November 2004 Archives

Some of the best Google links for learning about all things Google as rated by webmasters. One of the members at Cre8asite Forums, projectphp, have put together an excellent list of links that pertain to many Google related sections. It was followed up with some other good lists. From whitepaper to patents to Froogle to Adwords, a lot of it is here. If you can't find what you looking for here, then try the offical Google Site Map. This list took me a bit longer than expect, as I had to pull all the urls to post on here, but I definately think its worth it.

Google Links
Google Labs - New stuff from Google.
Google Store - Buy Google Merchandise.
Google Holiday Logos
Froogle - Google Shopping engine.
Google Local Search
Google Groups - Old Usenet Posts.
Google Answers - A service that never really took off. Pay to get answers.
Google Catalog Search - Search mail order catalogues.
Google News -
Wireless Google
Google Directory
Google Image Search

Patents
Google Snippet Patent No: 6,615,209
All Googles Patent Applications
6,526,440: Ranking search results by reranking the results based on local inter-connectivity
6,678,681: Information extraction from a database
6,615,209: Detecting query-specific duplicate documents
6,529,903: Methods and apparatus for using a modified index to provide search results in response to an ambiguous search query
6,658,423: Detecting duplicate and near-duplicate files
6,754,873: Techniques for finding related hyperlinked documents using link-based analysis

Search Specific Topics
Google US Gov Search Unclesam
Google Search: Linux
Google Search: Bsd
Google Microsoft Search
Google Apple/Macintosh Search
Google University Search
Google Public Service Search
A list of Special Google Searches

Webmaster Links
Sign up for the Google Newsletter
FAQ
SEO Information for Webmasters
Google Information for Webmasters

Tools
Google Toolbar
Google Deskbar (quick google searches)
Google Desktop Search (search local files as well)
Google Alerts
Remove A URL / Page From Google
Google Translate Tool
Google Web APIs
Make Google your Default Search Engine
Google Search Appliance
Add your URL to Google

Press And Contacts
Google Blog
Contact Google
Google Advertising Programmes
Google Press Center: Press Releases
Google Investor Relations
Contact Google Sales People
Google Worldwide Offices
Google Zeitgeist (top searches etc)
Google Fact Sheet

AdWords
AdWords FAQ
Google Advertising Reporting System Login
Google Adwords: Conversion Tracking FAQ
Trademark Complaint Procedure
AdWords Accreditiation

Searching Tips and Tricks
Google Web Search Features
Google Help
Google Help Central
Cheat sheet of Searches
Google Adwords: Keyword Tool

Froogle
Froogle FAQ
Setting Up A Froogle Feed
Froogle Merchants - Program Policies

Ad Automator
Google Widens Test to Froogle Merchants
Please note: New service that i can't find info about on google. Let me know if you find something permanent.

AdWords Accreditation
AdWords Learning Center
Adwords Accreditation Start Page

Thought this was a good thread, and held a nice accord of the many beliefs and myths that have been spread throughout the SEO/SEM industry through time. There are a good number of myths out there, so much so its almost necessary to identify them in order not to make the same mistakes again. As I have long believed just because a particular method is used by many, could be one of the best reasons for not continuing it. There is an active thread over at SEW forums detailing the some of the SEO myths that have been spread about SEO through time. Some are quite hilarious, such as "AdWords are moving to the left of the screen." or "You can outsmart Google by using hidden text".

To sum up some of the real myths about SEO/SEM, here is a fun list from the thread with some I added in as well:

• There is a right way to optimize
• There are a million search engines
• There are a 10,000 search engines
• Google is the only search engine
• Google hates me
• Stuff keywords in your comment tags
• PageRank is everything
• Your should repeated your keywords 100 times on the page
• You will not get caught for spam
• Automate your site submission to 15,000 search engines
• There's a perfect keyword density to achieve high rankings
• The reason you are not ranking well is because you need more/better metatags
• Page Rank is dead
• All you need is more links
• People on SEO forums know more about SEO
• Sitewide links do not work
• Google was created by space aliens
• SEO does not require patience
• New sites don't have a chance in the search engines

You have marketing, advertising, internet advertising, search advertising, pay per click, contextual ads, and then AdSense. It is rare to find someone who is a specialist in SEM, but to find someone who knows pretty much everything there is to know about AdSense - is just amazing. I strongly recommend that when you see Jenstar posting at WebmasterWorld or at Search Engine Watch Forums, that you take in every word.

