute some policy.

First policy was not to allow members with less then 100 posts to show their signature file. After that was set into play, we saw two things. (1) Manual signature links embedded within the body of a post. (2) People posting a hundred times in one day in order to reach the 100 post requirement. If those 100 posts were of value, no one would care but of course they were not.

So we added a second policy. Why not name it, the SEO Chat Sandbox. We require 100 posts PLUS a member has to be on board for 90 days. The 90 days are symbolic of the average time it takes for a site that has been sandboxed by Google to come out of the sandbox. I hope this works.

Every wonder where and how the term "Search Engine Optimization" came about? Danny Sullivan answered, to the best of his knowledge, how and when this term was popularized at the Search Engine Watch Forums. Please read the post for the complete detail, I will just pull out a few dates but its best to read the post in its context.

"May 1997: First reference I [Danny Sullivan] find within SEW to the exact phrase "search engine optimization," but only within a meta tag."

"July 1997: First reference I can find in newsgroups to the phrase "search engine optimization," from a company pitching these services."

Please read the post in its entirety.

I don't know about you, but I often find my content on other Web sites that have not asked me permission to use my content and without a link back to my Web site. Plus, what makes it worse, is that they have Google's AdSense ads on the Web site. So they are making money on my content and no credit or revenue is being shared with the content's creator. I am sure I am not the only on in this boat, if I was, Google would not have added this information to the AdSense FAQ.

A moderator from WebmasterWorld named Jenstar summarized the new rules here. Or you can visit the AdSense FAQs page on the copyright topic.

I say its about time!

Great, so your site is ranked number 1 and 2 for all the keywords you can imagine. In fact, you get 2,000 orders per day with huge margins. Hey, your sitting back and enjoying the good life, aren't you?

A problem, that is all too known by sites that rank well in search engines, is credit card fraud. It starts off small, a few orders here and there, small order values and then all of a sudden your reaping in the dough with large orders from all over the globe. Your sitting happy, right? Not when you receive your merchant statement with all the charge backs for goods you shipped out but never received payment for.

Credit card fraud is an issue and even with the best payment gateway solutions, you still need to use some common sense before shipping out an order. This was the topic at the new E-Commerce forum at SEO Chat, a thread named credit card fraud - how do you handle these?.

One member offered their advice based on four years of online retail experience. This member stopped shipping to countries outside the US and Canada. Why? Not only because of real scams, but as he explained "because they do not understand that they have to pay customs and sometimes don't want to pay the taxes that their governments want."

In addition, when the order seems a bit shady or is unusually large in value compared to the average order value of ones store he "would call the customer (if it's the wrong number we're pretty sure that it's a fraud and cancel the order) and ask for the bank phone number. And if it's a huge order, we would ask them to fax over their driver's license and credit card number over to us."

He also says, "99.9999999999% of the orders from Nigeria, Singapore, Indonesia, and some of eastern Europe are fraud."

Make sure to check out the thread for more tips.

It is funny how many of the forums in the SEM community start the same types of threads even thought they are not brought up on time sensitive industry news. For example, there are three forums (that I know of) that have new threads on what is or is not allowed in the signature file of their member's profile. I thought it would be a good idea to summarize which forums allow what at this current time:

Do Not Allow Signatures:
WebmasterWorld also does not allow signature files.

JimWorld is an other forum that does not allow for signature lines.

SearchEngineWatch does not allow signatures. Instead they recommend that the users customize the text that appears under your member name.

Do Allow Signatures:
Cre8asite Forums allows for 2 or 3 lines in the signature file and allow links do not distribute link popularity.

HighRankings does allow for 2 links within the signature lines.

ABAKUS Forum also allows for signature lines.

Webmaster Forum allows for signature files.

IHelpYou Forums allows for signatures.

SitePoint Forums allows for signatures.

WebProWorld allows for signatures.

SEO Guy's Forum allows for signatures.

DigitalPoints Forum allows for signatures.

Froogle is now including products from eBay stores, something it has not done in the past. Conduct a search in Froogle on store:ebay, and it will display all products in the Froogle index from eBay stores.

