July 2004 Archives

No real time to expand, so forum coverage at Search Engine Watch, here is a quote:

The page went live the other day stating that details were coming soon.

They're now available.
https://www.ipo.google.com/

and

https://www.ipo.google.com/welcome

Part of the page is a transcript/slides of a presentation by Schmidt, Brin, and Page.
https://www.ipo.google.com/data/transcript.html

With all this discussion abut the problems with PageRank and HITS, Microsoft released a paper recently discussing its solution for the faults in PageRank and HITS. The basic premise of the article, which can be downloaded here, is that the faults are that all links on a single page are not equal. By breaking up the page into "blocks" or "passages" (as Orion likes to call them in the thread at Search Engine Watch), you can semantically understand what sections of the page is about what. And then based on the mathematical location of links, determine the weight and relevancy of that link.

Very interesting idea, of course this can be abused as well. I for one would love to see this working at MSN Search. For discussion, please join the Search Engine Watch thread. Here is a passage:

Link Analysis has shown great potential in improving the per-formance of web search. PageRank and HITS are two of the most popular algorithms. Most of the existing link analysis algorithms treat a web page as a single node in the web graph. However, in most cases, a web page contains multiple semantics and hence the web page might not be considered as the atomic node. In this paper, the web page is partitioned into blocks using the vision-based page segmentation algorithm. By extracting the page-to-block, block-to-page relationships from link structure and page layout analysis, we can construct a semantic graph over the WWW such that each node exactly represents a single semantic topic. This graph can better describe the semantic structure of the web. Based on block-level link analysis, we proposed two new algorithms, Block Level PageRank and Block Level HITS, whose performances we study extensively using web data.

Seems like Google, ~9 hours later, is beginning to recover from its temporary ban it set for itself. If you didn't hear about it, read Google Bans Itself - PR 0 and Not Listed.

At about 2AM (EST) this morning, results for Google.com started to be seen by searchers. Reports come from WebmasterWorld and Search Engine Watch around that time. Reports later on come from SEO Chat AND HighRankings.

The SEMPO people have asked Danny to post a response to the scandal started by Mike Grehan. I'll just quote from the post and follow up more when I attend the SEMPO meeting this Monday night.

Barbara's stipend was approved on May 15 and she began drawing it on that date. She began taking it because she also assumed a second hat, that of acting executive director, in addition to her role as president.

I'm told that this was going to be announced at the meeting Monday even before Mike's article raised the issue. In addition, I'm told these are other points that were planned to be discussed, of items that have been in the works already:

* A search for an experienced executive director is to begin with the goal of having them onboard by December 2004. Barbara will then step down as president and acting executive director and just be chair of the board.

* There were already plans to have the membership nominate and elect a board member by December 2004 - this will be done faster if the board can determine a way to do this.

* The entire board is up for renewal in March 2005 - at that point, the plan is to stagger elections of new board members.

* Financials for the SEMPO year end were posted on the member-only website in April.

* Minutes of all board meetings are available to anyone who asks and SEMPO's seeking a way to put them online in the members area.

New items that were not already on the agenda that have been added in the wake of the article and various forum discussions will include:

* budget spend to date
* income
* future budgets
* accomplishments
* admission of shortcomings with member communication and steps being taken to correct this
* update on a current research project
* update on an upcoming SEM advertising campaign

That's what I've got. I'm sure people have follow up questions. If so, I'd say the most constructive thing is to list what else you'd like to hear, know or have expanded at the meeting Monday night.

Looks like Google has a PageRank 0 and Google.com is not found in the Google index. Nor will a search on Google.com at Google bring up results.

Here are screen shots of Google.com with a PR 0, from my Mac and PCs.

Forum coverage:
- Search Engine Watch
- WebmasterWorld
- SEO Chat

More too come...

Sharon and Roy, well known for their contributions to the forums, posted a new Google find today. They found that "Google Adds "Retrieved Date" To Its Cache Pages". The example given is:

Google Cache version of forums.searchenginewatch.com. At the top it reads: "This is G o o g l e's cache of http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/ as retrieved on Jul 28, 2004 01:13:04 GMT."

View Large Image

View Large Image

There is so much talk about how important it is to put your sites on separate servers at data centers far, far away from each other. Link builders who have huge networks of sites do it all the time. They have huge lists of reseller packages with dozens if not hundreds of hosting companies. The question is what do we know about how Google devalues links?