Jenstar's latest thread at WMW is named Analysis of how US Thanksgiving affected AdSense earnings. In that thread, she shares some of the data she collected from her AdSense reports:

Total earnings: Down about 33% Impressions: Down about 65% CPM: Up about 25%

The rise in CPM *really* surprised me. I guess people were hoping to get an early start on the biggest shopping time of the year. Most holidays show that CPM drops off significantly as people lower bids or pause campaigns for the holidays. If only my impressions were at their normal levels, I would have had an extremely good day.

Jenstar knows the AdSense rules inside out and she is one of the brightest when it comes to contextual advertising at the forums.

Update: Make sure to check out her blog named JenSense - it's all about the AdSense & other contextual advertisers too. Wow a blog on AdSense mostly.

I have yet to discuss the topic of domain hi-jacking through the use of redirects in detail. Please do not expect me to detail how to accomplish such a hi-jacking of a domain name, that will just make things worse. But this has been a larger problem for at least a few months now. Basically, through the use of redirects, 301s and 302s, you can either seriously hurt an other domain's backlinks or take them away. Again, I am staying very vague.

There is a 34 page thread on this topic at WebmasterWorld named Dupe content checker - 302's - Page Jacking - Meta Refreshes. In addition there is a thread at Search Engine Watch Forums named Come on Google, Fix it !!!. I briefly mentioned this in the Q & A session at the WMW conference (see the last Q & A). Yahoo! has once again said they have fixed the issue and the "changes have been rolled out and will take place incrementally over the coming weeks." Google, I am not aware of any changes being made.

WebGuerrilla is the name Greg Boser goes under when posting at forums. I have heard rumors dating back on Friday, I believe, that WebGuerrilla has stepped down as a moderator at WebmasterWorld. He used to moderate the Google and Keyword Discussion forums, before administering the Yahoo forum at WebmasterWorld.

Recently WebGuerrilla's name has been removed as the moderators of those forums and the title "administrator" is still labeled on his profile. Nick W's ThreadWatch also has heard these rumors, where NFFC wrote, "Word reaches me, in true TW style from an anonymous source that Greg Boser, President WebGuerrilla, LLC has resigned as both an Admin and Moderator at WMW."

NFFC then adds some good thoughts in that blog entry:

I have two complaints re: Mr Boser though:

1. I don't see a "thank you" thread at WMW, he deserves one without doubt.

2. It seems Greg is used sparingly on the European SES circuit, I think thats a shame. I'm torn between trying to organising a boycott of SES London next year and trying to let the powers that be know that if he is speaking it will be the sell out of all sell outs.

Rumorville in SEM forum land.

There were those that requested more RSS feed options. We aim to please, so we added two new feed options, one for completed entries and an other rss feed for each category.

Full Entry RSS Feed: http://www.seroundtable.com/index-full.rdf
Category Feeds:
Blog Administration RSS Feed: http://www.seroundtable.com/index-blog-admin.rdf
Directories RSS Feed: http://www.seroundtable.com/index-directories.rdf
E-Commerce RSS Feed: http://www.seroundtable.com/index-ecommerce.rdf
Google Search Engine RSS Feed: http://www.seroundtable.com/index-google.rdf
Interviews RSS Feed: http://www.seroundtable.com/index-interviews.rdf
Keyword Research RSS Feed: http://www.seroundtable.com/index-keyword.rdf
Link Building RSS Feed: http://www.seroundtable.com/index-link-building.rdf
Microsoft MSN Search RSS Feed: http://www.seroundtable.com/index-full.rdf
Miscellaneous RSS Feed: http://www.seroundtable.com/index-miscellaneous.rdf
Other Search Engines RSS Feed: http://www.seroundtable.com/index-other-search-engines.rdf
Pay Per Click RSS Feed: http://www.seroundtable.com/index-ppc.rdf
Programming and Coding RSS Feed: http://www.seroundtable.com/index-programming.rdf
SEM / SEO Companies RSS Feed: http://www.seroundtable.com/index-sem-companies.rdf
SEO Copywriting RSS Feed: http://www.seroundtable.com/index-seo-copywriting.rdf
SEO Forum News RSS Feed: http://www.seroundtable.com/index-seo-forums.rdf
Search Engine Conferences RSS Feed: http://www.seroundtable.com/index-search-conferences.rdf
Search Engine Industry News RSS Feed: http://www.seroundtable.com/index-search-news.rdf
Search Engine Optimization RSS Feed: http://www.seroundtable.com/index-seo.rdf
Search Engine Tools RSS Feed: http://www.seroundtable.com/index-seo-tools.rdf
SPAM RSS Feed: http://www.seroundtable.com/index-spam.rdf
Usability RSS Feed: http://www.seroundtable.com/index-usability.rdf
Web Design RSS Feed: http://www.seroundtable.com/index-web-design.rdf
Web Promotion RSS Feed: http://www.seroundtable.com/index-web-promotion.rdf
Weekly Email Updates RSS Feed: http://www.seroundtable.com/index-email-updates.rdf
Yahoo RSS Feed: http://www.seroundtable.com/index-yahoo.rdf