View Large Image

CobaltLady from DigitialPoint Forums felt that this is a good thing, "Ebay store items will be in the upper tier." Respree, responded "To a certain extent, I think its bad. If a merchant has both a website (and has submitted a feed directly to Froogle) and Ebay store, duplicate listings will occur (thus littering the Froogle SERPs)."

However, there are dozen's of sites that contain the same exact product and have slightly or similar pricing and information. For one owner to have multiple store fronts is not abnormal at all online, or even offline.

A few post back, I mentioned I saw the AskJeevesRep active and lurking at the SearchEngineWatch Forums. Today the AskJeevesRep posted a reply to a message left by a member named Igor. Igor's post read:

I just noticed a big bug on Teamo. The short version is: Google has a system for ignoring the mirror sites that once gummed up its results; Teoma appears not to have a fix for this annoying practice. For example, search Teoma for the term "company names" (w/o quotes) and the "Resources" result column lists ten websites, seven of them being the identical mirror sites listed below:

ahundredmonkeys.com
naming-company.com
namingcompany.com
name-branding.com
companynamesbusiness.com
hundredmonkeys.com
onehundredmonkeys.com

AskJeevesRep, replied with:

You mention that Teoma has a big bug w.r.t mirror sites and that "company names" (without quotes) query brings up 10 links under "Resources" in which 7 are mirror sites.

As AskJeevesRep let me try to clarify: Teoma brings up 6 links under "Resources", not 10 as you cited, for the query 'company names' (without quotes). Further, only 2 are mirror sites in there: www.naming-company.com and www.name-branding.com, not 7. The 'hundredmonkeys' sites you mention are not in the Teoma Resources links we present.

We do have mirror detection in place; further, we are constantly working towards improving our mirror detection and other algorithmic capabilities.

Its nice to know that AskJeeves is out there, reading, improving and responding to the searchers needs.

I can't believe the number of posts and phone calls I get with inquires on the Alexa rankings. A thread at HighRankings is discussing this now, so if you don't believe me, ask them.

Alexa ranking information is terribly skewed and shows a false representation of the actual traffic rankings on the Internet. The sole reason that the data is skewed is because Alexa obtains its statistics from people who have the Alexa toolbar installed. How many average Internet users surf with the Alexa toolbar? I don't, you might but I expect some of my readers to have it installed - you are search enthusiasts.

I enjoy looking at the figures, comparing very similar sites but that is all. Make sure to understand how the data is obtained before using these metrics. This is a common statistical accuracy problem. There is a academic term for this? Anyone in academia?

Microsoft announced a few days ago that they are "incorporating a new filtering technology into its forthcoming MSN Search technology, aiming to offer results clear of web spam." Unfortunately, "Microsoft has so far given little detail about its MSN Search project." So what are we to believe?

Can Microsoft solve a problem that is unsolvable? Can Microsoft cure a disease that has been plaguing the Internet for over five years now?

Vote at SearchEngineWatch Forums or discuss it at WebmasterWorld.

I can't give too much information away, since I have insider information, but I thought I bring this spotting to the public. At about 5:30 (EST) on June 10th 2004, I found the AskJeevesRep screen name active at the Search Engine Watch Forums. Of course I took a screen capture.

But by the time I had a chance to see where this individual was lurking, he was already gone. Does this mean that we should be expecting to see Yahoo, Google, Overture, MSN and other search engine representatives lurking and posting information at the Search Engine Watch Forums?

Two threads brought on this post, one from WebmasterWorld named Google Gmail Advertising and the other from SearchEngineWatch Forums named Gmail is a hot seller in eBay!.

What is Google's plan with all their free and awesome products? Let me list out the products:
- Search
- Toolbar
- Gmail
- Orkut
- Google API
- AdSense & AdWords
- Personalization
- etc.

As I posted at SEW Forums, its clear that they do not want to sell product to the end users. They want to make their money selling ads, technology and the like to partners. As Aaron pointed out in that thread "they are all about automation. paid email & customer issues would not support their automated ideas." So what is their plan?