A topic over at Search Engine Watch Forums named Links from Same IP Blocks, mentions "we lack evidence" that having a network of sites on the same C IP block (i.e. 192.168.1.x) will devalue or have a negative impact on ones linking campaign. I have selected a few posts by recognized link experts to help clarify.

rcjordan writes "if I were doing, say, 3 unique content sites for a company and the content warranted each having its own domain I wouldn't hesitate putting them on the same server and c-class."

Ammon Johns writes "Google were known to aggressively penalize cross-linked domains before LocalRank was ever discussed."

GoogleGuy in msg # 7 writes, "Virtual hosting means that innocent sites and spam sites can be on the same Class C block--or even on the same IP address."

It is to my understanding, that Google will not automatically devalue the links from cross-linked sites based on an IP address or C Class. However, Google will, to my understanding, devalue links from sites where you have 20 or more links on a domain name pointing to the same page. For example; if you have a site named www.cars.com and on the footer of this 5,000 page site is a link to www.mysite.com/page1.html. Google will count up to about 20 of those links and devalue the remaining 4,980. So if you have five, ten, thirty huge content sites, all on different C blocks the links can still be devalued based on the number of them pointing to a site from the same domain name. I believe this has little to do with IP addresses but more to do with the volume of links within the same domain name.

This post is based on discussions with a wide range of SEOs and non SEOs, and from hundreds of forum posts. As I said here, this is not based on scientific data.

Have you seen any of the AdSense image ads? By now, I am sure you have seen a few. The ones you might see most often at SEO/SEM related sites are from Did-It.com. But have you seen the Google Ads within the AdSense network? They basically come up 99% of the time at DigitalPoint's AdSense & AdWords Forum. It looks like the ad below, oh, I made the ad link to http://services.google.com/marketing/links/US-HA-CMBFIRST/ because that is where it links to, but no AdSense account is being funded by you clicking on the Ad (so Google, please don't cancel my AdSense account :)).

This topic has really started some interesting chatter around the industry. It can only make us wonder what the people over at SEMPO are talking about. My personal feeling is that SEMPO needs someone to step in that has experience in running a professional non-profit organization. If they can find someone good, its worth $78,000+ to get the person on board. Maybe its best if SEOs and SEMs are not the people trying to make this organization have an impact, maybe its best coming from an outsider who understands the importance of the SEM industry but yet doesn't have much of a stake. Obviously, the individual will need to be fueled with goals, such as taking SEMPO to the next level. The next level?

Here are some very interesting threads at the forums on this topic:
- Cre8asite Forums
- Search Engine Watch Forums
- HighRankings Forum
- WebmasterWorld
- IHelpYou Forums

Over at Search Engine Watch Forums, the Google AdWordsRep is asking for feedback in a thread named Your top five feature/tool requests?. He says:

What are the top five features and/or tools that you'd like to see included in future refinements of the AdWords program?

Post away, and I'll pass your feedback along later in the week. I usually forward feedback late on Fridays. but I'll be out of the office this coming Friday. So I'll pass on whatever comes in on Thursday evening - say about 7:30 pm California time.

Don't miss this opportunity to be heard!

Mike Grehan, one of the most respected figures in the industry, released an article today named Who needs SEMPO?. I found this by way of Andy Beal's blog, where Andy does an excellent job of summarizing the article. I'll pull out some quotes and then bring in forum posts by Barbara Coll (founder of SEMPO), to show how things just don't click.

Mike's article: "SEMPO has approved a $1,500 per week stipend to Ms Coll. This amounts to a salary of $78,000, to fund a part time effort from someone who already has a full time job running a SEM business."
Barbara's Cre8asite post: "The Board of Directors have received no financial compensation for their volunteer position on the board of SEMPO."

Mike's article: "There appears at this stage to be no appointment of a board member for the UK. This, despite the fact that the UK is the second largest market outside the US."
Barbara's Cre8asite post: "and we don't official launch SEMPO in UK/Europe until June!"

Interesting post in light of this article.