Please let me know if there are any issues with these feeds or if you have other suggestions.

This article was contributed by Alan Webb from ABAKUS Internet Marketing, a long time friend of mine in this industry with a unique grasp of the International Search Marketing Industry.

A buzz phrase for some time now in SEO circles has been 'Link Popularity'. Rightly so as well. Google were the first to include link popularity into their ranking criteria in the form of PageRank and were closely follow by inktomi driven search engines as well as others that had the capability to factor in link popularity.

Then came the inevitable. If the ranking criteria could be manipulated, then you can bet it would be. Link spam became a plague first on guestbooks, then forums and finally blogs. Also of course, there were a great number of link farm schemes and huge link networks. Google reacted well it has to be said, and eventually discounted a large majority of the guestbook link spam, some forum and a lot of the linkfarm and organised link network shenanigans. Also my research has shown that Google now counts multiple links from a single domain as just one link when it comes to PageRank and for the ranking algorithm. Hence a sitewide link is no better than a single link on a homepage.

Therefore it is not the number of inbound links that are important, but the number of different domains that link to you.

It is very important to remember that. Especially if you are using Google for your backward link checking.
I am fairly confident I can pronounce

"Link Popularity" is dead, long live "Domain Popularity"!

Continue reading "Domain Popularity By Alan Webb"

Many search engine optimizers are anticipating the day MSN Search will be replacing its current co-branded search by Yahoo! with its own search technology found at http://beta.search.msn.com/. A thread at Search Engine Watch discusses when the members feel that MSN will go live with its beta search. For some reason, I heard January recently. Danny Sullivan, who has been around this industry more then most, says in the thread:

Bill Gates said earlier this year that the new tech would go live on MSN Search by the end of this year. That's why the Dec. 2004 date is out there. I think MSN Search may have recently backtracked and put out the Jan. 2005 date to have more time to work with. Either case, not long now.

One of the cool features of MSN's new beta search is the MSN search Slider. There are reports at WebmasterWorld that the slider is not functioning properly. Basically, when you use the slider to fine tune the ranking factors, it adds "{mtch=#} {popl=#} {frsh=#}" to the end of your keyword search, depending on which factors you select and replace the # with a value between 100 and 0. The middle ground value should be 50, because you can either slide the slider up to 100 or down to 0.

I did some of my own tests, a search on Search Engine Optimization at MSN Beta brings back:
1. seoinc.com
2. seochat.com
3. submitexpress.com
4. searchfit.us
5. seo-guy.com/forum/search-engine-optimization-forum.html
6. patrickgavin.com
7. submitshop.net
8. submitshop.com
9. webworkshop.net
10. elixirsystems.com

A search on the same keyword term but setting the slider values to 50 (which should return the same results as above) bring back slightly different results:
1. seoinc.com
2. seochat.com
3. submitexpress.com
4. searchfit.us
5. seo-guy.com/forum/search-engine-optimization-forum.html
6. submitshop.com
7. submitshop.net
8. 1-hit.com
9. seologic.com
10. submitawebsite.com

Late last week there was a thread started on the topic of Google's Search Spam Reporters. This thread sprung up an interesting technical detail about Yahoo's URLs and what one attribute in the URL means.

Danny Sullivan writes that when you do a search on cars in Yahoo! Search, you will find that in the number one slot is Cars.com. Danny pulled out the URL in the SERP which reads http://rds.yahoo.com/S=2766679/K=cars/v=2/SID=e/l=WS1/R=1/SS=2044565/H=1/IPC=us/SHE=0/SIG=10pe5sku9/*-http%3A//www.cars.com/

Danny says "H=1 seems to indicate the site was hardcoded to show up in response to this query. In contrast, H=0 means no hardcoding appears to be involved."