Lets move over to the WebmasterWorld thread and look at msg number 5, "Thats an awful lot of information for one company to be able to gather about you. Especially if you are one of the people "trying to stay under the radar"."

Google has taken major strides in collecting information about its user. What will they do with this information? Build the ultimate search engine? Or maybe, build the ultimate contextual search advertising solution? Also, what is next? gIM service?

Well, finally, use Internet Explorer haters and Mac lovers can have a toolbar that displays the Google PageRank. All you need is the Firebox browser and then a few plugins. The download instructions and thread at WebmasterWorld discuss just that. Here are the instructions again:

1. Download FireFox browser from http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/

2. Install the GoogleBar Mozilla extension from http://googlebar.mozdev.org/

3. Install the PR indicator extension from http://toolbar.nickstallman.net/

I have installed it on my Firebox browser and its cool. It does take a few noticeable seconds to display the PageRank but its still cool. Here is a screen shot from my corporate site on Firebox with PageRank.

I would like to apologize for the delay in the coming out with the Search Engine Roundtable review for the last 15 days in May. It has been a real busy month, but late is better then never. Here is the Roundtable review for May 15th through the 31st.

Lets start with Gmail related discussion, where a funny but sophisticated cartoon was draw up to illustrate the desire people have to get a Gmail invite. In fact, people were able to lookup gmail usernames and then go to the gmail swap portal to try to get their desired gmail account. Google has been busy, on the 31st they had the long awaited backlink update, Google's AdWords department launched the AdWords Jumpstart program, and they took the time to block this nifty site named Proogle.

There was also recent technical news and theories that were brewing in the forums in regards to Google. The Hyphen Filter was suggested but ultimately disproved, for now at least. Then came something I named the Network Filter where Google looks at the cross linking between sites within the same IP block. After that we discussed the Country Specific Filter, which in fact is all so true. There was a lot of discussion on a pattern seen across large Web sites that were taking a hit in Google, but isolating the reason behind this loss in rankings was no easy task. So what solutions were discussed for these filters and problems that came about? Well, several were discussed; including the use of cloaking, traiangular linking strategies, fueling pagerank before launching a Web site and getting your site into Google News, your company listed in Google Stock Quotes or by getting into Google's Secret Directory.

Alright, enough about Google, lets talk more about the industry as a whole. In late May, I used my reach (lol, this site) to ask the search engine industry to publish some sort of acceptable cloaking usage policy, this was in response to the recent research conducted by Ben Edelman and Google stepping up with their Software Principles. On more of a competitive note, lets discuss some of the lawsuits and competitive events that took place. We had this hilarious Nigritude Ultramarine contest where we even found sites ranking number one in Froogle for this term. Dan Thies pointed out that these wise SEOs were painting a bulls-eye on their foreheads asking the competition and Google to look at how I am tricking you. Yahoo's customers in late May began to lose patience with Yahoo and Google was sued by Geico for trademark infringement. So what can one do to gain the competitive edge? One answer is to offer great incentives to your employees.

Let's see, Yahoo! released a new design for their homepage, or at least some people can see this beta design. Yahoo is having a real tough time with 301 redirects, which is forcing Yahoo! representatives to tell SEOs to create doorway pages to solve the problem. And DigitalPoint found MSN is secretly previewing its search technology.

To conclude, lets touch on some general search engine marketing topics. One that hit home for me is from my own blog, where I decided to take customer service into my own hands. We had an interactive review of some of the best SEO books on the market. And now that your a search engine expert, what should you do with all that traffic?

You got to love it, the Google Blog. Today, the a fellow named Dennis Hwang, "the guy who draws the Google doodles" posted at the Google Blog. He named the entry Oodles of Doodles and he described the history of the Google logos. Its worth checking out.

This new article came out and was posted at WebmasterWorld by Brett Tabke that said "But 60% of Google users said they would switch search engines if a better service were introduced." Currently, of that study, 48% use Google as their main engine, so for 60% of those people to say they would drop Google if something better came along is huge.