The 8 of us that are the current Board of Directors started SEMPO. It was formed from a group of people who attended Danny's Roundtable discussions at SES. We had been talking about forming an organization like SEMPO for over two years and finally I stepped up to lead the crowd. From the group of people who signed up to get involved in forming the organization, a few emerged as people who were willing to put some effort, time and money into it to get things started. That group became the Board of Directors.

We have by-laws that spell out the term of a Director and how they are to be replaced and/or elected. We will be opening a new Board member position up for members to nominate and then vote in. This will happen in 2004. Another Board member will be added from UK/Europe by London SES in June. This person will be appointed by the current Board based on their ability to mobilize volunteers to carry out the SEMPO mission in Europe.

The by-laws will be available to all members by the end of April (the SEMPO, Inc. year end) but will not be posted electronically. Not sure yet how we will handle requests for seeing the by-laws but we will figure it out by April 30, 2004.

Current forum coverage at Search Engine Watch.

I am the type of person that refuses to sell anything where there is not a 100% guarantee on deliverables. That is why I keep telling people that I do not offer pure SEO services. If someone wants a site that will rank well in search engines for a broad range of keywords, if someone wants a site that will convert visitors to buyers, is someone wants a site that is easy to maintain - then they can call me. But if they want to rank well for a specific keyword phrase, just for the purpose of ranking well for that keyword phrase, then call AdWords or Overture. Can I, or other SEOs, rank a site well in the natural results for a specific and competitive keyword? Of course. But will it last? Probably but not guaranteed.

I play my own games, have my own challenges to rank my site well for extremely competitive keywords. I do fairly well. But what I get a kick out is giving clients (and myself) the ability to rank well for any keyword phrase they might think of in the middle of the night. The client can login to his or her backend, create a new page and possibly in a few days, the site will rank well for that new page. This blog received traffic from over 4,000 different keyword terms this month. Why target one term when you can target very specific and actionable keyword phrases. As I said above, I do play my games and I do rank well for some very competitive terms.

Anyway, enough about me. This post is all about a thread over at HighRankings, where a member asked this question. "I have a prospect who would like a proposal for SEO. They want to be on page one of Google for outdoor furniture (4.5 million) and casual furniture (1.9 million)."

The responses are, dare I say it, ethical. Ethical in terms of showing the client that targeting one or two keyword phrases might not be the best avenue for long term success. Of course one can give a money back guarantee - which works well. But why not include those two competitive phrases plus 4,000 other phrases for the client?

One member brings up the analogy of a doctor's services:

You walk into a doctor's office, say to him, 'Doc I am in real pain, I mean REAL pain. I have seen 3 pain specialists, and they have all charged me lots and failed. Can you guarantee that I will not feel this pain anymore?'

Doc says yep, $50,000 in cash in advance.

Jill Whalen chimes in with her advice, and I agree completely, "you should never take on a campaign where they only want a couple of phrases."

According to the folks over at WebmasterWorld MSN is advertising the "new look" for the old search technology at http://search.msn.com/. I wonder if Google will do the same with gmail. I logged into my hotmail account but it was overflowed with junk mail that did not allow me to receive new mail since (who knows when). I did not see the ad in my hotmail account because there was no room. But Andy Beal posted a copy of the html ad in his blog.

They call MSNBC Newsbot "a new way to find news", doesn't Google have something called Google News. Anyway, forum coverage at Search Engine Watch and WebmasterWorld.

The MSNBC Newsbot (beta), powered by MSN Search Technology, is an experimental, automated news service. Newsbot gathers news from over 4,800 sources on the Internet to speed your discovery of the information you care about most. Enter a topic, interest, or news story you want to learn more about and MSNBC Newsbot will bring you up-to-the-minute coverage from around the Internet. Newsbot is built on advanced computer algorithms to determine which stories and photos are most relevant, most popular, and to recommend stories to individual readers based on their interests.

I was doing my normal forum browsing and this caught my eye. A post at Cre8asite Forums had this neat little affect on this word. When you mouse over it, it tells you that there is a link from the word to the Cre8asite glossary. Nice usability touch, guys.

At first, I thought gmail took away my last invite (I am saving it for a special someone). But then Marcia, in this thread at Search Engine Watch pointed out that the invites were still there, but just available as a link within the email.

GmailRep at Search Engine Watch then added, "Now the invite a friend link is on the left side, underneath your labels in blue. This link will also appear in red at the bottom of a message from a non-Gmail address next to the reply links."