Web accessibility laws have long been on the books for a number of years. In the UK, The Disability Discrimination Act was enacted five years ago in order to force provision of access for users of commercial websites.

The basic summary of the Act:

"The Disability Discrimination Act makes it unlawful for a service provider to discriminate against a disabled person by refusing to provide any service which it provides to members of the public the range of auxiliary aids or services which it might be reasonable to provide to ensure that services are accessible might include accessible websites."

But how effective has it been? I found this information on a thread at Cre8asite Forums. It intrigued me, and I had to find out more. This article relates that even though laws are in effect in the UK for helping apply technical standards to ensure accessibility in many commercial websites, it appears some of the efforts have gone half done or apparently not at all. Many companies the article claims may be moving to more acceptable accessibility standards but not changing web design as a result. What ends up happening is a largely gross user experiences that makes navigating for the disabled a task in itself. Some of the main things left out include leaving out efforts in changing the navigation and content. Additionally one common issue that is arising, and one I thought was applicable to everyone working on usability is the incorrect use of the ALT tag.

So for example we plan to hand over the work of making our site accessible to webmaster or tech guy or even ourself. We go into the code and start coding the ALT tags. For the image with our logo we put "image" or we put "company logo". Ok we just made the first step to making our site accessible, right? Not even close. What is left out is the usability part of the equation, an ALT tag with the effect or our company name, example: ABC Corp, including a short description describes way much more than "image" and "company logo".

The article says that education is a critical part of enacting a law like this. A mandate that websites needs to focus on accessibility but leaves out the fact that some of the information comes with a learning curve. Not all tech people are accessibility experts, nor usability experts. The user is often left out of the equation in such a law, and likely so such things are only half as effective as they should be.

So what should companies do to reach out to disabled customers on the web? Applying standards (already in place) with the accessibility requirements. The World Wide Web Consortium, as such a place for these. Some may complain as pointed out that W3C standards impact the look and feel of the site, and ruin the use of more advanced technology. I disagree, merging the use of both would be quite an accomplished than focusing entirely on one. I can create a super accessible website conforming to standards in no time, and one that uses advanced Flash technology but merging them would be the best.

The article makes a good statistic that I can't entirely validate, but it seems on track that 9 million people in Britian have some form of disability. Enough people to make them a shining light on the radar for any government or much less commercial website.

Just wanted to inform you that we made a few changes to the site.

(1) The home page of the blog is now smaller in size. I used to list the past 7 days of entries on the index page, I reduced that to the past 15 entries. The page size was over a 101k, now it is about 70k on average (depending on if there images in the entries).

(2) Didn't realize how bad the left hand size navigation looks in Firefox. We improved it while adding the "Premium Sponsor" ad. So its cleaner.

Any other suggestions are welcome, I am looking into providing more RSS feed options for you as well.

Thanks.

Found by way of a WebmasterWorld featured post, an article named Basis Technology Enhances Multilingual Search in MSN Search Engine. An other, more detailed article on this can be found at Yahoo! News, which is basically a copy of the offical press release.

The Rosette Linguistics Platform provides MSN the ability to better handle foreign languages. One example is the quote all news and forums are using from the release:

Rosette performs linguistic analysis that helps information retrieval applications understand search queries. For example, Rosette identifies individual words for languages such as Japanese that do not use spaces between words, breaks compound words into their individual components, and identifies parts-of-speech such as verb, adjective, etc. This information increases the accuracy of search results.

This is also common in German, where they often join two words into one (i think), such as "webdesign". An other useful quote from the press release is "The Rosette Linguistics Platform uses state of the art Natural Language Processing techniques to improve information retrieval, text mining and other applications and apply them to global markets. Rosette provides capabilities like identifying the language of incoming text, providing a normalized representation in Unicode, and locating names, places and other key concepts."

MSN, looking good.

The Google job opportunity page has a job listing for a Quality Rater. The job description calls for a "part-time remote workers to help with search quality evaluation." There are those that believe this job is to better find and de-list sites that are found not to comply Quality Guidelines. Basically, the job title to an SEO is "Spam Reporter". Side note: wonder if many bloggers link to this as Spam Reporter, we can get a little Google bomb going. :)

There are two threads discussing this topic, one at Search Engine Watch Forums and the other at Cre8asite Forums.