People can compare Google to AltaVista back in the day. Where is AltaVista now? Yahoo bought them and they are cannibalizing its technology to make the new and improved Yahoo! Search. But AltaVista never had the brand name and the reach Google has today. Google is synonymous with the word Web search, just like Kleenex is synonymous with tissues. That is something really hard to change. "I'll Google that word and get you the answer boss." "My home page is Google." "Where would I be without Google?" These are all statements I hear now and then by average Web users.

Ok, so you buy other brands of tissue paper. You buy the generic brand even though Kleenex is synonymous with tissues. But would 60% switch if a new engine came out that was better then Google? Well what is "better"? Less spam? More relevancy? Google isnt bad with either of the two. Plus relevancy is in the eyes of the beholder. I know many people in the education industry use Teoma because Teoma's results and tools are more focused on research. But Google is more focused on the public.

Take Apple computers for example, I know I can buy a more powerful Windows machine but I am a die hard Apple fan. I take the brand, the look, the design and the power of my PowerBook into consideration. I am proud to be an Apple computer user. Are you proud to be a Google user? That is the question.

Pick up the discussion at the SearchEngineWatch Forums.

Jeremy Zawodny really seemed to be angered by Andy Beal's post. I'll start off by stating that I respect both blog authors. Here is the quote from Andy's blog posting:

Not a smart move on Yahoo's part, they are advertising on Google. Why isn't it smart. Let's see, could it be because they are giving their biggest competitor a thumbs-up just before Google intends to raise umpteen-billion dollars?

Jeremy, and rightfully so (being a Yahoo! employee), backs up his company by stating two arguments. (1) The way Google AdWords works is that if an ad is under performing, it will be removed from the Google AdWords listing for that keyword. So since its still up, the ad must be doing well. (2) Yahoo! owns a piece of that IPO, so they would like to see Google do well in the near future. But he doubts that Yahoo purchasing ad space at Google would impact their IPO.

All good points. I would like to take this one step further. I read an article last week on Microsoft's real motives when it comes to Sun. I spent about 10 minutes looking for the article but I can not find it. The basic premise was why does Microsoft keep Sun around? Why did they settle legal cases offering to pay them millions or billions of dollars when they probably could have won? The answer, according to this article, Microsoft needs Sun around. Without them, M$ would be a legal monopoly which the US Government would take down. Microsoft does not want to become a utility company, they want competition, just not serious competition. By keeping Sun around, they have that security blanket, a blanket that Bill Gates makes him comfortable.

Is it possible that Yahoo doesn't want to see the complete incineration of Google? I think so. Yahoo has a long way to go before being in Microsoft's position but it is something to think about.

SEO Chat Forums added a new forum to its forum list. The new forum was added based on member request and is named E-Commerce Development. I think this is an excellent idea, since a large portion of SEOs are focused on the e-commerce industry. Check out the forum and be one of the first to post there.

Here I am plugging an other thread at SearchEngineWatch Forums, I am sorry, but the quality of threads over here are simply outstanding. A thread started by the famous Search Engine Strategies speaker and SEM expert from Denmark, Mikkel deMib Svendsen, discussed the benefits of using mod_rewrite to make a dynamic site search engine friendly. Post # 5 at this thread is where this discussion begins.

Mikkel is a huge fan of the mod_rewrite and so am I. As we discussed, its an easy way to convert dynamic looking URLs into search engine friendly URLs. This instantaneously makes more of the "hidden Web" visible to the search engines and searchers. Besides for the SEO benefits of mod_rewrite, you can use it for a dozen reasons. On some of my sites, we use it for authenticating traffic and access to files, so if someone tries to rip off stock photos from a client's site - it will mask the photo as stolen and strike it out. That is just one example of other uses for mod_rewrite, you can come up with really smart uses, depending on the time and ideas you have.

Ron Carnell tends to argue with this practice of using mod_rewrite or the other URL rewriting techniques on sites. In fact, he says that its a last resort action and should be considered a band aid like approach as opposed to a perfect solution.