This was first reported to me by one of the major forum owners. He told me that it seemed that Google was sending him 3 - 4 times the amount of traffic then what was of the norm. Later on he found the source was a virus:

The latest version of MyDoom, which started arriving in peoples mail boxes in force today, uses search eninges to find more recipients for its message.

Once the virus is started, it searched the users files for domain names. Once it spotted a domain name (e.g. '@example.com', or in '(Link: (Link: www.example.com')www.example.com')(Link: www.example.com')www.example.com'), it will search various search engines for valid e-mail addresses within these domains. These search engines include Lycos, Google, Altavista, Yahoo and possibly others. Some of the search strings used:

GET /default.asp?lpv=1&loc=searchhp&tab=web&query=e-mail+example.com

Some search engines report performance issues.

Antivirus vendors are currently publishing updated signature files. Please update ASAP. Infected machines can be identified by looking for excessive traffic to search engines and smtp traffic.

Search engines, such as Google, were reported to have been down. Articles by ZDNet were posted, Andy Beal posted a screen shot, and the folks over at SlashDot are discussing.

Forum coverage:

• WebmasterWorld
  
• Search Engine Watch
  
• SEO Chat
  
• Cre8asite Forums
  
• JimWorld
  
• V7 Forums
  
• HighRankings
  
• IHelpYou
  
• DigitalPoint Forum
  
• SEO Guys Forum
  

Experienced SEO forum members see it all the time. New posters who are new to the SEO world often join forums based on the fear of something that turns out to be the "Google Flux." A Webmaster launches a new Web site on day 1. On day 5, you can find the site in the Google index. On day 6, the site is gone. The Webmaster runs to the forums looking for advice and answers to why his/her new site was banned from Google. The common answer by a warm friendly and experienced SEO forum member:

Please do not panic. What you are experiencing is something known as the Google Flux. Often new sites and pages are included in the Google index and then dropped soon after. Don't worry, the pages will start to reappear soon.

And they do. Here is one of a thousand cases at WebamsterWorld.

Before calling a prospect that I never spoke with before, I look up to see where this person is located geographically. Normally, the leads I get are from the United States, so I look up the area code of the phone number to find out what time zone they are in. I do this ever now and then, but this time I tried to go with the invisible tabs approach.

I knew Yahoo! improved this just recently, so I did a search on the area code 507 at Yahoo!.

Now that was easy, I gave the prospect a call. Unfortunately, they are closed on Mondays. :)

So then I travelled over to Google to see what they are in the form of zip code look up. Keep in mind, I am just searching on 507 with no special prefix or special tab.

Not as pretty, but Google also gave me the information I was looking for without jumping through hoops.

Ok, now for my buddy Ask Jeeves. I thought it was a no brainer. Ask Jeeves is the leader in this type of stuff. Conducting a search at Ask on 507 did not, I repeat, did not, give me the information I wanted right on the search page. What happened to Ask Jeeves Search Smarter motto?

Question A. Ever do a search in Google with the default 10 results shown on a page, and then switch the default to something else? If yes, then move to question B.

Question B. Did you ever notice that ones rankings can change a few placements from depending on the requested number of results per page?

A thread at WebmasterWorld discusses just that. valeyard in msg # 3 sums this up perfectly, and GoogleGuy in msg # 5 backs these statements up.

Example: let's say you do a search with "num=10". The results on page one are:

Site A
Site B
Site C - page 1
...Site C - page 2
Site D - page 1
...Site D - page 2
Site E
Site F
YOUR SITE
Site G

So your site is #9.

Now imagine setting num=5. The first page is now:

Site A
Site B
Site C - page 1
...Site C - page 2
Site D - page 1

It makes no sense to have the second page from site D indented at the top of page two, so page 2 is:

Site E
Site F
YOUR SITE
Site G
Site H

Hey presto! Your site has jumped to position 8.

The lower the value of "num" the more chance of indented pages being cut off like this - which seems to fit what you're seeing.

You know what I am talking about, those emails you get throughout the day, the pop ups you see, and the big flashing banners ads found across the Web. they are all shouting the same message; "Submit your site to 1,000 search engines!"

A member over at Search Engine Watch asked if these submissions are worthwhile. The response. Absolutely not.