I mentioned early the search engines thanksgiving logos but I just noticed that Gmail has a special logo and letter up for the Thanksgiving holiday.

A Gobble approach to email. 

In 1621, a few hundred Pilgrims and Native Americans sat down to celebrate a bountiful harvest. The feast lasted three days, and included fowl, venison, fish, berries, watercress, lobster, dried fruit, clams, and plums. There was no pumpkin pie, however. There was also an alarming lack of user-friendly webmail services.

Now, 383 years later, it's once again time to celebrate what has come to be known as Thanksgiving—a time to gather with family and friends and give thanks for all that we have. We have many things to be thankful for. But mostly, we are thankful for you—our users—who remind us of why we work so hard all year and why we love what we do. That's better than all the dried fruit and clams in the world.

Happy Thanksgiving! Thank you for making our approach to email yours.

Gobble gobble,
The Gmail Team

Looks like Google is doing one of those very important (note sarcasm) backlink updates. It was first spotted at WebmasterWorld last night around 10:20 (EST). Even with all the debate on the importance of the backlinks we still see Google updating the backlinks for us.

Forum Coverage:

• WebmasterWorld
  
• SEO Chat
  
• SEO Guy
  
• DigitalPoint
  
• WebProWorld
  
• V7
  
• Search Engine Watch

There is a thread at WebmasterWorld named Yahoo Update? where members have noticed major shifts in Yahoo's search results pages for competitive keywords. GetBot in message number four says that he has been watching Yahoo! Search and noticed that Yahoo! has been serving up basically two sets of search results. He feels that Yahoo has been testing out a new algorithm that assigns more weight to those pages that have been listed in the Yahoo! Directory. His reasoning for this is that he feels that Yahoo!'s only competitive advantage is its directory.

An other point to note is something we discussed a couple days ago in the entry named Different Results in Yahoo! Search - Cluster Topic where members at Search Engine Watch Forums were noticing different results based on the case sensitivity of the keyword phrase. Tim Mayer, directory of product management search technology, answered this anomaly by saying "that the document was not being returned in one cluster and it was being returned in another" but it absolutely had nothing to do with case sensitivity. Interesting to note these two threads with Tim's response - might be some correlation.

The search engines all are suited up for the special holiday, and most are paying tribute but sporting a special holiday logo. Ask Jeeves takes that ones step further by sporting a balloon type logo, it is the fifth year that Mr. Jeeves will be attending the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade (source). Check out a low quality image of the Jeeves's Balloon.

Now for the search engine logos turkey day themes:

I wanted to welcome a new sponsor for the Search Engine Roundtable. The new sponsor is a new search engine friendly Web directory named Uncover the Net Web Directory. I would like to thank all of our sponsors, including Text Link Ads that is running a 15% discount on its inventory for our readers, and all the sponsors listed on the left hand navigation.

You should see the following little banner on the left hand navigation starting tomorrow.

Of course, the reader is most important and your feedback on the layout, content quality and coverage is always appreciated. If you rather not post a comment with feedback, feel free to email me at barry.schwartz@gmail.com.

It just would not be right if I did not mention anything about Kim Krause's big announcement. Kim is getting married! I am in total shock. I am incredibly happy for Kim and her future. I would like to publicly wish her and her family a happy, healthy and prosperous future together.

If you do not know, Kim has been one of those people that were instrumental in helping this Web site get started. Without her support, early, early on, I would probably not be writing here today. Again, she has helped tremendously behind the scenes as well as by posting outstanding entries at this site.

Kim - I can not believe it. So, so, so happy for you! Oh, and I made this little something, hoping you would think it is funny.

Christmas lists are one of those things that I always forget to do each year or at least don't do that well, as I know most of the things I want most of my friends and loved ones don't have a clue what they are all about (you want top search engine rankings, gift certificate to Google Adwords, and a new blog...what???). I know I have to be real, and a new service from Froogle was fun to find today to help make it easy for them. With the holidays upon us, it probably a good time to get something together to just to make sure you don't get a bread maker, or bag of rocks this year, or even worse socks.

This comes way for the Google Blog, and it appears some of the engineers over there decided to solve a long time problem of developing Christmas wish list the Google way...create one with Froogle that can be searched, created, and shared with many people.