If your CMS isn't SE-friendly, that's a problem with the CMS, not with the web server, and the best solution will be implemented at the correct level. Realistically, I know it's not always possible to solve the problem at the source, but I think that should always be the goal. At the end of the day, mod_rewrite is typically a Band-Aid used to cover up sloppy programming. Heal the wound, and the Band-Aid can be removed.

This makes for an interesting thread, feel free to join in.

Danny Sullivan and an other member at SearchEngineWatch Forums reported that they are noticing a new and cleaner layout for MSN Search and Yahoo Search.

In this thread started by Danny Sullivan named MSN Search Unveils Cleaner Look, he says "Just noticed that MSN seems to have taken the cleaner look it promised to rollout on July 1 and made it available on the regular site, http://search.msn.com/."

And, in this thread started by strategicrankings named Yahoo! new result layout, he says "Noticed that this morning. The header is more discrete (no of SERP, time to search etc)."

I personally do not see these layout changes, but its for sure possible.

As a follow up to my entry on Country Specific Filters & Weights, I would like to discuss a topic being discussed in a couple of forums today. The question at hand is, what will increase my chances of ranking well in the Google results outside of the United State of America. Yes, Google does deliver different results based on the geographic location of the searcher and the host. Even the legendary GoogleGuy from WebmasterWorld said "but for now the only way we can be sure that a .com is truly relevant for e.g. UK search is to see things like the .com is hosted in the UK." For more on that please read Country Specific Filters & Weights. Now that we know about this location specific ranking filter (or whatever you want to call it), what can we do if you want to rank well outside of the US centric Google results?

Two forums are discussing this topic right now, WebmasterWorld and SearchEngineWatch Forums. To keep things brief, I will detail what I believe works best today and leave out the remaining tips (some of which I do not think work) from this forum posts.

Keeping everything equal (i.e. link popularity, on-page seo, etc.), the most important aspect in ranking well outside of the US for a searcher outside of the US is to have a server hosted on an IP address that matches the same geographic area of the searcher. What comes into play next is separating out the domain name to its own, country specific tld (i.e. .uk, .il, .ca, etc.). The character set, if your in Israel and you use a Hebrew font, is an important factor. I would also think Google looks at the regional directories you are placed within the ODP and Yahoo (but I have no proof of this). Those are the most important areas to ranking well outside of the US, keeping everything else equal.

SearchEngineWatch Forums takes this one step further by asking the question Should Search Engines adopt different results outside the U.S.?

A thread over at SearchEngineWatch Forums is currently in the process of discussing why one product result ranks in the Google main results, while other sites do not. There are dozens of theories as to why, one such theory is that they select a low, middle, and high range for the top 3. When I say low middle and high I mean price range. They pick the "best match" from these 3 ranges and display them in order of lowest price to highest price.

However, there is nothing like doing your own testing and data collection and analysis. Therefore, I have had one of my developers build a Froogle data collection tool. We will be storing results for requested queries and then I will be conducting statistical analysis with SAS and Excel to find patterns.

I will not be allowing the automated submission of keywords to be tested. If you would like your keywords to be tested, please submit them at the SearchEngineWatch Forums Thread and I will be happy to run tests with your keyword requests or you can add a comment to this entry.

Yesterday I summarized Alan Web''s SES London review, today I want to throw a link to a thread at Cre8asite where Ammon Johns and friends discuss their experience at SES London. Ammon's friends include; Jill Whalen, Alan Webb, Danny Sullivan, and Amjid.

Check out Ammon's SES Review at Cre8asite Forums. Here are some quotes:

"Anyway, the point is that ROI isn't just a buzzword (as it was just a couple of years ago) but a genuine metric that performance is being held to. That's a huge change, and a very welcome one."

"The networking was fantastic. Just to spend a few days with folks who's eyes don't glaze over when you start on your favourite topic is wonderful. If you work alone, independantly, this alone provides full value, even if you don't manage to find potential partners, deals and longer-term friendships there."

"Deals were touted, brokered and made throughout the days I was there. Contacts were made. Ideas were gathered and shared."

The winner of the nigritude ultramarine contest is http://forums.merkey.net/. The announcement was made at the SearchGuild Forums.

Congrats!