Besides for the fact that most automated submission services are in violation of the search engine's terms of service, the search engines prefer to crawl the natural Web and find new pages naturally. I personally never submit sites to search engines. I just place a link on a page that is already indexed well, and presto, soon after the new site and its pages are also found in the search engine. This process is faster, more effective and more ethically sound then the automated submission services.

One more thing, as Marcia points out in this thread. "Besides, submission won't do anything for a site unless it's properly optimized - which is not rocket science, it just takes spending some time learning."

Google's legal staff basically has a revolving door to and from the court room. Two more widely discussed legal events are unfolding for Google. The first is the case of Age Discrimination at Google and the second is Google's Challenge of 'Froogles' Rejected (which was kind of expected). Now for the forum coverage:

Age Discrimination:
- WebmasterWorld
- Search Engine Watch
- Cre8asite Forums

Froogle Versus Froogles:
- WebmasterWorld
- Search Engine Watch

This was to funny not to mention here, although I do not like to cover the same thing andy mentions. There is forum discussion on it at search engine watch.

View Large Image

I promised I would write on this for a reader. So here it is. Looks interesting, but I did not have time to play with it.

Spurl.net is a kind of "search engine meets bookmarking" application - where users can store, search and share their online findings.

Spurl.net allows users to keep track of all the interesting and useful content they find online and then - at any time - do a full text search in all the marked content. This helps users find again information they've previously searched for and quickly becomes a great productivity tool for its users.

While this is the main function of the application, it also serves as a fully featured online bookmarking application, making a users bookmarks (and thereby the searching ability) available from any internet connected computer.

Spurl.net also makes use of the fact that thousands of users are using the system and can recommend pages by matching user profiles, point to related pages and show everybody what's hot within the Spurl community at any time.

Marking a page (or "spurling" it, as it is called), is done with a single click of a button, popping up a window where users can optionally categorize the page and enter a range of information about it to later help them find it again.

As so many people spend much of their time in work and play online, Spurl.net helps users manage their media consumption and keep track of the useful bits in the information overload.

A thread at Cre8asite Forums named How do you prepare clients for reality of SEO? discusses the challenges associated with the education and reality of achieving success with a Web site venture. The topic creator says "They launched their site which is in a very competitive market, and wondered why they weren't on the top page."

The responses can in quick from some top notch search engine marketers.

Ammon Johns said: "I never assume that a client will know anything that I don't tell them. Even if they do know some of the things, a refresher is always useful so long as it is kept informative and interesting." That is probably the first mistake some SEO companies make.

Barry Weldford: "I always find it useful to look at how the competition is doing. Are there particular competitors who are doing better in the SERP's? If so how are they stronger than your client? One proviso before you do a lot of work is to remember that it takes a month or two for even Google, which is the fastest of the majors, to find and index your website." Without a competitive analysis how do you know what is needed to achieve success in your rankings? You need to set targets and do your best to meet them. Without targets that are reachable, there will always be problems.

As one member said "Educating the consumer can be a daunting task - especially when there are some uneducated website designers that still believe in Field of Dreams web site marketing - "If you build it, they will come"."

Most of us reading this spend a lot of time in the forums, reading, posting and occasionally joking around. As more and more forums spring up on the topic of SEM and SEO, it becomes more challenging to find good threads. This entry is a plea to those who post threads, to make sure to post in the right forum and with a full and descriptive title. Here are some guidelines I follow when posting and I hope you do as well.

(1) Post in the relevant forum: There are some forums where everyone posts any topic in the Google forum. So even if it is on how MSN is a growing star, the poster will place it in the Google forum so it can be seen by more eyes. Please don't! Please post the topic in the most relevant forum possible.

(2) Use descriptive titles: How often do you see threads with the title "Read This!" or "Click Here...". I can tell you, I never read those threads, do you? Please be descriptive in your title. If its a good topic and the description is well written, you will not only get a lot of clicks from forum readers but Google will rank the thread well in a few weeks.

(3) Be specific: Some forums do not allow specific examples and some do. If possible, try to post specific examples of a case that you have seen. If your not allowed to do so, then post generic examples in a detailed manner so that one can follow your theory or questions.