Jason Shellen explains how to create your own Froogle Wish List:

Want one of your own? Just go to Froogle, search for a few things from thousands of online merchants, and click 'Add to list' for any item you want to add to your Shopping List. You'll need to sign in to your Google account or create one if you haven't already (if you have a Gmail account or Groups 2 login, you already have a Google account). If you want to share items, just click the 'In Wish List' checkbox and whammo, you now have a web page of your holiday wish list to share with friends and family. This year maybe I'll get iPod socks instead of argyle!

Now Jason, what are iPod socks? Funniest thing I have heard today that you can actually buy socks for your iPod. Cool! According to the the product description: Dress your iPod up in any one of six vibrant color socks, Just slide your iPod into the sock to keep it safe and warm. :) Slide it out to dock or change playlists. It's as easy as... putting on a pair of socks. Sounds pretty easy to me. Fun, and definately better than argyle socks. ;)

There is a nice thread going on at Cre8asite Forums named Is a Domain Name Worth It?, which discusses a blog entry by Barry Welford named Domain Names: the ultimate "vanity plates". You know something, I think it is worth quoting Bill Slawski's post once again, because he put so much detail into it.

There is a lot of value to a domain name.

1. Branding - By using your own domain name, you are working towards building an image that applies to your business. It is just one of many indicia that people see of the whole package, from business name, domain name, logo, tagline, mission statement, corporate history, to the more involved aspects of the business relationship with customers, vendors, competitors, and others who might interact with the organization.

2. Portability - you can take a domain name with you if you need to move from one server to another, or one host to another. IP addresses change, as do server names, if you find yourself on a service that provides a directory or a subdomain for your site instead of a domain name.

3. Memorability - a good domain name is easy to remember, and may lead to people not having to look the name up, or search for it amongst bookmarks or favorites.

4. Credibility - a domain name is more credible than just an IP address, or a directory or subdomain that includes the name of an ISP or shared host.

5. Type-in traffic - some domain names have value in that people will just type the address in a browser without knowing what might be on the other side, such as sex.com, or business.com.

6. Matching Offline Branding - branding efforts offline can be reflected on the web by the use of a well known business name or product name, or some other distinction about a business. This is true enough that a well known company will fight others under a trademark theory to take over a domain name that is in commercial use, or that is held by someone only with the intent of selling it to the trademark owner.

7. The appropriate tld - Chances are that if you are a commercial business that operates in a global environment, a name that uses the .com ending may be the most attractive choice for your business. Or, if you are a nonprofit, you would prefer one that ends with a .org. If you want to focus upon business in a country where local business is important, and search engines don't question your place of origin and business, a country specific two-letter tld may be of more value. The tld used in the domain name can be part of the value of a domain name by indicating what type of organization the site is, or where it is located.

At the WebmasterWorld conference there was a small discussion on domain names. In that discussion, Brett Tabke, the founder of WebmasterWorld, said that his logo is his domain name. What he meant by that is that he did not invest a whole lot on his logo because, as he said, "his best branding is the letters you type into the URL box in your browser when going to WebmasterWorld". It is a classic statement which shows the importance of a URL. I disagree with Brett in that I feel he should invest in a new logo that adds more to the WebmasterWorld brand, but I agree with his and Bill's views on a domain name.

Andy reports that Ask Jeeves and Lycos is getting into the SEO business. Andy is not worried for his company, Keyword Rankings. He said:

I don't see a threat here for anyone other than very bad SEO firms. The good ones will still find plenty of clients. Besides, the search engines already offer PPC management solutions, yet PPC management is still being outsourced to third-party, impartial, SEM firms. The same will happen with SEO.

Some of the forums already picked up the news and are discussing it now. Over at I Help You Forums Kal lists the two pages to find these servers, Lycos's Site Side Optimization and Ask Jeeves Direct Marketing Solutions. Lycos clearly lists out the prices on a per page basis, Ask Jeeves does not. If you had a dynamic site with 100,000 pages, it can get pretty expensive.

I think someone asked why don't the search engines sell SEO services at one of the last conference I attended. I thought it was a no brainer, and so did the people who answered the question on the panel. It would be a conflict of interest for a search engine to provide SEO service.