I was unable to attend the last Search Engine Strategies Conference, which was held in London, but Alan Webb was kind enough to review the conference and post his thoughts at SEO Chat. Alan's review is a little lengthly, so I thought it would make sense to summarize it here. If you want the full version, please visit his post here.

Domain Name Issues:
Alan basically came back from this session learning that it is best to have separate domain names and not separate folders (.com/en/) to provide language specific content to the search engines. Content is important and the originating IP address of the physical server are also important factors.

Search Engine Friendly Design:
Alan's next track was presented by Shari Thurow, a SES speaker elite. He pointed out a computer problem that caused the session attendees to use the paper slides. This was a real basic course but highly recommended to first time SES goers.

Writing for Search Engines:
An other basic course I have attended, presented by Jill Whalen and Charon Matthew. It discusses the proper utilization of keywords in your content. Too many, makes for a weird reading page and lowers your conversion rates. Too little, makes for a poorly ranked page. Finding the balance is what Jill specializes in.

Link Building Basics:
Presented by Matt Cutts of Google, Mike Grehan (my favorite speaker), and Thomas Bindl of OPTOP. In this session Google discusses the fair ways to build links and PageRank, Mike talks about his secrets in obtaining quality links and Thomas's methods of buying links.

Link Building Clinic:
Speakers included Ammon Johns (Propellernet UK) Warren Cowen (Greenlight) and Dixon Jones (Receptional). Alan was very impressed by Ammon Johns presentation, who wouldn't be? Alan decided to ask one question on the value of links from the same c-block. The answers were of course reassuring. He learned an other tip, to offer your testimonials to others for them to post on their Web site. Of course, get them to link back to your site with your name and company name.

Dynamic Web Sites:
Presented by Jake Baillie (Priva), Mikkel deMib Svendson (Marketleap) and Laura Thieme (Bizresearch). Hmm...sounds like the same panel from last time, not that it matters. Most of the talk was on how to optimize dynamic sites, such as sites that use content management systems. The use of mod_rewrite or Windows alternatives was also suggested.

Meet The Crawlers:
This is the session where you get to hear from representatives of the major search engines. The speakers included; Matt Cutts from Google and Ron Verheijen from Yahoo!/Overture. Besides for the simple demonstrations of all the new, cool features of the search engines. Alan learned that "apparently Yahoo understands CSS code". Alan then remarks on questions that received the diplomatic but essentially the "no comment" response.

Advanced Link Building Forum:
Speakers included Matt Cutts (Google), Paddy Bolger (Top-Pile), Warren Cowan (Greenlight) and Dixon Jones (Receptional.com). "It highlighted why forum links, link farm links, guestbook links, off theme links are not weighted as highly as thematic links from authority sites." The sandbox theory was brought up and I will quote Alan here; " The google sandbox was briefly mentioned. One of the panels mentioned it could occur when a site launches and all of a sudden a large number of links point to it with the same link text. So the sandboxing may well just be a filter for those sites that have an exorbitant amount of incoming links on launch. It is the links that are sandboxed not the site. This might explain why only some sites get sandboxed and not others. Matt Cutts on the other hands basically thought there was nothing in it and that there is no sandboxing “I don’t know where this sandboxing theory started from..” In others words there is still no answer to the sandbox question, whether it exists or not. My personal opinion is there is a form of quarantine going on some new sites which is triggered possibly by an unusually fast link development or from cross linking on same ip c blocks or one of possibly many other factors. It is being seen too often, and where there is smoke…"

Alan's Summary:
A very good conference and although I am an experienced search engine marketer, the cost to fly from Germany and the registration fee for 2 days was definitely worthwhile. If for any other reason than to hear what is believed and is posted as fact on forums confirmed or denied by those who know 100%. Sure, there may be some disinformation going on, but if you are good at reading people, you can sort out what is disinformation and what is for real especially when face to face with those who are definitely in the know.