(4) Discuss the topic, not the person posting: By focusing on the subject, and not the personality of the person behind the words, it keeps the discussion from blowing up into a personal fight. Plus, if the discussion is a big cat fight, I can not reference it here.

This is turning into a good post, I intend on updating this over time. If you follow the guidelines above, I believe, your posts will be read more often and receive better feedback and coverage.

Updated: Check out the forum thread at Cre8asite based on this post named Forum Posting Guidelines :: Some useful tips for you, a must read!

A thread at WebmasterWorld named Still using GMail? has posts by gmail users that talk about whether or not gmail is still as hot as it was when it was first release. The thread creator said "Now that the hype around gmail has died down, are we still using GMail? I used it for a while, sent out some invites to friends, now i don't use it at all anymore."

Here are some of the responses:

Gmail is refreshing. It's just like chat window.

I'm still using it at the moment.

I think i'll be using it for a long time.

Gmail beats any other service hands down IMO (and it's in beta!).

Got the invite but never used it.

I redirect all my email from several other email accounts for storage and lightning fast search.

I personally use it for spam or communication about gmail invites. Since I use a laptop and my pop server has a Web based mail version (if needed), and since I have unlimited space at my domain name, I do not use gmail that often.

Okay, the Earth may only be shaking quietly right now, but just wait. This is the biggest news in SEO all year. If anyone wants to argue with that, tough.

Trellian has just released the beta version of their keyword research database / tool. Their database includes over 9 billion search terms, and a full year's worth of history.

Yes, a full year's worth of history, so you can see how many people searched for "chocolate bunny rabbit" in March, or "college football picks" in September. Seasonality is finally, at long last, no longer the biggest problem in keyword research.

Everyone wave your hands in the air and say, "Thanks, Trellian!" Currently, access to the tool is free, but you do have to register (free) for a PrioritySubmit account. I'm so happy I might even pay to have a URL included somewhere!

Since the last Google update on July 16th, SEOs have been scrambling to understand what is going on with the weird link: query results. We now have a little more insight into what is going on over at Google. As the title of this entry reads, Google has defused the ability to Google Bomb a site. Well, in some cases. Here is how it works.

Danny Sullivan provided some really great detail on this theory at a thread he named Change To Link Bomb Sign Of New Link Analysis Shift?, where he discusses an email he received from Daniel Brandt of Google Watch.

The basic premise of Danny's post, to my understanding, is that a Google Bomb is only effective when one of the words within the anchor text is found on the page copy. For example, 100 pages with the keyword text "Google Bomb" point to www.abc.com/page1.html. If the page does not contain the text "Google" or "Bomb" in the page copy, then the Google Bomb will be ineffective. But if one of the two keywords are present in the copy, then the Google Bomb would work. Before the Google update of July 16th, the keywords did not have to be found within the page copy to successfully rank well.

Check out the thread at the Search Engine Watch Forums for more detail and history.

Do you find yourself unsatisfied with Yahoo!? Is Yahoo! underperforming for you? While other search partners like Google have put smiles on your face, Yahoo! has been holding back.

Many webmasters are complaining that Yahoo! Search is only bringing in a small fraction of their search traffic. This site on average obtains less then 10% of its organic search traffic from Yahoo!, which is nothing compared to Google which provides over 70%. A thread at WebmasterWorld discusses just that. People are feeling betrayed by the large search engine.

So what can you do to spice up your relationship with Yahoo! Search? Well, maybe you should buy Yahoo! little gifts; bring home roses, maybe take Yahoo! out to dinner, or take a walk on the beach. As one member said "Yahoo does a terrible job crawling. They want you to pay them for inclusion instead."

Yea, that is right, you read the title correctly. Support services for the free, natural, organic results. Not that many search engines have strong support for natural search, but if they did, what would you like to see improved. That is the question Danny Sullivan is asking in his thread named What Organic Search Support Services Would You Want?.

Danny Sullivan said, any "other ideas on support services you'd like to see? I have a series of search engine visits next week, so I'd like to float a bunch of ideas." Some of the ideas already covered include:

• Notification as to when algorithms change
  
• Inform the Webmaster of what the search engine do not use in the ranking algorithm
  
• "Express Spam Report"
  

Today I had the privilege to ask Kim Krause, the owner of Cre8asite Forums and founder of Cre8pc, a few questions. Kim runs a popular and well-respected forum at Creasiteforums.com. The forum is often referenced in this site and Kim stops by on occasion to share some of her thoughts on SEO and usability. Kim's current focus in the search engine-marketing world is bridging the gap between the seo world and the usability world. She is a known advocate to improve search visibility in order to convert that searcher to a buyer (or a desired action). So if we may, let's get to the interview.