These threads are definitely worth checking out in the following forums:
- I Help You
- Search Guild
- Search Engine Watch

Do you have ad blindness towards the sponsored results found at the search engines? You know the results off to the right side or boxed in at the very top of the results. Some people do. They simply will not click on a paid search listing. At Cre8asite Forums there is a thread named When do you click? where you see two outstanding individuals (also happen to be forum admins at Cre8asite) go at it about why you should or should not click on these PPC ads.

Ammon Johns, aka Black_Knight, suggests that when searching for general information he is more likely to look towards the organic, free search results. But when Ammon is in buy mode and looking for product information, he often looks towards the paid, PPC, sponsored listings.

Bill Slawski, aka bragadocchio, says that he "never look[s] at sponsored/featured listings on the search engines." Bill explains because he expects "most sponsored ads are based upon a broad match, and I have no expectation that many of them will be a good match for most of the queries I fashion, and often refashion as I am searching."

Ammon then responds stating that "broad match is generally considered the trademark of the amatuer, for exactly the reasons you stated." Ammon goes on to explain that "Conversion is the single most important thing in most PPC campaigns, and the first step to that is ensuring that a listing won't mislead anyone into a click that didn't serve them." And the final quote I would like to leave with is "It is only PPC that adds a penalty to getting untargeted listings or unqualified visitors."

I will repeat, reciprocal links are not evil. All this discussion in the forums about how people only want one-way links because they heard reciprocal links are bad and can get you kicked out of the search engines is taken way out of proportion. One example of such a thread is at Search Engine Watch named Reciprocal Links Are Evil!. Let me explain.

As I said in my response, there is nothing wrong to have site A link to site B and site B link to site A. When linking to any site, you need to ask yourself "will this link be of value to my web site visitor?" If the answer is yes, then by all means - link away. Take this site for example, it gets many links from search engine related news sites, forums, blogs and even search engine official blogs. Does that mean I should not link to them back? Of course I should. I link to forums, blogs, new sites and the official search blogs every day. They link to me, I link to them - a reciprocal link, in a sense. But I link to them because they have a document of value to my reader. They link to this site because, I hope, this site has a document of value to their reader. Its the natural development of links that search engines want to see.

This does not mean that you should email everyone that is on topic to your site and ask them to swap links. You can of course, but to some extent. Make sure it feels natural and looks natural. Some might argue that looking natural is not so important, well if it is not, it will be in the near future. As Nick W says in the thread "be inventive - be extaordinary - be contraversial - be outstanding and link out generously and all good things will follow. Really they will..."

I have an article I wrote on this topic to try to clear things up. I have named the article Web Links from the Search Engine's Perspective. See I just linked to a document I think will be of use to you. :) Of course it is a link to my corporate site but I do not care, I still hope it will be helpful.

Found a good thread over at SEW forums this morning that asks about particular types of drop down menus? Which are better CSS DHTML menus or Java Script menus. For the search engines the natural answer is CSS menus. They are easily spidered by the search engines and present a wide variety of options enabling the webmaster extra benefit in its use. Orion, responds that "hand-coding the menus populated with links right after the body tag and then repositioning the menu to be displayed where you want them not only improves link relevance but facilitates the crawler finding right away the links". Another member gives some good advice that while Google may read Java Script to some extent there are many other search engines that will not, so it best to use CSS for this.

An interesting argument I hadn't heard before was brought up about the CSS and JS menus. Apparently one of the member says that in some CSS drop downs use java script to just change divs from visible to hidden. So essentially your site is going to have:

- invisible div layers
- transparent gifs (to trigger the visible / hidden functions)
- link text inside divs with parameters that says hidden.

Hmm, not exactly what most people want. I use CSS menus in some of my site, and I don't run into this particular problem, nor am too extremely worried about it if I did. It does look like old school spam tactics, but then again its really not and while as one member relates a "stupid spider" might not understand I am not following the argument that it could put you at some risk. I guess the best way to find out would be to test it.

So what do you do if you are currently using a JS drop down menu? Can't change to CSS yet? Well good question. If you are using a JS Drop Down, I guess one of the first things you should consider is how the menu is being used in the code. Is the javascript placed in a file outside of the code on the page? Also as some of the members in the thread suggest, make sure you have a link to your site map near the top of the page, or at least the most important links on your site. If you can help it, put the site map link in an inline link where its part of a sentence and not a single link. Either way will work fine, just be sure to adjust for JS menus for all search engines.

Continue discussing JS and CSS Drop Down menus at SEW Forums.