For those not experienced, or with limited search engine marketing/optimization knowledge, the handbook that goes with the conference is worth the two days entry fee alone. You could learn most of what was at the conference for free on forums and in articles, but it would take you literally months to sort out the crap from the real nuggets and even then you wouldn’t know for sure what was really fact or what was just pronounced as fact. I strongly recommend anyone who has not yet been to one of the SES conferences to save up if necessary and do so. The knowledge can literally change your online business around and could potentially be worth a very substantial amount more than the cost of the conference registration fee.

Conference Coverage by Alan Webb.

Finally, I do not need to switch browsers to login to my Gmail account in order to mark my spam as read.

Apple's Safari browser, my default browser, now works with Gmail according to WebProNews.

Here is a screen image of how it looks in Safari. Check out the message by the way, I get so many of these. :)

View Large Image

WebmasterBrain, the ones that brought you Proogle, is on a role. They have developed a tool to check your Page Rank on the various Google Data Centers. They name this tool Future PR lookup.

It doesn't exactly tell you your future PageRank at all times. Normally when a PageRank and backlink update take place, they are updated from data center to data center. This was coined the Google Dance, because of the different data found at the various Google data centers. During this update, Google updates the PageRank of your site on the various data centers. Those PageRank values at the data centers that were updated often reflect your future PageRank value on the main Google.com server.

I am not talking about those SEO companies that promise and do not deliver. I am talking about companies that make up things and pass them along as fact in order to sell their product or services.

Would you agree with either of these next to statements?
"Less frequent computer users usually search through a search engine."
"Some of us users who are on the computer more frequently search this way." By this way, they mean "Simply type into the Address bar of your Internet Browser what you are looking for."

I was under the impression that novice Internet users search by typing keywords into the address bar of their browser.

A thread at SEO Chat discusses this so called "patch" that is installed on a users browser. At SEO Chat they call this adware or spyware but the person offering this service denies that. I won't get into the debate about the classification of such software, you can make your own decision on that.

But to say that "Less frequent computer users usually search through a search engine" really bugs me.

AskJeeves's is powered by Teoma; Teoma is a wonderful search engine with a very unique and interesting method of ranking Web pages. I am of the opinion that Teoma provides very relevant results and provides an easy to use mechanism to narrow down your results.

However, AskJeeves places these results under its ten paid listing results. So in order to find these relevant results you need to scroll. Over at the new SEW Forums there is a thread discussing this topic.

Paid listings, some might say, are more relevant then some organic listings. The reasoning behind this is that actual companies would not pay for keywords that will not provide a ROI. And we all know that only relevant results should provide a good conversion rate and positive ROI.

But paid listings are not always as relevant in many ways. They are mostly all commercial in nature, so if i am search on search engine optimization, and I am looking for information on search engine optimization, then I want a resource site and not a SEO company. Organic results try to provide resource sites, or authoritative sites. Paid listing provide commercial sites.

With AskJeeves pushing commercial sites, will that prove to be AskJeeves downfall?

I personally do not get it. There are two threads, one thread at WebmasterWorld and an other at SEO Chat where people are literally arguing over the concept of hyphenated URLs being penalized by Google.

The threads were all started by members who have had sites suddenly drop off the results. The only thing they noticed was that their particular sites have 'over used' the hyphens in the URLs. However, many others are reporting that they 'over use' hyphens in the URLs and they have no problems ranking well in Google. In fact, they believe that is actually helps their rankings.

I am torn in between, I have seen posts at other forums discussing this as well, this seems to be happening more and more often. I am thinking that maybe a flag is raised on certain sites and then a manual review is made. However, we all know how Google hates to do anything manual. I really do not know what is going on here but I think it is important to mention.

This is my first entry on coverage of the new SEW forum. There are already a couple dozen excellent threads brewing over at the forum, so check it out. One in particular that I liked was a post started by Daria Goetsch of Search Innovation Marketing named One-Way Link Building.

In this thread, we are discussing the ways to obtain one-way links from external web pages. Here is a listing of some of the creative methods used by the SEW Forum members.

- Write original articles
- Create a monthly newsletter
- Business directories
- Topical directories
- Join online business associations
- Press releases
- White papers
- E-books
- Build Unique Tools (Free are better)
- Create a Useful Directory
- Banners and text links

Join in the discussion here.