[Roundtable:] Kim, I would like to thank you for taking the time to answer a few questions about your forum, your services and your professional goals. Since this site is about forum coverage, can you give us some insight into why you started cre8asiteforums?

[Kim Krause:] Thank you, Barry, for considering me as an interviewee, and for your coverage of happenings at Cre8asiteForums. All of us at the forums appreciate your efforts and kind support.

Cre8asiteForums was once known as the Cre8pc Web Site Promotion club, which I launched in 1998 using the free club access provided by Yahoo!. Back then, I was working in web design and freelancing from home in search engine optimization. My target market was home and small business owners. I have a strong passion for them because many have little or no budget, but deserved a chance to get into search engines without being ripped off. Whatever I learned from my work, or from testing methods for the companies I worked for, I shared in that club.

When Yahoo! bought E-Groups (or whatever they were called) and changed their format from Clubs to Groups, we club owners lost certain control. For example, the unwanted advertisements that now interfered with posts. I also co-moderated a Home and Small Business Club, owned by Carol Daly of Creative Enterprises as well. Her group is flourishing and I'm still a contributor there because the needs of small businesses interest me.

In addition to the Yahoo! Group involvement, I frequented other SEO or marketing forums, and got to know people and the forum owners. From my Cre8pc Club, I met Bill Slawski (aka bragadocchio), now an Administrator for Cre8asite Forums. Mick Hansen (aka Mick), now a Moderator for Cre8asite, was also a member. At the time he joined, he was still living in Denmark and was about 15 years old. Adrian Lee (aka Adrian), also a Moderator at Cre8asite, was a long-time member of the Cre8pc club too. Those guys, plus a woman who was a member and later became a Cre8asite Moderator (no longer with Cre8asite), essentially kept things going when I needed a break and were keen to expand the forums when it was finally rolled into a Php based forum in August 2002. By this time Jill Whalen was contributing the Club. It was no longer Kim's little SEO club, but was ready for prime time. Club member Phil Craven (who now has his own forum), had the skills necessary to pull it off, and suggested taking the Club to true a forums format. We said we'd give it a try. Our beginnings were quite humble and there was no plan in place.

[Roundtable:] Looking down the list of forum moderators and administrators, I see that you have successfully enlisted a talented and well-known set of professionals in the SEM/SEO field. How did you get such great volunteers to help out in the forums? Did you have to reach out and ask them or did they come on their own?

Continue reading "Interview with Kim Krause, Usability and SEO Legend & Expert of Cre8PC.com"

I recently had the privilege of welcoming the Gmail Rep to the Search Engine Watch Forums. In my Welcome GmailRep thread, I decided to ask the question; how do Gmail invites work? Specifically, how does Google decide the 'who, when and how many' in sending gmail invites to gmail account users and non gmail account users.

As expected, the answer had to be somewhat vague (don't get me wrong, I do not blame Mr. GmailRep). The answer from the official Gmail representative was (and I quote) "invitations are provided to Gmail users on a random basis. Some users may receive more invitations than others and the invitation process sort of ebbs and flows."

If anyone has more information or has seen any pattern to this "random basis", I would be interested. I have a feeling the invite algorithm is fairly simple at the present time, but for some reason, I want to know. :)

View Large Image

Early in my interests in SEO I learned something about the "popularity component" that is built into most search engines. Within the "popularity component" was, of course, the number and quality of links pointing to your site but in addition, there was the idea that CTR (click-through rates) was a metric used by the search engines to rank pages naturally in the free results.

A thread at HighRankings brings this memory back to me. Since then, I have not considered that Google or other popular engines use CTR to rank sites in the free results. Pretty much all the well known search engine optimization figures say that no major search engines uses such a factor in ranking. However, some speculate that some of the smaller engines use it.

Interesting how we remember things like this, if I am correct, the book that had this was Shari Thurow's Search Engine Visibility.

Have you ever run a campaign and let a keyword perfor