I spotted a thread named Don't Get it? Case sensitive at Yahoo? at Search Engine Watch Forums which describes a case of conducting a search in upper case versus lower case brings back different results. The example given in the thread is a search on "Squaw Creek Condos" versus a search on "squaw creek condos" in Yahoo! Search.

Although I personally don't see any different results at this point in time, Danny Sullivan in the thread reports "First gets one match; second gets two!". Of course that sprung my interest, so I emailed Tim Mayer over at Yahoo! Search for some insight. He got to the bottom of it, telling me;

I looked into this and the only reason for this abnormality is that the document was not being returned in one cluster and it was being returned in another. Nothing to do with case sensitivity.

We often find slightly different results at Google when searching on the same term (no matter upper or lower case) due to data center fluctuations. Good to know we have a similar occurrence at Yahoo! Search.

At the WebmasterWorld conference I met an individual that just began writing for Web sites. He explained to me, briefly, how he has changed his writing style. He just thinks keywords, keywords and keywords when writing his page copy. He then asked me how do I go about it. To be honest, I said I really do not think about it. I said its really just how I write these days, I think keyword without having to think keywords. But I think almost any copywriter can easily transit from the old school offline copywriting to the new school online seo copywriting in a matter of a day.

A thread at HighRankings named When Does A Copywriter Become An Seo Writer?, where the member asks "how do you convert to an SEO writer?" Jill Whalen, probably the most well known SEO copywriter, responds with "Basically, for the copywriters I've worked with, I've just given them the keyword phrases, then they do their research on the topic as usual, and just try to write with the keywords in mind. It's often very difficult the for the first page, but after that they always pick up right up."

An other member offers the following advice:

I've been a copywriter for going on 30 years, writing for websites for about 7 and I still don't know whether I could call myself an SEO writer!
I can tell you that I do apporach a few things a bit differently when I'm doing web work. I'm a tad more self conscious about defining the page structure and working from fairly detailed outlines into relatively short blocks of copy - partly to make the page more scannable and partly to guide the type spec more finitely: indicating H tags and bold type as appropriate to highlight the overal content and maybe attract a couple points from the SEs.
Compared to print, I'm more goal-oriented for each page and para, knowing that, unless I keep the sign-posts to "what's next" in the foreground, the visitor is as inclined to click over to another site as to click through to my other pages for more info.
I also find that SE 'bots aren't real clever about metaphors & jargon & such, either, so my copy tends to be a little more grounded and literal than it would be for print or video. For the same reason, where I used to use benefit statements as anchor text for links to deeper pages, I work a bit harder at mentioning the product or feature by name in the text so I can anchor my links to soething more like a keyword. That's a fine line, though, sinceit can get repetitive and spammy - I use go that way more often on top level pages that linking to fairly different topics.
Meanwhile, I haven't done enough sites end-to-end to be sure whether the my approach is really helping or if I've just been lucky with the keywords I've gone after!
As others on this forum keep telling us, just focus on writing for your customer/visitor/user and the rest is gravy.

This makes for a nice thread.

A member over at HighRankings started a thread named  How To Get Listed On Yahoo, Easily And Cheap, Proven method, no Yahoo-express, which provides just that. Here is how it works.

(1) Sign up for an expired domain name service that show sites listed in the Yahoo! Directory
(2) Wait for the domain names to come into your inbox
(3) Purchase the domain name for several dollars
(4) Build up the site and content
(5) Call Yahoo asking them to switch the site into the new appropriate category. He said, just tell them you changed businesses and tell them that you forgot the email address you signed up under.
(6) Presto a free listing at least for the remainder of the service period, which could be for ever.

I am sure the Yahoo! Directory folks will patch this up shortly.

Ok, I lied in the title of the thread, but it did get you to click over from your RSS feed aggregator, didn't it? ;) But there is some truth to this title, MSN Search Beta does not currently rank MSN's new search blog on the first page of the results. Try it yourself, MSN Search Blog Query at MSN Search Beta and if they fixed it by now, see my screen capture.

Of course, good search engines like Google and Yahoo show the proper result in the number one slot. For some reason Ask Jeeves does not list the blog on the first page either, but Ask is slower at updating then the others. I do see that Ask Jeeves has some of the blog's pages indexed.

Interesting find and the thread discussing this can be found at Search Engine Watch under the title of MSN Search Beta stiffs MSN Search Blog.