A thread at WebmasterWorld discusses someone's theory that he has been penalized by Google because of conducting a heavy amount of cross linking between sites. I posted about a week ago on this topic and named it Pyramid Linking Strategies, which discusses how to avoid such a penalty.

But what do you do if you are already penalized? Some people place the noindex, nofollow tag in the robot.txt file. Then they revamp their sites and remove this tag. Build up new links in a triangular fashion and work hard on getting new links.

Like we didn't have enough SEM Forums, we have another one. However, I think this forum is an excellent idea and is long overdue. Search Engine Watch, the authority behind search engine industry news, has finally launched the Search Engine Watch Forums.

I will be a moderator at the SEW Forums.

Danny Sullivan and JupiterMedia will be backing the forum, which I feel will guarantee the success and rapid growth of the forum. I am sure you will find many posts here about the nice threads at the SEW Forums. Danny made it clear that this forum will not be a 'competing' forum. He has placed links to all the major SEM forums on the side navigation and will allow for forum communication and the like. I am sure there will be a post on that coming soon.

Some of the other moderators and administrators can be found at the SEW Forum Leaders page. This is a soft launch, so please expect to see more moderators added shortly.

Make sure to check out the a Search Engine Watch Forums today.

These funny but informational sites are launched about once a month or whenever there is some type of controversial subject. The latest site that has been launched is named Gmail is too creepy and details four problems with gmail:

1. Gmail is nearly immortal
   
2. Google's policies do not apply
   
3. A massive potential for abuse
   
4. Inappropriate ad matching
   

Forum discussion at SEO Chat Forums.

We launched the new SEO Research Labs site today, with an appearance on Brad Fallon's SEO Radio. SEO Radio is new, but they've already covered some great topics. The format works pretty well, with almost a full hour, and segments long enough to have a good conversation.

The main reason for the relaunch and hype is the addition of a few new keyword metrics to our keyword reports, including:
- KEI calculations based on "intitle" and "intitle+inanchor" results, in addition to the "old school" Wordtracker formula. In this sample report (MS Excel, zip archive), you can see how a more accurate KEI score properly identifies "SEO company" as a better search term than "SEO" by itself, which the Wordtracker formula sees the other way around.
- Link popularity / competition data for top ranked sites, courtesy of Alexa data services. This is a really unique measure, based on the number of unique sites linking in, rather than the number of pages, which provides a much better indication of how much work it will take to outlink the competition.
- We also have the usual metrics, enhanced a bit: color-coded Overture bid data, search term popularity from Wordtracker, and estimated click-through traffic for ranked sites based on our logfile data mining program.

The scariest part of launching this site, besides building the keyword metrics application: putting my trust in a conversion rate specialist instead of building my usual direct-response site. I'm throwing a bunch of Adwords/Adsense traffic at this thing to see if it really converts any better.

If anyone has seen a good resolution to Yahoo's 301 problem, post!

A post over at JimWorld brought up a valid point. If Google doesn't want people to sell PageRank, why do they distribute their PageRank to a page that is doing so?

Google basically says, do not do what this page is doing. Passing its PR10 to the page, which is reported to have a PR9 now. The PR9 page is then selling that PageRank to the top bidders. Of course it is possible that Google is not allowing that page to distribute the PageRank but it is not stopping them from selling it. What would, in fact, stop them from selling the PageRank is by making the PageRank of the page a PR0.

In addition, if Google does not want people to use products like Webposition Gold, then why do they mention the company by name in their Quality Guidelines?

Is it like the Biblical story of Adam and Eve and eating the forbidden fruit?

You know what I am talking about, "In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 1 already displayed.
If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included."

It frequently happens to sites that are dynamic in nature, and when you do an allinurl:www.site.com site:www.site.com query in Google.

What you should normally watch out for is having the top content that is the same for each page. With CSS-P (cascading style sheets positioning) you can force the real content to the top of the page and ensure that Google reads that content first. That will help prove to Google that your page is not similar to the other results.

A thread at WebmasterWorld is currently discussing this topic.